Identity Crisis in a Khartoum Taxi

I was told in broken English by a young Sudanese taxi driver yesterday that I was not Australian, I was English. I thought he was confused, thinking Australia was part of, or near, England. But when I tried to explain it was a whole separate country, he became quite vocal. “No! Australians are black. Black like Africans. The English took Australia like they took Sudan. Sudan reclaimed their country”. I asked him how he felt about his people winning the battle to control their own land and destiny and he replied, quite adamantly, that they had not fought any war or battle, "Islam is about using the heart to win a battle, using the power within the Islamic heart". He told me about The Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi) whom he described as the Gandhi of Sudan. It was an interesting interpretation, (I had heard it was a rather bloody battle) but I kind of like what he said. How he said it.

His timing was impeccable. I had been thinking a lot about what it means to be Australian. Thinking about the original Australians, who have more of a right to say “I am Australian” than I. Saying that phrase many times these past few weeks has delivered me incredibly warm responses, particularly from most Sudanese who, like the Nepali’s, usually know someone who has been lucky enough to migrate. Usually as a Nepali student or a Sudanese refugee. I sense the image they have in their heads is built on luxuries such as the freedom to be or do or think whatever one likes. Concepts I suppose I have always taken for granted. Yet perhaps they have always taken it for granted that they have these ancient stories deep within their souls. Cultures pure and rich. We all hold envy sometimes for what lies beyond that border maybe.

Living here in a culturally rich country, working each day in an office with over 50 nationalities, I have felt a bit lost in all of it. Like a bit of an outsider. I cannot deeply say I am Australian because I am still trying to interpret what that exactly means. I also feel I cannot even really believe those words until I make the effort to learn from the true Australians about their land. Indeed most people with white skin are immigrants of some kind or another but even then, people have roots in some initial piece of soil where they started. And perhaps the biggest mistake I make is spending too much time on foreign soils, but I think I travel like many in this world, to drink in all I envy, to reach out and touch it and live for a day with something I have always desired - a true sense of cultural identity, threaded with all the centuries and stories and food and languages and faces that are sewn into that. And I will return 'my country' some day to do the same there.

We shall never cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Elliot (1888-1965)