THE CHOICE IS YOURS

If there is an objection to my sharing

this little poem with you I shall be

obliged to remove it as it is not my

copyright. I took the photograph of

the small boy standing on the mud

walls in Omdurman (in the Sudan)

which were built by Mahdist forces

laying siege to General Gordon in

Khartoum (1884-85).

www.copix.co.uk

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/22/arts/miroslav-holub-is-dead-at-74-czech-poet-and-immunologist.html

SUDANESE WOMEN WHIPPED FOR WEARING TROUSERS

In 1993, I was invited to a WTO conference in Bali, but was refused admission at the door because I was wearing trousers. Not just any old pair of trousers, but a fashionable trouser suit. As a result I did not attend at all, because I had brought no dresses on the long flight from London.

Now I`m appalled to learn that the well known Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein is to be flogged for wearing trousers in a restaurant in Khartoum. And that women whipped earlier this month included some from the animist and Christian south where the Muslim north's sharia law does not apply.

Sudan is not high on most lists as a holiday destination, but potential women visitors should take heed. Remember, too, the British teacher Gillian Gibbons, arrested in 2007 for calling a toy bear Muhammad.

Is it any wonder that regimes such as that of dictator Oman al-Bashir give Islam a bad name?

His own punishment should be to be brought forcibly to London to see the shortest of shorts being worn this summer. Perhaps he would suffer a heart attack when the world would have one criminal less.

More power to your arm Ms.al-Hussain. I shall watch your trial with interest and wish you all the best.

c.Christine Osborne: former editor Two Niles/Sudan Airways flight magazine.

Image: Scene in Omdurman, Sudan

Source: www.copix.co.uk

THE MAN FROM SUDAN

I came home on the bus this morning with a man from the Sudan.

I had seen him many times, herding long-horned cattle, or playing an oud with long fingers that now clutched a cheap plastic briefcase. And clearly he did not know where to go.

`Can I help?` I said, touching his elbow gently.

I noticed a trace of orange henna at his temples, as he turned towards me. Many Muslims dye their beard with henna when they have performed the hajj. His beard has been shaved off, but the trace of henna and the zebiba (prayer mark) on his forehead, tells me he is a good Muslim. A good Muslim with one wonky eye.

`Clapham Common,` he said in an almost panicky voice, bending down, all six feet six of him, to look anxiously out of the window as we crossed Vauxhall bridge.

`Yallah,` I said getting off at the inter-change. But he was far too concerned about Clapham Common to realise that a strange `English` woman had uttered a word of Arabic in the heart of Vauxhall.

`Bus 88 Clapham Common, over there!` I tell him.

`Thanks you much!` he said, evidently knowing the way.

I watched him hurrying along the road in his new brown leather shoes until he disappeared on a traffic crossing and was out of sight.

It could have been me, a thousand times over, struggling to find my way around Sana`a, Salalah or Khartoum.

c.Christine Osborne

Image: Prayer by the Blue Nile, Sudan

Source: Liam White: www.worldreligions.co.uk