“The best way to beat your enemy is to learn their language.”
Novel Excerpt | Reem Gaafar | Issue 46
Excerpt of A Mouth Full of Salt
In the year that she had lived in Khartoum, Nyamakeem had seen very few Southerners except for a few soldiers retired from the Egyptian army who now lived on the far end of El Diyoum. The British government had not wanted the Arab Muslims infiltrating the South, corrupting the people and spreading their despised “Mohamedanism” into the rest of Africa. So, they had enacted a closed territory policy in the South, replacing Arab infantry in the military with the Equatorian Corps, relocating all Northern Sudanese administrators to the North, and pushing out Northern merchants.
Only those with a permit were allowed to enter and stay in the South with the assurance that they were there only for commercial purposes with no intention of preaching their Muslim religion. Hassan had been one such person, and that’s why it had been a surprise for Nyamakeem to see him in Doleib Hill when virtually all Northerners had been expelled for many years. In fact, he had been the first Northerner she had ever seen up close.
Coming to Doleib Hill elementary school had been against her will. She had resisted as loudly as she could, but she was no match for her father and could not understand his insistence on her education even when he explained it to her:
“The best way to beat your enemy is to learn their language.”
The Shilluk people—proud, powerful warriors and raiders that had once reigned all the way to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles in the North—had never overcome their defeat and subjugation by the British. The tribes of the South had put up a gallant resistance to occupation, but in the end spears and canoes were no match for fire power and steamers. They remained hostile to the invaders, their animosity and mistrust compounded by the raging slave trade. Although it was first run by the Turkish government, the British turned a blind eye when it was supposed to have been abolished.
And so Nyamakeem found herself deposited in the Doleib Hill boarding school for girls, away from her family and pac for the first time. The whole place was strange and new to her: while her teacher in the village school had been a young Chollo man who taught them in their own language and dialect, the teachers here were white-skinned nuns who spoke English and an array of Nilotic languages. The work was so much more difficult: arithmetic, English, Christian studies, and sewing. They were reprimanded constantly and not allowed an hour of idleness. Nyamakeem hated it, and more than once she thought of escape. But she had no idea how to get back home and was fearful of facing her father’s wrath should she be successful.
And then she made a friend—a Dinka girl by the name of Alek—and life became more tolerable at the school. She was even happy to return the year after, and the year after that. When the four years were drawing to an end, the nuns asked her if she would be interested in teaching at one of the new schools in her village. A teacher? Nyamakeem had never considered such a thing.
“I think you would make a great teacher,” Alek told her as they walked side by side under the shadows of the palm trees. “It’s better than going back and doing nothing after everything you’ve learned here.”
While boys had the option of going to secondary schools in Juba and Uganda, and training to be clerks, carpenters, and tailors, girls had no such opportunities. They were such a small percentage of students that it wasn’t deemed worth the expense. The majority of Southern tribes still saw no need to send their daughters to the missionary schools.
Despite her initial hatred of the school, Nyamakeem could see the attraction of a teaching position, especially since she would be the first and only girl in her village to be one. The years at boarding school and the change in routine had removed her from her family life. When she went home during the holidays she still helped in the gardens and the kitchen, but she no longer saw the dancing and battling shadows of the cows in the firelight. She just saw shadows.
Nyamakeem and Alek had circled the mission and crossed the long yard, coming up to the small hospital building. This was Nyamakeem’s favourite place, and she came here whenever she could. They watched the missionary nurses bustling in and out of the wards, talking to the only elderly doctor, bossing the patients back into their beds. Through the windows Nyamakeem could see them placing equipment in boiling water. She knew the needle with the sharp tip was used to administer their medicines. She admired the starched, white uniforms they wore and the serious looks on their faces.
“Don’t look now, but there’s a strange-looking man staring at you. I think he’s a Northerner.”
In her surprise Nyamakeem turned and looked directly where she had been told not to, drawing an exasperated “tsk!” from Alek. Sure enough, looking at them out of one of the windows was a light-skinned man with markings on his cheeks. He was smiling at them—at her. Nyamakeem stared back at him in curiosity. He looked as if he had been trodden on by a water buffalo; his head was bandaged, he had a black eye, and his arm was tied up in a bit of cloth. Then he spoke to them.
“Good morning!”
It was actually late afternoon, and hearing his broken Chollo and mispronunciation half-shouted at them across the yard made both girls laugh. They ventured closer to the building.
“What’s your name?” Nyamakeem asked. The man answered directly; he appeared to be used to this question.
“Hassan.”
“Assa?” Alek repeated the strange name with a laugh.
The man laughed with her.
“H-assa-nnn,” he corrected.
“Ha-san,” Nyamakeem said. A strange name for a strange man.
“The school?” the man asked, leaning on the window with a wince and nodding his head in the direction of the school.
“Yes, we’re from the school. Where are you from?”
He said something that sounded like shshh, which they couldn’t understand. He sensed their confusion and stated the obvious: “from up north.” He told them that he had been in Malakal for two years, and in Wau for four years before that. He recognized Alek as a Dinka and asked her where her family was from: Dinka Bor? Dinka Agak? Nyamakeem sensed that he was showing off his knowledge of the South. His Dinka was much better than his Shilluk, though the latter was not that bad.
A nurse appeared behind Hassan carrying a tray with the needle, which Hassan looked at with horror. She glared at the girls through the window and dismissed them back to the school. Hassan called out after them to come back tomorrow.
Reem Gaafar is a writer, physician and filmmaker. Her writing has appeared in African Arguments, African Feminism, Teakisi Magazine, Andariya and 500 Words Magazine, among others. Her short story ‘Light of the Desert’ was published in I Know Two Sudans where it was awarded an Honourable Mention. Her short story ‘Finding Descartes’ was published in Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices. A Mouth Full of Salt is her debut novel and Winner of the Island Prize 2023.
A Mouth Full of Salt by Reem Gaafar Invisible Publishing, 2025
Winner of the Island Prize in 2023, Gaafar’s debut novel follows three women as they navigate life in South Sudan and reveals the evolution of a country through different colonial eras.
When a little boy drowns in the treacherous currents of the Nile, the search for his body unearths further disaster for his northern Sudanese village, exposing secrets that had been buried for generations.
Three women try to make their way through a world that wants to keep them back, separated from each other by time but bound together by the same river that weaves its way through their lives, giving little and taking much more.
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