Throughout the One Book program period, interviews with members of Philadelphia's Sudanese community will appear in the City Paper’s Naked City section and on www.citypaper.net . All published stories will also be available on this blog.

The latest story in this 10-part series focuses on Ahmed Elmardi:

"They either kill you, or you leave the country," says Ahmed Elmardi, speaking about the National Islamic Front (NIF) that took over the government of Sudan in 1989, shortly before he came to the United States.

Now a resident of Philadelphia, Elmardi was once an artist and university professor in Khartoum, Sudan. Although he had plans to leave Khartoum with a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and an acceptance into its MFA program in painting, the NIF interfered.

"They changed the laws so that the government could hire and fire as they pleased," he says. "They prepared a long list of people to fire from universities. I was one of those people."

Elmardi says the regime targeted the universities first because there was potential power in the student movement. At one time, students were able to change the government through strikes and demonstrations. Elmardi remembers the October Revolution in 1964, when students from the University of Khartoum banded together with the trade unions and successfully overthrew Ibrahim Abboud's military dictatorship in Sudan. Since then, governmental changes in how universities are run prevent anything like that from happening now.

"They deliberately worked to deprive the country from its soul," he says. "Artists, musicians and poets were all forced or encouraged to leave the country one way or the other."

Along with many of his colleagues and other community intellectuals, Elmardi was arrested and imprisoned without reason. Calmly, he recounts his time spent in the detainment center. He explains that in order to maintain a sense of fear and minimize any resistance in the Sudanese people, the prisoners were tortured--or worse. Elmardi specifically remembers one of his fellow detainees, a pilot, taken from his cell and hanged.

"At that time they were very harsh," says Elmardi. "They didn't even care if you were related to one of them."

After a month in the detainment center, Elmardi was released. As to why, he cannot say. He assumes that they let him go because they knew he was accepted into the graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I think I was lucky," says Elmardi. "Especially because if I stayed there I don't know what would have happened to me. I remember walking to the plane and looking behind me to see if anyone was following."

Life as an immigrant in the United States has been far from easy. "I found myself without a Social Security number," he says. "I thought, so what can I do now? I tried to drive a cab but I didn't last more than one week. That wasn't me."

Elmardi says the immigrant people's ability to bounce back is remarkable. Even the ATM machines posed serious problems for the Sudanese who came to the United States in the 1990s because they never had to use one before. So many years later, Elmardi believes that the Sudanese community has gained its footing.

"They have built their lives," he says. "By now many have their own houses. It is very interesting to see how people have all this resilience."

After completing his MFA in painting from Penn and starting his own graphic design company, Elmardi is surprised at how long he has been in Philadelphia. "In the beginning I thought, I am here only for a short time," he says. "And now this is really half of my adult life--18 years."

With his wife, Iman, and 9-year-old son, Monier, in Philadelphia, Elmardi says it is too late for him to return to Sudan, despite his love and attachment to the country.

"A lot of my friends are not there anymore," he says. "It is just too much to deal with. I have my son doing quite well in school. So to take him back there, to start again-the threat is still there. It would not be good for him and it would not be good for me, either."

Asked to compare Khartoum and Philadelphia, Elmardi speaks in visual terms. He mentions that Khartoum suffers a lot from sandstorms, making the city look brown. He also says that shadows are much stronger in the cities in Sudan because the light is more intense. Still, continents apart, Elmardi can draw similarities between his native city and his new home. He sees shapes, shadows and lines that bring back memories of his life in Khartoum.

"Sometimes I am driving and I think I am home," he says with a smile.

Currently, Elmardi is focusing on his art, which includes sculpture, mixed media and animation. With his wife, he started a web site for contemporary Sudanese artists around the world . He says the site is an important tool because it educates viewers on contemporary art from Africa's largest country and exposes Sudanese artists to an international audience.

