A SERIOUS DILEMMA
As I write, there lie before me three successive paragraphs culled from
a recent edition of a London paper. These paragraphs were intended to
be, and doubtless were, amusing to their readers, but they contain
inaccuracies. I have ascertained that one misstatement owes its origin
to a report drawn up in connection with the guide’s account of the
successful escape of Father Rossignoli. The facts connected with that
flight, and my reported refusal to escape when the opportunity (?)
offered, find their place later in my narrative. For the moment I shall
content myself with but one of the paragraphs, and fill in the details
which, while not detracting from the humorous element introduced, will
show that the episode referred to had somewhat of a pathetic, if not
tragic, vein in it. This may have been lost sight of owing to the tale
being recorded in an office about two thousand miles away from the
scene of action, and the inaccuracies may be accounted for by the fact
that the tale was told by one of that large class in the East whose
greatest glory it is, when one of them has by constant |135| practice
attained a certain standard of inventive faculty and plausibility, to
prove to the world that the race of Haroun-el-Rashid’s story-tellers
is not yet extinct. There can be little doubt that the guide and Wakih
Idris, and maybe others, would be much entertained, if not a little
surprised, if told that the whole of their tales had apparently been
believed in.
On my servant Hasseena being sent into the Khaleefa’s hareem in May,
1887, she obtained her release, or dismissal, by declaring that she was
with child; she was not. In November, 1888, she certainly was, and the
fact could not be concealed. Hasseena, having been a slave, could not
well be legally married, so that when dismissed from the Khaleefa’s
hareem, she was sent as my property to the hareem of Idris es Saier,
where she had, in addition to buying and preparing my food, to perform
the housework and run messages for the women of Idris’s household.
Idris I knew had long coveted Hasseena, and her being with child
appeared to him a favourable opportunity of securing her for himself,
for under ordinary circumstances, the woman being a slave and the child
being born in his hareem, he could lay claim to the paternity, when
mother and child would become free, the mother ranking now as a wife.
He talked the matter over with Hasseena, and then sent her to interview
me. I submitted the case to my friends in prison, and they showed that
Idris had misread, or misunderstood, Surah IV. of the Quoran, which
only justified his position towards Hasseena in the event |136| of my
being a prisoner of war, and he having captured Hasseena on the field.
Things became still more complicated by Hasseena admitting to me that
there were doubts in her own mind as to the child’s paternity. Hasseena
was of a light copper colour; Idris was as black as the ace of spades.
It would only be reasonable to expect that the child when born would
exhibit in the colour of its skin an evidence of its paternity, and
it was precisely on this account that Hasseena wished to defer making
any declaration until the event came off. If she elected to declare
Idris the father, and the child at birth gave the lie to her statement,
her life would be in danger; but before continuing the narrative,
and detailing the complications which Hasseena’s condition and her
uncertainty on a vital point gave rise to—it might be well to refer
briefly to one of the moral code of laws instituted by the Mahdi, as
this will help the reader to a better understanding of the quandary we
were placed in.
While a man, having already the regulation quota of four legal wives,
might crowd his hareem with as many female slaves and concubines as
he could support or keep in order, a woman was restricted to the one
husband or master. All breakings of our seventh commandment were, if
proved, followed by flogging in the case of unmarried women and slaves,
and by the stoning to death of married women; but, in the latter case,
_the sentence could not be given, nor the punishment inflicted, unless
the woman confessed_. Very few stonings to death took place, and these
were in the earlier days of Mahdieh, when religious fanaticism held
sway. |137|
The flogging has already been described. When a stoning to death was to
take place, a hole was dug in the ground, and the woman buried to her
neck in it. The crowd stood facing the victim, about fifteen to twenty
yards distant, and on a given signal the stoning commenced; but it is
only right to say that the Soudanese themselves hated and feared taking
part in such an execution. None of the stones thrown had, singly, the
force or weight to cause stunning or death, and the horrid spectacle
was presented of what appeared to be a trunkless head, slightly jerking
backwards and forwards and from side to side to avoid the stones being
hurled at it, and this ordeal continued for an hour or more. Sometimes
a relative or friend, under pretence of losing his temper in upbraiding
or cursing the woman, smashed in her head with one of the small axes
usually carried by the Soudanese, thus putting her at once out of her
torture and misery. Shortly before sunset, the relatives and friends
would come out to take away the body and give it decent burial, for the
soul had fled, purified with the woman’s blood, to the next world.
