Sunday is the only day of the week that the only Sudanese restaurant in Washington serves Sudanese food. The rest of the week, it serves a jumble of Middle Eastern and Greek favorites, like dolmades, baba ghanouj, fattoush, tabouleh, hummus, falafel, gyros, baklava, harisa, sharwama, rabab, shish kabab and shish kifta. They also have omelettes, including Western, and submarine sandwiches, including steak and cheese, a hamburger for $2.79, and Buffalo wings, of which you can get 50 for only $24.99. Plus, there’s regular coffee, black tea, Turkish coffee, hibiscus or tamarind, assorted fruit juice, Coke and Pepsi. Bring your own Alka Seltzer.
But on Sunday, you can also get “Baby okra imported from Egypt, can be cooked with or without meat sauce,” “Molokhia special green leaves grown along the Nile, finely chopped, cooked in a very thick meat and tomato sauce,” “Lamb Liver grilled and served with lentil and pita bread,” “Grilled Lamb served with salad and pita bread,” and “Fava beans smashed falafel in the fava beans with tomato, onions, feta cheese, lemon juice and oil, served with pita or french bread.” Like I said, bring your own Alka Seltzer.
Now, I’m not complaining or anything, but the fact is, I took Mohammed to Marcel’s a few months ago, and when he invited me for dinner tonight “to return the favor”, as he put it, I was more than a bit surprised at his choice of venue. Of course, the Sudanese Embassy doesn’t pay very well, and everybody in town knows it. That provides Mohammed with a very convenient excuse for returning favors like Marcel’s boudin blanc celery root puree truffle, pan seared Alaskan halibut with spinach risotto and crisp salsify, sauteed calvados apples and the decidedly Christian half of a bottle of Riesling Grand Cru “Clos Saint Urban” Rangen de Thann Domaine Zind Humbrecht 1994 with invitations to enjoy “the only genuine Sudanese delicacies you can get anywhere this side of Philadelphia,” as he put it. Anyway, Mohammed ordered the molokhia, and so did I, figuring that under the circumstances, that might be a good idea.
“Damn shame about Darfur,” I remarked after the waitress sauntered off, giving me a cordial glare of genuine Sudanese hostility that left me wondering whether I should, in fact, eat anything she brought to the table. Oh well, I did have a plan, after all.
“Yes,” Mohammed agreed, “we should have had all of them killed off by now. But they proved much more elusive than we anticipated. That has dragged things out way too long.”
“Ah, yeah, right,” I replied, figuring that clarifying what I meant might not be the most prudent thing to do, given the situation. “You guys at the embassy here in DC working that Teddy bear thing over in Khartoum?”
Mohammed shrugged, sipping his Pepsi as I opened a can of Coke. “Your State Department sends us nasty notes, we forward them to our government back in Sudan.”
“So what do you think, Moe? First the authorities sentence Gillian Gibbons to six months and forty lashes, then they change that to fifteen days and deportation. Then on Friday, after mosque, there are all these huge demonstrations all over Khartoum, with guys brandishing weapons and demanding she be executed. Is that how your government planned to handle this absurd issue?”
“Not the least thing absurd about it,” Mohammed declared confidently, “and I can assure you, those demonstrations on Friday were not the work of the Sudanese government.”
“Oh, really?”
“Absolutely not government organized or inspired.”
“What make you so certain?”
“Because,” Mohammed said, smiling slyly, “there were no firearms.”
“So?”
“So when Sudanese demonstrate in the street with government backing, they are required to carry their AK-47s, pistols and RPGs,” Mohammed explained. “If there are no guns at a street demonstration in Sudan, then it’s not government-approved.”
“Interesting way of determining that,” I allowed, glancing up at our waitress, who appeared bearing two plates of steaming molokhia. Wasting not one spare second, I quickly reached up and grabbed the plate she was about to set down in front of Mohammed. “Thanks,” I said, flashing my most ingratiating smile, “that sure looks good.”
