Giving Thanks, Sudanese Style
12/24/2004 2:27PM (12:27AM 12/23/2004 Khartoum)
Merry Christmas, America, and I hope you have as much fun in the next couple of days as I had last night. We held a karama last night at our house. A karama is basically an occasion to celebrate a success, newfound health, a birth, or anything else worth noting with some thanks to God. Frequently an animal is slaughtered in thanksgiving, and used to feed the throngs that show up to the party. Family and friends come around, eat, drink and be merry. Since our karama was held in the evening (and on a Thursday night to boot), there was also dancing and live music by Ahmed "Silver", the fanan or artiste. The topic of Sudanese singers is a long one, and enough for a whole separate post, but for now I will say that this "Silver" is the musical flavor of the month in Khartoum, and my cousin and her friends were very excited at the prospect of his coming to sing for us.
The whole thing was organized in less than 24 hours by my aunt (yes, this is exactly how my family operates, in case you were wondering), to celebrate my mother's safe return from Paris where she had a minor procedure performed last month. It was also held to celebrate my own minor achievement of last month. My cousin and I spent most of yesterday driving around town, buying supplies, paying for things and being called every 30 seconds with something else to get. Upon our arrival at the house we discovered that all my female relatives in the capital had descended upon the house to help with the preparations. We had already gotten a cook to take care of the food aspect, and the young men of the family were taking care of the chairs, tables, and so on, so they had nothing to do but sit around drinking tea and chatting about this and that. It was still nice to see so many people there earlier than necessary, and to know that the family is so tightly knit.
We held the actual party in the "other" house, which is to say that there is a house in the neighborhood that is my family's, and we are staying with my aunt. The other house has a larger yard so we decided to hold it there, so as to accommodate all the folks we knew would show up. Around 9p, people started showing up, in all their finery. The artiste had shown up a little before everyone else and set up his gear, a keyboardist and a drummer in tow. I was dressed in a navy blue jacket and a great chocolate and blue shirt (when you see it, you'll know how bad ass I looked), and everyone that came in seemed impressed in that "you clean up good, kid" way. They also had taken up the habit of calling me 'arees, or "the groom". Apparently I'm not allowed to wear a blazer and not be getting married. Coupled with my mother's oh-so-innocent revelation the other day that someone had mentioned to her the rumor that she had come to Sudan to "marry off her son", and you can see how I started to wonder if this was some sort of trap. Everyone was shooting knowing looks at me, and at each other. Fear not, though, dear reader, I emerged from the evening unscathed, unencumbered, and generally free.
The dancing started up early enough, with my cousins taking the floor to get things started. My younger cousin is in her second year of college, and has a group of girlfriends that are very much like her, which is to say, Sudanese party girls. The connotations are not the same as they would be for their counterparts in the West, though. This bunch just took control of the dance floor and basically held on to it all night, dancing with some abandon and much glee. I moved in and out of the dance floor, as often as I could, but as you all know I am a mother hen at parties I am ostensibly hosting and took lots of time to go talk to people and photograph them, and shmooze. All of this is, of course, is immortalized on video tape, which of course I will willingly show for a steep fee, and the signing of a confidentiality agreement.
Due to the repressive nature of some aspects of life in Sudan we had to have a permit for the party (late night noise) and the party had to be over by 11p, so around that time the artiste wrapped up, and people started talking and streaming out in dribs and drabs. I spent the next couple of hours walking people to their cars and waving last goodbyes. By the time I went to bed it was about 3a with 5 days of work crammed into the last 16 hours, and a tired smile draped across my face like an old coat.