Knowing what would be the result of a confession, it will be wondered
that any woman ever did confess; the number who did so is, admittedly,
small. In one of the three cases of stoning to death I know of, the
confession was extorted by torture, and the poor woman preferred the
horrible but certain death by the time the sun set, to the lingering
death she was enduring from day to day. Thousands of women were charged
with the breaking of this particular rule |138| or commandment of the
Mahdi, but almost all the charges were made by other women—and this,
too, out of sheer jealousy, not from any feeling of outraged morality.
I may now proceed with the narration of the quandary Hasseena had
placed us in, herself included. I had been kept chained and closely
confined for nineteen months, and was under Idris es Saier’s particular
supervision; Hasseena, during the same period, had been a servant in
his hareem, and also in his entire charge. If I claimed the paternity
of the child, the probabilities were that Idris would get into trouble
with the Khaleefa; if Idris claimed it, his head might be in danger,
for decapitation or hanging was the punishment ordered for the male
offender, and in all cases Hasseena was liable to flogging or stoning
to death. Again, if I claimed the paternity of the child, and there
were reasonable grounds after its birth to believe that the paternity
should be looked for in some other direction, and I knew that it should
be; then, while Idris would clear himself to the Khaleefa, I should
have been punished for lying to him, and Hasseena would be in the same
predicament as before.
I had inquiries made outside as to Hasseena’s movements when marketing,
and as to those whom she associated with, or went to see; being
satisfied, as a result of the inquiries, that the expected arrival
would be a shade lighter in colour than its mother, I, acting on the
advice of my prison friends, claimed the child as mine, thus leaving
Idris to get out of the thing as best he could. There was, as above
indicated, |139| a risk in my claiming the paternity, but it was
worth while running it. The Khaleefa, so my friends told me, would
now certainly release me from prison, as my wife and child would be
a guarantee for my good behaviour if released, and also guarantee me
against any escape, for to try and escape with a woman and baby made
success very problematical, while the woman would certainly hinder me
in any attempt to escape, when it could only result in the death of
herself and child. It was for this reason—to hinder escape—that the
Khaleefa kept his captives well supplied with wives, and showed his
displeasure very plainly if the expected results did not follow. But my
claiming the paternity did not please Idris, as it deprived him of all
chance of securing Hasseena for himself, and also left him at the mercy
of the Khaleefa for his neglect of duty in allowing Hasseena to come
near me, so he empanelled a jury of Soudanese matrons to inquire into
the affair.
At the time when Hasseena startled our little world with her
interesting condition, Omdurman was, and had been for some months,
almost depleted of its male population; the rumours of an expedition
(Stanley’s, to rescue Emin) had resulted in a considerable force being
sent to Equatoria. The army to attack Abyssinia had been in the field
for months, so also had the army which Wad Nejoumi was to lead a few
months later to its destruction at Toski.
A number of the ladies empanelled for the jury ought not, unless they
belonged to the Gawaamah tribe, to have been eligible for election, and
others, |140| under the circumstances, should have avoided publicity;
but here was an opportunity for them, and they were not going to miss
it. They came together to save themselves—not Hasseena or Idris—hence
the extraordinary verdict they gave: to the effect that it was not
only possible for a woman to be with child nineteen months—as Hasseena
presumably was, but for twenty-four months, while some hotly contested
for an extension of the time to years!
Idris had still another card to play; he averred that it was impossible
for the child to be mine, and he now swore it was not his. Then
Hasseena ought to be flogged and sent to prison; but as Idris would be
entrusted with the flogging himself, it was to be understood that he
was not going to damage his prospective property. It was now the turn
of those whom I remarked ought not to have been eligible for election
to the jury; the tales they told to account for their own interesting
condition are worthy of the best traditions of the “Thousand and One
Nights;” but, even if written, they would be less fit for translation
and publication than the originals of the famous tales. Idris now
appealed to the Kadi, who, after interviewing the jury, supported
their contentions, and related the whole story to the Khaleefa, much
to his amusement and the discomfiture of Idris; for, while graciously
sending me his congratulations on the coming event, he ordered the
unconditional release of Hasseena, who went to live in what might be
called the “Christian” quarter of the town.
