A Prisoner of the Khaleefa/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
MY FIRST CHANCE OF ESCAPE
It was during my first months in prison that Ahmed Nur ed Din of the Kabbabish succeeded in getting into prison, in the hope of effecting my escape. I had for some years had dealings with Nur ed Din in connection with the Intelligence Department, and also the caravan trade. When I left Wadi Haifa with Saleh's caravan, Nur ed Din was then at Saleh's camp with messages to him from the Government. On his return to Wadi Haifa, he heard of what had happened, and coming at once to Omdurman, he sent a message by my servant that he had come for me. All his applications to get into the prison being refused by the guards, and fearing to make an application to Idris es Saier or the Mehkemmeh, he arranged with a friend to have a petty quarrel in the market-place; his friend hurried him before the Kadi, and Nur ed Din was ordered into prison. On seeing me walk towards him as he entered, as I did not know then that he came as a prisoner, he gave me a "hooss," the Soudan equivalent for our "ssh" (silence), and walked off in another direction. Later in the day, and when we were being marshalled to be driven into the common cell, he came next to me, and whispered, "I have come for you; be careful; keep your eyes open; try and obtain permission to sleep outside the Umm Hagar." Two weeks elapsed before we had another opportunity of exchanging a few words, but in the interval Nur ed Din was ingratiating himself with the prisoners who associated with me, and gradually allowing his curiosity to speak to the "white kaffr" to be evident. It was necessary for him to act in this cautious manner in order to avert suspicion, and another week passed after his introduction to our little circle, before he dare seize an opportunity to consult me about his health and numerous ailments — which was his explanation when questioned about our long conversation together.
It was a strange story he had to tell. On meeting Gabou, Gabou at once commenced to talk to him about some double dealings which he proposed with both dervishes and Government. Nur ed Din was suspicious, and did not fall in with the proposals; this then left Gabou at the mercy of Nur ed Din, and the former picked a quarrel, during which Nur ed Din accused Gabou of the betrayal of the caravan to Saleh. Others of the Kabbabish were already looking askance at Gabou, and wondering whether, if the truth once came out, they too would not be punished as conspirators. Gabou was, they believed, then engaged upon some plot which would render them harmless as regards himself should they make a report against him to the Government, and in self-preservation they held a conference with Nur ed Din. It was proposed that some one, for the honour of the tribe, should try and effect my release or escape from Omdurman, while, as will have been seen, there was also the element of self-interest in the matter. There was now a feud between Gabou and Nur ed Din, and the latter volunteered to undertake the risk of the journey to Omdurman.
His plan, when he saw that there was not the slightest hope of my being released from prison, was a desperate one, and we ran every chance of being killed in the attempt to escape, but this risk I was quite willing to take. I knew Nur ed Din would make no mistakes. It was not as if he was actuated by avarice in assisting me; but being engaged in a death-feud, he sought every means to be the one left alive, and he knew that if he could conduct me to Wadi Halfa, Gabou would soon decorate a scaffold or be shot out of hand.
Nur ed Din, through the services of one of his party, a boy whom he had brought with him, and who came into the prison daily as Nur ed Din's food servant, first arranged for relays of camels, then for the purchase of rifles and ammunition, which were buried in the desert a short distance from Omdurman. These preparations being complete, six of the ten men at his first relay station were sent for to cut a hole through the wall of the prison nearest the Nile, and this they were to do on the night we sent a message to them or gave a signal, one of the men being always near the bank, close to the selected part of the wall. Final instructions were given on hearing that the camels were ready and well provided with water. After creeping through the aperture, we were to make our way to the river, dragging an old fishing-net behind us; rags were to be bound round the chains to deaden their rattling; this part of the scheme was to hide my chains, and prevent their clanging being heard. On passing the last of the huts, we were to leave the river, and, mounting the camels, we were to travel as fast as the camels would go, for twelve hours direct west, where we would pick up the first relay. We had sent the boy out with a message to our people to procure three revolvers and ammunition. Nur ed Din and I were to take one each for use in case necessity arose before we could reach the buried rifles; the other one of the men was to take, and, if our flight was at once discovered, he was to fire towards a boat which had been taken to the opposite bank, and swear that we had escaped by its means. This would put our pursuers on the wrong scent for some time. One revolver and seventeen cartridges only could be found then, and Nur ed Din decided on waiting a few days until others could be obtained.
Whilst these were being searched for, Nur ed Din became feverish, and to my horror I saw all the symptoms of typhus fever developing. This fever had been named Umm Sabbah (seven), as it invariably carried off its victims in seven days. It may be guessed how anxiously and carefully I nursed Nur ed Din, and how Hasseena was kept busy the whole day brewing from tamarinds, dates, and roots, cooling draughts to allay his fever. He might have recovered, had he not kept himself excited over the fear of losing his vengeance on Gabou, but he gradually sank and died.
