Time travel eludes most of us, but for a few, it is possible to participate today in rituals and activities that have been going on continuously since ancient times.
We had heard that Nubian Wrestling was one of the "must see"s for Sudan. Alongside the pyramids at Meroe, the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, the Whirling Dervishes, the Camel Market, and the Omdurman Souq, this millenia-old sport done northern Sudanese style is not to be missed.
The broiling heat has slowed our accomplishing visits to too many of these tourist/historical interest sites. The Meroe pyramids, for example, will have to wait until September. Just the thought of driving the 18-hour circuit (best broken up into two days with a stop at the Italian Camp in between) in the relentlessly blazing sun and sand makes my skin flush and my forehead sweat.
This weekend, our curiosity got the better of us. We headed up to the north edge of Khartoum, into the neighborhoods of mud and straw compounds, free ranging goats, and un-paved roads for a chance to witness the famous Nubian Wrestling. We pulled up for the 4pm show time just a few minutes after the hour, thinking it wouldn't be a problem to grab a seat at the last minute for an outdoor show in this heat . . . what and with everything taking place on Africa time and all . . .
As you might guess, we were among the first spectators to arrive. Our effort to be just fashionably late got us there about 90 minutes early. We rented our chairs (25 cents each) from a friendly vendor outside the woven-plastic-mat-walled arena and went in.
There were about 20 other early birds, all squeezed into the 14 inches of shade along the west edge of the dusty arena. Our fellow spectators/organizers encouraged us to pull our chairs right up along the outer chalk circle indicating the boundaries for the match. We squinted into the sun in that direction and then pulled our chairs up alongside everyone else in what would become the very last row. At least we had shade.
After about an hour of watching men finish the set up for the show: a boom box and a loooooong extension cord, a mic, a speaker, more chairs, and generally herding the slowly trickling (all male) crowd to the correct part of the dusty corral, we were asked more firmly to move from our inconspicuous spot in the shade to a place just a few feet from the action, and right smack in the middle of a section of people with no chairs. Yeah, we weren't going to stick out or anything, us being the only white people and all, and perched up there on chairs above all of our neighbors . . . but we couldn't seem to talk our way out of these better seats, so we acquiesced.
After another half hour the athletes finally appeared. As I looked out over the now tightly packed ring of spectators, I marveled at how this ancient sport still drew such a crowd. Waffling back and forth between appreciating the wrestling matches and observing the other observers, I struggled with the feeling that I was romanticizing the exotic I saw all around me. Orientalism is something hard for Arabic-o-philes like ourselves to avoid sometimes, and this experience brought that internal debate to the forefront for me. If nothing else, Nubian Wrestling offered us a window into the past . . . and once we get our video all up and edited and ready, you can have a look out that window too . . . stay tuned!
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