- Lea T. Burns

Throughout the One Book program period, interviews with members of Philadelphia's Sudanese community will appear in the City Paper’s Naked City section and on www.citypaper.net . All published stories will also be available on this blog.

The latest story in this 10-part series focuses on Michael Kuch:

This first-person account tells the story of refugee Michael Kuch's journey as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Harriet Levin Millan Director of The Drexel University Writing Program and the author of The Christmas Show (Beacon Press) interviewed Kuch and pieced his answers together in fluid prose.

These scars on my forehead? These are not my initiation scars. They are not the scars a boy gets when he goes into the forest to become a man. I did not live in my village and with my family long enough. Initiation happens to boys when they are somewhere around 10 years old. I was much younger when I was forced to seek a home elsewhere. These are razor blade scars. When I was about 5 years old I had some problems with my eyes--maybe just some dirt in my eyes--I don't know how serious it was, and my grandmother cut my forehead with a razor blade to improve my health. I still remember the pain. The blood. I didn't like my grandmother after that. Her name was Nyankuerdit, the "it" at the end of her name means "big," a sign of respect like you would say in English. My esteemed Grandmother Nyankuerdit.

The government systematically planned to destabilize my village, Bor, in southern Sudan, because it was the home of John Garang, the man who started the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement and began the rebel uprising. My village was attacked at night. Planes bombarded it with bombs and set it afire. My family was scattered. I joined a crowd of people and walked with them. When I first started walking I wore shoes, but this walk went on for three months and most of it I did barefoot.

There are two seasons in the Sudan, the dry season and the rainy season. This happened during the dry season, which is hot, windy and humid. We walked at night to avoid the hot sun and the winds, and because we'd be less thirsty. The problem with walking at night is that there are wild animals, which attack people. I saw lions and hyenas attack and kill people in my group. Another reason we walked at night was because we were walking though a war zone.

Even though I was so young, I was conditioned for the walk because I had spent many days with my siblings in the forest learning how to hunt animals. I was already skilled at learning how to survive. We walked days without food. Some of the walkers ate wild plants and others ate mud, which attached to their insides and killed them. It took me a long time after I moved to America to get accustomed to eating meals. For a year or so I only ate once a day, and still, I don't eat a meal the way you do.

After three months of walking, I arrived at a refugee camp in Ethiopia. It was 1991 and Ethiopia was undergoing its own troubles with Eritrea. A civil war was breaking out and almost as soon as I had arrived, I had to leave abruptly in the middle of the night. This time it was the rainy season and the Nile, which runs through all of eastern Africa, was flooded. Not many of us knew how to swim. There are tribes who have always lived by the Nile. In fact, they are called Nilotes. These people knew how to make dug-out boats from trees. I was lucky enough to get a spot in one of the boats, but other people were pulled across the river with rope attached to the boats. I saw many people drown in that river. I also saw crocodiles in that river attack people.

I couldn't make it back to Bor because it was so far away. Instead, I stopped at an Internal Displaced Persons Camp called Pachalla where food and medical attention were provided. But again, just as I was settling in, more violence broke out. Planes bombarded the camp day and night and it became unsafe to stay. It took me one month to walk to another refugee camp, Kakuma, in Kenya. I stayed at Kakuma for eight years, all that time learning how to survive in the camp, which meant learning how to live in a very small space with tension - clashes over food and water, and avoiding the Turkana, the tribe who lived nearby and often attacked refugees outside the camp.

In 2000, I got an offer from the U.S. state department to come to the U.S. I struggled with this decision, which meant leaving Africa, perhaps forever. I still didn't know if my family, particularly my mother, was alive. Just about that time, I was united with three of my brothers and sisters, who it turned out had also come to Kakuma. Then, all of us were given the chance to immigrate to Philadelphia.

I always feel called to go back to Sudan. The whole American experience, the chance to get my B.A. here, and now, applying to graduate school, is an opportunity, but I will always want to go back and do more.

