A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman

by Charles Neufeld

Idris I knew had long coveted Hasseena, and her being with child appeared to him a favourable opportunity of securing her for himself, for under ordinary circumstances, the woman being a slave and the child being born in his hareem, he could lay claim to the paternity, when mother and child would become free, the mother ranking now as a wife. He talked the matter over with Hasseena, and then sent her to interview me. I submitted the case to my friends in prison, and they showed that Idris had misread, or misunderstood, Surah IV. of the Quoran, which only justified his position towards Hasseena in the event |136| of my being a prisoner of war, and he having captured Hasseena on the field. Things became still more complicated by Hasseena admitting to me that there were doubts in her own mind as to the child’s paternity. Hasseena was of a light copper colour; Idris was as black as the ace of spades. It would only be reasonable to expect that the child when born would exhibit in the colour of its skin an evidence of its paternity, and it was precisely on this account that Hasseena wished to defer making any declaration until the event came off. If she elected to declare Idris the father, and the child at birth gave the lie to her statement, her life would be in danger; but before continuing the narrative, and detailing the complications which Hasseena’s condition and her uncertainty on a vital point gave rise to—it might be well to refer briefly to one of the moral code of laws instituted by the Mahdi, as this will help the reader to a better understanding of the quandary we were placed in.

While a man, having already the regulation quota of four legal wives, might crowd his hareem with as many female slaves and concubines as he could support or keep in order, a woman was restricted to the one husband or master. All breakings of our seventh commandment were, if proved, followed by flogging in the case of unmarried women and slaves, and by the stoning to death of married women; but, in the latter case, the sentence could not be given, nor the punishment inflicted, unless the woman confessed. Very few stonings to death took place, and these were in the earlier days of Mahdieh, when religious fanaticism held sway. |137|

The flogging has already been described. When a stoning to death was to take place, a hole was dug in the ground, and the woman buried to her neck in it. The crowd stood facing the victim, about fifteen to twenty yards distant, and on a given signal the stoning commenced; but it is only right to say that the Soudanese themselves hated and feared taking part in such an execution. None of the stones thrown had, singly, the force or weight to cause stunning or death, and the horrid spectacle was presented of what appeared to be a trunkless head, slightly jerking backwards and forwards and from side to side to avoid the stones being hurled at it, and this ordeal continued for an hour or more. Sometimes a relative or friend, under pretence of losing his temper in upbraiding or cursing the woman, smashed in her head with one of the small axes usually carried by the Soudanese, thus putting her at once out of her torture and misery. Shortly before sunset, the relatives and friends would come out to take away the body and give it decent burial, for the soul had fled, purified with the woman’s blood, to the next world.

Knowing what would be the result of a confession, it will be wondered that any woman ever did confess; the number who did so is, admittedly, small. In one of the three cases of stoning to death I know of, the confession was extorted by torture, and the poor woman preferred the horrible but certain death by the time the sun set, to the lingering death she was enduring from day to day. Thousands of women were charged with the breaking of this particular rule |138| or commandment of the Mahdi, but almost all the charges were made by other women—and this, too, out of sheer jealousy, not from any feeling of outraged morality.

I may now proceed with the narration of the quandary Hasseena had placed us in, herself included. I had been kept chained and closely confined for nineteen months, and was under Idris es Saier’s particular supervision; Hasseena, during the same period, had been a servant in his hareem, and also in his entire charge. If I claimed the paternity of the child, the probabilities were that Idris would get into trouble with the Khaleefa; if Idris claimed it, his head might be in danger, for decapitation or hanging was the punishment ordered for the male offender, and in all cases Hasseena was liable to flogging or stoning to death. Again, if I claimed the paternity of the child, and there were reasonable grounds after its birth to believe that the paternity should be looked for in some other direction, and I knew that it should be; then, while Idris would clear himself to the Khaleefa, I should have been punished for lying to him, and Hasseena would be in the same predicament as before.