I was locked up in the Umm Hagar on the night of his death, and the fever was then taking hold of me; two days later I was senseless, and of course helpless. Hasseena, with two boys, used to carry me about from shade to shade as the sun travelled, but my neck-chain dragged, and sometimes tripped one or the other up, and then it was that orders were given to remove it. Hasseena had been told that the best remedy for me was a description of vegetable marrow soaked in salt water; the water was drunk and the marrow eaten as the patient recovered. The purgative properties of this medicine might suit Soudan constitutions, and it evidently suited mine at the time, but I should warn any of my readers, should they be so unfortunate as to contract this fever, against attempting the remedy. When the decoction has acted sufficiently, the mouth is crammed with butter, which to the throat, at this stage of the "cure," feels like boiling oil, and you experience all the sensations of internal scalding. The next operation is to briskly rub the whole body, and then anoint it with butter or oil — butter by preference. The patient has nothing to Say about his treatment — he is helpless; every bit of strength and will has left him, and when he has been rolled up in old camel-cloths and "sweated," weakness hardly expresses the condition he has arrived at. It was on the thirteenth day of my attack that I reached the final stage of my treatment, and then I fell asleep, waking some hours later with a clear head and all my faculties about me, though I was then but a living skeleton.
The Khaleefa, hearing of my condition, thought it a favourable opportunity for me to receive a few more lessons in Mahdieh, and my period of convalescence was much prolonged owing to the worry and annoyance which these teachers of Mahdieh were to me. Kadi Hanafi, one of Slatin's old Kadis, then imprisoned with me owing to his open avowal that the justice and the sentences given by the Mehkemmeh (religious courts) were against the teachings of the Quoran, told me that it was a mistake on my part so openly to defy the Khaleefa, and that it would be more "politique" to submit as had Slatin, who had now his house, wives, slaves, horses and donkeys, and cultivated land outside the city. But in my then condition, a little procession, for which my dead body would be the reason, was much more to my liking, and I did not care in what shape death came, provided that it did come.
Hanafi used up all his arguments in trying to persuade me to become a good Muslim. Dilating on the power of the Khaleefa and my impotence, he pointed to my chains, then weighing about forty pounds, and said that the Khaleefa would certainly torture me with them until I submitted to become a good Muslim. To this last argument I replied that if I did say I would be converted, the Khaleefa, as soon as he heard of it, would make me proclaim my conversion publicly, and just as certainly behead me immediately afterwards, to prevent my slipping back into Christianity. Hanafi believed that the Khaleefa would still let me live after embracing the Mohammedan faith in the hope of my accepting the Mahdieh; he failed though to convert me, and the Khaleefa, hearing of the result, and not believing that Hanafi had done all that he might have done with his arguments, for this and other reasons sent him later as a convict to Gebel Ragaf, near Lado, the convict station of the Soudan.
By the time I had gained sufficient strength to attempt the flight, the men engaged had lost heart, and there was no one to lead them. Nur ed Din was dead, and as they only came into the thing for the money they were to receive, and the dollars were not then forthcoming, they decided not to run any risk, disbanded the camel-posts, and scattered to their various homes.
How many hundreds of times have I regretted since that I did not take Nur ed Din's advice and escape at the time, leaving him behind. As he said, there was no reason to be afraid that he would lose his head, as his being so ill and also his being left behind would prevent suspicion being directed towards him. During my twelve years' captivity, this, my first chance of escape, risky and desperate as it was, was the only one which had in it a real element of success, for my conductor in saving me was to save himself.
As is customary in all oriental prisons, the prisoners in the Saier had either to purchase their own food, or their friends and relatives had to send it into the prison for them; failing money, friends and relatives, the prisoners starved to death. I have already said that the best and greater part of the food sent to the prison gates was appropriated by the gaolers, that is to say, after Idris es Saier had seen to the wants of his "starving children" and numerous household first. Idris, even during the worst period of the famine, did not lose flesh; he was always the same tall, stout, flat-nosed black, both when I first saw him on May 10, 1887, and when I last saw him in September, 1898. Nor was Idris quite so bad as he had been painted; he would often — when the Nebbi Khiddr tale had had the desired effect in repentance, or when he was in a good humour after a bout of marrissa drinking — go out of his way to do his prisoners small kindnesses, such as the removal of extra chains, and giving permission to sleep in the open; but the Nebbi Khiddr institution left him so much at the mercy of the Khaleefa's immediate attendants, that his periods of good humour were, in consequence, of very short duration. Some day, if I return to the Soudan, or Idris pays a visit to civilization, I may learn from him whom I have to thank for a few of the unnecessary hardships inflicted upon me.
