Layover in Sudan: Regime Shifts, Climate and Otherwise

The outer doors of the aircraft had just been closed. The hot air inside still smelled liked the desert, blending with the cooling sterility of the plane’s air conditioning. The plane was only about a third full now, most of the passengers having left us. My wife had nodded off in the seat next to me on the Airbus. We had watched them walk down the long rolling stairs and cross the tarmac to the battered terminal building. People did a lot of walking at this airport. Khartoum seemed hazy in the distance. I wondered how close we were to the Nile. On to Addis?

The plane rumbled into motion as we began to taxi. I could see no hangars, but several planes were parked along the edge of the runway. The plane suddenly shuddered at the same time I heard the sound of metal ripping . We came abruptly to a stop, my wife suddenly awake.

I crossed over to the other side of cabin. Apparently, a part of our wing had sliced through the fuselage of another large plane. I could see the hole in the body of the other plane, a hole shaped exactly like our bent “winglet” — the part of the wing that acted as a vertical stabilizer.

After two hours, we were escorted to a room of undefinable purpose, with few chairs or tables, whose advantage seemed to be that the doors could lock us in. Our passports disappeared into a sack, and after a few more hours a few water bottles and small snacks appeared from another sack. Then a bus, crossing big roads and finally running along the Nile itself. The Nile!

We passed government towers, offices, and businesses, stopping in front of a hotel. Men with guns escorted us in. My wife and I had a small room on the front, looking down into the river through trees. In the far distance, I could see where the White and Blue Niles met — a great sight to me. Men with guns lined the sidewalk and fence, though they seemed to hold less interest in the wonders of African hydrology than me. I did not foresee a chance to touch the water. My phone didn’t work in Sudan apparently. There was no internet. The phone in the room had no signal and the restaurant served no meals. No one who knew us knew where we were or what had happened.

The day had been stressful, but we were perhaps calmed by other catastrophes of the recent past. My wife’s father had literally died in our arms about six weeks before, almost without warning and with much suffering. We were in the final stages of adopting a child, which accented our grief since we knew her father could now never meet his first grandchild. And we were jetlagged and drained from travel across 10 time zones. We lay down, dreamless in sleep. I am sure we were dead to the world for a dozen hours.

This wasn’t how Sudan was meant to be seen. An ancient country, as old as Egypt, and nurtured and fed by the Nile as much as its neighbor, Sudan has its own pyramids, deep traditions, and culture. South Sudan was still quite new then. Our visit here wasn’t fair to the country and the rich culture and history of the place and people.

I’ve often thought that if Freud had been interested in freshwater, he might have been remembered for saying something like “Hydrology is destiny.” My hypothesis remains untestable, but the hydrology of Sudan has changed dramatically over relevant human timescales. Two thousand years ago, the Nile in Khartoum carried four times as much water as today, while the marshes of southern Sudan and South Sudan were large lakes. There was a lot of water here in the desert. And no less than now, reliable waters is a powerful basis for wealth and stability. The waters of Sudan have become far more scarce with minor shifts in climate, and its position between climate zones seems to have created a kind of latent instability. Climatic instability cannot encourage social stability.

Given this year’s tragedies in Sudan and Khartoum in particular, I am unlikely to revisit that hotel anytime soon. Looking at images of the city and smoking wreckage of conflict there is horrifying. I would be surprised if our hotel was still standing. If our bed can still comfort tired bodies, then the mattress must hold refugees, far more afraid than my wife and I then, in touch with even more grief and pain. With grim humor, they might tell me that the restaurant is still not serving meals.

Transformation, uncertainty, and resilience are words that I use here often — most often for climate change. But these words apply to other processes too, and other forces of alteration, reordering, and impact. Many of the lessons and tools described here apply as well as to shifts in political regime as well as to shifts in climate regime. But resilience has limits. Sometimes things stop bending and start breaking.

For us, after about 24 hours, a bus noisily pulled up in front of our hotel, and we plodded out and drove back to the airport. A man came out to us with another sack, dumping our passports on the ground. Our little crowd self-organized and began distributing them to each other. Curiously, they were unstamped. We had not “entered” the country. We waited a few more hours back in the chairless room, and then went back to a plane awkwardly missing a winglet. We flew on to Ethiopia. Strangely, I remember Khartoum as a quiet place, a calm place, where I slept a long time with nothing else to do.

Khartoum is an ancient city and a more ancient place. Khartoum and Sudan will come back, and hope with peace and calm waters. May those waters replenish your shores, your resilience, very soon.

John H. Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA