The Lemon Tree Family—an excerpt

Translator’s Note: Sudanese Arabic, influenced by Nubian, Beja, and sub-Saharan African languages, has a distinctive quality that sets it apart from other spoken forms of Arabic. Many expressions and words within this dialect defy direct translation into English. Although The Lemon Tree Family is written in Standard Arabic, it is richly laced with elements of the local dialect, most notably in everyday exchanges between characters and interspersed Sudanese proverbs.

One of the greatest challenges as a translator is carrying a country or region’s rich, deeply rooted sayings and expressions into English without stripping them of their cultural texture. Proverbs in particular often contain layers of humor, rhythm, and social meaning that cannot be neatly reproduced word for word. An expression that feels immediately familiar to a Sudanese can fall flat, sound strange, or even seem nonsensical in English if translated literally. 

Regarding the Sufi proverb in the novel—الوقفة في بابك، والعَشم في جنابك— Soheila Ramadan, the editor at Al Riwaq Publishers (who released the novel in Arabic), provided invaluable insight that guided my final choice for the translation. She explained that the proverb carries a certain cadence “closer to the older Anglican/Catholic litany style ‘At thy feet we kneel; in thy mercy we trust’ and actually sits a bit closer to the Sufi register than a more modern, plain phrasing would. It carries that same formulaic, ritual repetition and slightly archaic reverence that the Arabic has.”

Among the terms I retained in my English translation are the transliterated “Janjaweed,” referring to the notorious Arab militias of the 2000s, later known as the Rapid Support Forces, and “Fulul,” denoting the loyalists of the ousted Omar al-Bashir regime. These expressions are indispensable to grasping the nuances of Sudan’s political cycles of authoritarianism and conflict. Footnotes or in-text clarifications would disrupt the text’s flow and rhythm, so I left them to speak for themselves.

— Rana Asfour, Executive Editor

1.

I saw her hanging.

Her body dangled from the ancient lemon tree that had presided over our courtyard for generations. Her head drooped to the left, her gaze transfixed upon the courtyard gate—a hollow stare suited to the dead. But still her copper-hued face glowed with a radiance that was uncanny; flawless, untouched by even the faintest traces of death.

“Bahja?… Why?” I wondered in disbelief.

“Bahja?” she asked, in a voice not her own, tremulous with disbelief that matched mine. 

I thought I heard a single cry of “Ashawis” before other voices joined in: “Janjaweed, Fulul, Jellaba.” The voices converged and swelled into a muffled din, then, as if at the push of an invisible button, fell suddenly silent. Perhaps it really was all in my head.

As I approached the corpse, her Nyalan eyes swiveled toward me—like a robot—and she smiled. I was now certain she wasn’t dead. Her gaze met mine and lingered, her wide smile unwavering. A large black mole graced her left temple.

Once more, her gaze drifted toward the open gate, where three Janjaweed fighters were entering. Their hair and beards were long and twisted; all of them dressed in earth-colored khakis and green camouflage turbans that hung to their chests, coiling like giant serpents. They were armed, their faces as still as statues. Blood dripped from their beards, their hair, and their fingers, which were tightly locked around their weapons.

“Janjaweed?”

She offered me no answer, only another smile—this one mocking.

As soon as the men saw me, they swung their rifles in my direction and took aim.

“Fululi! A remnant of the old regime!” One of them shouted.

“No!” I screamed in terror.

“A Fululi bastard!” Another cried out.

“No!”

“He’s a Jellabi fa…!” She chuckled before adding, “He’s neither a Fululi nor a Jellabi; he’s just a liar. Kill him!”

All three men disengaged the safeties on their weapons and opened fire. The air rattled with the shots, yet I felt no pain as the bullets tore through my flesh and punched holes in the wall behind me, sending up small puffs of dust.

I gazed upon my ruined body; my garment was in shreds, but I marveled at the absence of pain, feeling only the warm gush of blood as it spilled, pooling on the courtyard floor.

“A liar! He has to die. He has to die.”

The copper-skinned girl with the large mole—whom I had taken for Bahja—kept accusing me of lying as one of the Janjaweed loosened the rope from her neck and the other two held her body. They carried her—stiff as a log—toward a truck idling outside, its mud-smeared rear visible through the open doorway. I heard the engine roar and gravel crunch as it drove away.

Bodies rained down from the sky, so many bodies.

Dark clouds gathered overhead, and a fierce wind began to howl. I sought refuge behind the trunk of the lemon tree, clinging tightly so the wind wouldn’t carry me away like the bodies swirling in the air around me, adrift like lost birds. Thunder rumbled nearby, mingling with the sharp crack of gunfire and punctuated screams.

Bodies rained down from the sky, so many bodies. But when I looked down at my feet, I saw a fresh-faced little girl—as though she’d sprouted from the earth—clutching a toy cat and smiling at me. She watched the swarms of bees emerging from the tree, reaching up to catch them.

