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Sudan, 2005
—on the death of Dr. John Garang, Liberation
Fighter and Sudanese Vice President
Garang is dead! An accident, they say—
his helicopter downed by slanting rain.
This man who kept the Northerners at bay
no longer lives to temper hatred’s strain.
Conspiratorial tongues have lit a fuse
and black-smoke pillars fill the morning air
as burning barricades and tyres accuse
his enemies of striking from their lair.
Come night! The call to prayer’s a call to kill.
Beyond our walls we’re hearing blunted blades
honed sharp upon the asphalt, honed to spill
the blood of those deemed foes before night fades.
Come morning! Through near-empty streets we drive
to safety, tired, heart-broken, but alive.
.
.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Paul, a sad and poignant look back at a critical moment in the birth of South Sudan. With your personal ties to Sudan I am left wondering if this poem was written then or now? Either way, it personalizes the fear and danger of those uncertain days. Doubly sad the blunted blades continue to be honed and wielded in the current ongoing unrest, mayhem, murder and displacement of so much of the population.
I wrote this poem a few years ago and had forgotten about it. It could be that I wanted to compartmentalise those memories. The recent poem about Crystal Night sort of woke it up.
Sadly, the cycle of violence, the to-ing and fro-ing as refugees between the two Sudans has dogged my wife’s family their whole lives.
Such a sad state of affairs in the Sudan brought to us in gripping detail.
Thanks for commenting, Roy. This is really only an outline of what happened that night. The full details are difficult, mentally, for me to retell.
Maybe a bit of context is needed.
This poem chronicles what was probably the most frightening night of my life, back in 2005, in Khartoum, Sudan.
I was visiting from Saudi Arabia where a low-level insurgency was going on. I’d evacuated my South Sudanese wife and my three young children to (north) Sudan.
Dr John Garang had fought the (north) Sudanese government for 21 years, had signed a peace agreement, and had been one of two Sudanese vice-presidents for 21 days. While returning from Uganda to South Sudan, his helicopter crashed in a rain storm, leading to rumours of assassination.
What followed was South Sudanese burning tyres in Khartoum city centre, and north Sudanese massing in the streets, ruing the signing of the peace deal and bent on vengeance.
I, and one of my wife’s cousins, barely escaped an ill-thought-out trip to Khartoum city centre. I then spent the night patrolling inside the perimeter wall of the house we were staying in, in a mostly north Sudanese neighbourhood, where impromptu citizens’ militias, made up of norther Sudanese, were out roaming, looking for Southerners and those sympathetic to Southerners.
Fortunately, at 1 AM, the Sudanese government imposed and enforced a curfew.
It’s not known how many South Sudanese died that night, and the news cycle shifted the following day when King Fahad of Saudi Arabia died.
The sonnet is distinctly impressive, Paul, and well organized, but rather cryptic without the context you give above. The epigraph makes it seem the poem is to be about Garang, though it is much more comprehensible as a report of your personal experience. I would not want to sacrifice anything of the poem, but it might be a good idea to write a different epigraph, giving as much about place and circumstances as needed to make sense of the scenically described drama as a survival story.
Indeed it must have been a terrifying time. I know of someone who was trapped in Sudan during a stormy period when borders were closed. He got out at last, possibly helped by fervent prayers for his protection, but I never heard exactly how the escape was managed.
Alas, history keeps repeating itself. The poem is from back in 2005, yet in this latest round of blood-letting, I’m hoping to evacuate my last two close family members through Port Sudan next month.
Problem is, their destination is volatile, too.
I was living in Hawaii at the time and I remember the news of Garang’s death as clearly as if it were yesterday. I have missionary friends who were forced to leave Sudan back in the early 1980s due to the violent conflicts between the north and south. Because of my continuing interest in the region Paul’s poem was (to me) a clear personal reflection on a sad and destabilizing moment in Sudan’s history. Unfortunately, US media have little interest in covering matters related to East, West or Central Africa. For example, each year for many years, more Christian’s have killed and/kidnapped for forced conversions in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined.
Crickets.
My pastor for six years now is a Nigerian, and we in this area are well served by several more Ibo priests. They shake their heads and groan, “Islamicization,” without wanting to explain fully. Looking it up, I seen the national government joins suspicious diplomatic organizations, then proceeds to voluntary and later to compulsory “social initiatives.” Before you know it, persons are detained or disappear because they are said to interfere with “education.” Much more needs to be known and said.