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My Sudanese Stills: Seeing the Prince of Tobacco

By Matilda Arvidsson

It was a special occasion. I sipped my cup of black, spiced and heavily sugared coffee in the dazzling sun. I was trying to make sense of what I saw: a white plastic table mounted on the uneven ground surrounded by unfamiliar people making conversation, PET-bottles of Fanta Orange and Coke, the contrast between intense greenery and the red fertile soil, our four-wheel parked at a distance, the path between the pineapple garden and the tobacco field, ripe avocados weighing down their branches, the exactness of the edge between sunshine and shadow under a Baobab tree, the white muddiness of the Blue Nile, golden straw roofs on mud brick houses. And a young man running across the court-yard with his undershirt fitted tightly to his body – still wet from his swim.

I followed his manic run across the yard, thinking to myself: “this is the first Sudanese I’ve seen making a real run!” I directed my Canon his way, made a rapid decision and let my finger down. His features were imprinted on my Kodak ISO 200 as he disappeared into the pineapple garden. I steered my gaze back to the people around the table. I was a guest. Throned as I was next to the Prince of Tobacco, I was a fair skinned princess. I couldn’t tell what was being said. It was all spoken in Arabic. So I kept to myself, trying to make sense of what I saw.

It took some time for my Kodak rolls to return from the photo lab. By then it had turned into winter in the Southern Swedish sense of that season: endless winds, dripping noses, wet feet and damp wool. It had made the colours of Sudan grow sharper in my mind. The avocados had grown plumper and the pink grapefruit sweeter. The sun had become brighter than gold and the red soil carried its moisty smell all the way through the chemical process of the photo lab to the glossy paper copies. The imprint on the Kodak roll became a threshold keeping me on one side looking into another world through a magnifying lens. I still flip through the photos in search for details. Often without removing the photo album from the shelf. The glossy paper copies keep staring back at me: What did you see?

A surprised gaze under a khaki baseball cap: the Prince of Tobacco inspecting one of his tobacco farms. His left arm extended towards the golden straws scattered on the farming lot. Five smiles squatting around it, gazing in the direction of the Prince’s arm. The Prince has just finished his instructions to the villagers on how to properly plant his tobacco seeds. His boots and socks covered by red fertile soil. Such is the African soil: it sticks to your boots in lumps, it colours your socks, and it freckles your bare legs. 

The Prince of Tobacco was of Syrian descent. This heritage made his hairy legs look like blood-spotted birch trunks. He had been named George, which revealed him as a Christian in this Muslim country. He belonged to a peculiar minority whose sources of wealth lurked in a colonial past and whose future depended on an ability to make unholy alliances with power in whatever shape it took on. Military uniform, tailored suit, or traditional stylejallabeyya and white turban mattered all the same when old money sat down to negotiate with the political power of the day. George’s nickname—the Prince of Tobacco—crowned his father as the absolute monarch of Sudan’s tobacco industry. The royal patrilineal order allowed George to travel however much and wherever he wanted in spite of the general travel ban which applied to most parts of the country. It provided him with enough cigarettes to bribe every starved and homesick guard at the roadside checkpoints scattered along the way from Port Sudan in the East to Damazine in the South. In case the guards got greedy, George’s title provided him with the authority to have them transferred to an even more desolate and destitute place. It also provided him with a lot of fair skinned friends.

It was George the Prince of Tobacco who had invited me on the trip to the South. He had given me the time of departure like a captain giving an order: “5.30 AM. Be ready. It’s a five to seven hour drive to Wad Meddani, and we won’t wait for you if you are late.”

So, I had been ready, waiting for the four-wheel to pick me up at the doorsteps to the old Blue Nile Insurance building, just off Sharia al Mashdal, c/o Miss Helena Eriksson: my address in Khartoum. At five in the morning the sun still hadn’t hit my side of the street, so I kept my hijab tightly swirled around my head. Most housemaids arrived at this hour. They came one by one on foot down the dirt road, quietly disappearing into the dust coloured buildings. A few years ago, our housemaid had come on foot through the desert from Eritrea, arriving in Khartoum with nothing but her baby son. No one came to Sudan unless they really had to. In order to freely choose this place you had to be privileged. Preferably white or at least fair skinned. Rich at the very least. And perhaps also out of your mind. Or at least terribly bored. Or suicidal. Or all of the above. I know I was. Perhaps I had a very good reason for leaving, at least a better one than for waiting on the doorsteps to the old Blue Nile Insurance building for a prince to pick me up. Being able to leave is indeed a privilege, but being able to belong where one is, that is the greater privilege.

