Date Line Khartoum

Christmas at 30C +, stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, in the best traditions of the Stiff-Upper-Lip, one makes the best of things. The situation is greatly ameliorated by the discovery of vast lakes of the local tipple, a spirit derived from dates (and rumour has it, everything bar the kitchen sink), known as ‘araki… and the amusing finding that at least one person is breeding turkeys in Sudan.

Bertrand Russell famously exemplified the limits of inductive inference by reference to the farmyard of turkeys that generalised (quite reasonably) that every morning the farmer would feed them… however; they did not take into account Christmas. One might have thought that turkeys might breathe (or perhaps gobble) easier in Islamist Sudan, where Christmas and all things non-Islamic are rather discounted, indeed discouraged. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the brace of fine birds in a cage outside of a supermarket in Taif, a district of Khartoum. Faisal, the in-house butcher is already sharpening his knives and allocating the disgusting duties of plucking and drawing the birds to unwitting Ethiopian shop assistants. Faisal asks me: “What do you do with these things?” I reply: “O Faisal, you eat them!” He glares at me; his visage then softens and he asks: “With dates?”

Forgoing the delights of Faisal’s doubtlessly odd butchery of a turkey; and the shoe-leather qualities of a halaal turkey from Brazil that has spent too long frozen to others in some warehouse in Luxor before being shipped south to Khartoum, the Family Abu Faris are settling down to a tasty repast of leg of mutton this Festive Season. Yes, with dates, and slathered all over with a butter mixture of garlic, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper, together with fresh almonds. The whole is presently sealed in silver foil, in the fridge. I am letting the flavours mix.

Reversing the normal practice of Christmas, this will be the left-overs (or perhaps nearly whole-over) from an earlier meal – or rather, slaughter. A young ram sacrificed at ‘Eid.

An odd sheep. It seemingly had five legs. Or at least so it seemed this morning when I went through the defrosted carrier bag of offal, bits and bobs and meats I had thrust into my hand by the Sacrifice butcher and which I had as quickly plunged uninspected into the depths of the freezer. I went downstairs from my apartment (after confirming with my wife the Arabic for “mutant”) and interrupted the doorman from his task of sleeping on the job. I had something else to share with him, apart from my miraculously five-legged sheep. “You are lucky!” was the reply, when I pointed out that my sheep had five legs. I drew out of the bag of offal I had carried down with me my other discovery: “And, he seems to have had two penises and four bollocks”. The doorman seemed unperturbed: “These are nice, barbeque them, wait until they pop, then eat them.” I asked sarcastically, “With dates?” He leaned forward from his cot: “Why dates? You don’t eat balls with dates!”

Peace and Goodwill to All.