In January the girl-child was born, and named |141| “Makkieh”
(shackles), a name which appealed to the humorous side of the Khaleefa,
who, being tickled at the idea of the name, in a fit of good-humour,
sent word to me to ask if I would undertake the manufacture of
gunpowder if he released me. I unfortunately replied that I did not
understand the manufacturing of it, and this aroused his suspicions,
which did not abate one jot when, shortly afterwards, a Bohemian
baker, who had strayed from Halfa, was taken prisoner, and sent on
to Omdurman as a captured spy. This man, whom I knew only by the
name of Joseppi—though he had a string of other names, which I have
forgotten—was a Bohemian by birth and a baker by trade. He was not of
strong intellect, and what intellect he had, had maybe been impaired by
a “music madness.” From the rambling statements he made to me during
his year’s imprisonment, I gather that he had tramped Europe as a
wandering musician, landing finally in Egypt, where he tramped from
the Mediterranean to the frontier. It is quite evident that instead
of coppers he received drinks in exchange for his strains, and this
further added to his mental troubles, though the drunkenness he has
been charged with was, in my opinion, more the result of circumstances
and misfortune than a natural craving for ardent liquors.
On leaving Wadi Halfa, he had expected to find, as he had found in
Europe and the part of Egypt he had tramped through, villages or towns
within the day’s tramp. He had not the slightest idea of what the
desert was until he found himself in it. After some days of wandering,
during which he eat pieces of his |142| worn-out boots in lieu of
other food, he struck the Nile, and, wandering along, ignorant of
the direction he was taking, he came upon a party of dervishes, whom
he tried to communicate with, and after, by gesticulations, showing
them that he wanted bread or food, he commenced to “soothe the savage
breast” with strains from his violin. They took him prisoner, destroyed
his instrument, and sent him on to Omdurman as a spy. On arrival there,
he was ushered into the presence of the Khaleefa, who was undecided as
to whether he had a madman or an actor to deal with, for on dates being
brought for Joseppi to eat, he threw them about, and then lay flat on
his face. He was sent to prison and heavily chained; in the process of
having his chains and bars fitted, he fainted away.
[Illustration: Gaoler. Neufeld. Gaoler. Son of Fauzi Pasha. Fauzi Pasha.
MEAL-TIME IN THE SAIER.]
Joseppi was in my charge for about one year, and while being as
harmless as a child, he caused me endless trouble. During the day he
would remain perfectly quiet, but at night-time he would insist upon
singing or humming. As his tunes had neither beginning nor end, and
were composed of notes snatched from here and there, we soon tired
of it, and Joseppi received a light flogging on one occasion for not
“shutting his mouth” when requested to do so. I remonstrated with him
after he had been flogged, and told him that he should not continue to
hum after other prisoners had asked him to keep quiet. He ruminated
over this, and thinking, maybe, at the moment that I was taking the
part of the others against him, he went off to the Saier, and told
him |143| confidentially that I was a great and well-known general
in Europe, and a few other things. Joseppi had an enormous appetite,
and was always hungry; he caused me a great deal of trouble during the
worst days of the famine, when food was so scarce, for after sharing
my scanty meal, he would wander off and pester every group for a scrap
of food. Eventually, we had to provide three bowls for him; just when
our food came in, we handed him his bowls, and thus were allowed a few
moments’ peace. We had finished our meal before he had finished his
food, so that our group, at least, was free of his importunities. He
came to grief through eating pieces of camel-skin, which the gaolers
used to sell to the poorer prisoners during the famine.
Fearing that he would die in the prison, I sent word to the “Christian”
quarter, asking that the Khaleefa should be prayed to release Joseppi,
which was done, and he found congenial employment for a time in the
bakery of Youssef Sawar. Soon afterwards, he borrowed a few dollars
here and there for the purpose of buying grain at El Fun; he started
off dressed in a new jibbeh, carrying his dollars, and a well-stocked
basket of provisions for his two days’ journey. At the very moment when
Wad Adlan was pleading with the Khaleefa to release me from prison, so
that I could assist him in the work of the Beit-el-Mal, a deputation
of the captives arrived at the door of the house to tell the Khaleefa
that Joseppi must have escaped, as he should have been back in Omdurman
some days ago. Turning to Wad Adlan, |144| the Khaleefa said, “El
boomi mahhgaad—Abdulla Neufeld ogud? Khallee ossbur.” (“The fool did
not stop—when he had the chance to escape. Will Neufeld? Let him wait a
bit.”) This was the second time the poor fellow had cost me my liberty.
There is no doubt that the man was murdered for the sake of his food or
money, for his remains were found later, on the road between Khartoum
and El Fun.
|145|