THE SPECTATOR TRAVELER: Where is Your Camel?
Dealey, Sam
THE SPECTATOR TRAVELER SAM DEALEY Where Is Your Camel? OWARDLY, LYING, EFFEMINATE BRUTES, these Arabs and Sudanese! I wish they had one neck and someone would squeeze it!... Oh! I am sick of...
...My lighter had been requisitioned at the gate under the guise of security and no doubt brought the guard a few dinars...
...He pointed to the sign above and shook his finger...
...This is the place of stop thinking," the agent said, and smiled apologetically...
...The plane, of course, did not leave in 10 minutes, and after all the internal travel forms had been filled out, we were ushered to a tall porter wearing a mishmash of uniforms who would check our luggage...
...With a great frown, however, he pointed to a large camel bag I bought as a souvenir...
...As Gordon himself wrote, "There is some deep and wonderful design in all these trying obstacles...
...It's become little more than a nuisance, remarkable only for whether a plane landed ahead or (more likely) behind schedule, or whether the meal was atrocious or merely edible...
...I was greeted by a fog of smoke so thick it's a wonder the pilots could see anything at all...
...No more plane...
...Americans, after all, do not go to Sudan to hijack planes...
...Sam Dealey is a writer based in Washington, D.C...
...When it came time to land, he merely told me to brace myself in the doorway...
...Tinny Arabic music blared from a small boom box, and on the floor sat the navigator, cross-legged, boiling tea...
...it hasn't escaped certain transportation modernizations, it's still fortunately a far cry from sterile...
...Ahhh," he said, grasping the conundrum...
...Certainly he preferred the untamed savannas and desert to the relative comforts of Khartoum, where he chafed under his administrative duties...
...But you say a plane leaves in 10 minutes...
...Indeed, there was a plane bound for the capital right now, he said, and pointed through the broken window panes at a plane that hurtled down the runway...
...What he didn't know was that, despite my exasperation, inwardly I felt only thanks...
...Multiple calls to the various domestic and cargo airlines over the previous days, however, turned up that the only flights were on Saturdays and Mondays (at 6 a.m., of course...
...No smoking," he said...
...THE FIRST STEP IN UNDERTAKING anything in Sudan is realizing that nothing happens on time...
...There had, in fact, been several flights to Khartoum that morning, the ticketing agent explained...
...This—and the stench of unburned fuel and my unshowered fellow passengers—was reason for a cigar, and I fished around for a pack of matches...
...There's really no joy like barrelling down a Thai highway on the roof of a bus in the early morning, passing elephant herders and Buddhists clanging their begging bowls, feeling the cool damp from the mist on one's face...
...To those who worked alongside him, he could be an annoying perfectionist...
...Ah, yes...
...There is a very good reason for this latter ritual in Sudan...
...Cursing our bad luck back in our guest house, we suddenly heard the drone of an airplane taking off...
...Yes, there are no flights today...
...Sadly, "getting there" is no longer part of the adventure, and a trip doesn't really start until one lands...
...I thought happily, and over the course of the next hour had a delightful chat with the Armenian pilot...
...While I SAM DEAL Y ing off and the grateful applause upon landing...
...Many of the slaves regarded the Englishman's promises of liberation with bewilderment and even ambivalence, ultimately leading him to dismiss them as "a hopeless, hopeless, hopeless lot indeed...
...There was the seal of some United Nations relief agency, and another from the Sudanese air force...
...And where is your camel...
...Three more told of long-shuttered attempts at civilian aviation...
...Many of the seat rows weren't bolted down, so take-off resulted in a domino effect, with one group of passengers tumbling back onto another...
...The blocks were removed and, like an old mule, the plane sighed as it plodded down the runway...
...Or sweltering in a stalled Haitian taxi, smelling the sickly sweet smoke of burning rubbish and—inevitably in Haiti—flaming tires...
...Gordon's letters, however, can be misleading...
...I am sick of these people...
...Is there no other flight to Khartoum today, perhaps even on a cargo plane...
...Airlines routinely publish departure times of6 or 7 a.m., but there's no assurance they will leave then or ever...
...NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47...
...Or holding on for dear life in the bed of a pick-up truck as it slips and bounces over the Sahara, the whirling sand stinging a sunburned face and arms...
...His grumblings home notwithstanding, I suspect Gordon perversely enjoyed the trials of the Third World...
...With the help of a contact who had access to a helicopter, we arranged to fly back Sunday—only to learn that morning that he had left without us the previous evening...
...Charged by the Egyptian Khedive some 130 years ago with ending the slave trade in Sudan, the English adventurer and Governor- General of Sudan found not only his mission but the people and their climate impossible...
...The propellers sputtered to a start and coughed oil...
...I'd taken only a few puffs when what passed for the steward crept up to me...
...Ah well, he sighed, feeling our consternation...
...Gordon himself, during one of his periods of exile in Khartoum, wrote, "Since the lonely camel rides are at an end, I have no nice thoughts...
...The favorite Sudanese expression is "Inchalla bukra mail mushkala"—"God willing, tomorrow, no problem"—and this is particularly apt when it comes to travel...
...Yes, it is a bag for camel, I said...
...Before I could stub it out, however, he stopped me with a pat on the hand and motioned toward the front of the plane...
...We raced to the airport...
...Change of schedule...
...I am the last Soviet fighter pilot," he declared at one point...
...Sure, there are inconveniences, but mostly they're of a charming and darkly humorous sort—an Ethiopian Airways flight running out of meals, for example, or the ubiquitous Moslem prayer before tak1 --v-OT SO WITH THIRD WORLD AIRLINE TRAVEL...
...His eyes brightened...
...That bag is for camel," he said matter-of-factly...
...He suffered from a weak liver and persistent diarrhea, and complained endlessly of frustrations with local officials, Arab tribal leaders, and his own aides and native troops—to say nothing of the Africans, for whose poor souls Gordon labored...
...He asked it with such earnest innocence—as if boarding the camel could be solved in its own Sudanese way—that the ticketing agent and I both laughed...
...But I hope to bring it onto the plane...
...I found myself traversing the country for much of the summer in an old Antonov, its past lives revealed by the fading decals under the wings...
...An 1883 report from the nettlesome Anti-Slavery Society was conspicuously silent on Gordon's governance, noting simply that, "He spent most of his time traveling...
...But more often than not he was gracious and soft-spoken, ministering to those who 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 became ill and patiently instructing those who mucked things up...
...Not sure that I'd understood him correctly, I made my way hesitantly toward the cockpit door and knocked...
...But I thought there were no flights to Khartoum on Sunday...
...Charles Gordon's letters home were often dyspeptic...
...I naively asked...
...In this day and this world, travel usually has little allure...
...The conveyor belt wasn't conveying, and a team of natives simply crawled into the machine to drag the sagging boxes and bags through...
...He pondered this for a moment, finally giving a befuddled nod...
...Having spent a fair amount of time in Third World hellholes, I can appreciate where Gordon was coming from...
...The first step in undertaking anything in Sudan is realizing that nothing happens on time...
...One Sunday in late August, my colleagues and I needed to return to Khartoum from the dusty Saharan town of Al-Fashir in the remote western region of North Darfur...
...Now this is my idea of an airliner...
...MidAir leaves in 10 minutes...
...We stood in dejected silence, watching as it took off...
Vol. 37 • November 2004 • No. 9
