A Prisoner of the Khaleefa/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
DIVORCED AND MARRIED
As if my troubles were not all-sufficient in themselves, Hasseena, in addition to the begging and other undesirable proclivities she had developed since the death of Makkieh, added that of thieving. She naturally devoted her talents in this direction to my friends, knowing that they would not, on my account, prosecute her. Numberless complaints came to me, and many a recommendation was made to get rid of her; but as she had been sent to me by the Khaleefa, I could not send her off without his sanction. The question also arose as to what excuse I might offer for divorcing her; to give the real reasons might end in her being stoned, mutilated, or imprisoned, and this I shrank from. I must admit, too, that, bad as she was then, I did not like the idea of throwing her over. Being in receipt of ten dollars a month, I sent word to my friends that I would save what I could to repay their losses, and do my best to break Hasseena of her bad habits. My friends warned me that if I was not careful I should find myself before the Kadi as Hasseena's partner in crime; and the Kadi, being no friend of mine, would certainly order me into prison again, which would put an end to all chances of escape.
In the end Hasseena had to go. Nahoum Abbajee, my greatest friend, gave a feast at his house to celebrate the marriage of his son Yousef. Hasseena was one of the invited guests. She stole all the spoons and cutlery before the feast commenced, and also a number of articles of dress belonging to other guests, all of which she sold in the bazaar. Nahoum could overlook her stealing his property, but to steal the property of guests under his roof was carrying matters too far. He sent word to me that I must get rid of her, and at once. Calling Hasseena to Khartoum, I was compelled to quarrel with her in such a way as to attract the attention of Hamad'na Allah, and on his asking me the reason for our constant squabbles, I told him that Hasseena was not acting as she should by me, and begged his intervention in obtaining through the Emir Yacoub the Khaleefa's permission to divorce her. Abdullahi was "gracious," permitted the divorce, and sent word that he would select another wife for me. This was just what I did not want. Always expecting the return of my guides, my not having a woman in the place lent probability to my having a whole night's start upon my pursuers, for my absence might not be discovered until sunrise the following morning, at which time we went to work, and some hours more would be lost — and gained — by Hamad'na Allah and others making a thorough search for me before daring to tell the Khaleefa that I was missing. Returning my thanks to Abdullahi, I asked to be left in single blessedness for a time; but to this he replied that "his heart was heavy at the loss of my child; that no man might be happy without children, and he wished me to be happy; he also wished me to have all the comforts of life, which did not exist where woman was not; that if I did not take another wife, he would believe I was not content with my life in the Soudan under his protection." It was a long rigmarole of a message he sent, and it wound up by saying that as I had been ill for two months, he must send a wife to attend to me, and had selected for the purpose a daughter of Abd-el-Latif Terran.
This was making matters worse than ever, for this girl, although brought up in the Soudan, and speaking only Arabic, was a French subject, being the granddaughter of Dr. Terran, an old employé of the Government. She was only nominally Mohammedan, and lived in the "Christian quarter." When marriages took place in this quarter, the Mohammedan form of marriage was gone through, and then Father Ohrwalder performed the Christian religious ceremony surreptitiously later in the day. I spoke to him about the Khaleefa's intention, and as he knew I was already married, he advised me to try and get out of the proposed marriage by some means or another, as it would be considered binding. After casting about for excuses which I thought might appeal to the Khaleefa, I asked Hamad'na Allah to inform him that I thanked him for his selection of a wife, but as she was of European descent, had been brought up in a rich family where the ladies are waited upon and never do any work, she would be no use to me, as I required some one to nurse me, do the cooking and house work, and go to the bazaar to buy food, all of which she had had servants to do for her; I therefore begged to be allowed to select a wife of the country.
The latter part of my message evidently pleased the Khaleefa; it appeared to him as an earnest that I was "content," but again he undertook the selection of the woman. When Abdullahi told any woman she'was to be the wife of any one, she dare no more refuse to accept than the one she was sent to dare refuse to receive her. Fearing that he might send me some one from his hareem, I asked Nahoum and other friends to find me a wife — sharp. My object was to get her into the place before Abdullahi sent his "present," whom, on arrival, I might send back on the plea that I was already married, and could not support two wives. Nahoum found me a wife, and sent me the following history of her.
Umm es Shole (the mother of Shole — Shole being the name she had given her first child) was an Abyssinian brought up from childhood in a Greek family settled in Khartoum. On reaching womanhood, she was married to one of the sons of the family, On the fall of Khartoum, her husband, with seven male relatives, was butchered in the house in which they had taken refuge; Umm es Shole, with her three children, was taken as "property" to the Beit-el-Mal, where she was handed over as a concubine to the Emir of the Gawaamah tribe. Refusing this
man's embraces, he in revenge tortured her children to death, upon which Umm es Shole escaped to Omdurman. Through Abd-el-Kader, the uncle of the Mahdi, she had her case brought before Mohammad Ahmed, who, after listening to the details, gave her a written document declaring that, as she had been married to and borne children to a free man, she was a free woman, but to make certain that she might never be claimed as a slave, the document also declared that she was "ateekh" (freed) by him.
When Abdullahi succeeded the Mahdi, he ordered every woman without a husband, and every girl of a marriageable age, to be married at once. He was most particular that every one in the "Christian quarter" should be married. Umm es Shole married an old and decrepit Jew, whom she nursed until he died two years later. Returning to a woman relative of her husband's, she supported the old woman and herself by cooking, preparing food for feasts, sewing, and general housework.
