"I am not at all angry at what you have done," I answered, "you are but one among many: and should I have been annoyed with you, your words have quite reconciled me." "I thank you," said Madibbo. "May God strengthen you, and as He has protected you hitherto, may He continue to protect you!" "In truth," I replied, "I put my trust in Him. Still it is hard to have to bear all that has now happened; but I suppose it must be!" "Not so," he answered; "I am only an Arab, but listen to me. Be obedient and patient; practise this virtue, for it is written, 'Allah ma es saberin' [God is with the patient]. However, I have come to ask you something, and my request is this: If you are really a brother to me, then, in token of our friendship, I wish you to accept my favourite horse. You knew him before; he is the Sakr ed Dijaj [the Chicken-hawk]." Before I could reply, he had got up and gone outside, and in a few minutes returned, leading his horse, which was the finest and most handsome animal owned by the tribe; he then handed me the leading-rope. "I do not wish to insult you," I replied, "by refusing to accept your present, but I do not require it; I shall not want to ride much now." "Who knows?" said the Sheikh. "Illi umru tawil bishuf ketir [He who lives long sees much]. You are still young, and may often ride yet,—if not on this horse, then on another." "You may be right, Madibbo, but now do you accept from me this token of friendship," said I, pointing to his precious war-drums, which my servants took up and handed to him; these drums, it will be remembered, I had taken in the night attack on Kershu. On the drums I also laid a sword which I had taken down from the wall. "To-day," said I, "these are mine, and I can offer them to you; to-morrow they may be another's." "I thank you, and accept them gladly," said the Sheikh. "Only a short time ago your men captured my war-drums; but, as the Arabs say, 'Er rigal sharrada urrada' [A man runs away and comes back again],[9] and I may truly say I have fought many times in my life, and sometimes I have run away, then I have returned and have succeeded." Madibbo now ordered his men to carry off his drums, and departed in great delight. His conversation had affected me considerably. So I was now to be "obedient and patient; for he who lives long sees much."
Mohammed Khaled soon sent for me, and informed me that on his arrival at Shieria he had despatched a letter by one of Wad Darho's relatives to Said Bey Guma, summoning him to surrender, and had at the same time sent a certain Abderrahman as his representative. He now called upon me to write officially to him to hand over Fasher and summon every one to submit. I replied that the clerks were no longer in my service, and that the document could be made out, should he think it necessary, and I would sign it. The orders to this effect were given, I signed them, and Khaled, addressing the letter to the commander of the Fasher garrison, despatched it at once.
The following morning the new Governor began his seizure of the state moneys. The inhabitants of Dara, with the exception of all troops below the rank of officer, and myself, being considered as Ghanima,[10] were ordered out of their houses; they were only permitted to take with them a few necessary cooking utensils and the clothes they wore, and were ordered to collect in front of the police-station near the market, whilst their dwellings were ransacked and the contents carried off to the Beit el Mal which was opened in the Mudiria. As no money or jewellery was found, all those suspected of having any were brought before the Emirs, who ordered them to instantly produce it; and in carrying out the search disgusting cruelties were perpetrated: they flogged mercilessly, beat them with sticks or tied them by the legs head downwards in wells until the rush of blood to the head rendered them unconscious. Amongst those who exercised more cruelty than the rest was my old Khartum friend Hassan Wad Saad en Nur, whom I reported, in his presence, to Khaled. Hassan instantly turned to me, saying, "Do you still think you are Governor-General of Darfur and can say what you like?" I replied that he should be careful not to go too far, and reminded him that it was I who secured his release from prison, and that the horse he was then riding was mine. To this he answered impudently, "It was God who released me, and it is God, and not you, who has given me your horse to ride." Khaled, who heard these remarks, angrily ordered him off, and said to me, "Take no notice of him, his father, Saad en Nur, was the Sultan's slave, and slave-blood always shows itself."
As we were now alone, I complained to Khaled of the ill-treatment visited on those who had shown complete submission, and I reminded him of his pledge to protect all men, women, and children. "I am not going to put any one to death," answered he, sharply, "but they have no right to the money they are concealing; it is contrary to the arrangement, and it must be taken from them by force." My experiences were beginning. I went home, and here several of the poor people who had been turned out of their houses came and begged me to give them something. I furnished them with a little corn; but since our troubles began I had received no pay, so had no money to offer them.
The male and female servants of the former officials were now distributed amongst the Mahdists, but all the good-looking young girls were put aside for the Mahdi himself.
