Miadan AlKhalifa

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Upon the death of Gordon Pasha, a British officer, the Mahdi forces ended Turkish rule over the land known now as Sudan on January 26, 1885. The Mahdi was a religious leader who led a revolution against the Turks between 1881 and 1885. The Sudanese people were united during his time, but he passed away shortly after Gordon and didn't live to see his Islamic state.

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The Khalifa, the successor of the Mahdi, became responsible for establishing the new Mahdia state, the capital of which was Omdurman. In a span of 13 years, Omdurman grew from nothing to a human buzzing city, spanning six miles along the Nile. The spot where the Mahdi chose as his residence and later became his grave and tomb was the nucleus from which the city sprouted. To the south of the Mahdi's abode the Khalifa built his house/government building and to the west he built the largest structure in the city, the Khalifa’s mosque. Designed to hold 10 thousand souls in prayer. The mosque had a stone wall, painted limestone white, a Mihrab, and it was partially roofed. To the west the women were separated from men by a line of trees. The only thing that remained were the stone walls after the British invasion in 1898. Throughout the past century, the mosque has undergone many changes and been given many different names and uses.

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I am sharing my experiences of encountering many people, trying to find out what this place has been through over time.

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Memories within a memory

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It was an afternoon, nothing special about it, I just took the wrong bus and found myself standing in front of Maidan Al-Khalifa, it was the Mawlid season. You can tell it’s Mawlid from the exquisite pop-up candy stalls that literally pop-up out of nowhere at the beginning of Rabi’ Al-Awwal the third month of the Islamic lunar year.

The hot pink coloured candy is a visual overdose when you first peer into those stalls, rows upon rows of pink dyed statues, along with a variety of overly sweet sweets. Many people have many unpleasant theories about its manufacturing process and where it came from and how it shouldn’t be allowed to be food. Like many unpleasant theories you close your eyes and pretend you haven’t heard…

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Two kilos of that please sir!

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Now I took a look at the Maidan behind the stalls. The huge square that is depressingly brown all year is now every color but brown. Tents of Sufi Tariqas have been set up in their designated sections for the twelve days of religious festivities.

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Right in the centre of the Maidan stand three very tall concrete structures. A full range of Mawlid decorations were hanging from it. Those structures have always caught my attention, but the decorations made me curious about them.

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What are those? I asked a young man sitting in the slim shadow of the three wall-like structures.

I don’t know. He replied. We hang the decorations on them every year.

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If you ask me, that's a lot of concrete for a structure that's intended to hang seasonal decorations.

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…..

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I walk into an archive that is normally very difficult to access. It took many letters and many signatures to finally be able to sit in a room that some estimates say holds over two million pictures. I am handed a huge volume titled Khartoum. I flip through 1,700 something pictures showing different important buildings. They have at least two dozen pictures on the parelemnt and an entire section on Omdurman market.

Finally, I see the Maidan, but this time there’s nothing brown about it, or I think there’s nothing brown about it. It was a black and white picture, yet you can still see trees in grayscale. The three huge structures in question turned out to be a monument. Now I see it! They are part of the landscape even.

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Can I take a picture? I ask the old man (there is always an old man, they come in the default scene settings in Sudan).

No you cannot!

But I have a signed paper.

Not enough, that paper has to be signed by another person and that person’s signature has to go past another person and that other person has to….

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I just took a mental screenshot of the photograph and left.

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…..

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In a lecture room at a university stands Dr Osman Elkhair. The lecture was about how the two cities Omdurman and Khartoum were formed and how they juxtapose next to each other, the iron grid of the Tropical European Utopia contrasted with the organic cultural capital on the west of the Nile. Dr Osman explained how the Khalifa distributed large land allotments separated by roads that then expanded inwardly leaving no room for shared public spaces.

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Dr Osman!

Yes?

Did you know that Maidan Al-Mawlid was a park?

Did I know? I worked on that project when I was a young architect. It was such a fabulous idea. You know Omdurman does not have any public spaces and to use that huge area as a green heart for the town would have changed it completely.

But why does the park not exist anymore?

I don’t know.

How about the monument, what was it for?

I don’t remember.

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I looked up the Italian architecture company that Dr. Osman said was behind the fabulous idea. I found no pictures and certainly nothing about the monument.

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…..

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I stand in a room that is full to the brim with artefacts, posters and students, a room I am sure was not intended for hosting any of these subjects. Three schools sent their students to visit the Khalifa house, now a museum, and forgot to call beforehand. The museum was closed for restorations so the head of the Maidan committee, a descendent of the Khalifa, has turned his office into a mini museum and took the liberty of explaining the history of Mahdia, his history, to the young minds. Each class waited in a batch until they were allowed inside.

