Ambiguous Borders, Ambivalent Subjects

Abstract

The peoples of what are today known as the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Sudan have interacted for millennia. Their cultural norms, ideologies, and histories are profoundly entangled, particularly with respect to Muslims in cultivating communities along the Nile River and urbanites from the main riverain cities of Egypt and northern Sudan. In the twentieth century, the tangible results of joint British rule followed by the unifying ideologies of the unity of the Nile Valley and Arab nationalism brought Egyptians and Sudanese even closer together.

‘Ayn Shams, Cairo (1997): The sitting room was packed with Sudanese aunties in tobes² come to see Huda³ off to her wedding in Khartoum. Khadiga was, as usual, in the thick of things, chatting with her circle of friends in the parlor. The younger set—I counted 20—crowded into the bedroom, whose windows opened onto the street. On the bed lay the bride’s travelling outfit—long black skirt, white bodysuit and blouse, and black tarha⁴ freshly ironed by Mushira, Huda’s Egyptian neighbor and friend. The mother of the bride came round and rubbed all of us with khumra.⁵ Khadiga’s daughter Mai got a tape recorder and some Sudanese tapes, and the clapping started. A few women ululated the Sudanese way, one starting and others taking over. Then someone put on the cassette of a popular Egyptian singer. An Egyptian neighbor from across the street came over, and with women rushing to close the shutters, performed a highly erotic version of a belly dance. The bride’s 10-year-old niece, Karima, who had shown me her skill at the markedly different Sudanese dance style a couple of weeks earlier, also tied a scarf around her hips and belly-danced to the Egyptian song.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 1994 and 1997 with dissertation grants from of the Population Council’s Middle East Awards program and the Social Science Research Council. I wish to express my appreciation to Amira Abderahman Ahmed, who has profoundly influenced my research and whose comments on this paper have been immensely helpful. I am grateful to Ibrahim Elnur, Muhammad Abd al-Wadoud, Mary Ann Fay, Anhar Ahmed, Shahla Haeri, and Lid-wien Kapteijns for their comments and suggestions on various drafts, though I bear full responsibility for any errors in fact or interpretation in the final text. Finally, I thank “Khadiga Mustafa” for many hours of sociability and for her willingness to participate in this project.