海角大神

In Sudan, a bride and her village celebrate love in a time of war

As the soft afternoon sunlight slips below the hills, the rhythmic beat of drums echoes across the valley below. Women dance in tight circles, ululating with joy, while groups of men sit nearby watching.

In the center of the celebration sits 21-year-old Lubna Kamal, her hands and legs stained deep auburn with henna, gold bracelets stacked on her wrists and fingers glinting with jeweled rings. She smiles shyly beneath a beaded veil. Hundreds of her family members, friends, and neighbors have gathered in this town in Sudan鈥檚 Nuba Mountains for a dowry ceremony to mark her marriage.

In a flowing sage-green dress, intricately braided hair escaping through the front of her headscarf, Ms. Kamal is visibly overjoyed. 鈥淚鈥檝e always wanted this to happen,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 never had a doubt it would.鈥�

But until recently, her mother, Amuna Bashir Kodi, who sits beside her, wasn鈥檛 so confident. A year ago, everyone gathered at this celebration was living through the worst hunger crisis in their collective memory. The rains failed, and crops withered. Then a plague of locusts descended, eating much of what was left.

What little people here had to spare went not to buy wedding gifts, but to help their new neighbors. Around a million people have fled to this part of Sudan in the last two years because it is relatively untouched by the country鈥檚 brutal civil war.

But that conflict has also generated what United Nations officials 鈥渢he largest and most devastating displacement, humanitarian and protection crises in the world today.鈥� And that is felt even far from the front lines, including in Nuba, where both warring parties in the civil war have blocked and looted aid, using hunger as a weapon of war.

In Kauda, outside help for those fleeing was slow to arrive. And so 鈥淲hen the displaced came looking for food, we helped them cook and shared what little we had,鈥� Ms. Kodi recalls.

Eventually though, there was nothing left to share. Families diluted small handfuls of sorghum into large pots of watery porridge. When that ran out, many resorted to boiling and eating leaves.

All of that meant that a wedding 鈥� which here involves feeding hundreds of guests and giving livestock to the bride鈥檚 family 鈥� was out of the question.

Still, Ms. Kodi was determined that Ms. Kamal, the last of her four daughters to marry, would not put her future on hold. As the worst of the hunger crisis passed, they decided to schedule the wedding. And the community rallied around them.

Traditionally in this part of Sudan, the groom and those close to him pay their respects to the bride鈥檚 family members by gifting them grains, as well as goats or cattle. But only the bride鈥檚 side attends the dowry ceremony.

Tonight, dozens of pots of cooked porridge crowd two huts near where the celebration is taking place. Goats, their legs bound, lie in the dust thrashing to free themselves, while dozens of people shift past them in a dance punctuated by their bleats.

Although these gifts of grains and meat are for the bride鈥檚 family, Ms. Kodi says she will share the porridge widely in the community as a sign of gratitude in unstable times. It is April, midway through the traditional marriage season. But after the hunger of the past two years, many of those here never thought they would see such a wedding feast again.

It鈥檚 a moment of ordinary life that may not last long. In February, the Sudan People鈥檚 Liberation Movement-North, the rebel group that governs the Nuba Mountains, announced an alliance with the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring parties in the civil war. That is expected to pull the region deeper into the conflict.

On the day of Ms. Kamal鈥檚 dowry ceremony, however, that future feels far off. Drums made of stretched cattle skin beat the rhythm of the party well into the evening.

Ms. Kodi surveys the crowd, which is large for the current moment, but small in comparison with weddings in more prosperous times.

The feeling is bittersweet. 鈥淚f it wasn鈥檛 for the famine,鈥� she says, 鈥渢his would鈥檝e been the biggest wedding.鈥