Who wears the trousers in Sudan?
By flogging women for wearing trousers, the Sudanese government shows its fear of challenges to the status quo When I was 14, my family and I made our way to my father’s military club in Khartoum where we had been dining for years. On this occasion, we were denied entry as I was not wearing a headscarf. Upon my father’s protestations that this had never happened before he was informed by staff that it was the government’s new directive; all women had to wear the hijab in public and no trousers or revealing clothes were permitted. We went back to the car, fashioned an awkward headscarf for me to wear and made our way to dinner as my teenage embarrassment obliterated my appetite. This was life in the new Khartoum after the National Salvation coup in 1989. Music with “irreligious” lyrics was banned from the airwaves, open-air parties using sound systems were prohibited after 11pm (spawning what came to be known as the “overnight”, where the performer was smuggled indoors to entertain the
