VINYL POETRY

Volume 10, July 2014

BIRDIE
Safia ElhilloView Contributor’s Note

Sudan Today. Nairobi: University of Africa, 1971. Print.

Note on Arabic

It is difficult.

The Publishers do not pretend
to have solved the problem.


1: INTRODUCING THE SUDAN

Above all, the story of Sudan
is the record of a fight against
nature.
Travelers saw it as hell on earth.

Dimensions
Boundaries are natural
, ruled lines pronounce ownership


2: PROVINCES AND TOWNS

Darfur

Darfur used to be the most isolated.
It took a month by camel to reach.

Northern Province
The Sahara
cuts a vast swathe
across Africa
from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
Suakin
Suakin is different.
In Suakin, a wealth of windows seek the cool
of the Red Sea evening breezes.

The houses are built of coral, cut from beneath the sea.


Khartoum

Gordon was dead, his severed head at the Mahdi’s camp.
Khartoum, damaged by siege and sack.
Amidst the rubble, the desert took over once more,
as corpses mummified in the dry summer heat.


3: THE RIVERS:

givers of life


4: FROM 250,000 B.C....
; history is more a matter of chance remarks
by early travelers.


5: MEN WHO HAVE SHAPED THE SUDAN

Mohammed Ahmed el Mahdi (1848-1885)

The son of a boat-builder.

Major-General Charles George Gordon (1833-85)

Only the Gordon Music Hall remains, inappropriate reminder
of a man who was no lover of dancing girls.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Earl of Khartoum and Broome (1850-1916)

Kitchener earned disapproval by destroying the tomb of the Mahdi and throwing the bones
into the Nile sending the skull to London.