Barkal, North Sudan 2015

Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar

On the banks of the Nile strip in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance may look all the same, such as on Google Maps. Vast land  showing gardens offsetting the curves of the Nile, and enclaved by villages  tinted with a brown color. They may all look similar, but villages, tribes, traditions and even languages differ in these vast areas of Sudan, as there is a wonderful diversity on the ground.

Al-Barkal is one of those towns, with the same palm tree gardens inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq", who are residents of the highlands far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region and the reason behind the name of the town is al-Barkal mountain, which is a rock platform rising to four meters and a hundred, and on its side protrudes a rock resembling a minaret, which was previously carved. "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” as the most famous Shayqiya poet Hassouna called it expressing his disappointment in one of the great Barkal leaders:

Mount Barkal, the one with a crooked tooth                

It cannot mount to the mountain of Ibn Ouf in lower Hizaima

The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taraqa (Tarhaqa), can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the continuously disapearing raw of rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire current town lies on the land of the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.

View from Jebel Barkal with its side slit.

The pyramids of Barkal, which were burials of the kings of Nabta before the transfer of burials to Meroe (Bagrawiyah).

About two kilometers south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, now inhabited and is run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house and my aunt are both important monuments as the ones mentioned above, at least for the following narrative. In the following text I will narrate the events of my visit to Barkal in 2015, to participate in the date harvest season, or as it is called "Hash Altamur". The text also contains interventions from my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, for the purpose of maintaining the accuracy of the information, my experience that I formed in 10 Days is incomparable to his experience. The one who was raised in this house and grew up on these lands.

The house of my grandfather Hajj Mahgoub. Shown the front part or what is known as the Diwan or Saraya.

The main street in Barkal, which connects Meroe and Karima.

The date harvest season in the Barkal area begins in September or the month of "Nasea" as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic months. This calendar is still used for the purpose of agriculture and harvesting in most regions of northern Sudan, where the months coincide with the emergence of clear weather changes or seasons. Dates in al-Barkal are dry dates, meaning that they are left to ripen and dry before harvesting, and therefore easy to preserve and store, making them more suitable for trade. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft, kept in baskets stacked on top of each other, and left until they retain the moisture, which is not customary in northern Sudan. There are semi-soft dates in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in the Nile River state, from which Ajwa is made, such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.

Al-Barkal use to be safer in the past, but due to some recent harvest stealing incidents, there has become a tradition of guarding dates and setting a specific day to start harvesting to avoid thefts, as a specific day is set for the start of the entire harvest season, and there is a day for each sagyia or garden so that it is known that the owner of the sagyia is the one who is harvesting. In the year 2015 specifically, the eighteenth of September was the designated harvest day for our sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my aunt Hafsa, may she rest in peace. She was the manager of the date business for the whole family and an excellent businesswoman. The “Qafaz” and his family came with us. The “Qafaz” is usually a partner to the owner of land, he cares for and harvest the dates, his name comes from the “Qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, where the male palm - is planted in the female palm sapling, and this process takes place several months before the harvest season, that is, in winter, to contribute to the production of dates properly.

On our way to the lower lands, there was a row of young men, sitting on the ground on the main street, opposite the farms waiting for work, me and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come in the days before the harvest season. We came from Khartoum, but this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan, which are apparently not empty of inhabitants. In the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city. Men work in harvesting, and women work in small, scattered chores in homes, doing small magic tricks, or picking dates. The young man hired by my aunt from West Africa had come to northern Sudan to seek education in khalawi the Quranic schools found all around Sudan. He and his companions had come to work to collect a wage that would help him financially in the coming months. The harvest season is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. People are temporarily enriched, which is always a reason for festivities. The time of our visit was no different, as our presence coincided with several weddings in the Hilla or neighborhood. Employees in the capital and other large cities and expatriates usually come on their annual vacations to visit during the harvest season. The joy of children on the other hand has two reasons, the first is that the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they help their families in harvesting, and the second is that children have a wage for collecting dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that fall on the ground from the impact of the strong wind, these dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use this opportunity to increase their pile of dates in the corner of yard.

Dates of the Barkawi type after harvesting in a basket “guffa” made of Dom fronds, widely used as a container for dates, and other grains and crops.

The method of paying for the different types of characters participating in the harvest varies; the Qafaz, usually, takes his fare in the form of dates, as it has one or two branches “sabita” from each palm, depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the palm tree. The collectors prefer money, especially in recent years, and take their wages by the day, while children and young collectors are paid by a measured size they collect. They collect the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm until they complete a "kaila", a Kaila is a tin can equal to the amount of two quarters, and a quarter has two malwa, and the date sack is mostly the size of six kila, and all these are old measures of weights and size that are from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy these kailat from the children.

Our small delegation arrived at the Sakgyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into Sagiyas, and the sagiya is a piece of land equal to the area of what can be irrigated with a single watering machine also known as Saqyia, even after the old mill disappeared and was replaced by mechanical pump, the name remained as a measure until now. A sagiya is approximately equal to an area of twenty to thirty acres. An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length names, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.

A view from above of al-Barkal gardens

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The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. Climbing the palm in al-Barkal area is done without using any auxiliary tools - such as a rope or ladder - but the bottom of trunk of the leafs known as "Al-Karoug" is left extruded when it is cut, and the harvester uses those parts to climb the tree, as the palm tree grows, these parts weakens and breaks causing the climbers to fall.