The invitation for the trip had come out of nowhere. At least that’s how it had appeared to me. He thought it would interest me, he had said—George the Prince of Tobacco. His white Zimbabwean tobacco farming friend had nodded and downed the last of a Heineken in one go. I too had nodded, though with less confidence. I didn’t know George very well, or to be correct, I didn’t know him at all. All I had done to earn his invitation was to go to his Nile-side palace a couple of times together with the rest of the “ex-pats”: Brad the sports instructor at the international school, Allan the Scott, Monique (who seemed to never fall in love with the right guy), Terry the Aussie baker-turned-chief of staff at the Sudan Bread Factory (who definitely wasn’t the right guy for Monique), Greg the oil company guy, Margaret from Coca Cola, and Tiiu who was with the Estonian embassy. And of course Helena. George’s palace offered a place to meet, to smoke pot, and play darts or perhaps a game of snooker. Or to down one of those rare forbidden beers. All at George’s expense, of course. It also offered a spectacular view of the Nile, as well as the infamous Kobri prison, where political prisoners were held and hanged.

I didn’t enjoy any of those sports, and it took some time before I could steer my gaze in the opposite direction. I just didn’t want to be alone. I found the texture of the imported English sofa soothing against my skin, and a certain sense of belonging grew out of the ability to bare my shoulders without their appearance causing a public stir of dismay.

I slept my way through the first hours of the drive down South, but the holes in the road eventually made any rest impossible. I was thrown all over the back seat, and so was the weed that George, with little success, was trying to roll into smokes. Aziz, our designated driver, steered the car off road and we zigzagged our way through the savannah. The car filled up with the familiar sweet and heavy smell. I declined the offer to share the smoke and glanced out the window in want of any suitable subject of conversation. George’s absolute power kept me on guard. I turned my gaze towards the landscape through the lens of my Canon. It magnified the details and filtered out my sense of not belonging there. I saw cows with horns like swords herded by young men. I saw women dressed in colourful tobes brewing tea on coal stoves under Baobab trees. I saw the ground beneath the car turn from desert sand to seas of mud in a heavy downpour. Aziz and George filled the car with small talk.

The scenery had changed from sand to trees. Aziz insisted on this part of the country being a stronghold of black magic and witchcraft: “Be aware, I tell you.” Was he genuinely worried, or just playing a trick on me? Still facing the road ahead, he glanced at me through the rear-view mirror. I didn’t know how to read the expression on his face.

“These wicked women are witches. They know the black magic. It’s not like Europe here, you know. I tell you. Don’t accept anything offered to you unless it comes from a sealed bottle.”

I couldn’t figure out the importance of the seal. All I knew was that plastic bottles release a foul taste into any drink after hours and weeks of Sudanese heat.

“They cast spells on the water here,” he added.

 He took a deep puff on his smoke while resting his other hand on the wheel. He paused, raised his eyebrows and made a dramatic gesture towards me.

“You stick to Coke.”

I turned my gaze out the window, trying to hide a smirk. His prophecy of Coca Cola being blessed while Nile water comes out cursed seemed more like wicked witchcraft to me than the other way around. Yet, having resumed a neutral face, I met his gaze and promised to decline any bewitched water offered to me. He nodded in silent approval.

 As soon as the car stopped I found myself surrounded by villagers welcoming the Prince and his entourage. There was a tobacco farm to be inspected. George headed our three man troop down the narrow path towards the tobacco fields. Aziz followed behind. The khaki shorts walking before me and the black curls finding their way to freedom beneath the stained baseball cap didn’t come through as particularly prince-like. But his posture did. I let my gaze wander through the pineapple garden as I followed behind the Prince, over the irrigation channels, through plantations of avocado trees and something else. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The dense greenery opened towards a field. There it was: a farming plot bordering the riverbank. George, squatting and letting his finger run through the tiny top leaves of the plants closest too him, inspected the farm work done so far while talking to his farmers. He gave them instructions on how to properly plant his seeds. He made sure to address each of them, the women as well. He listened. He knelt and bent down to inhale the aroma of the tobacco plants. It was apparent that he was in right element here. There wasn’t really anything for me to do except stand by his side. I excused myself, crossed the tobacco field, and went down the nearby hill to explore the river.

