We were not at that time altogether without news; papers published in Egypt were constantly arriving, brought by the Khaleefa’s spies, who passed regularly backwards and forwards between Omdurman and Cairo, keeping up communications between the Khaleefa and some of the more fanatical Mohammedans resident at the capital. Since my return I have inquired as to an incident which happened on the frontier in connection with the army some years ago. I shall only relate what we heard, and as given out by the Khaleefa and his Emirs. All the English officers, according to the report received, had been dismissed, and had left with the Sirdar. The English soldiers had also been removed from Egypt; so the Khaleefa was jubilant, and looked forward to the near future when the Egyptian troops would attempt to attack him, and when not a man of them was to be left alive. I was to have been a witness of the great battles when the angels of Allah were to fight with the believers, and assist the Ansar to utterly exterminate the Turks. While this was still the topic of conversation, another messenger arrived to say that the trouble had been arranged; the English officers and troops were not leaving, and as the Khaleefa’s hopes fell, ours rose. |98|
Of all the people whom the Mahdi himself appointed to posts, two, and, I believe, two only, retained their positions up to the time of the taking of Omdurman. One was Khaleel Hassanein, the director of the arsenal, and the other Idris es Saier, the gaoler. Idris—for he is still living—is a man of the Gawaamah tribe, a tribe that the first missionary will have some little trouble with, unless he is prepared to revise one of the Ten Commandments out of the Pentateuch altogether, as the following story connected with my gaoler’s first appearance in the world may indicate. Idris’s mother had a sister who, tired of single blessedness, proposed to, and was accepted by, a swain of the tribe who was a constant visitor to their hut. Idris’s mother had also the intention of proposing to the same man, and having told her sister this, the sister popped the question first, was accepted, and then Idris’s mother upbraided her after the manner of her tribe, which evidently consisted more of actions than of words. When the happy swain put in his next appearance, Idris’s mother, with Idris in her arms, asked him how he dare go against the custom of her section of the tribe, and accept in marriage a girl who had had no children, while she had already had two! “Saier” in the Gawaamah language means “custom” and “customary,” and Idris was named Idris es Saier when, in after years, a satisfactory explanation could not be found for his not boasting a father. Idris’s mother afterwards married and ruled, with her legitimate son, Saier’s family. When appointed as gaoler by the Mahdi, his prison was |99| called “El-Beit-es-Saier” (the house of Saier), which later was contracted to “Saier,” and the name eventually replaced the proper word for prison, all prisons being called the “Saier,” and the head-gaoler, “Saier.”
Idris had been a famous robber and thief, and he was never tired of relating his exploits, and then winding up by pointing out what Mahdieh had done for him, for by his conversion he was now the honoured guardian of all thieves, robbers, and murderers, and there is little doubt but that he had a sneaking regard for all such, as a link between himself and his earlier days.
He was superstitious to a degree, and although the Mahdi and Khaleefa had strictly forbidden fortune-telling and the writing of talismans, Idris followed the example of the Khaleefa himself, and regularly consulted the fortune-tellers, most of his ill-gotten gains going to them in fees. He had had made twenty-five to thirty boards of hard wood, about eighteen to twenty inches square, and on these he had written daily, a Sourah from the Quoran. The ink with which the Sourahs were written was a mixture of wood-soot—or lamp-black, when that could be obtained—gum arabic, some perfume, and water. As soon as the writing was finished, Idris would, after carefully washing his hands, take a small vessel holding about two teacups of water, and carefully wash off the writing, allowing the water to drip back into the vessel; not a drop was to be spilled on the ground, otherwise the writing would have to be done over again, for the name Allah, and many of His attributes, |100| were then in the solution. Having washed the board clean, caught every drop of water, and then drunk it, he would come to us, and deliver himself of the following harangue, and as we heard it two or three times a week for years, I have an almost verbatim recollection of it.
