Hanafi used up all his arguments in trying to persuade me to become a good Muslim. Dilating on the power of the Khaleefa and my impotence, he pointed to my chains, then weighing about forty pounds, and said that the Khaleefa would certainly torture me with them until I submitted to become a good Muslim. To this last argument I replied that if I did say I would be converted, the Khaleefa, as soon as he heard of it, would make me proclaim my conversion publicly, |111| and just as certainly behead me immediately afterwards, to prevent my slipping back into Christianity. Hanafi believed that the Khaleefa would still let me live after embracing the Mohammedan faith in the hope of my accepting the Mahdieh; he failed though to convert me, and the Khaleefa, hearing of the result, and not believing that Hanafi had done all that he might have done with his arguments, for this and other reasons sent him later as a convict to Gebel Ragaf, near Lado, the convict station of the Soudan.
By the time I had gained sufficient strength to attempt the flight, the men engaged had lost heart, and there was no one to lead them. Nur ed Din was dead, and as they only came into the thing for the money they were to receive, and the dollars were not then forthcoming, they decided not to run any risk, disbanded the camel-posts, and scattered to their various homes.
How many hundreds of times have I regretted since that I did not take Nur ed Din’s advice and escape at the time, leaving him behind. As he said, there was no reason to be afraid that he would lose his head, as his being so ill and also his being left behind would prevent suspicion being directed towards him. During my twelve years’ captivity, this, my first chance of escape, risky and desperate as it was, was the only one which had in it a real element of success, for my conductor in saving me was to save himself.
As is customary in all oriental prisons, the prisoners in the Saier had either to purchase their own food, or their friends and relatives had to send it into the |112| prison for them; failing money, friends and relatives, the prisoners starved to death. I have already said that the best and greater part of the food sent to the prison gates was appropriated by the gaolers, that is to say, after Idris es Saier had seen to the wants of his “starving children” and numerous household first. Idris, even during the worst period of the famine, did not lose flesh; he was always the same tall, stout, flat-nosed black, both when I first saw him on May 10, 1887, and when I last saw him in September, 1898. Nor was Idris quite so bad as he had been painted; he would often—when the Nebbi Khiddr tale had had the desired effect in repentance, or when he was in a good humour after a bout of marrissa drinking—go out of his way to do his prisoners small kindnesses, such as the removal of extra chains, and giving permission to sleep in the open; but the Nebbi Khiddr institution left him so much at the mercy of the Khaleefa’s immediate attendants, that his periods of good humour were, in consequence, of very short duration. Some day, if I return to the Soudan, or Idris pays a visit to civilization, I may learn from him whom I have to thank for a few of the unnecessary hardships inflicted upon me.
It might be asked why we, knowing that the guards would purloin the greater part of the food sent in, did not arrange for a larger quantity to be sent. There are two reasons, and the first is the least of the two: the guards knew very well what was the minimum amount of food to keep us alive, and just that quantity of food |113| would be allowed to pass the portals of the Saier. The second reason was, that the sight of more or better food being brought to a prisoner proved one of two things: either the prisoner himself had received some money, or his friends had, and the following day the time-worn Nebbi Khiddr tale, properly translated, meant chains until more dollars were forthcoming. Under such circumstances, the unlucky offender against Saier politics would be called upon by the other mulcted prisoners to make good the money they had been bled of, for the Saier was most impartial in the matter of chains, and, certain of always getting the proper victim in the end, invariably loaded a dozen or so with extra chains, and ordered all into the Umm Hagar. An attenuated and burned chicken, or pigeon, cost a few dollars in repentance, and also the wearing of extra chains and the horrors of the Umm Hagar for nights, for it was advisable to keep Idris waiting some days for an evidence of repentance, so that he should believe, and the Khaleefa’s attendants believe also, that some little difficulty had been experienced in collecting the few dollars you had to pay.
Our usual food was “Asseeda,” the Soudan dourra (sorghum), roughly pounded moist, and mixed into a thick paste, feeling and tasting to the palate like sawdust. It was not a very nourishing dish, but it was a heavy one, and stayed the pangs and gnawings of hunger. A flavour might be imparted by allowing a quantity to stand for a day or two until fermentation set in. Occasionally, but only occasionally, a sauce |114| made from the pounded seed of the Baamia hybiscus, and called “Mulakh,” could be obtained, and this, with the fermented asseeda, made a veritable banquet. Friends in the town sent us, when they could either afford or obtain it, a little wheaten bread, a bit of cheese or butter, or a few pinches of coffee.
CATARINA.
Amongst the many captives in Omdurman who did so much for me stands out prominently Father Ohrwalder, the old Greek lady, Catarina—who was a ministering angel alike to prisoners and captives—Mr. Tramba and his wife Victoria, Nahoum Abbajee, and Youssef Jebaalee. Surely the recording angel has placed to the right side of the account the little deceptions practised by Father Ohrwalder to gain access to the prison, when the few piastres of baksheesh he could afford were not sufficient to satisfy the rapacity of the guards, in order to bring me some little dainty, when, God knows, he was bringing me the lion’s share of what he was in absolute need of himself. At one time he would present himself at the gates as being “Iyyan Khaalas” (sick unto death), and, of course, wished to see me once again before his dissolution. At another time it would be that he had heard I was dying, then, of course, he wished to see me; and the changes would be rung by his coming in on the pretext of wishing to see some other prisoner. With bowed head and bent back, exaggerating the weak state he was then in, he would crawl towards me, dragging one foot after the other, and, reaching me, would sit down on the ground and sway his body to and fro—a little pantomime which allowed of his |115| surreptitiously passing to me the dainties he had brought in the old leather bag slung from his left shoulder. Time after time he was turned away from the gates, and this, too, after having paid the baksheesh; but his persistence secured his seeing me every one or two months during my first three years in prison, and the scraps of news he brought from the outside world—news to both of us, though a year or two old—gave me something to think of and turn over in my brain until his next visit. Death, as I told Father Ohrwalder, I did not fear, but my great fear was insanity.
Often and often, when allowed to sleep in the open air at night-time, instead of experiencing all the horrors of a night in the common cell, the cool night-air would send me off into a sound sleep, from which I would start up from some confused dream of old days, and, looking up to the sky, would wonder to myself, half awake and half asleep, which was the dream and which the reality, the old loved scenes, or the prison of es-Saier at Omdurman. I would for some moments be afraid to look round at the men chained on each side of me, and when I mustered up courage to do so, and felt the weight of my irons and the heavy chain across my legs, which bound our gang of fifty or sixty together, I would speculate on how long it would be before the slender thread holding me between reason and insanity snapped under the strain.