temperature
The temperature in London was 9 degrees today. In Montreal it was minus 10. In Khartoum it was a balmy 28 degrees.
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Where is the Sudan in your imagination? Monica flies to Khartoum on Tuesday. In the chill of Covent Garden we shopped for a torch that can be attached to your brain, powered by two AA batteries, and a guide to learning the English language. I have never known anyone about to fly to Khartoum before. I once met a Sudanese man in a restaurant in Ladbroke Grove who told me that Bush should effect regime change, sending a couple of warships down the Nile. The fact that my sister is headed there brings it to life. It is 40 degrees in January. It has 140 languages, including Arabic and English. It is Muslim, Christian and perhaps 138 other religions as well. The Nile flows through it. It borders the Sahara, lush lands to the South and the Red Sea. The British built railways, the Pharaohs built tombs, and Gordon died there. It contains Dafur. You need a pass to travel to places. They need more English teachers.
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My sister said: I wonder how much of the country I’ll get to know. Then she added: I wonder how much of a country it is ever possible to get to know.
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Where is the Sudan in your imagination? Monica flies to Khartoum on Tuesday. In the chill of Covent Garden we shopped for a torch that can be attached to your brain, powered by two AA batteries, and a guide to learning the English language. I have never known anyone about to fly to Khartoum before. I once met a Sudanese man in a restaurant in Ladbroke Grove who told me that Bush should effect regime change, sending a couple of warships down the Nile. The fact that my sister is headed there brings it to life. It is 40 degrees in January. It has 140 languages, including Arabic and English. It is Muslim, Christian and perhaps 138 other religions as well. The Nile flows through it. It borders the Sahara, lush lands to the South and the Red Sea. The British built railways, the Pharaohs built tombs, and Gordon died there. It contains Dafur. You need a pass to travel to places. They need more English teachers.
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My sister said: I wonder how much of the country I’ll get to know. Then she added: I wonder how much of a country it is ever possible to get to know.
posted by maldoror at 7:59 p. m.
1 Comments:
My brother went there with his father, but he was too young to remember much except sitting in the cockpit and a black man with a giant, rusting refrigerator. His father I recall used to talk about the Gordon of Khartoum and his fateful last stand. It was one of the stories in a book about the glories of Empire I was given. This was all part of the strange lessons he wished to impart about honour and courage - things that seemed remote to me, in our west London flat of the seventies.
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