Meet Me By The Nile

I found myself alone in my grandfather’s house. It was maghrib, and gold and magenta painted the sky over Khartoum. Layered adhans were vibrating in the air and birds circled in worship. I was standing under the old palm tree in the middle of our  garden that has housed cats, bats and birds for generations. I was thinking about how there’s never a moment without an adhan somewhere under the sky. After a while, I decided to go to Saleh, a little botanica that carries beauty supplies and Zar essentials like bakhoor, spirit costumes, coffee sets, creams and accessories. It’s our neighborhood  shrine. I put on my skirt and tarha and catch a rikshaw, anticipating some bakhoor and maybe a chat with the store owners.

I arrived to a floor covered in broken clay mabakher. Dresses and accessories hung slack on the walls and coffee beans crunched under my feet. Saleh always smells intensely of incense blends, perfume and popcorn. But today a different aroma lingered in the air. Everyone seemed amused despite the mess, which led me to rule out the possibility of a break in. Two older ladies were haggling , unfazed. One of the two older store workers  pointed at a young apprentice, calling him a tornado. “The tiger spirit caught him last night and wrecked the whole place. He only calmed down and came back to his senses after running to the butcher across the street and taking a bite of raw meat!” He shook his head and fixed his gaze on me. “And your spirits, why are they upset? Oh, please don’t break more things in here!”

“What, who said they’re mad? Why do you think they’re mad?” I asked, eager to find  out what he saw.

I was exhausted by the years-long power struggle with my Zar spirits and jinns, always looking for ways to ease the tension. He turned away, still contemplating, then  advised me to consult Saleh, Sheikh Saleh, not the store owner.  “I’m sure he can help you. But he barely ever comes by.” The minute he uttered these  words, Sheikh Saleh entered behind me.

He was almost floating in his beige jalabiya that might have been white in the past and the sibha around his neck. It was as if he had been expecting to find me there. His breath smelled of musk and peppermint tea when he asked me what was wrong. I turned to the others in hopes that they would join the conversation, but they had already retreated to their tasks. In my surprise, I only managed to return the question, but he quickly told me he did not have time for jokes. “Here, take my number, call me  tomorrow at noon.”

The next morning, I asked my friend Safiya to accompany me in what seemed like  another spiritual adventure. Sitting in the smoke of cigarettes and bakhoor, we called  him over our morning coffee. “Get ready, I’m coming to pick you up”, was all we got, in  the same brusque manner as the day before.

He arrived on the dot in a small brown car with the windows down. His radio player  was set on a Quran station, almost inaudible amidst the horns and rikshaws playing  “No one like you” by P-Square. I made my way to the passenger seat and Safiya swung  herself in the back. Sheikh Saleh seemed pensive and serious and refused to respond to any of our jokes or answer any questions. It was as if we were accompanying him on his errands, making a few stops to pick up items off a grocery list: nuts and seeds, dates, popcorn, three doves. He steered through narrow streets I had never seen before, and each stop felt like a threshold crossed. At the last one, at a tiny run-down store of tableware, he asked me to get down and get a white mid-sized bowl.

That was something I must pay for with my own money, he explained. I almost  stumbled upon the sand-covered steps to the store and returned with my new shiny  bowl wrapped in a black plastic bag.

He continued to drive off to the Nile, passing by the beach where rikshaw drivers  convene to wash their rides, listen to music and smoke weed. I knew the spot from one of our first family summer vacations we spent in Sudan.. My  cousin and I got stuck there well  past our curfew. I will never forget the shock on our mothers’ faces when we disclosed where  we had gone.

Saleh found an empty spot by the Nile, not a single soul in sight. Safiya sat down under a tree, put our bags next to her and lit a cigarette but got right back up and walked away, determined to find a tea lady. Saleh arranged all the offerings on the ground and called me to the water. We took off our shoes and entered. He greeted the Nile, read Surat al-Fatiha, the opening Surah of the Quran, and called in the spirits. For a  moment, all sound was suspended like being underwater and time stood still the  way it did in my dreams. The glaring sun mixed with humidity made it hard to keep my eyes open. I was surrounded by shades of blue and the warm sand embraced my feet like a hug from an old friend.