I had inquiries made outside as to Hasseena’s movements when marketing, and as to those whom she associated with, or went to see; being satisfied, as a result of the inquiries, that the expected arrival would be a shade lighter in colour than its mother, I, acting on the advice of my prison friends, claimed the child as mine, thus leaving Idris to get out of the thing as best he could. There was, as above indicated, |139| a risk in my claiming the paternity, but it was worth while running it. The Khaleefa, so my friends told me, would now certainly release me from prison, as my wife and child would be a guarantee for my good behaviour if released, and also guarantee me against any escape, for to try and escape with a woman and baby made success very problematical, while the woman would certainly hinder me in any attempt to escape, when it could only result in the death of herself and child. It was for this reason—to hinder escape—that the Khaleefa kept his captives well supplied with wives, and showed his displeasure very plainly if the expected results did not follow. But my claiming the paternity did not please Idris, as it deprived him of all chance of securing Hasseena for himself, and also left him at the mercy of the Khaleefa for his neglect of duty in allowing Hasseena to come near me, so he empanelled a jury of Soudanese matrons to inquire into the affair.

At the time when Hasseena startled our little world with her interesting condition, Omdurman was, and had been for some months, almost depleted of its male population; the rumours of an expedition (Stanley’s, to rescue Emin) had resulted in a considerable force being sent to Equatoria. The army to attack Abyssinia had been in the field for months, so also had the army which Wad Nejoumi was to lead a few months later to its destruction at Toski.

A number of the ladies empanelled for the jury ought not, unless they belonged to the Gawaamah tribe, to have been eligible for election, and others, |140| under the circumstances, should have avoided publicity; but here was an opportunity for them, and they were not going to miss it. They came together to save themselves—not Hasseena or Idris—hence the extraordinary verdict they gave: to the effect that it was not only possible for a woman to be with child nineteen months—as Hasseena presumably was, but for twenty-four months, while some hotly contested for an extension of the time to years!

Idris had still another card to play; he averred that it was impossible for the child to be mine, and he now swore it was not his. Then Hasseena ought to be flogged and sent to prison; but as Idris would be entrusted with the flogging himself, it was to be understood that he was not going to damage his prospective property. It was now the turn of those whom I remarked ought not to have been eligible for election to the jury; the tales they told to account for their own interesting condition are worthy of the best traditions of the “Thousand and One Nights;” but, even if written, they would be less fit for translation and publication than the originals of the famous tales. Idris now appealed to the Kadi, who, after interviewing the jury, supported their contentions, and related the whole story to the Khaleefa, much to his amusement and the discomfiture of Idris; for, while graciously sending me his congratulations on the coming event, he ordered the unconditional release of Hasseena, who went to live in what might be called the “Christian” quarter of the town.

In January the girl-child was born, and named |141| “Makkieh” (shackles), a name which appealed to the humorous side of the Khaleefa, who, being tickled at the idea of the name, in a fit of good-humour, sent word to me to ask if I would undertake the manufacture of gunpowder if he released me. I unfortunately replied that I did not understand the manufacturing of it, and this aroused his suspicions, which did not abate one jot when, shortly afterwards, a Bohemian baker, who had strayed from Halfa, was taken prisoner, and sent on to Omdurman as a captured spy. This man, whom I knew only by the name of Joseppi—though he had a string of other names, which I have forgotten—was a Bohemian by birth and a baker by trade. He was not of strong intellect, and what intellect he had, had maybe been impaired by a “music madness.” From the rambling statements he made to me during his year’s imprisonment, I gather that he had tramped Europe as a wandering musician, landing finally in Egypt, where he tramped from the Mediterranean to the frontier. It is quite evident that instead of coppers he received drinks in exchange for his strains, and this further added to his mental troubles, though the drunkenness he has been charged with was, in my opinion, more the result of circumstances and misfortune than a natural craving for ardent liquors.