“Then upon thee be perfect peace, even until the day of Al-Jassasa,” answered the Khalifa, with a sinister smile of satisfaction, and without further speech the two men parted, walking in different directions, and leaving me, excited and apprehensive, to my own reflections.
Chapter Seventeen.
Flight.
Allah took me into his keeping. I made a solitude and called it peace. Half-an-hour later I succeeded in escaping unrecognised from the Fada, and passing out by the great gate, hurried breathlessly through the slave market, already alive with Arabs, negroes and herds of half-starved slaves, through the Yaalewa quarter, past the Palace of Ghaladima, and down many quaint and narrow streets of square, flat-roofed houses, their walls intensely white against the bright, unclouded blue, with passages from the Korân inscribed over the doors. The great market presented a most animated scene, for business is transacted in Kano before the sun becomes powerful. All the idioms of the Sahara, Soudan and Northern Africa, from the blue Mediterranean and grey Atlantic to Lake Tsad, were to be heard there, and beneath the white turban or red fez were all the different types of negro races—Berber, Songhoi, Bambara, Toucoulem, Malinka, among the blacks; and Foulbes, Moors, Tuaregs, and Tripolitans among the whites. Rows of shops bordered three sides of the market, and the fourth opened upon the Mosque, as if in reminder that honesty and good faith should preside over all its transactions. Sitting surrounded by calabashes and potteries, the women, with neatly-plaited black hair, sold vegetables, milk, manioc, incense, baobab flour, karita, spices, soap and fagots of wood. In the centre of the market were three shops in which were sold the choicer goods—native and European textiles principally, Manchester calicoes and Lyons silks, with salt, kola nuts, slippers, mirrors, pearls, knives, etc. The money-changer was also stationed there, with his black face showing out from between his little mountain of cowries. For native gold (in rings like the money of the Pharaohs) he gave and took hundreds and thousands of the little shells, grinning broadly the while. Further on, amid a perfect babel of tongues, magic roots, gold dust, emeralds, pearls and amber, provisions dried in the sun, hair torn from the heads of dead negresses, old Korâns, gongs, poniards, ancient jewellery, ginkris, flint guns, and amulets, were bought and sold, while everywhere beggars, ragged and dirty, and lepers, rendered hideous by their horrible white ulcers, held forth lean, talon-like hands, crying aloud in the name of the One Allah for alms.
The people who crowded the narrow thoroughfares beyond the market were of every variety of national form—the olive-coloured Arab, the dark Kanouri with his wide nostrils, the tall, stately, black-veiled Tuareg, the small-featured, light and slender ba-Fellenchi, the broad-faced ba-Wangara, the stout, masculine-looking Nupe female, and the comely ba-Haushe woman. But I sped onward, thinking only of the dastardly plot by which the Sultan was to be overthrown, and the woman I loved spirited away to the great harem in far-off Omdurman. Assuredly the register of the actions of the wicked is in Sejjin, the book distinctly written, which cannot be denied as a falsehood.
At first I had felt impelled to seek an audience of the Sultan, but on reflection I saw that such a course would achieve no purpose. Already he had forbidden me to set foot within his Empire, and it was not likely that he would believe my statement if flatly contradicted by both the Khalifa and the villainous Khazneh, as undoubtedly it would be.
I strove to invent some means of acquainting the Sultan ’Othman of his impending doom, but could devise none. As I crossed the Zat Nakhl (Place of Palm Trees), I reflected that my secret assassination would probably be the only result of my exposure of the plot. Four months must elapse ere the Dervishes could reach Kano, therefore I resolved to preserve silence, and go forth to fulfil my promise to Azala to try and elucidate the mystery.
At a little distance outside the Kofa-n-Kura, I found, as she had stated, two camels kneeling, with their bags ready packed, in charge of the dwarf Tiamo, who, when he saw me, ran forward, greeting me effusively, and urging me to hasten, so that we might leave the city ere our absence from the Fada was discovered. This advice I followed, and a few minutes later we were seated on the animals, speeding quickly away over the loose sand, leaving the gigantic white walls of Kano behind.