“The Sabties, who guard my house day and night, led me here, and I’m sure they have been ordered to cut off our heads very soon.”
“Talk like a sensible woman,” answered Mr. Rawlison, frowning. “You are not in Sudan, but in Egypt, where no one is killed without a judicial sentence, and so you can rest assured that not a hair of your head or of your children’s will be touched.”
However, she besought him once more to intercede for her with the Egyptian Government, and obtain permission for her to travel to meet Smain. “The English are as great as you, sir,” she said; “they are able to accomplish anything. The government in Cairo thinks that Smain is guilty of treason, but that is not true. Yesterday I talked with Arabian merchants, who came from Suakim, after having bought rubber and ivory in Sudan, and they told me that Smain lies ill in El-Fasher and bids me and the children come to him, so that he may bless us.”
“Fatima, you have invented this tale,” interrupted Mr. Rawlison.
She now began to protest by Allah that she was telling the truth, and then she said that were Smain to recover he would certainly buy the freedom of all the Christian prisoners, and if he were to die then she—as a relative of the leader of the Dervishes—would easily gain admission to him, and be able to obtain anything she asked. If only she might travel to join her husband, for her heart bled longing to see him! What had she, unhappy woman done against the government or the Khedive? She asked if it were her fault, and if she could have prevented her misfortune in being the relative of the Dervish, Mohammed Achmed.
Fatima did not dare, before Englishmen, to call her relative “the Mahdi,” as that name means “Saviour of the World”; and she knew that the Egyptian Government looked upon him as a rebel and a schemer. Continually bowing and calling on heaven to witness her innocence and her misfortune, she began to weep piteously, just as women of the Orient are accustomed to do on the death of their husbands or sons. Then she threw herself on her face on the ground, or, speaking more correctly, on the carpet which covered the inlaid floor, and remained silent.
Nell, who had felt somewhat sleepy toward the end of dinner, was now wide awake, and, as she had a kind heart, she took her father’s hand, and kissing it over and over again, begged him to say a word in Fatima’s behalf.
“Won’t you help her, papa? Help her!”
And Fatima, who seemed to understand English, said between her sobs, without raising her head from the carpet:
“May Allah bless you, you little flower of paradise, Omaj’s delight! Little star without blemish!”