We waited our turn as well sitting in the now back-at-being-brown Maidan while looking at new car drivers being trained and horses being walked around. The horses looked maybe too much in their natural habitat.

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The large sign said the Maidan size is 470 arm lengths by 295 arm lengths. Who's arms did they use to measure that? Is that person’s job? is to be a measuring tool? Do they get called to measure something when it is needed?

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It’s now our turn to enter the room, looking at all the trinkets and posters hanging right under the ceiling.

I turn around and ask the old man (another old man), do you remember when the Maidan was turned into a park?

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Do I remember? I was one of the people who opposed that terrible decision!

Why?

Because it’s a mosque and not a public space, just because it doesn’t have a roof now you assume its a square, it’s a mosque even if it doesn’t look like it.

So what happened?

Nimary took down the original wall and they built this new metal fence, they built the monument and made the landscape, we sued him and won the case and I personally watched as they removed everything, the concrete monument however was impossible to be removed…

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“I am sure he only wanted to use the place to bury people.” Says a passer-byer that we didn’t even see coming.

What makes you say that?

There are rumors that under the monument there are rooms.

And dead bodies was the first thing that came to your mind? Did you see them?

No! But what else would they be made for?

It’s a tall structure, it maybe needs such a structure underneath the ground to hold it.

I don’t know...

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How about the monument, what was it for?

Something about heroes.

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…..

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I decided to try my luck with the archives again, this time a more supposedly accessible archive. I sit in front of a woman whose job is to decide for you what you should access which is always anything but the things you want to really see. After I explained what I was looking for, she suggested I read Abusalim’s Khartoum book. He was the person who established the archives and wrote a lot of books from the documents they have. Abusalim said plenty about the Maidan, like it was built in phases, first straw then mud then stone. The Maidan was always used for religious celebrations and demonstrating the Khalifa’s army power, since it was in the heart of the city. It has the strategic location of being at the end of many roads, one of which was made for marching the Khalifa's army and the road was named after the march “Arda”, another road was made for the army to depart the city through, it was also named after the army departing the city, the departing road “Hijra”. In another book in the archives Wingate drew this quirky sketch of the mosque showing each tribe and where they used to stand in the time of prayer. Supposedly that method was used to take attendance and make sure everyone was there and not plotting something somewhere else.

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…..

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I posted a question online as a last resort: Does anyone know what the monument on Maidan Al-Mawlid stood for?

A number of monument-related responses were received, but none were about the monument I requested.

There were steel obelisks that people remembered at different intersections. Was it one or were they 3? They might have been mobile monuments for all that matters. Some remembered a canon, others Statius of a Badri, some said it was the son others said it was the father.

What they all had in common, apart from the one I asked about, was that none of them exist today.

I tried my luck again asking in a Facebook group for old pictures collectors. The answers came in fragments, scattered between comments shouting political agenda. Commenters said the decision to turn the mosque into a park is not divorced from the political dispute between Nimery and the Mahdi family, the entire event is looked at as an attempt to erase the history of the space and the Mahdia heritage. As for the monument, the story goes is that in the late Seventies, the Mosque was turned into a park called Heroes' Square. The monument, known as the monument of heroes, was covered in white marble from top to bottom, with stairways leading to it, giving the illusion that the landscape reached the sky.

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Someone suggested I watch a music video for Abul Azeez Mohammed Daoud, Alfina Mashhouda, “what’s within us (our greatness) is known", a song about the bravery of the Sudanese people. The music video shows footage of many sites of historical locations and pictures of none other than the monument I have been long looking for. The three structures were surrounded by three-dimensional paintings showing scenes from different battles. And the towering marbled structure reflecting the sunlight in between.

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…..

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Back in front of the Maidan years after that first visit again during the Mawlid time. The voices of the strategically placed speakers in the Baladia building behind me however are trying to drown out the sound of recitations and chants coming from the Maidan. Men's voices can be heard excommunicating everyone in the Maidan and calling for the termination of the festivals.

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Dozens of children lounge on a tiny roundabout with a ball in the middle located right between the sounds coming from both sides. The children however don’t seem to be bothered by the excessive use of freedom of speech.

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Military use, market, an attempted park and a space for religious celebrations as well as anti-religious celebrations demonstrations, a fabulous idea, a terrible decision, a mysterious monument and devilish conspiracy theories, a mini museum and horse training track, a short cut for the people trapped by one-way nightmare of roads.

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Among all of this what I can truly say is the brown tinted square isn’t as dead as it looks after all.

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This piece was first published in 2022 under the name Maidan Alkhalifa in the book Until We Meet, Edited and Published by Locale and Waraq

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