Barkal, North Sudan 2015

Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar

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The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.

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Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves 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 living 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 rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:

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AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth                

It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima

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The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.

About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.

The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.

In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded.  However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.

On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.  

Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.

Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 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 measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting 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.

The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are 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 produces off-springs, has male and female trees and 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. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.

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 pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.

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Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “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. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa 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.

People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.

During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.  

On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.

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As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.

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Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.

"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for

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

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

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

(old Shayqi poet)

A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.

In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.

I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which 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! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.

Cover picture  © Zainab Gaafar

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