That my reason did not give way during my first period of imprisonment I have but to thank Father |116| Ohrwalder and the friends mentioned. Each one of them risked his or her comparative freedom, if not life, to help me. Even during the worst nights in the Umm Hagar, when Hell itself might be defied to match such a scene, when Madness and Death stalked hand-in-hand amongst the struggling mass, and when, jammed in tight with a number of the more fanatical prisoners, I fought and struggled, bit and kicked, as did they for bare life, the thought of having friends in adversity, suffering almost as much as I did, kept that slender thread from snapping; but the mental strain caused me most violent headaches and periods of forgetfulness or loss of memory, which even now recur at times. But it was during the famine that the Christian—more than Christian—charity of my friends was put to the severest tests and never faltered. Food was at enormous prices, but, day after day, Catarina brought her scrap of dourra or wheaten bread; every day Youssef Jebaalee sent his loaves of bread, unmindful of how much the guards stole, provided that I got a mouthful.
All the food sent for the prisoners did not, of course, reach them; what little passed the gates of the Saier was fought for; those having longer chains, or bars, connecting their anklets stood the best chance in the race for food, as they were able to take longer strides. Had it been under other circumstances, the scenes enacted might have provided endless amusement for the onlookers, for they had in them all the elements but one of a sack-race and old country sports. Seeing thirty or forty living skeletons shuffling, leaping as |117| far as their weight of chains and strength would allow, you knew, when one fell, that it was the weakness caused by starvation which had brought him down. There he would lie where he fell, given over to despair, whilst those who did reach any messenger with food, rather than resenting the stripes given by the guards with the courbash, would almost appear glad of the open wounds these caused, so that they might caress the wounds with their hands and lick the blood from their fingers. This picture is not over- but underdrawn; but I have been advised to leave out minute details and other scenes, as unnecessarily harrowing.
We heard that cannibalism was being practised in the town, but none took place in the prison; in the Saier, when once the despair engendered by starvation and cruelty took hold of a prisoner, he would lie down and wait for death; food he would never refuse if offered, but if water without food was offered, it was refused. Day after day, for months, the bodies of eight or ten prisoners, who had died of starvation, would be thrown into the Nile, and thousands must have died in the Saier. The population of the prison was always kept up owing to the hourly arrivals of starving wretches committed there for trying to steal food in the market-place, and it was from such as these that the fighting for food in the prison emanated chiefly. It can be well imagined how the most civilized being might be driven to madness and desperation, when, as the result of his trying to steal a bit of food, maybe for himself, maybe for |118| a dying child, he is committed to an oriental prison, and there, as he is taken to the anvil, the body of the last victim to starvation is dragged up to have the shackles knocked off only to be fitted on to him. Yet this happened not twice, not scores, but hundreds of times in the prison of es-Saier during that terrible famine.
After my servant Hasseena had been knocked down a number of times and the food she was bringing me had been devoured by the starving prisoners, we hit upon an expedient. Buying a gazelle skin, she had this hung from her waist, under her dress, and left dangling between her knees; the food for me was placed in this, but Hasseena always carried, as a blind or decoy, a little food in her hands. This would be pounced upon, when Hasseena, who had a healthy pair of lungs, as Wad Nejoumi discovered at his first interview with her, would raise the echoes with her screams. These gave her a clear path to me, and she waited for a favourable opportunity to drop the gazelle skin on the ground beside me.
It must not be thought from the foregoing that the prisoners had no feelings for each other, and for those worse off in the matter of food than themselves. There was more charity shown by those wild fanatics, and almost savages, than is often shown in more civilized places. Mahmoud Wad Said, so long as his little property held out, sold portions of it day after day, and had sent into the prison for his poorer fellow-prisoners, a large “geddahh” of asseeda and milk, night and morning, and this gave thirty to forty |119| prisoners a meal each day; others divided with their less fortunate friends the little food they received. I have seen it stated that my charity to other prisoners created a very good impression; but, then, how could I, the only white and Christian in the prison—and, for the matter of that, the only avowed Christian in the Soudan—not strive to show just a little more self-denial and charity and kindness of heart than those “fanatics” showed me?*
* On reading over the foregoing to Father Ohrwalder, and asking him if he knew of any others who had assisted me with food while in prison, he first objected to my giving him any credit for what he had done, saying he had done but part of his duty towards me, and, in deference to his wishes, I have curtailed the account of his kindnesses towards me. He then expressed surprise that the name of Slatin did not figure amongst those of my benefactors, and it is only now that I hear from Father Ohrwalder of the risks Slatin ran in trying to help me. As can be well understood, this is hardly a subject on which, at the present time, I could approach Slatin, as it would practically be asking him how many dollars’ worth of thanks were due to him.