A few tense moments passed as our waitress regarded the plate in her left hand, which she had obviously intended to plunk down in front of me. Her eyes traveled in an angry triangle from me to the plate to Mohammed and back. Thinking she might simply pick the plate I had grabbed back up, I quickly established my territory by digging in and taking a bite while she figured out what to do next.
Seeing that, she knew the jig was up, I guess, because she turned to Mohammed and told him “Sorry, sir. I just noticed,” she glared at me again, “this plate is cold. I will replace it for you.”
She was gone before either Moe or I could say anything, and now it was my time to shrug insincerely. “They certainly take good care of you here,” I offered.
“Yes,” Mohammed concurred, peering curiously toward the kitchen, “they certainly do.”
“So, anyway,” I persisted, “that can’t be right, can it? I mean really, flogging a 54 year old woman for blasphemy, much less executing her?”
Mohammed shook his head slowly, indicating the weightiness of the issue in question. “Evil is done by us everywhere in His world, yet still, Almighty Allah is merciful. She was never sentenced to be flogged. That is merely the maximum penalty under Article 125 of the Sudanese Legal Code. Our magistrate sentenced her only to half a month imprisonment and deportation. That was quite a light sentence; to insult the Prophet, Peace Be Unto Him, that is a very, very serious thing. ”
“But surely,” I reasoned, drawing on my seminary training, “to sin, one must know that one is doing so; furthermore, one must intend to sin, either by commission or omission.”
Mohammed pondered that proposition for so long, our waitress had time to reappear with a plate of molokhia, set it down in front of him, and disappear back into the kitchen. “To name an animal after the Prophet is a sin, whether a person knows it or not.”
“But a Teddy bear isn’t even really an animal,” I protested.
“To name an inanimate object in such a manner,” Mohammed clarified as he dug into his molokhia, “that is also a grave blasphemy.”
“In a country where ‘Mohammed’ is a common name for male children? Come on, admit it, isn’t it the case that naming the Teddy bear ‘Mohammed’ wasn’t even actually Ms. Gibbons’ idea? From what I’ve read about the incident, her class of seven year old children at the Unity School voted on a name, and it just happened that ‘Mohammed’ won. Now, since the vast majority of children in that class room were Moslems, if all this business is indeed as serious as you say, shouldn’t their parents have already taught them that naming a Teddy bear ‘Mohammed’ is a grave sin? Why expect a middle aged English woman to be familiar with such intricacies of Koranic interpretation when all those kids she was teaching, who were raised in the Islamic faith, obviously didn’t know about them?”
“Frankly,” Mohammed jibed, “I don’t know why someone who doesn’t know anything about Sudanese culture would go there to work in the first place.”
“Gibbons is from Liverpool,” I explained.
“Which means?”
“Which means, if you ever visited Liverpool, you’d know why someone from there would want to move just about anywhere else, whether they knew anything about the place or not.”
“Seriously? Anywhere else?”
“Well, probably not Edinburgh or Glasgow; or Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Richmond, Virginia, or any place in Mississippi, Utah, Texas or Alabama, but yeah, almost anywhere else besides those would be better than living in Liverpool, I would imagine, even Sudan – hell, even Florida, for that matter.”
“Be that as it may,” Mohammed mused while munching his Nile greens, “I am not entirely convinced the children were in fact actually ignorant of what they were doing.”
“You mean to imply,” I asked, a bit taken aback, “that this whole thing might have been some kind of ultimate version of that big trick on the teacher every kid dreams of pulling?”
“It’s certainly possible. When I was seven,” Mohammed admitted, “I would have just loved to get my teacher in big trouble. What seven year old doesn’t?”
“But, you must realize,” I continued, “That this whole incident, all the brouhaha, all the overplayed drama – it makes Sudan appear to be a backward, ignorant and intolerant nation. Really, isn’t it all just a bit, well, primitive for you folks to get all bent out of shape because of a Teddy bear named ‘Mohammed?’ Look at the name ‘Jesus,’ for example…”
“Whosis?”