“I am a born thief and robber; my people killed many on the roads, and robbed them of their property; I drank as no one else could, and I did everything possible against rule and religion. The Mahdi then came and taught me to pray and leave other people’s property alone.” (This last always raised a bitter smile from his hearers, as he used to torture us to deliver up for “the Khaleefa” any small coin or article of value we might come into possession of.) “How I have to thank the Mahdi for having made me a good, holy, and new man, and he will at the Day of Judgment be my witness, and take me with his ansars to heaven. Think what I have been, and see what I am now! I have been worse than any of you. If you stole anything, you stole when you were with the Government, and you only did what the Government and every one else did, you had authority to do so. I was worse than you, I had no authority. God has pardoned me, and will also pardon you if you repent and give to the Beit-el-Mal what you have taken from the poor, for there are many poor now in the town crying for food, and there is no money in the Beit-el-Mal to purchase any. I have given all my money in charity, and my wives and children are crying for food. I have no boats to bring me |101| merchandise, and I have no land to cultivate to grow dourra” (Sorghum, a grain in the Soudan, which takes the place of our wheat). “I am a prisoner as you are, and the pay I get is not sufficient to feed my family. Yesterday there was no dourra in my house to feed my children, they had to lie down hungry, and I thank God for His grace in supporting me through these trials for which I shall be rewarded in the next world. I am going to see my starving children now, and then I shall pray to God, and ask him to release you if you repent, and turn the Khaleefa’s heart to you. The Khaleefa knows everything you do, and sees you all the day, for ‘El Nebbi Khiddr’ is his eyes and ears, and El Nebbi Khiddr not only sees and hears what you are doing and saying, but sees what your thoughts are.”
After this, all but myself used to rise and kiss his hands; I never did so. At the end of the first harangue he gave in my presence, and at the end of his harangues for weeks later, he would continue:—“And now you man from the bad world, you understand Arabic well. The Khaleefa has told me to instruct you in the true religion; your fellow-prisoners will tell you how Hicks Pasha was, with all his army, killed by the angels; not a single shot was fired, or a spear thrown, by the Ansar; the spears flew from their hands, and, guided by the angels, pierced the breasts of the unbelievers, and burned up their bodies. God is great. You will soon learn that you are mistaken, and that all your world is wrong; there is no religion but that of the Mahdi. How happy you |102| should be to have lived in his time and entered into the company of the Ansar. God now loves you; it is He who has brought you to us, and with the Khaleefa’s blessing you will yet be numbered with the Ansar, and you will fight against the unbelievers and Turks as other converts have done. You have a strong mind, and the Khaleefa therefore has not a bad opinion of you. Thank him for his mercy that he did not kill you. Be converted, and I shall be pleased and proud of you, and be as your father. You others, you have seen the Mahdi and the Khaleefa and their dealings; tell him of them. You Hamad el Nil, you are a learned man, and know more of religion than I do; make Abdalla know who God is, and who is His prophet.”
IDRIS-ES-SAIER.
At the end of my first lecture, Abou Jinn asked me how much money I had. I inquired why. He replied, “Do you not understand? The Saier wants some money from you.” I told him of the money Hasseena had, and which the Saier was taking care of, on which he smiled and told me that the Saier would not take the money himself, but he would compel me to give it to him for his “starving children.” A few days later I was sent for to hear the Saier hold forth again, and on this occasion he finished up by saying that some of us must have done something wrong. The Nebbi Khiddr had reported it to the Khaleefa, who had in consequence ordered him to add more chains to our feet, but that we were to submit to this without bad feelings against the Khaleefa and him. If we repented, the |103| Nebbi Khiddr would report it, and the Khaleefa, as he was full of grace, would soon order the chains to be removed again. All the principal prisoners, with the exception of myself, were then marched to the anvil, and had their chains hammered on. I was spared, as, after the first lecture, I had, on Abou Jinn’s advice, sent word to the Saier to take fifteen of my dollars for his “starving children.” We prisoners held a conference, and it was decided to present more moneys. It took us two days to scrape together the requisite sum—about fifty dollars—to which I added seventeen of mine. This had the happy result of not only removing the extra chains of the prisoners, but Hasseena’s also. The Saier called us together, gave us a homily on repentance and good behaviour, and told us to continue in the same path, as it was evidently looked upon with approval by the Nebbi Khiddr.*
* The Nebbi Khiddr is a mythical character in Islam. Sects are divided as to whether he is a prophet or not. His name does not appear in the Quoran. By some of the old writers he is made the companion of Noah, Abraham, and Moses. Having drunk of the waters of the Fountain of Life, he is believed by some to be ever present at one of the holy places. His exact whereabouts and his attributes have never been defined. The Mahdi killed two birds with one stone by appropriating this unclaimed prophet to himself; first, his supposed presence made Omdurman a holy place, as the Nebbi only appeared at holy places, and then, by investing him with the powers as related by Idris es Saier, he was able to impress the more ignorant of his followers of his—the Khaleefa’s—omniscience and omnipresence through the Nebbi Khiddr’s agency. The Mahdi laying claim to this prophet and attributing to him the powers he did, raised in the minds of Hamad-el-Nil and others their first suspicions as to the Mahdi and his mission.