Seven days after our surrender Khaled informed me that Said Bey Guma had sent the principal officials to make their submission, and that he himself was in the neighbourhood of the town awaiting further orders; he therefore collected his forces and prepared to march out to meet him. The delegates sent by Said Bey Guma were Omar Wad Darho and some of his officers, Hanafi el Koreishi the grand Kadi, and Ali Bey Khabir. Khaled received them with great satisfaction, and one of the clerks, coming forward, presented the documents relating to the transfer of the Government to Abderrahman; in these were included the lists of arms and ammunition in store, the number of guns, etc. Khaled now took his guests into the town and entertained them with the best of everything, pledging himself to preserve, not only their lives and the lives of all the women and children in Fasher, but also, when all the money and valuables were collected, he promised that half would be returned to the owners. The following day, however, it was rumoured that the Fasher garrison had decided not to surrender after all, and in the evening news arrived that Fiki Abderrahman had been warned to leave the city, which he had done, and that all preparations were being made for defence. Khaled now anxiously inquired of the messengers what had occurred to cause this sudden change in Said Bey's intentions; but they replied it was not the doing of Said Bey, but of some of the officers, who had been told by refugees from Dara that their comrades had been badly treated, and they had, therefore, decided to fight to the end.
Khaled now gave orders that all his people should prepare to advance at once on Fasher, including the entire garrison, with their arms and ammunition, with the exception of the officers, whom he ordered to remain behind and to be carefully watched. He waited, however, two days longer, in the hope that he might get different news; but as the first account was further corroborated by some of Darho's men and Ali Khabir's servant, who came in that evening from Fasher, he set out on 3rd January to lay siege to the town, followed by large numbers of men marching by various roads.
On 7th January he, his Emirs, and the Dara troops under Mohammed Agha Suleiman, reached Wad Beraj, on the outskirts of the town, where they pitched camp. The next day a letter was written which I was obliged to sign, reminding Said Bey Guma and the officers of the agreement they had made to surrender through Omar Wad Darho, Kadi Hanafi, and others. My—or rather Khaled's—letter remained unanswered; for it was quite understood in Fasher that, being now under Khaled, I had no other course open than to obey his orders. The messenger who took the letter was told to warn all those who complained of ill-treatment to come and state to Khaled what they required; and this becoming known to the Fasher garrison, several who had no desire to fight left the fort, and were accepted in the Mahdist camp. Wad Darho's men, who lived outside the fort, also came over to Khaled immediately, and orders were given to begin the siege forthwith; the operations being intrusted to Darho.
I now asked Khaled to be allowed to talk to him privately, and I told him plainly that this opposition on the part of the Fasher garrison was entirely due to their fear of suffering in the same way as the Dara people. This he quite admitted. I then told him I was very unwilling to fight against those who had formerly been under my rule, and, as he was well aware, the events of the last few days had considerably affected my health; I therefore begged to be allowed to return to Dara. In reply to my request he said that were it not that he liked me, he would most certainly have punished me severely for the words I had just uttered; nevertheless, he would allow me to return to Dara, on condition that I pledged myself to abstain from any acts of hostility; at the same time he showed me some letters which had been addressed to me, but which he had opened. One of them was a reply to my report sent from the Beni Helba country to Cairo regarding the desert road to Assiut. They had been given to some Magharba Arabs to bring to me, and on their entry into the country they had been arrested by the Saidia Arabs and kept as prisoners, and on Khaled's arrival at El Fasher they had been sent on to him. He allowed me to make notes of their contents. The letters were all of old dates. One was from His Highness the Khedive Tewfik Pasha, expressing his complete satisfaction with the services I had rendered, urging me to continue to fulfil with diligence the duties of my position, and telling me that he was despatching an army under Hicks Pasha to subdue the rebels in Kordofan and restore peace. Another was from H. E. Nubar Pasha, Prime Minister, who also expressed satisfaction with my services, and repeated the information about the Hicks expedition. The third was from Zubeir Pasha, who sent me his kind regards, and asked me to make inquiries about the family of his son Suleiman. As far as I knew, Suleiman had left only one child, who with his mother I had handed over to the care of Omar Wad Darho with instructions to take an early opportunity to send them to Zubeir's relatives on the Nile. The mother, however, preferred to marry one of Darho's relations, and she was charged with bringing up the child. The feelings which I underwent on reading these letters can be better imagined than described. How we had placed all our hopes on the success of the Hicks expedition, and how rudely had those hopes been dashed to the ground! However, I did my best to master my feelings, and handed the letters back to Khaled, who was contentedly smiling at my agitation. "Your Effendina [the Khedive] thought he would defeat the Mahdi," said he, "but the 'expected one' has turned the tables on him; there are still harder times in store for these deluded Turks and Egyptians." I smothered the retort which hung on my lips, and said nothing. "Be obedient and patient" was Madibbo's advice; but how difficult it was to follow it!
I then got up and took leave of Khaled, who lost no opportunity of showing me that he was my superior, and then proceeded to Dara without delay. I was really ill, and on my arrival there kept to my house for some days; but the weeping and wailing of the unfortunate people gave me no rest: they had been robbed of all their means of livelihood, and now eked out a miserable and wretched existence as best they could.