In Desert and Wilderness

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

For some time the boat floated in silence. There could be heard only the grating of the oars on the boat's edges and once in a while a splash of water by a crocodile struck in the tail. Many of these ugly reptiles had swam down from the south to Khartûm, where they found an abundance of food, for the river teemed with corpses, not only of the people who were slaughtered after the capture of the city, but also of those who died of diseases which raged amidst the Mahdists and particularly among the slaves. The commands of the caliphs prohibited, indeed, "the contamination of the water," but they were not heeded, and the bodies which the crocodiles did not devour floated with the water, face downward, to the Sixth Cataract and even as far as Beber.

But Idris thought of something else, and after a while said:

"This morning we did not get anything to eat. I do not know whether we can hold out from hunger until the hour of prayer, and who will feed us later?"

"You are not a slave," replied Tadhil, "and can go to the market-place where merchants display their supplies. There you can obtain dried meat and sometimes dochnu (millet), but for a high price; as I told you, famine reigns in Omdurmân."

"But in the meantime wicked people will seize and kill those children."

"The soldiers will protect them, and if you give money to any one of them, he will willingly go for provisions."

This advice did not please Idris who had a greater desire to take money than to give it to any one, but before he was able to make reply the boat touched the bank.

To the children Omdurmân appeared different from Khartûm. In the latter place there were houses of several stories built of brick and stone; there was a "mudirya," that is, a Governor's palace in which the heroic Gordon had perished; there were a church, a hospital, missionary buildings, an arsenal, great barracks for the troops and a large number of greater and smaller gardens with magnificent tropical plants. Omdurmân, on the other hand, seemed rather a great encampment of savages. The fort which stood on the northern side of the settlement had been razed by command of Gordon. As a whole, as far as the eye could reach the city consisted of circular conical huts of dochnu straw. Narrow, thorny little fences separated these huts from each other and from the streets. Here and there could be seen tents, evidently captured from the Egyptians. Elsewhere a few palm mats under a piece of dirty linen stretched upon bamboo constituted the entire residence. The population sought shelter under the roofs during rain or exceptional heat; for the rest they passed their time, built fires, cooked food, lived, and died out-of-doors. So the streets were so crowded that in places the detachment with difficulty forced its way through the multitude. Formerly Omdurmân was a wretched village; at present, counting the ives, over two hundred thousand people were huddled in it. Even the Mahdi and his caliphs were perturbed by this vast concourse, which was threatened with famine and disease. They continually despatched to the north expeditions to subjugate localities and cities, loyal yet to the Egyptian Government.

At the sight of the white children here also resounded unfriendly cries, but at least the rabble did not threaten with death. It may be that they did not dare to, being so close to the prophet's side, and perhaps because they were more accustomed to the sight of prisoners who were all transported to Omdurmân immediately after the capture of Khartûm. Stas and Nell, however, saw hell on earth. They saw Europeans and Egyptians lashed with courbashes until they bled; hungry, thirsty, bending under burdens which they were commanded to carry or under buckets of water. They saw European women and children, who were reared in affluence, at present begging for a handful of durra or a shred of meat; covered with rags, emaciated, resembling specters, with faces swarthy from want, on which dismay and despair had settled, and with a bewildered stare. They saw how the savages burst into laughter at the sight of these unfortunates; how they pushed and beat them. On all the streets and alleyways there were not lacking sights from which the eyes turned away with horror and aversion. In Omdurmân, dysentery and typhoid fever, and, above all, small-pox raged in a virulent form. The sick, covered with sores, lay at the entrances of the hovels, infecting the air. The prisoners carried, wrapped in linen, the bodies of the newly dead to bury them in the sand beyond the city, where the real charge of the funeral was assumed by hyenas. Above the city hovered flocks of vultures from whose wings fell melancholy shadows upon the illuminated sand. Stas, witnessing all this, thought that the best for him and Nell would be to die as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh. In Omdurmân there were a few Greeks and Copts whom the Mahdi had spared because he needed them. These not only walked about freely, but engaged in trade and various affairs, and some, especially those who pretended to change their faith, were even officers of the Mahdi, and this gave them considerable importance among the wild dervishes. One of these Greeks stopped the detachment and began to question the children as to how they happened to be there. Learning with amazement that they had just arrived, and that they had been kidnapped from far-away Fayûm, he promised to speak about them to the Mahdi and to inquire about them in the future. In the meantime he nodded his head compassionately at Nell and gave to each a few handfuls of dried wild figs and a silver dollar with an image of Maria Theresa. After which he admonished the soldiers not to dare to do any harm to the little girl, and he left, repeating in English: "Poor little bird!"