MODEST WOMEN, DECEPTIVE JINN: IDENTITY, ALTERITY, AND DISEASE IN EASTERN SUDAN

Abstract

This article examines the cultural construction of difference, danger, and disease among the Muslim patrilineal Hadendowa-Beja of eastern Sudan and focuses on the ways in which gendered discourses, together with symbolic and ritualistic practices, diagnose historical relationships of power, powerlessness, and social conflict. In particular, I show how the female body, viewed as a “fertile womb-land,” is the locus of anxieties about foreign dangers and diseases, which are perceived to be threatening to collective identity and well being. By using “foreignness” as a double-edged category linked to both power and danger, I examine how Hadendowa's feminization of social vulnerability draws attention to their own political history of exclusion and displacement.

Key Words:

• gender
• identity
• fertility
• embodiment
• health
• Sudan

I would like to thank my colleagues and friends at Northwestern, Harvard, and the University of Michigan for their valuable comments on this article. I would also like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation, The Population Council, and the Center for Development Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, for funding my research in eastern Sudan. I am, forever, indebted to the Hadendowa women and men, whose openness and support made my research in eastern Sudan possible. My gratitude also goes to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their constructive suggestions.

Notes

1. Most terms used in this article are Tu-Badawi. I will, however, use the abbreviation (AR) to mark usage of Arabic terms.

2. I will use “foreignness” and “otherness” interchangeably to denote Hadendowa's conceptualization of external danger.

3. The stories I used in this article are solicited from my dissertation fieldwork conducted among Hadendowa migrants in the shanty settlements of Sinkat town, during an eleven-month period in 1998. I used various methods of data collection that included participation in various social activities, a questionnaire with eighty-five women, in-depth interviews, and routine visits carried out, with the help of Hadendowa research assistants, in both Tu-Badawi (Hadendowa language) and Arabic (researcher's first language). Some women, who lived in town longer, spoke Arabic as well and responded to questions in an Arabic–Tu-Badawi blend. Data was also collected through interviews with á few men and women in rural areas outside Sinkat town.

4. Sinkat town is claimed by the Imirab lineage, despite government land regulations, where other Hadendowa lineages are considered as guests on the Imirab land and cannot assume land ownership. Issues of land organization and conflict are, however, beyond the scope of this article.

5. Hadendowa cultural codes dictate that the bride live near her mother unless in practical situations where such arrangements cannot be maintained. Although FBD marriage is preferred, in practice marriage from sublineage members is considered an alternative strategy. According to the eighty-five women interviewed, FBD marriage represented 32.9 percent, while marriage to relatives from the same sublineage represented 42.4 percent. In between these two categories fell Father's Sister's Daughter's marriage (11.8 percent), Mother's Brother's Daughter's marriage (7.1 percent), and Mother's Sister's Daughter's marriage (5.9 percent).

6. In such a predominantly pastoral economy, land is less significant as a private property and, thus, it is used and claimed collectively by extended family members, who trace their descent partilinealy to a common forefather.

7. Hadendowa's perception of fertility goes beyond bearing children, particularly sons, to include raising them properly in order to undertake their productive and reproductive roles (see also Bledsoe 2002).

8. This is not to suggest that women do not travel or cross similar boundaries; their movement, however, requisites veiling and male companionship.

9. The Ashraf claim to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. They intermarried with the Hadendowa and speak both Arabic and Tu-Badawi.

10. The Khatmiyya is a major mystical brotherhood with substantial following in northern and eastern Sudan. For a detailed account of the brotherhood's doctrines and history, see Voll (1969).

11. The Beni Amir are comprised of different groups, who are divided into subgroups of nobles and subordinates.

12. Tigray is a Semitic language, which is different from the Cushitic Tu-Badawi language.

13. Takarir refers to the Kingdom of Tekrur, which was established in Senegal in the eleventh century A.D. One of Sinkat's shanty settlements is named after a well constructed by a Nigerian migrant (bir tikrirait).

14. Halab is Arabic for Aleppo in Syria, believed to be the original homeland of this group. On northern Sudanese perception of Halab, see Boddy (1989: 103).

15. Mihaya contains Quranic verses written on a wooden board or paper and soaked in water for patients to drink or massage on their bodies.

16. Most women interviewed used the terms jinn (Arabic) and jantaib (Tu-Badawi) interchangeably to refer to spirits.

17. Women describe Turks, Kurds, and Moroccans as people of red skin color. They also refer to the spirits characters with different terms: Khawajat, are sometimes referred to as kustani and Turks are referred to as Bashawat or Atrak, while Moroccans are referred to as maghrabi spirits.

18. See also Kenyon (1995) on the predominance of Habash spirits in Sinnar after the increased migration of Ethiopian refugees to the area.

19. This taboo is related to the danger of consuming foreign products that are believed to affect bodily well being. The inner body is where health and energy are generated and stored in contrast to the outer body which, although penetrable, serves as a shield to protect the inner organs. This conforms to Hadendowa's own notion of power within and without. What is inside is deemed as more valuable and, thus, more vulnerable to external danger.

20. A healthy he-goat that has no defects such as pierced ears, broken horns, legs, and the like.

21. Known in Northern Sudan as Swar Paris, filair damaur and alsarawkh (meaning “the missile,” referring to the shape of the container). Hadendowa women also refer to it as alsarawkh.

22. See also Inhorn (1994) for a description of the Kabsa-healing rituals as “reversal rites.”

23. A mix of oil perfumes, cloves, and musk.

24. Women's real names are altered as they requested.

25. Some women believe that mixing a woman's clean blood, after she stops menstruating, with a man's semen creates a child.

26. Hadat (which means lioness) is the Hadendowa ancestral mother who is famous for giving birth to seven sons who later established the Hadendowa seven dominant lineages. The name of the group, Hadenowa, is itself derivative of the combined words, Hadat-indiwab (meaning Hadat's family).

27. Such suspicion toward foreign commodities and technologies such as food, medicine, and family-planning methods is documented elsewhere in Africa (e.g., White 2000; Rene 1996).

Muhammad Salih, Hassan 1976. The Hadendowa: Pastoralism and Problems of Sedentarization. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hull, England.