I heard my mother’s voice in supplication: “.الوقفة في بابك، والعَشم في جنابك”

So many lemons had fallen from the tree, carpeting the earthen basin my mother had painstakingly tended for years, that I’ve lost count of them. She would sit with her back against the trunk, sipping her morning coffee and communing with her beloved Sheikh Wad Badr, whose distant minaret was visible just beyond our garden walls, entreating him to help her weather the hardships of the day ahead.

“At your threshold I wait; for your grace, I hope,” she said again.

Her voice echoed in my ears like a monotonous bell. It was then that I awoke. A woman was walking barefoot past the window of the truck where I had dozed off, her body wrapped in a white garment, both hands clasping a wooden rosary to her chest as she murmured: “We pause at your threshold, our hopes in your grace.”

Through the truck’s windshield, I saw the driver and my two companions, also barefoot, treading reverently across the sand at the edge of the cemetery toward the tombs, which swelled from the earth like the breasts of virgins, straining upward in supplication to the sky.

*

2.

I followed the sluggish procession toward the shrine complex, the sun sagging toward the horizon at the end of the long, sweltering June day. For a fleeting moment, it slipped behind a smudge of dark cloud, turning the sky a molten, languorous orange and bathing the world below in warm crimson. 

A light breeze eased the heat of the day, most of which we had spent on the desert road connecting Port Sudan to Khartoum. The air carried the mingled scents of coffee, dung, mud, and the acrid smoke of brick kilns—signs of early autumn in these parts, reminders of the Khartoum countryside I remembered. This time, though, everything carried the scent of war.

As we made our way toward the cemetery, other groups joined our procession. A few battered cars and trucks—some bound to Khartoum, others fleeing it—pulled up to the edge of the cemetery. Their passengers got out one by one to pay homage to the occupant of the great mausoleum, which stood sentinel at the capital’s northern entrance. Perhaps they were seeking aid or a blessing to help them endure the hardships of their existence—burdens rendered heavier by the war.

Like the others, I slipped off my shoes where the sand began and walked behind the woman, who chanted her entreaty as though in a trance, her ample frame shifting from leg to leg with every step.

“الوقفة في بابك، والعَشم في جنابك”

I kept my habitual distance from those around me—a separation I have maintained since childhood, sometimes widening or narrowing, but always present. The same questions, for which I had never found an answer, drifted once more through my mind: What solace could a dead person, confined beneath the earth and stripped of all power and agency, possibly offer the living who flocked to his grave day and night, pleading for mercy, while the Creator—his and theirs—watched and listened from on high? My father was right. Yet my mother did exactly as they did—for my sake especially, sometimes for my twin sister, my older brother, and even for my father. Every Friday morning, on holidays and special occasions, she would travel—with me in tow—to the shrine of Sheikh Wad Badr in the distant suburb of Um Dawan Ban, weighted with her votive offerings to pray for us there.

She always imagined me a dervish, or marked by spirits, or haunted, because—unlike my twin sister, who was born on the very same day and at the very same hour—I rarely spoke to people as a child. I arrived only twenty minutes before her, yet that brief span of time was enough to usher into the world two beings who differed in every respect—in temperament, gifts, and relationships with others. Indeed, it was enough time to create two opposing worlds. I was not as articulate as she was, nor did I share her knack for winning the company or affection of other children; I spoke only of what I wished to discuss—and even that was rare—focusing on a few topics that captivated me, which I would revisit in a manner that struck everyone else as tedious.

Even when they tried to engage me in their interests, they felt I dismissed their worlds, always drifting back to my own obsessions: drawing, distant countries, geography, space, and the dreamscapes of magazine photo spreads—a universe entirely my own. I had no friends throughout my childhood or youth—except for Bahja, our neighbor.

After circling the shrine, my mother deposited her offering in the green box. Then, holding on to the railing, she offered her plea to its blessed occupant: “O Sayyidi Sheikh Wad Badr, I entreat you—by your intercession, by the grace of the Prophet, and by the sanctity of your righteous ancestors—heal my son. Cast from him the evil eye, banish the harmful winds, and dispel the spirits—Umm al-Sibyan, male and female, as well as the ’Ashiqa and Ma’shouqa. O Master Wad Badr, restore him and guide him by your hand.”

When her prayers were done, she would wipe her palms over my head and chest before we sought out the shrine’s custodian. Each time, he would hand her an opaque bottle of oil—yellow as urine, its odor foul and metallic. At night, she would rub the contents over my body, and my skin would burn as if wrapped in flames. My breathing would grow labored, and nausea would rise in me. And, oh God, in the morning, she would add drops of the same concoction into a bucket and wash my entire body with it. Afterward, she would take me to the back room—mainly a storeroom—and set fire to one of the sacred papers she had received from the custodian, waving the smoke around me like a ritual cleansing. She would soak another paper in water, letting the black ink dissolve, before making me drink the infusion.

