WITNESS - Hunting empire treasures in Sudan market

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The shelves of Mahjoub Mahmoud's market shop glint with piles of broken watches, coins and dented silver plates.

"See this here. It is very old. It is your king," he says, holding up a tarnished metal disc. It is actually not my king -- it is my grandfather's king -- Great Britain's King George VI, stamped on the front of a World War Two service medal and mine for an asking price of 100 Sudanese pounds ($50).

It is tempting, but the price is not brilliant and it is not quite what I am looking for.

What I am looking for is treasure: real historical, high-value treasure, hidden in the twisted alleyways and darkened corners of Sudan's sprawling Omdurman market.

People say you can find anything in Omdurman, if you have the time to look and the constitution to put up with hours of open-air shopping in temperatures topping 47 degrees centigrade.

"It is like a spider's web," said one friend who grew up in the capital Khartoum just half an hour's drive along the Nile. "There's a part that I know. But if I wander too far, even I get lost."

"You can find anything, even from the British time," says Moumar, an 'Amjad' minibus driver, referring to Britain's on-and-off 66-year control over the country. "You could find a pistol here, a sword there. But you have to look."

So I have started at Mahmoud's tiny shop -- one of a huddle of "folklore" junk stores that have built a business out of selling Sudanese souvenirs, mixed in with the flotsam and jetsam of British rule.