- Michael Kuch with Harriet Levin Millan

Michael Kuch will be speaking at the Joseph E. Coleman Regional Library on February 4 at 4:00 p.m., at the Bustleton Branch on February 13 at 5:00 p.m. and at the Central Library on the Parkway on February 25 at 7:00 p.m.

Throughout the One Book program period, interviews with members of Philadelphia's Sudanese community will appear in the City Paper’s Naked City section and on www.citypaper.net . All published stories will also be available on this blog.

The latest story in this 10-part series focuses on Eltigani Abualgasim:

Recently recognized as one of the best cab drivers in Philadelphia--nominated by the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association--Eltigani Abualgasim used to be in a very different kind of transportation business, helping to deliver Red Cross messages across Sudan and reconnecting families torn apart by war.

"One of our main programs was for unaccompanied minors, who are called 'Lost Boys' here," says Abualgasim. "We did a lot of missions to trace the relatives of these minors--in the mountains, in southern Sudan, through war zones...it was very difficult."

A graduate of the University of Khartoum with a bachelor's degree in geography and a diploma in economics and development, Abualgasim spent the 1990s working for the tracing department of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, where he led a team charged with helping concerned family members locate missing loved ones displaced by violence. In 2000 he traveled to Saudi Arabia where he lived for three and a half years before securing a visa to come to the United States, settling in Philadelphia in 2004.

"I left Sudan...before the war in Darfur started," he says. "I was forced. The policy of the government is to drain the country of opposition."

While Abualgasim has some extended family in the Philadelphia area, he is the only one of his siblings currently living in the United States, and the crisis in Sudan continues to affect his brothers and sisters directly. In 2006 his older brother, Abualgasim Ahmed Abualgasim--a longtime resident of Saudi Arabia and an opponent of the Sudanese government--was arrested by Saudi Arabian authorities and sent to Sudan, where he remained incarcerated for six months without ever being charged with a crime.

"He gave a talk at the Sudanese Embassy in Saudi Arabia, and the next day he was deported," says Abualgasim. "When they brought him to Sudan, they tried to assimilate him by offering him an appointment as a minister. He refused."

Abualgasim's brother was released this past March, thanks in large part to the advocacy efforts of Amnesty International and other collaborative organizations. One of Abualgasim's sisters was less fortunate. She resided in the Kuttum area of northern Darfur--where Abualgasim's family is originally from--and died recently after being unable to seek medical treatment for a heart condition due to ongoing conflicts in the region.

Here in Philadelphia, the situation in Darfur is never far from Abualgasim's mind. He is active in a number of organizations--including the Sudanese National Rally, whose primary goal is to raise awareness among Sudanese living in the U.S. about ongoing human-rights violations in Sudan--and serves as volunteer director for Darfur Alert Coalition, a Philadelphia-area coalition of Sudanese and Americans offering educational programs and coordinating advocacy initiatives on behalf of the oppressed in Darfur.

When asked about what needs to be done to bring peace to Darfur, Abualgasim speaks passionately. “People every day are dying on the ground, and the U.N. is just talking, talking, talking,” he says. “We need to put a lot of pressure on the U.N. and the U.S. government to push things forward.”

Abualgasim took a job as a cab driver partly so that he would have flexibility during the day for his volunteer commitments. When asked what it’s been like to meet a broad cross-section of Philadelphians behind the wheel of cab, he smiles. “A lot of people ask, ‘Where are you from?’ I try to test the Americans’ geography. I tell them my country starts with an S. I’ve met many nice people, but also sometimes you find the tough ones. You need a lot of techniques, especially working late at night."

Abualgasim clearly takes pride in his job, but he knows he won't be driving a cab forever. "I want to go back to school to start my master's degree," he says. When asked what he plans to study, he says matter-of-factly, "Peace and conflict resolution."