This daily ordeal of torture—which began shortly before bedtime and ended only when I left for school in the morning—lasted throughout my childhood and early youth, before I finally rebelled against it. I hate the night. I love the morning. I rejoice in the sunrise as I walk briskly down the street, drawing in deep breaths and filling my lungs with as much fresh air as I can hold.

Who has been displaced, or become a refugee or immigrant? What, in fact, did all of Khartoum look like now?

I sat there contemplating the fearful, respectful faces as they drew closer to the shrine’s guardian, who sat with his back against the largest tomb. We formed a wide circle around him, our gazes fixed on his shrunken face, buried within a massive turban that consumed his head and neck. He, too, watched us, his rough fingers coaxing a string of old wooden prayer beads into motion, his head swaying in slow orbits to their hypnotic rhythm. He addressed us: “Pilgrims to these sanctuaries are required to observe proper reverence and decorum—in their appearance, attire, and manner of addressing the Sheikhs, upon whom Allah’s blessings rest. These holy men, alive in the company of Allah, are said to hear and comprehend Him, their spirits sustained by His presence. Temper your petitions and avoid raising your voice in their company, for their station stands beside that of Prophets, Saints, and the Righteous.”

He proceeded to extol the Sheikhs’ virtues—in life and in death—lauding their legacy of devotion and service to the land, the people, and the needy. He remarked that God Himself had placed these shrines along the main road linking the capital to the northern cities, so that any soul in need of solace could stop and seek it. Just then, the wind picked up, sweeping waves of dust across the silent graves, grains of sand pockmarking our faces.

I turned my face away from him. His words faded as my thoughts drifted to Khartoum—the city at whose gates I now stood. What awaited me at home? Would I find my older brother Khaled already returned, sparing me the trouble of looking for him? Would a search yield any results at all? Had the Janjaweed who abducted him killed him, or was he still alive somewhere—captive, wandering, or waiting? Would I find my father unchanged, just as we had left him? He chose not to flee, staying with his other wife, Khala Al-Hadiyya, whom my mother despised.

What had become of my home? What did the neighborhood look like now—the place where we were born, lived our entire lives, and only left because of war? Who remained, and who was gone? Who has been displaced, or become a refugee or immigrant? What, in fact, did all of Khartoum look like now? This miserable war, sparked by desperate men, struck us like a hurricane, uprooting our tent, hurling it far away—just as it did to millions who had stood for decades under the false shelter of this accursed city. Safety turned to fear, serenity gave way to anxiety, and dreams dissolved into death—more death than seemed possible.

When I turned back to the guardian, he was still leaning against the tomb, talking: “Whenever Sheikh Abd al-Rahim al-Burai—May God be pleased with him—visited this mausoleum, he would rest against the tomb and recite: ‘O Sheikh al-Kabashi, champion of the forsaken, grant us your backing, be our pillar of strength.’”

Should I follow Sheikh al-Burai’s example? Should I ask Sheikh al-Kabashi to be my pillar as I face this ordeal alone? Yet what power does this man, buried beneath the earth, truly possess?

I felt a hand rest on my shoulder, then move to gently caress my back. I turned and saw a man in his forties—handsome, with a striking, almost beautiful face. His features were radiant, a captivating sparkle in his eyes. He wore a stark-white jalabiya and a yellow or green shawl—I can’t remember which—draped across his chest, along with a wool cap. A black beard, touched with gray, framed his luminous face. There was something familiar about him, as though I had seen him in a dream, though I couldn’t remember where or when. He looked at me from beneath his brows and smiled kindly.

“The Caller summoned you, and you have come, O Blessed One. Praise be to God that you have arrived safely.”

I gazed at him in wonder. He smiled once more, his eyes mesmerizing. From his gentle voice and calm demeanor, I understood that no one arrived at this place by choice—that it was a predestined journey. In fact, I had not intended to visit, nor had I come willingly or been dragged against my will.

“Who are you?” I asked. 

His smile widened, and he patted my shoulder and back with fatherly tenderness. 

“In time, you will understand everything. For now, receive this blessing and continue on your way.”

He stared at me for a long moment, unblinking. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, as if he had remembered something important. He reached into the pocket of his jellaba, pulled out his phone, and, with remarkable gentleness, asked me to enter my number. His politeness caught me off guard. I typed in my number, copied from a slip of paper tucked inside the phone’s case, and, matching his tone, I replied, “Forgive me. I’m new to this.”

He nodded vaguely and left without a word. He walked past the cemetery boundary and headed north at a brisk pace. I watched until his shadowy figure dissolved among the houses and faded into the darkness gathering over everything.