“That’s the Spanish pronunciation, ‘Hey-sooz,’ okay? It means ‘Jesus.’ Just like ‘Mohammed’ in Moslem countries, the name ‘Jesus’ is popular in Spanish cultures. You don’t seriously think that, if some school teacher’s class of seven year old kids in South America voted to name a Teddy bear ‘Jesus,’ she’d be arrested and threatened with imprisonment or flogging, do you? You can’t seriously contemplate the possibility that people would riot in the streets demanding her execution, can you?”
“That’s the difference between you Christians and us Moslems,” Mohammed replied confidently. “You aren’t willing to go stark, raving, camel-spit crazy and hack people who commit blasphemy to bloody pieces in front of television cameras, and we are – willing, able and enthusiastic about it, as a matter of fact.”
“And that’s good?”
“I don’t know if it’s good or not,” Mohammed philosophized, “but it sure does a great job of keeping the population’s attention off how dirty, stinky, rusty, crumby, lousy and disorganized everything is in Sudan.”
“So,” I inquired, taking another tack, “what do think – if that stuffed bear was already named after somebody else, would it even be possible to name it after Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him?”
Mohammed turned that over in his mind for a while as I watched him placidly chew through a couple more fork fulls of Nile greens in “meat sauce,” whatever that might have been. “I think that if the bear already had a name, and the children voted to name it something harmless, such as ‘Abdullah,’ that probably wouldn’t count,” Mohammed opined. “So, arguably, it probably wouldn’t count if they chose the name of the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him, either.”
“Well, you know, technically, that bear was already named after somebody else.”
“Who?”
“All Teddy bears,” I explained, “are named after Theodore Roosevelt.”
Mohammed paused, his fork of molokhia poised halfway to his mouth. “You don’t say. Why is that?”
“Theodore Roosevelt was a world renowned big game hunter. Reporters used to follow him around on his trips, too, because he made very good copy and stories about him sold newspapers. One day, he was hunting bears and shot a big one, only to discover that it was a female and had two cubs. So instead of shooting the cubs, he had them shipped back to the United States and put in the national zoo. The public loved that story when they read it in the newspapers, so, in 1902, a fellow named Morris Michtom, the owner of a candy store in Brooklyn New York, started selling stuffed animals that he called ‘Teddy Bears’ honor of ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt.”
Mohammed slowly lowered his fork back down to his plate. “Do you mean to tell me,” he blurted out, astonished, “that this Gibbons woman knowingly harbored a stuffed animal named after a United States president in the Republic of Sudan? If what you say is true, then she is guilty of an even more serious crime than naming a stuffed animal after the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him!”
“Wait!” I shot back, “There’s no way to tell, whether she knew, before the fact, why Teddy bears are called ‘Teddy bears.’ Unless she confesses to it, of course.”
“But why has the United States kept this vital information from the Islamic world?” It was obvious the news had rendered poor Mohammed quite incensed.
“Ah, gee whiz, Mohammed,” I countered, “it’s no big secret. Sure, it’s not like every Teddy bear comes with a label that says ‘Warning – this Teddy bear is named after U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’ or anything, but on the other hand, that fact is not exactly locked up in a vault under NORAD headquarters, either.”
“Be that as it may,” Mohammed proclaimed idignantly, “it is utterly intolerable that the children of Islam go to sleep at night with their innocent arms around Great Satan infidel-president-named huggy bears!” Mohammed peered at me intently. “Here, tonight, Tom Collins, you have surely witnessed the Will of Allah.”
“I have?”
“Most certainly. For without this discussion, I would never have known the evil that lurks in toy shops, from Morocco to West Irian-Jaya.”
“Do you really think there are actually toy shops in West Irian-Jaya?”
“Oh, probably not,” Mohammed muttered. “Make that Maluku, then.”
“Right.”
“The evil that lurks in toy shops, from Morocco to Maluku.”
“Uh-huh. Evil stuffed bears named after Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Collins?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Mocking you?” I smiled at Mohammed coyly. “Now really, Moe, why would I do that? Here’s Sudan, with your entire population going wall-eyed, ape sweat nuts about a Teddy bear named ‘Mohammed,’ and here’s you, yourself, working up to a purple-faced, vein-busting jihadi conniption fit after you discover that Teddy bears are named after the one U.S. President who not only really was an intolerant, bigoted, jingoist imperialist, but, in fact was also very proud of it. Seriously,” I pressed on, “the situation is so liberally saturated with intrinsic farce, any mockery on my part would only be gilding the lily.”
