A citizen's tale By: Abdulaziz Ali

I would like to share you one of Sad Eldin Abrahim articles from his famous cloumn ‘ Sabah rabah’ in “Akhir lahza’ daily Arabic publication In Khartoum.
Abdul-Aziz Ali Omer
The Sudanese citizen is born on a day with a variable weather condition that ranges from being hot by the morning and cool breezy at night . He adapts himself with the vagaries of the weather .He earns his resilience through the ups and downs of dismal atmospheres.
It is true indeed that any Sudanese citizen is infected in his infancy with many of endemic diseases.
Those who died early because their flesh couldn't offer them the resistance would infallibly be admitted into the paradise. The citizen is an object of public curiosity and chattering that persist throughout his childhood from the first week of his birth.
The parents invite for the christening feast innumerable guests who sit in a circular gathering of eight or ten men. The same people visit the family on Al-arbeen named after the fortieth day of birth anniversary to take the infant out for blessings to a saint's tomb or to the Nile bank if his house is nearby that river .
Then , they are split by controversary over whether the prospect of his walking and sprouting a tooth is near or not yet. After that ,they come to the house on the day of his circumcision on which he is treated as a prospective bridegroom.
Then, with his enrolment at school his failure and success is checked and forecasted.
The wedding comes after university graduation and on such a joyous occasion, the photogenic bridegroom arrival will be greeted with flurry of hand-shakes and embraces by a crowd of awaiting spectators. Their contemplative looks and gossips last until the end of marriage ritual and the birth of his first child .
They keep pestering the citizen that his only child needs a brother or a sister until he has the last from a brood of children. Incessantly their physical growth and affairs are observed till you marry them off and you are seen somewhere in the house fondling your grandsons.
Friends and relatives paint white the house and they scrawl on the walls of with the return of citizen as an expatriate or pilgrim .They share him a celebratory meal prepared for a safe homecoming .
In the end sweet life kisses the citizen's cheek for the last time as he leaves to recuperate from his ordeal in Jordan or Egypt where latter the quick examinations show that the citizen's heartbeats have stilled. Back home instead of admitting the true causes of the longest suffering, it is just claimed that his breath did not come back to him in the wake a sudden illness.
The congregation of mourners trickle to lift the citizen's bier and carry from the hut . They don't disperse after watching him covered with earth unless one from the family of deceased announces the end of the long traditional condolences. The go back to stay for a two or three-day in a hired tent where they eat, drink tea and coffee . Their chats stop at some one arriving to pray for the soul of the dead.
After the death of citizen, the watching miasma shifts towards his surviving progenies who are called the sons of the late…alleging that they did so and so . Long live the Sudanese citizen while being kept under watch .