Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: One day in the early 1980s, I was riding in the backseat of an old Land Rover through the desert southwest of Khartoum.There was no road, but the landscape, mostly flat, was marked by the occasional saint's tomb distinctive to Sudanese Islam.My companions and I hadn't seen another vehicle for a couple of hours when one appeared as a tiny dot on the horizon.It was headed our way, and as is typical both cars slowed down to see who else might be passing through the seemingly empty desert.My curiosity was mild-I had been in the Sudan only a month or two and didn't think I'd know anyone-until I realized that in fact I did know the face looking back at me through the window of the other Land Rover.It was my friend Vaughan, an Oxford classmate from years earlier.We both shouted and our cars stopped.The reunion was a pleasure.It seemed very old-school, and we laughed about how many Oxford classmates of different generations had run into each other in the Sudan over the last 150 years.More than a few, I'm sure, each taking pleasure in his or her cosmopolitanism (and more than a few in colonialism, too).Vaughan and I caught up on families and careers and work on multiple continents.Being citizens of the world was going well for both of us.
Source: Daedalus
Author: Craig Calhoun
Institutions: Social Science Research Council, New York University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: W.K. Kellogg Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2052264942