Happy Birthday

For color-loving, fun-seeking Sudanese there were color and fun aplenty. It was Leilat el Isra, anniversary of Mohamed's visit to the seven heavens on his human-faced steed el Buraq. It was also the birthday anniversary of Mohamed Ahmed el Mahdi, whose fanatic desert dervishes destroyed "Chinese" Gordon's British army in the Sudan in 1885.

As the great day arrived last week, the Mahdi's son, 63-year-old Sayed Sir Abdul Rahman el Mahdi Pasha, now the darling of the British because he opposes union of the Sudan with Egypt, was ready to reopen his father's tomb at Omdurman. In ruins since Lord Kitchener's army shattered it with artillery in the reoccupation of the Sudan in 1898, the tomb was rebuilt this year with British permission.

Three thousand desert dervishes in flowing abbayas streamed into town on camels, horses and rickety provincial trains. Ten thousand Sudanese jammed the big dusty square before the stuccoed, white-domed tomb, brightening the drab town with pink, blue, yellow and green galabias (skirted garments). For the first time since the Mahdi's victory over Gordon, big black, green and red banners, bearing the silver crescent, and dervish spear, danced overhead. Inside the tomb enclosure, women rocked and swayed over big rawhide drums, wailing mournful tunes in high-pitched tones.

Camel Meat for the Poor. Through the mud-brick city Sayed Abdul Rahman's spanking new black Chevrolet picked its way. As it entered the square before the tomb, butchers hacked off the heads of three camels and seven oxen. They threw hunks of bleeding meat to the city's poor. Unruffled, the Mahdi's son stepped daintily from his car, unfurled a light blue parasol, mounted the notables' platform.

Grizzled old desert sheiks, who remembered the brief days of victory, wept as Sayed Abdul Rahman cut the orange ribbon across the tomb's doorway. Inside, a green, red and blue glass dome cast gaudy light on a glass chandelier and handsome Persian rug (the gift of Neighbor Emperor Haile Selassie). Sayed Abdul Rahman contemplated his father's inlaid sandalwood coffin, which he claimed to have found in the ruins of the old tomb last year.

Waiting for the Brides. Then Sayed Abdul Rahman and his followers turned to still greater joys. On this day of days, Sudanese bridegrooms could marry for an $8 dowry instead of the usual expensive outlay for bridal clothes and marriage feasts. Four hundred bridegrooms took advantage of the cut rate. They faced their brides' proxies (the brides' fathers) and took the marriage vows. While the absent, newlywed wives waited expectantly at home, the menfolk took off to pub-crawl the cafes of flag-decked Omdurman, to feast, sing and dance.

In the square before the Mahdi's tomb, the poor cooked their free camel and ox meat on great bonfires. The big war drums boomed through the night. After seven days of merrymaking, the husbands would claim their brides, the British could sigh with relief. For then the Mahdi's dervishes, wives and all, would melt back into the deserts and fields of the Sudan.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.