From home with Love

1. Flights and Airlines
“We are about 10 minutes away from Khartoum, we should be able to land on time,” announced the KLM flight captain. We did, at exactly 5:30 PM. It was hard to look at the city from above a curtain of red sand covered the place, although not a thick haboob but was enough to make one not want to look down. We said goodbye to a smiling crew who thanked us for travelling with their company. My niece and nephews were flying on Sudan airways from Abu Dhabi on the same day, they arrived 12 hours late and without their checked in luggage.
2. Some smile some don’t
The majority of the passengers were flying to Addis Ababa, so very few had Khartoum as destination. We walked down to the bus that took us to the terminal. Well there is a great change there; more than two immigration kiosks were open and staffed. I easily reached the kiosk, there were two officers one sitting on a chair another standing by his side. Both had a blank look on their faces, the sitting one looked for something in my passport, stamped it and handed it over with the same blank look. I did say assalmu alaikum with a big smile, only to feel like a fool.
3. Warmth of other suns
Family and friends greetings were as warm as ever, usually coupled with the question (ma khalas jiti niha’i). I always wonder why is this question attached to the greeting, I finally decided that it is a welcome back and we want you to stay. However no one knows what I would do if I stayed. OK it is a benign rhetoric question.
4. Culture, literary delivered
In the morning newspapers were delivered to the door. I wondered whether this is a step forward or backward. The kiosks that sold magazines and newspapers in the neighborhood had disappeared. There was a big one in the shades of the high trees of the Gorashi park, and 3 others within a walking distance from our house. I used to even pick up all the Arabic and English magazines. They sold school supplies for children and those loveable children magazines. Alas! No more of those. However, young men in search of a living took up the job of delivering newspapers but carry no more interesting things. The only deliverable sought after service they carry are telephone cards. The most interesting unwanted service by these young men is how they take it upon themselves to substitute any newspaper for one that you ordered. One day he left Alintibaha instead of Alahdath (the latter is prone to suspension by the powers that be, so it is easy to substitute another for it). Although there is one member of the family who pays the guy, he got threats from everyone who reads the paper that day. HE was told that if he left this paper again He would be replaced by another delivery and phone card supplier.
5. So many Bo Azizis
The newspaper carried on its first page that skilled laborers gathered at Al mahaliyya building demanding that their tools be returned and official attacks against them be stopped. Every time their tools got confiscated they had to pay LS 150 as a fine to get them back. If this is not what Bo Azizi walked in flames for, what is? Any way there was no follow up on the story. I figured they paid the 150 and got their tools back. But what was the fine for? Was it for owning the tools, working without a license or just their bad luck? Confiscation of tools does not take place, legally that is, unless the tools are being used for an illegal act, e.g. making araqi. One would think that a constitutional right of those men was breached, but who wants to go there?
6. Alkalkla Allafa

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