Aida Al-Hajeb sits on a sofa in a small shop. Barely 30, she has dark skin and wears her black hair in pigtails. Her bright black eyes are outlined with Arabic kohl. She is wearing a colored gown with silver accessories and she sits quietly while she skillfully paints henna on the hand of another woman.

Al-Hajeb moved to Egypt with her family after Sudan’s independence. However, they were not granted Egyptian nationality as Egyptian laws only grants citizenship to Sudanese born before 1914, despite the fact the Aida’s family spent half of their life in Egypt and Aida has never visited Sudan.

“We are a family of seven and we work in menial jobs. My father works in a perfume shop in Al-Munshiya in Alexandria and my mother is a tailor and my sisters and I work as henna painters because we are skilled at this profession and it has become popular among all Egyptian girls not only Nubian and Sudanese women.

She sadly remembers when she turned 30 without being married, as the financial situation of most Sudanese young men living in Egypt is difficult. They are either unemployed or work in menial jobs such as guards, salesmen or ordinary workers. Such professions do not generate enough income to cover the costs of marriage.

“I started thinking about marrying a Nubian when I saw many of my friends getting married to Nubian Egyptian men.” One of her friends suggested a Nubian man looking for a bride. They met and liked each other and got married a few months later since the man was financially prepared.

“I can say that I am quite beautiful, however the Egyptians I live among refuse to marry black women due to racial discrimination which is religiously and morally unjustified. The only man who did not treat me as a foreigner is the Nubian man with whom I share with my skin color, social customs and traditions and accent. He did not mind my skin color so I married him,” she explained.

Common customs and traditions

“Nubians and the Sudanese share the same customs and traditions. Only the names differ. Each region uses different words and names. The weddings’ customs and traditions in Sudan are very similar to the Nubian Egyptian weddings as we come from the same origin. They are no different from us,” said Mohja Lahimi, a 40-year-old Sudanese woman who is married to a Nubian Egyptian man and lives in Alexandria who has been living in Egypt with her family since Sudan’s independence in 1956. She never went to Sudan.

When she was old enough, she married a young Nubian man of Sudanese origin working in the perfume industry. They fell in love and got married seven years ago and she was granted Egyptian citizenship.

“I did not marry a Nubian Egyptian man for citizenship reasons,” she says. “I chose him because I loved him and because we have the same customs, traditions and race.”

Rituals of Sudanese weddings

In Sudan Mohja says, the first step is a meeting between the couple’s families to get acquainted, then comes the engagement and the acceptance of both the family and society of this marriage. The following step is paying the dowry. Then comes the henna celebration the night before the wedding. In this night, the hands of men and the bride and the groom are painted with henna and the invitees are served food amid dancing and singing.

Then the marriage procedures are finalized and the couple is announced a husband and wife. A banquet is held for the relatives and invitees. Then, the wedding party starts. After that, some old customs, which go back to the pharaonic age, start including “Al-Jartak” when the bride and the groom wear red clothes and place a red cloth embroidered with a golden crescent on their foreheads. There is also a milk splashing ritual. The couple takes milk from a jug and splash each other’s faces. Then the groom cuts a silk tape surrounding the bride’s waist and throws it to the audience.

Nubian weddings

Aida recalls that in her wedding, they combined Sudanese customs with Nubian ones, which are very similar but have different names or some additional customs. For example, the Nubians call the first meeting between the two families “Berjar.” When the bride’s family accepts the proposal, a banquet called “Tanjood Yandaba” is held at the groom’s house where sheep slaughtered to feed the guests. The Nubians call the engagement “Adismar” or “Shila,” which is the beginning of the official marriage preparations. Then comes the dowry payment. Next is the henna night, which is called “Kofreh” in the Nubian language. Finally, there comes the official wedding day which is called “Baleh” or “Arkana”.

Aida explains that in Nuba, there are post-wedding celebrations such as the “Barkeed” which is held the day after the wedding and the “Tijar”, held three days after the wedding and incudes singing and serving Nubian food.

Origins and roots

Dr. Jame’a Sa’doon, a Sudanese researcher in the Nubian history at Alexandria University, says she is Nubian and Sudanese as her father is Nubian and her mother is Sudanese. She indicates that most of the Sudanese women who marry Nubian Egyptians come from tribes living on the Nile’s banks in far northern Sudan and southern Egypt. The tribes of Mahas and Dankala are major Nubian Sudanese tribes.

Sa’doon ascribes the strong connection between the Sudanese and Egyptian Nubians to the fact that Nuba was a unified land until 1882 when Britain occupied Egypt then Sudan. The Mahdiya Revolution in Sudan managed to liberate Sudan. However, on August 1899, Britain defeated the Sudanese in the Battle of Toshka Gharb, 250 miles from Aswan, and reoccupied Sudan.

She adds that, in the same year, Britain tried to separate Sudan from Egypt by demarcating new borders between them, 330 miles south of Aswan, scattering the Nubian villages in two countries.

The village of Adnadan formed along Egypt’s southern borders and the village of Faras on Sudan’s northern borders. As a result, there are now Sudanese and Egyptian Nubians.