He opened the ceremony by declaring his intention to mediate and restore equilibrium  between me and the spirits. Finally, he took out the anxiously fluttering doves from the  perforated cardboard box, holding them tight by their feet. Saleh continued to recite the Quran, making sure to read Allah’s name over the doves too, as if to remind us all of the natural order of the lord of all worlds and the seven skies. His voice was firm and grounded like a sermon in front of the invisible.

After a short silence where he seemed to await their sign, he sacrificed the doves one by one – he slit their throats cleanly and let the blood run into my bowl. I braced for the metallic smell but all I could smell was his scent of musk that masked death. He dipped his finger in the warm blood and anointed me with it on my forehead, my palms, and feet, sealing me like a pact, before flinging the doves towards the sun. The Nile received them without a sound.

I walked farther in, until the water touched my hips. Saleh’s voice was telling me to let it all out, to tell the Nile and the spirits everything I had to say, to state my wishes and make my peace. I inhaled this moment. I wanted to store it, to wear it under my skin. I cried, I cried, I cried. My tears mixed with blood and water in my face, and a tingling sensation of relief soaked my brain before washing over my whole body.  I thanked my body for returning to me, for letting me back in after having felt exiled  from it all these years – years in which my body never felt entirely mine, as if something moved through it, contending for space and leaving me estranged from myself.  I thanked the spirits for their presence. I thanked Saleh. And  most of all, I thanked Allah for granting me release, for the beauty of this moment, for  the turning of the wheel. My palms wet with prayer, I became my own priestess.

This was the first time the spirits were not  angry, testing, or seductive – they were present, listening, and forgiving.

After so long, I was able to embrace what was not an exorcism but a reunion, with Sheikh Saleh as midwife, not a savior like so many before him had promised. In that moment I sensed how the Nile had always held both, blessing and terror. In its physical, spiritual, and political might, the Nile has embraced us for as long as memory, receiving our innermost desires, swallowing our sorrows,  breathing life back into us.

Women wash their newborns’ faces in its waters forty days after birth, freshly circumcised boys are brought to the river, and brides and grooms come to seek its blessing alongside all the spirits that inhabit it. The Nile embraces them all: young  revolutionaries whose bodies were thrown into it during the uprising in 2019, the  women who tied themselves together with ropes, weighed their bodies down with  stones, and drowned themselves with their children in its depths to escape the violence  of war – in 1897, and again in 2024. The Nile has always been an axis holding life, death, and rebirth in its infinite blue. As I stood there, every vision and every dream I had, entwined me tighter into a constellation of others: women,  spirits, ancestors, strangers.

Back at the beach, I picked up the offerings to give them away, like Saleh had instructed. And before I could finish my thought of how far I would have to walk to find  any recipients, I spotted a group of children pushing and playing with a car tire that was coming my way.

I extended the offerings to them and asked the oldest for his name. He looked at me  with a smirk that sent ice down my spine before replying “Shakir”. Shakir is the name  of a black spirit, Shakir hallal al mashakil – the resolver of problems. He is strong, serious and swift. The kids immediately took off singing and playing, the same way  they had appeared.

I turned around to look for others to give my offerings to, when a tall, skinny man walked by slowly, marveling at the Nile. He was barefoot, his pants rolled up under his knees. and a warm smile, revealing mostly missing teeth. He expressed his gratitude for my appeasement by making duaa for me out loud, asking  Allah to grant me a happy life filled with love, happiness and children. My eyes swelled with  tears. He  said I was like his daughter who lived in the South and wished me protection and guidance from Allah – and vanished like the others before him did.