This summer I traveled to Sudan for the first time in eight years. Sudan is situated in north east Africa, with Egypt bordering it to the north, Ethiopia to the east, and Chad to the west. The capital Khartoum sits at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, flowing north into Egypt. Sudan is home to hundreds of ethnic groups with a multitude of spoken languages and dialects, and has a rich history that is often forgotten by the outside world due to the turmoil that the country has faced in the past few decades.
One of the most interesting places I visited was the Market of Omdurman (Souq Omdurman). The market is massive and houses everything from everyday necessities to rare antiques.
When my mother was my age she moved away from home to attend the University in Omdurman, and mentioned that every week on her way back from visiting her family, she would stop by the market to run errands.
We spent hours weaving through shops admiring the craftsmanship of leather shoes and bags; many of the shops were filled with carved wooden masks and animals. There seemed to be a substantial amount of imitation ivory pieces as well. We wandered past dishware, clothing, and food. Men lounging in front of their shops, waiting on customers, and young men with buckets offering car washes. We found shopkeepers selling antique pieces that were a reminder of the country’s colonial past, and other pieces that predated the colony all together. We came across shops that sold gold and perfumes for weddings, and vendors that sold incense and oils.
This market is one of the most lively places I have ever been, almost as lively as the people within it.
There is a certain kind of nostalgia that exists when one returns to a place after having been gone years at a time. I have never lived in Sudan, but when someone has memories associated with a place that is so very different from their own normal, those memories have the tendency to stick. It’s like seeing a human at different stages in their development, rather than slowly over time. The likeness is still there but the change can be jarring, and it feels as though they’ve changed all of a sudden even though we logically know that isn’t true.
I hope to return to this market again in the future, hopefully one day with my mother, to see how it grows and adapts to the surrounding city. In the back of my head I have a sneaking suspicion that time somehow moves differently there.
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