It might be asked why we, knowing that the guards would purloin the greater part of the food sent in, did not arrange for a larger quantity to be sent. There are two reasons, and the first is the least of the two: the guards knew very well what was the minimum amount of food to keep us alive, and just that quantity of food would be allowed to pass the portals of the Saier. The second reason was, that the sight of more or better food being brought to a prisoner proved one of two things: either the prisoner himself had received some money, or his friends had, and the following day the time-worn Nebbi Khiddr tale, properly translated, meant chains until more dollars were forthcoming. Under such circumstances, the unlucky offender against Saier politics would be called upon by the other mulcted prisoners to make good the money they had been bled of, for the Saier was most impartial in the matter of chains, and, certain of always getting the proper victim in the end, invariably loaded a dozen or so with extra chains, and ordered all into the Umm Hagar. An attenuated and burned chicken, or pigeon, cost a few dollars in repentance, and also the wearing of extra chains and the horrors of the Umm Hagar for nights, for it was advisable to keep Idris waiting some days for an evidence of repentance, so that he should believe, and the Khaleefa's attendants believe also, that some little difficulty had been experienced in collecting the few dollars you had to pay.
Our usual food was "Asseeda," the Soudan dourra (sorghum), roughly pounded moist, and mixed into a thick paste, feeling and tasting to the palate like sawdust. It was not a very nourishing dish, but it was a heavy one, and stayed the pangs and gnawings of hunger. A flavour might be imparted by allowing a 'quantity to stand for a day or two until fermentation set in, Occasionally, but only occasionally, a sauce made from the pounded seed of the Baamia hybiscus, and called "Mulakh," could be obtained, and this, with the fermented asseeda, made a veritable banquet. Friends in the town sent us, when they could either afford or obtain it, a little wheaten bread, a bit of cheese or butter, or a few pinches of coffee.
Amongst the many captives in Omdurman who did so much for me stands out prominently Father Ohrwalder, the old Greek lady, Catarina — who was a ministering angel alike to prisoners and captives — Mr. Tramba and his wife Victoria, Nahoum Abbajee, and Youssef Jebaalee. Surely the recording angel has placed to the right side of the account the little deceptions practised by Father Ohrwalder to gain access to the prison, when the few piastres of baksheesh he could afford were not sufficient to satisfy the rapacity of the guards, in order to bring me some little dainty, when, God knows, he was bringing me the lion's share of what he was in absolute need of himself. At one time he would present himself at the gates as being "Tyyan Khaalas" (sick unto death), and, of course, wished to see me once again before his dissolution. At another time it would be that he had heard 7 was dying, then, of course, he wished to see me; and the changes would be rung by his coming in on the pretext of wishing to see some other prisoner. With bowed head and bent back, exaggerating the weak state he was then in, he would crawl towards me, dragging one foot after the other, and, reaching me, would sit down on the ground and sway his body to and fro — a little pantomime which allowed of his
surreptitiously passing to me the dainties he had brought in the old leather bag slung from his left shoulder. Time after time he was turned away from the gates, and this, too, after having paid the baksheesh; but his persistence secured his seeing me every one or two months during my first three years in prison, and the scraps of news he brought from the outside world — news to both of us, though a year or two old — gave me something to think of and turn over in my brain until his next visit. Death, as I told Father Ohrwalder, I did not fear, but my great fear was insanity.
Often and often, when allowed to sleep in the Open air at night-time, instead of experiencing all the horrors of a night in the common cell, the cool night-air would send me off into a sound sleep, from which I would start up from some confused dream of old days, and, looking up to the sky, would wonder to myself, half awake and half asleep, which was the dream and which the reality, the old loved scenes, or the prison of es-Saier at Omdurman. I would for some moments be afraid to look round at the men chained on each side of me, and when I mustered up courage to do so, and felt the weight of my irons and the heavy chain across my legs, which bound our gang of fifty or sixty together, 1 would speculate on how long it would be before the slender thread holding me between reason and insanity snapped under the strain.
That my reason did not give way during my first period of imprisonment I have but to thank Father Ohrwalder and the friends mentioned. Each one of them risked his or her comparative freedom, if not life, to help me. Even during the worst nights in the Umm Hagar, when Hell itself might be defied to match such a scene, when Madness and Death stalked hand-in-hand amongst the struggling mass, and when, jammed in tight with a number of the more fanatical prisoners, I fought and struggled, bit and kicked, as did they for bare life, the thought of having friends in adversity, suffering almost as much as I did, kept that slender thread from snapping; but the mental strain caused me most violent headaches and periods of forgetfulness or loss of memory, which even now recur at times. But it was during the famine that the Christian — more than Christian — charity of my friends was put to the severest tests and never faltered. Food was at enormous prices, but, day after day, Catarina brought her scrap of dourra or wheaten bread; every day Youssef Jebaalee sent his loaves of bread, unmindful of how much the guards stole, provided that I got a mouthful.
