“Do the lower classes in Egypt really sympathize with the Mahdi?”
“The Mahdi has followers even among our soldiers, and perhaps that is the reason they fight so badly.”
“But how can the Sudanese escape by way of the desert? It is thousands of miles long.”
“And yet slaves have been brought into Egypt that way.”
“I do not believe that Fatima’s children could stand a journey like that.”
“But she will make it shorter by crossing over to Suakim.”
“All the same, she is a poor woman.”
Thus the conversation ended.
And twelve hours later, after the “poor woman” had carefully locked herself in her house with the son of the overseer Chadigi, with raised eyebrows and a lowering glance in her lovely eyes, she whispered:
“Chamis, son of Chadigi, take this money; start to-day for Medinet, and give Idris this writing, which, at my request, the holy Dervish Ballali wrote to him. The children of these Mehendisi are good (i.e., good material to be used to further our ends)—there is no other way—if I can not gain permission to travel. I know that you will not betray me. . . . Remember that you and your father belong to the Dangali tribe, the same tribe to which the Mahdi belongs.”