On my arrival at Omdurman, it was believed by the Khaleefa, and others, that I was a brother of Slatin, and had started for Sheikh Saleh’s country with the idea of organizing an expedition to attack the Khaleefa and effect Slatin’s release; the latter, in consequence, was looked upon with more suspicion than ever, and bad as my position or condition was, his, in a measure, may have been worse. People in Omdurman—my servant and the prison barber in particular—gauging Slatin’s position to a nicety, had little fear or compunction in blackmailing him, day after day, after his first contribution to my sustenance, for more money and food, and in each instance it was asked for in my name. Others doubtless did the same, and poor Slatin, as he was then, must have been robbed right and left, his robbers perfectly secure in the conviction that even, should he discover their trick, he would be powerless to punish them, for had he attempted to do so, he would have placed his head in a noose for disobeying the Khaleefa’s orders, which were that he was never to speak to, or have any dealings with me. It is the least that I can do here to place the matter on record in connection with my experience, and leave Slatin to await the appearance of this in print to learn that my heartfelt thanks go out to him, while, at the same time, the world will better understand from the foregoing the difficulties of Slatin’s position with the Khaleefa.
CHAPTER X PRISON JUSTICE
What I have written previously concerning the Nebbi Khiddr history will, in the following notes of prison life, assist the reader in better understanding how such mutual and transparent deceptions might be practised by the Khaleefa and the gaolers as are related here. It will be remembered that the Khaleefa, following the example of the Mahdi, laid claim to the Nebbi Khiddr as his prophet or constant messenger—a sort of modern Mercury amongst the Soudanese; hence the mutual, but unacknowledged deceptions which might be practised by the Khaleefa and his followers one against the other, but with always this proviso: as the Khaleefa had the power of life and death, and his spoken word was absolute, no one dare, even by suggestion, imply that he had in any way deceived or hoodwinked Abdullahi, else the Nebbi Khiddr would not have rested content until his detractor had been shortened by a head.
When the many escapes from the Saier zareeba became of too common gossip to be any longer concealed, Abdullahi ordered a wall to be built in place |121| of the thorn zareeba, and later, to obviate the necessity of the prisoners going to the Nile banks for drinking water and ablutions, a well was sunk to provide infiltration water for the purposes mentioned.* Until these works were ordered to be made, the prisoners were mainly employed in building mud-brick houses for the gaolers; and when these were finished we had to attend to certain of the household duties—the tending of children, sheep, goats, and the carrying of water from the Nile. Of all the tasks set the prisoners, the household duties were the most pleasant, or, at all events, the least distasteful. Most of the gaolers were able to keep up a large establishment on the proceeds of their baksheesh and ill-gotten gains, but with a multiplicity of wives or concubines a very natural result followed—household bickerings and squabbles, in which one wife or concubine was bound to come off worst; and this gave the wide-awake prisoner engaged upon household duties his chance. He would soon detect which concubine was being “put upon,” or whom the women-folk were most jealous of, and in a few days’ time, as a result of his attentions in carrying her pots and pans, and bringing her water as many times in the day as she wished, he would be bemoaning in her sympathetic ears the hard |122| fate of both of them, and trying to persuade her that what she was enduring was far worse than his imprisonment and chains. The old truism that “pity is akin to love” obtains equally as well under the dusky hide of a Soudanese damsel as under the white skin of her European sister, and very soon the pair would be maturing plans for an escape and elopement. The main difficulty was the removal of the man’s chains and a rapid flight to some distant village; but the Soudan ladies are not a whit behind in woman’s resourcefulness face to face with apparent impossibilities. Failing to arrange for a regular flight, the woman would secure some place of hiding in Omdurman itself. She would undertake all the arrangements, and I never knew of a failure in their plans.