All the food sent for the prisoners did not, of course, reach them; what little passed the gates of the Sater was fought for; those having longer chains, or bars, connecting their anklets stood the best chance in the race for food, as they were able to take longer strides. Had it been under other circumstances, the scenes enacted might have provided endless amusement for the onlookers, for they had in them all the elements but one of a sack-race and old country sports. Seeing thirty or forty living skeletons shuffling, leaping as far as their weight of chains and strength would allow, you knew, when one fell, that it was the weakness caused by starvation which had brought him down. There he would lie where he fell, given over to despair, whilst those who did reach any messenger with food, rather than resenting the stripes given by the guards with the courbash, would almost appear glad of the open wounds these caused, so that they might caress the wounds with their hands and lick the blood from their fingers. This picture is not over- but underdrawn; but I have been advised to leave out minute details and other scenes, as unnecessarily harrowing.
We heard that cannibalism was being practised in the town, but none took place in the prison; in the Saier, when once the, despair engendered by starvation and cruelty took hold of a prisoner, he would lie down and wait for death; food he would never refuse if offered, but if water without food was offered, it was refused. Day after day, for months, the bodies of eight or ten prisoners, who had died of starvation, would be thrown into the Nile, and thousands must have died in the Saier. The population of the prison was always kept up owing to the hourly arrivals of starving wretches committed there for trying to steal food in the market-place, and it was from such as these that the fighting for food in the prison emanated chiefly. It can be well imagined how the most civilized being might be driven to madness and desperation, when, as the result of his trying to steal a bit of food, maybe for himself, maybe for a dying child, he is committed to an oriental prison, and there, as he is taken to the anvil, the body of the last victim to starvation is dragged up to have the shackles knocked off only to be fitted on to him. Yet this happened not twice, not scores, but hundreds of times in the prison of es-Saier during that terrible famine.
After my servant Hasseena had been knocked down a number of times and the food she was bringing me had been devoured by the starving prisoners, we hit upon an expedient. Buying a gazelle skin, she had this hung from her waist, under her dress, and left dangling between her knees; the food for me was placed in this, but Hasseena always carried, as a blind or decoy, a little food in her hands. This would be pounced upon, when Hasseena, who had a healthy pair of lungs, as Wad Nejoumi discovered at his first interview with her, would raise the echoes with her screams. These gave her a clear path to me, and she waited for a favourable opportunity to drop the gazelle skin on the ground beside me.
It must not be thought from the foregoing that the prisoners had no feelings for each other, and for those worse off in the matter of food than themselves. There was more charity shown by those wild fanatics, and almost savages, than is often shown in more civilized places. Mahmoud Wad Said, so long as his little property held out, sold portions of it day after day, and had sent into the prison for his poorer fellowprisoners, a large "geddahh" of asseeda and milk, night and morning, and this gave thirty to forty prisoners a meal each day; others divided with their less fortunate friends the little food they received. I have seen it stated that my charity to other prisoners created a very good impression; but, then, how could I, the only white and Christian in the prison — and, for the matter of that, the only avowed Christian in the Soudan — not strive to show just a little more self-denial and charity and kindness of heart than those "fanatics" showed me?[1]
- ↑ On reading over the foregoing to Father Ohrwalder, and asking him if he knew of any others who had assisted me with food while in prison, he first objected to my giving him any credit for what he had done, saying he had done but part of his duty towards me, and, in deference to his wishes, I have curtailed the account of his kindnesses towards me. He then expressed surprise that the name of Slatin did not figure amongst those of my benefactors, and it is only now that I hear from Father Ohrwalder of the risks Slatin ran in trying to help me. Ascan be well understood, this is hardly a subject on which, at the present time, I could approach Slatin, as it would practically be asking him how many dollars' worth of thanks were due to him.
On my arrival at Omdurman, it was believed by the Khaleefa, and others, that I was a brother of Slatin, and had started for Sheikh Saleh's country with the idea of organizing an expedition to attack the Khaleefa and effect Slatin's release; the latter, in consequence, was looked upon with more suspicion than ever, and bad as my position or condition was, his, in a measure, may have been worse. People in Omdurman — my servant and the prison barber in particular — gauging Slatin's position to a nicety, had little fear or compunction in blackmailing him, day after day, after his first contribution to my sustenance, for more money and food, and in each instance it was asked for in my name. Others doubtless did the same, and poor Slatin, as he was then, must have been robbed right and left, his robbers perfectly secure in the conviction that even, should he discover their trick, he would be powerless to punish them, for had he attempted to do so, he would have placed his head in a noose for disobeying the Khaleefa's orders, which were that he was never to speak to, or have any dealings with me. It is the least that I can do here to place the matter on record in connection with my experience, and leave Slatin to await the appearance of this in print to learn that my heartfelt thanks go out to him, while, at the same time, the world will better understand from the foregoing the difficulties of Slatin's position with the Khaleefa.