Desert rose
” They screamed, “God is alive”. The crowd was a frenzied, chanting mob, swaying as one like a wheat field in a gale, the drums like machinegun fire, and my heart keeping pace.
Suddenly, the drums stopped. It was over. The dervishes and crowd fell exhausted to their knees and prayed in the encroaching gloom, the dust settling slowly until all was still. My heart slowed.
When I said I was going to Sudan, most people asked: “Why?” Here is a country invariably framed in terms of bloodshed and hardship. From General Gordon, butchered by the Mahdi in Khartoum in 1885, to recent decades of famine and civil war and a president, Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court over the Darfur genocide.
In 2005 there was a peace treaty and in 2011 South Sudan seceded , losing Sudan its title of Africa’s biggest country. However, recent fighting on the disputed border, just 150 miles south of Khartoum, makes peace prospects seem remote. Less well known is Sudan’s rich, ancient past, when the Kingdom of Kush was a superpower, dealing with Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors as equals, leaving behind some of the world’s greatest archaeological treasures – including more pyramids than Egypt – lying in the desert unheralded and largely unvisited by outsiders.
Source: Financial Times