The Miernik Dossier

27. REPORT BY A CLERK OF THE SUDANESE CONSULATE AT GENEVA TO THE ANOINTED LIBERATION FRONT (TRANSLATION FROM ARABIC).

H.R.H. Kalash el Khatar has demanded that visas for entry into Sudan be issued forthwith to the following persons: Collins, Nigel Alexander Spencer (British subject); Christopher, Paul Samuel (U.S. citizen); Miernik, Tadeusz (Polish citizen).

In an interview with the consul, Prince Kalash demanded also that this Miernik be issued with a valid Sudanese passport. The prince furnished photographs of Miernik. The consul explained that Sudanese passports can be issued only to Sudanese nationals, but Prince Kalash was insistent that an exception be made.

The consul, aware of the influence of the prince’s family, has instructed me to issue in Miernik’s name not a passport but a laisser-passer. The consulate possesses no such document. Indeed, I have never heard of such a document.

On instructions by the consul, issued after I vainly protested this improper giving of documents to a non-Sudanese, I am arranging to have a laisser-passer printed by a local printer. Because only one such document is being printed, the cost is enormous, and there is no authorization in the consulate’s budget for such an expense. The consul, when informed of this fact, chose to ignore it. He told me to “find a means to pay this trifling sum.” My own pocket is the only means.

The consul is hardly less arrogant with me than is the prince with the consul. Khatar regards the Sudanese government as a mere convenience to gratify his every whim. He never takes into account the difficulties he creates for us with his behavior. I have written of the insult he gave to the Ambassador of Egypt at an official function last week, when he remarked that the appellation “United Arab Republic” was a “joke.” In the prince’s view, as he expressed it with the utmost contempt to the Ambassador of Egypt, “Egyptians are not Arabs, they are the descendants of loose females like Cleopatra who offered themselves to a thousand conquerors.

So long as my country continues to give respect and homage to such relics of the exploiting class it will not be free! Meanwhile, in anger, I must issue these visas, falsify this laisser-passer. Such deeds do not humble me, they feed my hatred, increase my thirst for retribution.

(The consul would not tell me why these visas, etc., are wanted by Prince Kalash. Probably he does not know himself, though of course he makes a show of being in the confidence of the great Highness.)