- B. Davin Stengel

Inspired by Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng, the Philadelphia City Paper--in collaboration with Drexel University writing students--kicked off a weekly series dedicated to telling the stories of Sudanese living in Philadelphia. Throughout the One Book program period, interviews with members of Philadelphia's Sudanese community will appear in the City Paper’s Naked City section and on www.citypaper.net . All published stories will also be available on this blog.

The first story in this 10-part series focuses on Isaiah Kuch:

In a way, it's remarkable Isaiah Kuch still feels a connection to Sudan.

He was only 6 when civil war forced him and thousands of others out of their villages in the southern part of the country. After that, he spent about four years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and another eight in a camp in Kenya. In 2000, he and the other Lost Boys were relocated to the United States in search of education and safety. Kuch has lived in Philadelphia since then, studying and working.

Now, armed with U.S. citizenship and a degree in economics, it would seem like an easy choice to stick around and move on with his life.

Not Kuch.

"I will always believe one day I will go back to Sudan and make it my home again," he says soberly. That's a common sentiment among his fellow refugees. They want to return to the site of their most difficult times, where they lost their parents and siblings, to help the place build and develop.

When he wasn't studying at La Salle University, Kuch was working several jobs and sending money back to his half sister and half brothers in Kenya. So far, he's been able to make enough to get his siblings out of the Kakuma refugee camp and into school.

That was the place he called home the longest. It's an immense camp set up by the United Nations to house refugees from Somalia, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. Only compared to Pinyudo--the initial makeshift settlement Kuch fled to in Ethiopia--does Kakuma look livable. "There was food, but not enough. Water, but not enough. Schools, but not enough qualified teachers," recalls Kuch. Skipping meals was commonplace and education stopped at grade 12 (after that, you could be enlisted as a teacher yourself).

Kakuma was also the place the Lost Boys were finally old enough to understand their situation, as much as it can be understood. "When all that in Sudan started, nobody knew," he explains. "You just think it's a fight, you go and hide, it's going to be alright. In the refugee camp you start going to school, you start asking the question why."

When faced with the opportunity of being relocated to the U.S., he took it, though not without reservations. "You have to also keep in back of your mind: Is this taking me farther away from home? Most of us thought it couldn't be worse than what we went through."

So on a freezing cold day in November of 2000, Kuch's plane touched down in Philadelphia. It was quite a shock to the system. He remembers back in hot, dusty Kakuma seeing a picture of Alaska and thinking he'd like to live in a place like that. "Alaska looks really beautiful in pictures," he laughs. "We didn't understand all that snow means cold."

This year he's gonna skip as much of the Philly winter as he can while visiting family in Kenya, Uganda and, if possible, Sudan. Kenya, once considered the most stable country in eastern Africa, is currently embroiled in social unrest surrounding its recent elections. Kuch isn't scared. As long as the flights are still allowed in and out, he'll be going.

And right now, the war in Sudan is quieted thanks to a peace agreement - though the situation in Darfur remains dire and some are skeptical about the government's willingness to adhere to the concessions it's made. While waiting to see how that plays out, Kuch is applying to grad schools.

"There is hope," he says. "You can't lose that. Once you lose that, you don't have anything left. You got to have some hope or otherwise life is meaningless. That never goes away. However I do not cheat myself by believing that this hope is going to come easily. I do believe it's going to be as complicated as my past. But one day, one time, it will come."

- Pat Rapa

Dave Eggers, author of the 2008 One Book, One Philadelphia featured reading selection, What Is the What, will be stopping by the Central Library on the Parkway tonight at 7:00 p.m. (Dave will also be signing books after the event.)

This is just the first of many great events that will be happening as part of the 2008 One Book, One Philadelphia program--including film screenings, dance performances, cooking lessons, art projects, panel discussions, and more--which runs through March 20, 2008.

Check back here regularly for highlights and updates. Also, feel free to share your comments about What Is the What or a One Book program you’ve attended. Our mission is to build community, so we’d love to hear what you think!