This was the wife my friends had selected for me, and I accepted her thankfully; but when she was approached on the subject, she positively declined to be married again, and it was only upon her being told that I was ill, and might die, that she consented to the marriage. I had to appoint a "wakeel" (proxy, in this instance) to represent me at the marriage and the festivities; Nahoum prepared the feast at his house, the bride preparing the food and attending to the guests. At the conclusion of the few days' ceremonies and feastings, Umm es Shole was escorted to Khartoum — a married woman, and introduced for the first time to her husband. She set to at once with her household duties and attendance upon me, and during a long and weary five months nursed me back to life.
As can well be believed, Hasseena resented no less bitterly my projected marriage with Umm es Shole, or any one else, than she resented her divorce, and this she resented very bitterly indeed, for passing as the wife of a European and a presumed "General" to boot, gave her a certain social status in Omdurman, which she took advantage of when visiting in the various ways pointed out. On my saying to her, "You are divorced," which is the only formula necessary in Mohammedan countries in such a momentous domestic affair, she promptly replied that she was again pregnant. A few words on the subject of divorce in the Soudan — and the rules are practically identical with those laid down in the Quoranic law — will assist towards an appreciation of the fix this declaration of Hasseena placed me in.
If a woman, on being told "you are divorced," declared herself with child, the husband was compelled to keep her until its birth; if it was a son, the divorce was null and void; if a daughter, the husband had to support the wife during two years of nursing, and provide for the child until her seventh year, when he might, if he chose to do so, claim her as his daughter.
When a woman was divorced for the first time, she was not allowed to marry again without the consent of the husband; this was giving him a "first call" if he wanted her back, for divorce might be declared for less trivial things than incompatibility of temper. If the husband took her back, and divorced her a second time, the woman was free to marry, but if the husband again wanted her, he had to pay her a marriage dowry as at her first marriage. Should he divorce her a third time, and again want her back, he would have to arrange for her to be married to — and divorced from — some one else first, when she was free to return to him. All this may sound very immoral to people in Europe, but one cannot help but admire the simplicity of the proceedings; and consider the amount of domestic infelicity it prevented. There is no public examination of the parties concerned; no publication of interesting details in newspapers; some little thought is given to the woman who may have been the mother of your children, and should she have slipped in the path of virtue, you do not shout it from the housetops; the marriage was a private arrangement between you, so is the divorce, and the reasons for the latter are your affair and no one else's.
I have touched upon divorce in some detail, as many re-marriages under all the conditions given above occurred, and some family records became a hopeless tangle to all but those immediately concerned. When the new Soudan Government comes to settle up claims to properties, they will be confronted with a collection of "succession" puzzles to solve, for one woman might be the proud mother of the legitimate heirs of three or four different people, and being, as the widow and mother of the heritor, entitled to a fixed proportion of the properties, you may be quite sure that she will fight to the death for her sons' interests.
Hasseena ought not to have been in the interesting state she declared she was, for we had been separated for a much longer period than that ordained by law. I was obliged to tell her that if she empanelled a jury, after the example of Idris es Saier, all the explanations they might offer would not convince me that I held any more relationship to the child than I did to Makkieh, and there was nothing now to induce me to claim the paternity, — indeed just the reverse. However, if Hasseena was with child, I should be bound to keep her for at least two years, and if the Khaleefa sent on his present, I should have two households to support on ten dollars a month. When making my plans for escape, Hasseena was included; she was to have got away on the same dromedary as myself. When my guides returned, they would find me with two wives, and having made arrangements for one only, they might demur at taking the two. The probabilities were they would abandon the thing altogether, fearing that one or the other might betray them, which meant instant execution for them and imprisonment for me. If I kept Hasseena, she might steal from some stranger, as the houses of my friends were now closed to her, and then I should be sent back to the Saier; if I sent her away, she, knowing my guides and all my arrangements, would be the first to meet them on arrival in Omdurman, and would insist upon coming away with me under threats of disclosing the plot. It was a. most awkward fix for me to be placed in; but after considering the whole matter most carefully, I decided upon sending Hasseena off, and trusting to luck for the rest. I had hoped she might get married to some one in Omdurman, and then I should not have been afraid of her. But Hasseena returned in February, 1892, some months after my marriage with Umm es Shole, carrying a little bundle of male humanity, who had only been three or four months less tardy in arrival than Makkieh.
Hasseena, doubtless, had for me the Soudan equivalent for what we understand as affection; she had saved my life when we were first captured; she had nursed me, as only a woman can nurse one, through my first attack of typhus fever, and had kept me from starvation during the famine. But while I could not forget all this, I could not forget also that she had become a source of great danger to me, and although my treatment of her in sending her away when I did, might to some appear harsh in the face of what she had done for me, it must not be forgotten that self-preservation is no less a law of nature in the Soudan than it is elsewhere. I supported Hasseena for nearly two years, when her child died. She then left Khartoum, where I was still a chained prisoner at large, and went utterly to the bad. I heard of her from time to time, and, on my release in September last, hearing that she was at Berber, I delayed there until I had hunted her out of the den of vice in which she was living, and provided for her elsewhere, only to receive a telegram a few weeks later to say that, hankering for the life which she had led for a few years back, she had run off to return to it.
It was this action of mine, which probably gave rise to the legend that I had brought her to Cairo with me, where my wife arrived, "only to be confronted with a black wife after all her years of mental anxiety and sufferings." Why facts should be so persistently misconstrued, I cannot understand. In making that last — and I do not say final — effort, to do something for the woman to whom, at one time, I owed so much, I feel I have nothing to be ashamed of. Those who think differently must remember that it takes one some little time to fall again into European ideas and thoughts after twelve years of chains and slavery amongst the people whom I was compelled to associate with; and no one in the Soudan was more out of the world than I was.