Khartoum

		Khartoum "Salaam-aleikoum", they say, and Salaam-aleikoum, it is - "Peace be with you" - for in Khartoum, there is no other God but Allah. No other God would linger here; this place that is the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers in the heart of a sun-bleached Sudan; southern arondîsement of the Sahara, astride the old caravan trading route to Cairo. Gordon died here in 1885, hopelessly outnumbered; defending a virtual reality that was the British Empire. There was a statue I remember of him on his camel, looking down at the ground and looking lonely up there with nobody around. I wonder if it's still there? Still 1,750 miles before the river reaches the Mediterranean, the desert stretches right up to the riverbanks, where banyan trees and tamarisk mix with oleander and bullrushes. Here, placid crocodiles wait patiently in clouds of mosquitoes for the occasional marabou stork or farmers' kid to come wading. Here, Typhus, Cholera, Bilharzia, Malaria, Bubonic plague and sickness also live off the life-giving waters. El Khartoum - the elephant's trunk - was the old Arabic name for the confluence of these two vast rivers. Here, the Blue Nile has fallen nearly 5,000 feet in it's descent from lake Tana in Ethiopia to the east, providing 85% of the combined rivers' volume. The White Nile is much longer, and having fallen barely 2,000 feet in the two thousand miles from Lake Victoria, Uganda to the south, appears more sedate.

By the middle of the wet season in April, the Blue Nile crests and the rushing waters hold the White back. Literally dammed up, it backs up for the duration of the floods, while floating islands of uprooted bamboos, bushes and trees course by on the muddy waters. At the end of the wet season in January it subsides, and for the rest of the year both rivers seem to meet and the two separate colored masses can be seen flowing side-by-side until they eventually blend, miles downstream.

Both names are of course misnomers. The White Nile is not white, but at best a muddy gray. The Blue Nile is actually a deep, brownish-green, maybe looking blue sometimes at dawn, before the desert reaches 132° with its 90% humidity. Temperatures as high as 137°F have been recorded, and aircraft would sink, tail-first into the tarmac of the airport apron.

In 1956 during the Suez Crisis, I got into some forgotten dispute with my mother, and at the age of three, took off across the Sudanese desert towards Wadi Saiydna airport on my tricycle. Arriving there, I pedaled past all the hastily assembled Army troops to redress my grievances with my father, who could not believe I had just crossed six miles of Sudanese desert to get there. The storm between my mother and my father that followed was rivalled only by the Haboob - black sandstorm walls that would descend upon us in Spring. The difference lay in the fact that someone would inevitably bring a parafin lamp to illuminate our path during the haboob. Not so, my parents.

It suddenly occurs to me as how I have lived on the Zambezi, Nile, Tigris, Irrawaddi, Thames, Seine, Sarr, Hudson, Mississippi, Colorado, Columbia, and Mekong in my time.
	And it goes on and on, Watching the river run; Further and Further from things that we've done, Leaving us one by one; And we've just begun, Watching the river run; Listening and learning and yearning, Run, river, run.