“What have flowers got to do with this?”
“Okay, then, any mockery on my part would be seriously overdoing it. Like a dish with too much spice.”
“Like the… oh, what is it in here, anyway?”
“In this molokhia? That’s coriander. And black pepper.”
Mohammed nodded agreement. “Right. And too much salt, too.”
“Tell me, Mohammed, is all Sudanese food like this?”
“Yeah,” Mohammed muttered, sadly. “We take fairly decent Arab and East African recipes, then put in too much oil, too much salt, and too much peppers and coriander. Then we burn it, so everything always tastes of charcoal, no matter what it is; even dessert.” Mohammed looked mournfully down at his plate. “Tastes just like home, unfortunately.” A miserable moment passed, then I could see his face brighten as an idea occurred to him. “I know just the thing! How about we go down the street to McDonald’s and have a couple of Quarter Pounders?”
I will not lie, it was a true relief to put down my fork, but still, gimme a break, feckin’ Mickey D’s? Talk about beyond the pale! “Good Lord, man, you have to be kidding.”
“Oh, come on, I know where it is. It’s not far.”
“How far?”
“It’s… you know, we gotta walk past DuPont Circle, then down Connecticut Avenue across K Street, and it’s just a couple of blocks…”
“Near what?”
“Uh, Lafayette Square.”
“Okay. Let’s get started. But, if I spot a better place than McDonald’s between here and Lafayette Square, do you mind if we eat there instead?”
Mohammed smiled broadly as he slapped down a ten, a five and a dime, which covered our food and drinks, District of Columbia restaurant meal tax, and a generous (by Mohammed’s standards, anyway) tip, amounting to all of a eighty cents, then cheerfully prompted, “You’re buying, right, Tom?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not? Maybe both of us can eat something… I donno…. dare I say it? Something decent tonight? Something, whao… stand back… I mean, actually pleasurable to consume? Food that reflects something other than total barbarity, whether it be molokhia or quarter pound hamburgers?”
“Take me to Marcel’s again?”
“After this… this… raving culinary hand-job, what, are you completely deranged, boyo? Fuggedaboudit! You’ll be lucky to get some reasonably authentic tapas, the way you’re handling this.”
“Tapas?”
“Jaleo, on Seventh Street.”
“Tom, now you are talking. Tom, my friend, I have been to that place, and it is so damn good, I think it’s better than Marcels.”
“Well, talk about cost effective strategies. Let’s get a cab over there, get some food worth eating into ourselves and discuss what I can do for the Republic of Sudan that doesn’t violate the United States Code.”
“You the man, Tom Collins!”
We made our way out, then down the block in silence for a few moments, searching for a cab. I spotted one, shooed Mohammed away so the cabbie couldn’t see him, then stepped out from the curb and raised my hand.
The cabbie, some kind of light-skinned Brahmin Indian, it appeared, visibly blanched when Mohammed, who’s quite definitely much, much blacker than the ace of spades – think shimmering indigo highlights – got in. But after I assured him that Mohammed is just another murdering, bigoted, bloodthirsty fanatical Sudanese Islamic religious maniac and not a native-born American Negro from Anacostia or someplace like that, well, frankly, no problem, he was glad to have us. It’s incredible, really, but nonetheless true – Mohammed and his cronies are convinced that they are Arabs, and they use that totally implausible fantasy as an excuse to massacre the people in Darfur, whom they consider to be “savage Africans,” and unworthy of life, even though they are fellow Moslems, and, moreover, despite the fact that you or I, Dear Reader (unless you’re reading this in Sudan) couldn’t tell them apart if our lives depended on it. Go figure – you just can’t make this stuff up.
We traveled, again, in silence, on our way to Jaleo, until Mohammed placed his right hand over his abdomen and peered at me, beseechingly. “By the way, Tom,” he whimpered, “you have any Alka Seltzers?”