The Qafaz climbing the palm tree using on the Karouk.

A sabita or branch cut and thrown by the Qafaz on the floor over the linoleum.

After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the collectors– including me, I was promised a kila of dates if I helped collect the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then remove the remaining dates by hand. Then the dates were collected in the middle of the linoleum and poured into the sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look very local, they are in fact  not; these sacks first appeared in the English colonial period, as they were and still are imported from India. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile that was built in the seventies of the last century tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but it stopped operating years ago. Now sacks are sometimes made from plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or iron wire and carried home.

Dates are cut from Arjun or Sabita.

Piling the dates

Sealing the sack using a wire

The full shawal was a sign that we can stop working to rest. The land was soon littered with the scattered bodies each finding shade to rest under. Lunch or brunch was sent from our house, as usual: Gurassa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. We returned home at the end of the day, followed by a camel with sacks of dates that walked right into the house through the door, as was the case in the house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar, Wad Mustafa and Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry completely.

Transporting date sacks using donkey carts.

Using camels to transport dates, and here is one entering the gate of Mahjoub Gaafar's Diwan.

People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season is the rainy season or autumn, some are afraid to the point they ask the Shaiks to hold the rain. Next to our new pile was another pile for my other aunt Aisha, who had been brought before we arrived from another "driver" owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif, may God have mercy on them.  We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality Qandila dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as tamuda and kalamah, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges, while our pile was from "Barkawi", which is a commercial date variety where it is produced in large quantities, and is exported in different parts of Sudan, while "Al-Jaw" is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of dates.

The dates are piled up on the terrace of my grandfather’s yard, where they will be spread for days to dry in the sun before being packed in sacks.

During my stay in those ten days, there was no more important topic than dates and their conditions. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you have harvested? And how was the season? Is the date “Shail” or not? The "shail or sheel" is the degree to which the branch is filled with dates. And if this year the palm tree it is not “Shayla” then everyone in their councils discusses why. It could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one of the sessions, or the dam lake has increased humidity in the area. In any case, dates were the master of subjects. Its fame was never threatened except once because of a notorious cat that stole fish from one of our neighbors and took over our kitchen several times.

On our second day of work, the house turned into a wedding house, where the women of the neighborhood came to bake the wedding tea biscuits of one of their sons in our large oven, which runs on gas, not like the old stoves that run on "wagood" – that is, dry palm leaves – especially "kood", which is the wide part of the palm leafs or arjun that survived the process of turning them into toys, such as the old game called Tab or whips made for disciplining the same children. As is usually the custom of wedding houses, the house was filled with laughter, teasing and singing, in the outdoor kitchen women worked with a biscuit machine, and others came to chat in the veranda, and the holder of the occasion brought lunch trays from her home to feed the guests, just like dates, the owner of the matter is always the one who must feed everyone.

The delicious biscuit that was made for one of the Hilla weddings.

If you lean next to one of the reclining women in the veranda, you will find yourself looking at the traditional roof. Traditionally houses are roofed with what? Of course, palm trunks, where the trunk is cut longitudinally into quarters or sixths, each of which is called "falaga". It is the main construction on which the roof is built. Then the stem of the leaf is placed on top of it after it is de-leafed and tied together. Previously, green palm leaves were usually by the thousand stems, cut from the palm while cleaning it outside the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged, but now, palm owners pay workers to cut the leaves. Fronds and mud are placed on top of the newspaper, and finally animal waste or manure, usually donkey residues. Before autumn, this process is repeated for the ceiling and walls before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.

A traditional roof with an iron beams and wood veins

The season ended and the second stage came, which is the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers " are skilled workers who sort dates quickly and pack them, where bad dates "karmosha" are thrown to animals and sheep. In the past, dates were stored in silos of different sizes, made of clay and raised from the ground, called Al-Qasiba or Al-Qusaiba , also used to store crops such as wheat, and Al-Qasasib is still used in some villages in the north. In our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above tree trunks or iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic cover from above.

Dates are raised on stones or wood to protect them from damage and insects.

Clay silos (Qasiba) for the preservation of dates and grains are still used in some villages in the Far North.

"AlMusharf dates, which it’s protective walls were raised

The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up

The happy on in the world takes the fate of his days

And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead

(old Shayqi poet)

Dates have multiple traders, mostly sababa; they are middlemen who buy dates from small dealers and collectors, and sell dates to market traders. The street vendors buy dates to retail in the market. Large merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as El Obeid, El Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ships to Karima, from there by train to all these cities by rail, and in the White Nile from Kosti to the south by ships and through the many roads that connect Sudan to each other. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan, where they are eaten with coffee. Dates are delivered to Port Sudan by trains and sold by the "Malwa" in the market.

In the late fifties, during the government of General Abboud and with American aid, a date canning factory was established in Karima. The machinery arrived from California, and was assembled at the factory, the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut, and packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them, to facilitate their filling and removal of the seed/stone, which was used as animal feed, and the factory also produces white spirit or alcohol as a by-product and is used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped operating for a long time, but returned to work seasonally due to local Sudanese efforts as the dates were harvested.

Karima’s Fruit and vegetable canning factory, which was established by the Russians in the early sixties of the last century.

I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates, it was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined, but the little "sackl" was a gift from my aunts for at least trying.

North Road Bus Station

Photo of passengers

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