National Geographic - UK (2022-02)

played a pivotal role in the protests. “Whenever

people see a young woman in the street fight-

ing for Sudan, going into the streets for Sudan,

that means she’s brave, she’s very defiant,” she

explains. “She’s strong and a warrior, just like

the kandakas.”

In the nearly three years since the fall of Bashir,

however, the role of women has been increasingly

shunted aside. That was Salah’s main concern as

we spoke, to ensure that Sudan’s modern kanda-

kas are safe and would have proper representa-

tion in any transitional government. Since our

interview, the coup—which, with the threat of

a return to a repressive regime, feels more like a

counterrevolution—has made the situation for

Sudanese women even more perilous.

O

N MY LAST FRIDAY in Khartoum,

I cross the White Nile to the city

of Omdurman, where the tomb of

19th-century Sufi sheikh Hamed al

Nil lies in a cemetery bounded by

busy streets. Some 70 percent of

Sudanese consider themselves fol-

lowers of Sufism, a mystical expression of Islam.

The country’s Sufi orders often play an influen-

tial role in internal politics, and the Sufis who

marched from Omdurman to army headquarters

to join the 2019 protests helped oust the regime.

Each Friday at sundown, hundreds of follow-

ers of the Qadiriyya order gather at the cemetery

to perform the dhikr, a ritual that often involves

chanting and dance. As men in green and red

robes slowly slap their tambours in rhythm, the

crowd looks on and sways. The drumming picks

up pace, and the dancing and chanting begin. La

ilaha illa Allah. “There is no God but God,” the

crowd repeats, as clouds of frankincense and

dust rise in the air. The dhikr ends with a kinetic,

exultant release, and people disperse, some fol-

lowing the call to prayer to the mosque, others

wending their way through the cemetery.

Several graves are fresh and decorated in the

colors of the Sudanese flag. These belong to

some of the protesters killed during the revolu-

tion, students who announced in the streets that

they too were kings and kandakas, inheritors of

the complex legacy of a land where some of the

earliest empires intersected.

Watching students pay their respects at one of

the graves, I was struck by how fragile the new

Sudan felt, like a precious ancient vessel being

carefully excavated from the earth. Now the

coup has injected even more uncertainty into

a nation and generation hungry for democracy

and stability.

Most of the grand palaces and temples of

Kush disappeared long ago, looted for parts

and swallowed by sand. But many monuments

to the dead remain: the pyramids of kings and

kandakas standing sentinel in the desert, the

tombs of sheikhs, and the tombstones of stu-

dent protesters crowding urban cemeteries.

These monuments persist as regimes collapse

and rebuild, telling anyone willing to listen: We

fought for this. We were once here too. j

Kristin Romey is the archaeology editor for

National Geographic. Photographer Nichole

Sobecki covered cheetah trafficking for the

September 2021 issue.

SUDAN’S RECKONING 131