Two if by Sea
12/13/2004 4:10PM (2:10AM Khartoum)
I saw two shooting stars in a row tonight. I was talking to my newly married cousin outside as he prepared to leave for his new home when I saw them. They both originated in the western sky and arced down towards the south, fading behind the silhouette of the neighborhood mosque's tower. I rarely see shooting stars, and to see two in such quick succession is the sort of thing that makes you understand why ancient peoples took up augury, among other things.
The house has been full of visitors and well-wishers. Mostly they have been relatives, although some friends of the family have been here as well. The surprises are coming fast and furious, as I see young cousins who've started college, and others who've married and even had children. There's nothing so effective at disabusing you of the notion of your own youth as the sight of your younger relatives and friends with their own offspring. A lesser man might go deaf from the sound of the biological clock ticking, but luckily I have reason on my side, and it saves my bacon more frequently than you would think.
This afternoon I got the chance to go out for a little bit between visitors, to visit yet another friend of the family. His family's engineering firm has offices on Hurriya St (Freedom St) in the midst of the Soug AlAraby (the Arabic Marketplace) close to the center of the city. The way there was made very long and unpleasant by the amount of traffic. Like London, and other old capitals, Khartoum simply wasn't meant to have this many cars plying its streets. As a result of the population explosion due to rural migration, the war in the south and simple biology, we are seeing an increase in the number of cars on the road. Like a fat man with arterial sclerosis, the city is finding it harder and harder to push cars through the narrow streets, made narrower by cars awkwardly parked on both sides of the road. While Khartoum traffic was bad when I was living her in the late 80's and early 90's it's even (inconceivably) worse now.
The visit with the family friend went well, though he seems depressed and dispirited by the direction that the country is taking. His melancholia made me, in turn, sad. I wish for his (and all my loved ones' sakes) that things weren't so crummy here, that life and this government had ground the fight out of them, the taste from their food, and the light from their lives. As I've said, the Sudanese are like Russians; they are prone to melancholia, and seem to thrive on misfortune, inviting it sometimes with open arms. This does not ameliorate the harsh hand that has been dealt to them lately, and I find myself ashamed at my good fortunes. Not that anyone begrudges me that fortune. In fact they are happy for me, sometimes happier for me than I am for myself. This serves to make me even more ashamed of course. As I left his office, I saw the unfinished office block that stood opposite to it. It's skeleton had been standing for the better part of 12 years, unfinished, because the owner had built more floors than the zoning commission had approved on his building permit. He did not remove the extra floors and so the building remains at a standstill till today. It's a metaphor for the country in many ways, and its lost potential.