UMM ES SHOLE AND TWO CHILDREN.
Umm es Shole (the mother of Shole—Shole being the name she had given her first child) was an Abyssinian brought up from childhood in a Greek family settled in Khartoum. On reaching womanhood, she was married to one of the sons of the family. On the fall of Khartoum, her husband, with seven male relatives, was butchered in the house in which they had taken refuge; Umm es Shole, with her three children, was taken as “property” to the Beit-el-Mal, where she was handed over as a concubine to the Emir of the Gawaamah tribe. Refusing this |189| man’s embraces, he in revenge tortured her children to death, upon which Umm es Shole escaped to Omdurman. Through Abd-el-Kader, the uncle of the Mahdi, she had her case brought before Mohammad Ahmed, who, after listening to the details, gave her a written document declaring that, as she had been married to and borne children to a free man, she was a free woman, but to make certain that she might never be claimed as a slave, the document also declared that she was “ateekh” (freed) by him.
When Abdullahi succeeded the Mahdi, he ordered every woman without a husband, and every girl of a marriageable age, to be married at once. He was most particular that every one in the “Christian quarter” should be married. Umm es Shole married an old and decrepit Jew, whom she nursed until he died two years later. Returning to a woman relative of her husband’s, she supported the old woman and herself by cooking, preparing food for feasts, sewing, and general housework.
This was the wife my friends had selected for me, and I accepted her thankfully; but when she was approached on the subject, she positively declined to be married again, and it was only upon her being told that I was ill, and might die, that she consented to the marriage. I had to appoint a “wakeel” (proxy, in this instance) to represent me at the marriage and the festivities; Nahoum prepared the feast at his house, the bride preparing the food and attending to the guests. At the conclusion of the few days’ ceremonies and feastings, Umm es Shole was escorted |190| to Khartoum—a married woman, and introduced for the first time to her husband. She set to at once with her household duties and attendance upon me, and during a long and weary five months nursed me back to life.
As can well be believed, Hasseena resented no less bitterly my projected marriage with Umm es Shole, or any one else, than she resented her divorce, and this she resented very bitterly indeed, for passing as the wife of a European and a presumed “General” to boot, gave her a certain social status in Omdurman, which she took advantage of when visiting in the various ways pointed out. On my saying to her, “You are divorced,” which is the only formula necessary in Mohammedan countries in such a momentous domestic affair, she promptly replied that she was again pregnant. A few words on the subject of divorce in the Soudan—and the rules are practically identical with those laid down in the Quoranic law—will assist towards an appreciation of the fix this declaration of Hasseena placed me in.
If a woman, on being told “you are divorced,” declared herself with child, the husband was compelled to keep her until its birth; if it was a son, the divorce was null and void; if a daughter, the husband had to support the wife during two years of nursing, and provide for the child until her seventh year, when he might, if he chose to do so, claim her as his daughter.
When a woman was divorced for the first time, she was not allowed to marry again without the consent of the husband; this was giving him a “first call” if he wanted her back, for divorce might be declared for |191| less trivial things than incompatibility of temper. If the husband took her back, and divorced her a second time, the woman was free to marry, but if the husband again wanted her, he had to pay her a marriage dowry as at her first marriage. Should he divorce her a third time, and again want her back, he would have to arrange for her to be married to—and divorced from—some one else first, when she was free to return to him. All this may sound very immoral to people in Europe, but one cannot help but admire the simplicity of the proceedings; and consider the amount of domestic infelicity it prevented. There is no public examination of the parties concerned; no publication of interesting details in newspapers; some little thought is given to the woman who may have been the mother of your children, and should she have slipped in the path of virtue, you do not shout it from the housetops; the marriage was a private arrangement between you, so is the divorce, and the reasons for the latter are your affair and no one else’s.
I have touched upon divorce in some detail, as many re-marriages under all the conditions given above occurred, and some family records became a hopeless tangle to all but those immediately concerned. When the new Soudan Government comes to settle up claims to properties, they will be confronted with a collection of “succession” puzzles to solve, for one woman might be the proud mother of the legitimate heirs of three or four different people, and being, as the widow and mother of the heritor, entitled to a fixed proportion of the properties, you |192| may be quite sure that she will fight to the death for her sons’ interests.
Hasseena ought not to have been in the interesting state she declared she was, for we had been separated for a much longer period than that ordained by law. I was obliged to tell her that if she empanelled a jury, after the example of Idris es Saier, all the explanations they might offer would not convince me that I held any more relationship to the child than I did to Makkieh, and there was nothing now to induce me to claim the paternity,—indeed just the reverse. However, if Hasseena was with child, I should be bound to keep her for at least two years, and if the Khaleefa sent on his present, I should have two households to support on ten dollars a month. When making my plans for escape, Hasseena was included; she was to have got away on the same dromedary as myself. When my guides returned, they would find me with two wives, and having made arrangements for one only, they might demur at taking the two. The probabilities were they would abandon the thing altogether, fearing that one or the other might betray them, which meant instant execution for them and imprisonment for me. If I kept Hasseena, she might steal from some stranger, as the houses of my friends were now closed to her, and then I should be sent back to the Saier; if I sent her away, she, knowing my guides and all my arrangements, would be the first to meet them on arrival in Omdurman, and would insist upon coming away with me under threats of disclosing the plot. It was a most awkward fix for me |193| to be placed in; but after considering the whole matter most carefully, I decided upon sending Hasseena off, and trusting to luck for the rest. I had hoped she might get married to some one in Omdurman, and then I should not have been afraid of her. But Hasseena returned in February, 1892, some months after my marriage with Umm es Shole, carrying a little bundle of male humanity, who had only been three or four months less tardy in arrival than Makkieh.