I let my Canon sweep through the landscape. I indulged in the explosion of colours. The camera framed it for me in a series of stills. Red mud bordering green grass: the shadow of each straw sharp as a knife in the midday sun. Jallabeyyas left behind on the river bank: their whiteness reflected in the water. The sun split each white reflection into countless rainbow diamonds against the blue sky. Two boys taking a swim together in the Blue Nile on a Sunday afternoon: laughing, splashing water around as they dared each other further into the depths of the river. My autofocus made a rapid double-beep before the shutter opened and closed, kweea-kusch: a moment caught and imprinted on my Kodak roll. The scent of damp mud from the riverbank mixed with smoke and a hint of onion. Excited voices called on me to join in the coffee ceremony.

When seated with the others I returned the smiles extended in my direction and accepted a cup of black spiced and heavily sugared coffee offered to me. I sat back and tried to make sense of what I saw: a white plastic table mounted on the uneven ground surrounded by unfamiliar people making conversation, PET-bottles of Fanta Orange and Coke, our four-wheel drive parked at distance, and a young man running across the courtyard with his undershirt fitted tightly to his body—still wet from his swim.

The manic run marked the end of our stay. Our company left the table. Hands were squeezed. Kisses were exchanged. The air buzzed with Ma’asalamas and al’hamduliallahis and insha’allahs. I mimicked and smiled and spread thank yous and shoukkrans to my left and right.

They didn’t tell me until the four-wheel was already taking us down the dirt road back towards Damazine and the Rosaries Dam. George turned from where he was seated in the front to inform me:

“His friend was taken by a crocodile.”

In response to my silent consternation he added:

“Such things happen a few times a year here.”

He turned back, keeping an eye on me through the rear-view mirror. I tried fixing my gaze. I clung to my camera, unable to direct it.

Through the lens of my Canon it had been two boys taking a swim together in the Blue Nile on a Sunday afternoon. It had been a frame: bee-beep, kweea-kusch. Inside the camera I was holding, both boys were still alive and splashing water at each other, their features imprinted on my Kodak roll.

 I hadn’t seen death coming. Had I lingered on for a few more minutes down at the river bank, I would have been an eye witness. I would have seen the surviving boy fleeing the water in his undershirt, leaving hisjallbeyya behind next to that of his dead friend. But I had been quietly sipping my coffee fifteen yards away, thinking to myself as I followed his manic run across the yard in front of my throne: “this is the first Sudanese I’ve seen making a real run!”

How do you respond to a death you didn’t even notice, though looking was everything you did? And how do you un-think what has been thought? I didn’t know what to do with the information George offered to me. My heart grew heavy with guilt. Though I couldn’t tell exactly what I was guilty of. I wished that I’d known what to say. I wished that I hadn’t been there. So, I just nodded, as if I understood.

Afterwards, I learned that our trip to the South had become the talk of the town. Of course only in the parts where the ‘ex-pats’ lived. George the Prince of Tobacco explained to me that all the “ex-pats’” now wanted to join him on his trips. He asked me, with a smile, what I might have told them to cause such an interest in the practices of tobacco farming. I hadn’t spent much time with the Teds and Freds and Gregs since returning from the South, but the rumour had gone around that there was an opportunity for free trips and plenty of weed if one befriended George in the right way.

I didn’t have to answer George’s question. I guess he knew. I had stopped appearing at his “ex-pat” parties. Instead I returned his smile and asked if I could take his picture. Framed through the lens of my camera he appeared as if out of context. Without his entourage of friends, his throne of tobacco and his empire waiting to turn into ashes, he looked like an ordinary young man. A bit tired perhaps, or was he sad? It was just the two of us at his palace that morning. After the picture a silence fell. I didn’t ask him if he had seen death catching me unable to see on that Sunday afternoon of our trip to the South. I didn’t ask why I had been there, or what the glossy paper copies from that day would reveal. I didn’t ask what my pale skin had represented, or why I always seemed to end up where I didn’t belong. Instead, we both looked in silence in the direction of the Kobri prison. I let my camera slowly fall into my lap. The rope from the gallows on the other side of the prison wall was weighted down. He didn’t have to tell me what it meant.