Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882-1892

by Josef Ohrwalder; Sir F. R. Wingate

The Mission gardener, brother Domenico Polinari, who had been left to take charge of the Mission property, on the first alarm, had rushed to the main gate of the garden to see what was the matter. He opened the gate slightly, and, seeing an array of lances, he slammed to the gate with all his might, and fled to a small hut in the garden which was full of hay, and he hid himself in the corner underneath the hay. Several slaves who were working in the garden followed his example; but they did not stay long, for, thinking it was not a sufficiently good hiding-place, they were running off to another hut when they were fallen upon and massacred. Domenico heard their shrieks and the click of the sword which beheaded them from his place of concealment; but he dared not move from the spot, though half choked with the dry grass in which he lay. Several Dervishes entered the hut and thrust their spears into the hay to search for any one in concealment.

One can realize the terror of poor Domenico as the naked spear-heads were forced through and almost touched him. He lay, however, undiscovered for some hours, and at last the noise and din of rifle-shots grew less. Though suffering agonies from thirst, he still did not dare to move till close on midnight, when he emerged from his bed of hay. All was still, the stillness of death. He could see the Dervish guard fires; and, as he crept along, he stumbled over the dead body of the black who had been working in the garden. Horror-stricken, he slowly moved forward again. At every step he saw a dead man, all of them labourers and watchmen who had attempted to escape when the Dervishes entered. Creeping under the shadow of the large lemon-trees, he reached the main gate, above which was a small hut which had been occupied by one of the black families belonging to the Mission. The windows of the hut looked into the garden, and Domenico scrambled through one of these into the room. Here he found one of the women, Halima, and begged her to give him some bread and water. He questioned her about the entrance of the Dervishes and the fate of the inhabitants. She replied in a few words that the town had been stormed, and numbers of the inhabitants, as well as General Gordon, Consul Hansal, and most of the Europeans, had been killed.

This was a new shock to the already terror-stricken Domenico. He threw himself on the bed and begged that Halima would not betray him; but she, fearing to be found out, crept out of the hut, went up to the Dervishes who were collected round the camp fire, and told them that there was a Turk in her cottage. Some of them jumped up, and, following Halima into the hut, they drove out the unfortunate Domenico with the butt ends of their lances. He was brought in front of the camp fire and carefully searched for money; but he at once drew forty pounds out of his pocket, which he distributed amongst them, and they were satisfied and did not ill-treat him.

On the following day he was taken before Ahmed Wad Suleiman, the Emin beit el mal, who made full inquiries of him regarding the Mission money. Domenico said that when the Mission left Khartum they took all the money with them, and had left nothing. Domenico was then sent to the garden to work there for his new master, but soon afterwards was betrayed a second time, and fell into grievous trouble and danger.

A few days before the fall of Khartum he had buried £150 in the garden, intending to make use of it when the needful time came; but one of the blacks who was working at the steam-pump in the garden, to whom Domenico had confided his secret, and who was one of the garden labourers who had escaped the massacre, went and told Ahmed Sharfi (one of the Mahdi's nearest relations) that Domenico had concealed money. This he did to ensure his own safety, for the Dervishes had been greatly disappointed in the quantity of loot they expected to find. In the palace they had discovered only paper money, and in the Mission some furniture, instead of the treasure they had been led to expect. Ahmed Sharfi was therefore much pleased with the black's information, himself came to Domenico and asked to be shown the place where the money was buried. In vain Domenico protested that he had given all the money to Gordon. He was at once knocked down and flogged with a kurbash; but the first stroke, which drew blood, made him cry for mercy; he disclosed the hiding-place, and, when Ahmed Sharfi had secured the money, he was released.

The ruthless bloodshed and cruelty exercised by the Dervishes in Khartum is beyond description. I will briefly describe the deaths of the best-known people. Nicola Leontides, the Greek consul, who, on account of his amiable character, was much respected in Khartum, had his hands cut off first, and was then beheaded. Martin Hansal, the Austrian consul, who was the oldest member of the European colony, was alive up till 2 P.M., when some Arabs from Buri, led by his chief kavass, who was on bad terms with him, entered the courtyard of the house, and, on Hansal being summoned to come down, he was at once beheaded. At the same time Mulatte Skander, a carpenter who lived with him, was killed in the same way. His body, together with that of his dog and parrot, were then taken out, alcohol poured over them, and set fire to. After a time, when the body had become like a red-hot coal, it was thrown into the river.

Human blood and ruthless cruelty alone seemed to satisfy the Dervishes. The Austrian tailor, Klein, on making the sign of the cross, had his throat cut from ear to ear with a knife which was used to slaughter animals, and his life-blood was poured out before the eyes of his horror-stricken wife and children. Not satisfied with the death of the father, they seized his son, a youth of eighteen, and, burying their lances in his body, they stretched him out at his mother's feet, a corpse! They then took counsel as to how they should kill the next son, a lad of fifteen. But by this time the mother, a daughter of Cattarina Nobili, of Venice, was worked up into a state of mad despair. Seizing her son of five years old with her right hand, while she held her suckling babe to her breast with her left, she fought against these murderers like a tigress being robbed of her young, and they could not wrest her children from her; but they seized her daughter, a girl of eighteen, who became the wife of an Arab.

The son-in-law of Doctor Georges Bey (who had been killed in the Hicks's expedition) was roused from sleep by the noise of the Arabs breaking in. He rose from his bed, and, making the sign of the cross, rushed to the window, where he shouted "Aman" ("Security of life"); but a bullet struck him in the forehead, and he fell dead at the feet of his young wife. The Dervishes forced their way into the house, broke in the door of the room where the dead man lay stretched out on the bed, killed another Greek, and clove open the head of the little son, a boy of twelve years of age, with an axe, scattering his brains over his unfortunate mother, who was sitting beside him. She saved her little son of six months old by saying he was a girl. The mother herself was not killed, as she was with child, but she was reserved to become the wife of Abderrahman Wad en Nejumi.

Aser, the American consul, fell down dead on seeing his brother beheaded before his eyes. The males of most of the Coptic families were massacred, but the women were spared. I know several of these poor women who, from continuously weeping over the cruelties of that terrible 26th of January, have become quite blind.

Those men whose lives were spared have to thank Providence that either they fell into the hands of those less cruel than their comrades, or that they did not quit their houses for two days, at the end of which time the first wild passions of these murderers had cooled down.