“Would the blessed Mahdi care to see the women prisoners? If any please him, he might take them into his zenana.” The khalifa sought to placate him.
“May Allah be pleased with you, Abdullahi,” said the Mahdi, ‘but first I wish some refreshment. Then we shall pray, and only thereafter will we go to view the new women.”
Abdullahi had prepared a pavilion in the governor’s garden at a spot that overlooked the river and the beach beside the harbour on which the gallows had been erected. Under a tent of plaited reed matting, which was suspended on bamboo poles and open on all sides to allow a cooling breeze to blow through, they reclined on splendid rugs of the finest wool and pillows of silk. From clay pitchers that allowed the liquid to permeate through and cool the rest of the contents, they sipped the Mahdi’s favourite beverage of date syrup and ground ginger. In the meantime they watched, with mild interest, the execution of Gordon’s men. Some of the victims were cut down from the scaffold while they still writhed in the noose and thrown into the river, hands bound behind their backs.
“It is a pity that so many are of Islam,” said Osman, ‘but they are also Turks, and they opposed your jihad.”
“For that they have paid the price, but in as much as they were of the true faith let them find peace,” said the Mahdi, and extended the forefinger of his right hand in blessing. Then he stood up and led them towards the Customs House.
When they entered the main hall the captured women had been lined up against the far wall. They prostrated themselves as the Mahdi entered and sang his praises.
The guards had erected a dais at the opposite side of the hall to where the women knelt. This was covered with Persian carpets. The Mahdi took his seat upon them, then motioned for his khalifa to sit at his right hand and the Emir Osman Atalan to sit on his left. “Let them bring the captives forward, one at a time.”
AH Wad, who was in charge of the women, presented them in inverse order of their appeal to masculine taste. The old and ugly to start with, and the younger and prettier to follow. The Mahdi dismissed the first twenty or so, who interested him not at all, with a curt gesture of his left hand. Then AH Wad led forward a young Galla girl. The Mahdi made a sign with his right hand. AH Wad lifted her robe over her head and she was naked. The three great men leant forward to examine her. The Mahdi made a circular movement with his right hand, and the girl revolved before them to display all her charms, which were considerable.
“She is, of course, too thin,” the Mahdi said at last. “She will have eaten little in the last ten months, but she will plump up prettily. She is pleasing, but she has a bold eye and will be difficult. She is of the kind that causes trouble in the zenana.” He made the left-hand sign of rejection, then smiled at his khalifa. “If you decide she is worth the trouble, you may take her, and I wish you joy of her.”
“If she makes trouble in my harem, she will have stripes on her lustrous buttocks to show for it.” The Khalifa Abdullahi flicked her with his fly whisk on the threatened area of her anatomy. At the sting she squeaked and slotted in the air like a gazelle ewe. Abdullahi made the right-hand sign of acceptance and the girl was led away. The selection went on at a leisurely pace, the men discussing the females in explicit detail.
The daughter of a Persian trader caught their particular attention. They all agreed that her features were unattractively bony and angular, but the hair of her head was red. There was some discussion about its authenticity, which the Mahdi settled by having AH Wad remove her garments. The gorgeous ruddy tone of her dense, curling nether bush dispelled their doubts.
“There is every hope that she will bear red-headed sons,” said the Mahdi. The first Prophet Muhammad, of whom he was the successor, had possessed red hair. Thus she was highly valuable as a breeder. He would give her to one of his emirs as a mark of his divine favour. It would reinforce the emir’s loyalty and strengthen the bonds between them. He made the right-hand sign.
Then AH Wad led forward Rebecca Benbrook. Nazeera had covered her head with a light shawl. Amber had just enough strength to totter at her elder sister’s side, clinging to her hand for comfort and support.
“Who is the child?” demanded Khalifa Abdullahi. “Is she the woman’s daughter?”
“Nay, mighty khalifa,” AH Wad replied, as Nazeera had coached him. “It is her little sister. Both girls are virgins and orphans.”
The men looked interested. A maidenhead was of great value, and bestowed a magical and beneficial influence on the man who ruptured it. Then, as Nazeera had told him, AH Wad drew off the shawl that covered Rebecca’s head. The Mahdi drew a sharp breath, and both the khalifa and Osman Atalan sat straighter as they stared in astonishment at her hair, which Nazeera had combed out carefully. A beam of sunlight through one of the high windows transformed it into a crown of gold. The Mahdi beckoned Rebecca to come closer. She knelt before him. He leant towards her and fingered a lock. “It is soft as the wing of a sunbird,” he murmured in awe.
Rebecca had been careful not to look directly into his face, which would have been a gesture of disrespect. With her eyes still lowered, she whispered huskily, “I have heard all men speak of your grace and of your holy state. I have longed for sight of your beautiful face, as a traveller in the great desert longs for his first glimpse of Mother Nile.”
His eyes opened a little wider. He placed one finger beneath her chin and lifted her face. She saw at once that what she had said had pleased him. “You speak good Arabic,” he said.
“The holy tongue,” she agreed. “The language of the faithful.”
“How old are you, child? Are you virgin, as AH Wad has told us? Have you ever known a man?”
“I pray that you might be my first and my last,” she lied, without a tremor, knowing just how much depended on his choice. She had been watching the khalifa during the selection of the other women and sensed that all Nazeera had told her was true: he was as slippery as a slime-eel and as venomous as a scorpion. She thought that it would be better to be dead than to belong to him.
When he whispered to the Mahdi his voice was oily and unctuous. “Exalted One, let us have sight of this one’s body,” he suggested. “Is the bush of her loins of the same colour and texture as the hair on her head? Are her breasts white as camels’ milk? Are the lips of her quimmy pink as the petals of a desert rose? Let us discover all these sweet secrets.”
“Those sights are for my eyes alone to gaze upon. This one pleases me. I will keep her for myself.” With his right hand he made the sign of acceptance over Rebecca’s head.
“I am overcome with joy and gratitude that you have found me pleasing, Great and Holy One.” Rebecca bowed her head. “But what of my little sister? I pray that you will take her under your protection as well’
The Mahdi glanced down at Amber, who shrank from him and clung to Rebecca’s dusty, bloodstained skirt. She stared back at him in trepidation and he saw how young she was, how weak and sickly she appeared. Her eyes were sunk into bruised-looking cavities, and she had barely the strength to stand upright. The Mahdi knew that a child in her condition would be a nuisance and the cause of disruption in his household. He was not lubriciously attracted to children, either male or female, as he knew his khalifa was. Let him have this wretched creature. He was about to make the left-hand gesture of rejection, when Rebecca forestalled him. Nazeera had coached her in what she must say. She spoke up again, clearly this time.
“The saint Abu Shuraih has reported the direct words of the Prophet Muhammad, the messenger of Allah, may Allah love him eternally, who said, “I declare inviolate the rights of the weak ones, the orphans and the women.” He said also, “Allah provides for you only in as much as you protect the orphans among you.”
The Mahdi lowered his left hand, and looked at her thoughtfully. Then he smiled again, but there was something unfathomable in his eyes. He made the right-hand sign of acceptance over Amber and said to Ali Wad, “I place these women in your charge. See that no harm befalls them. Convey them to my harem.”
Ali Wad and ten of his men escorted Rebecca, Amber and the other women chosen by the Mahdi to the harbour. Without drawing attention to herself, Nazeera followed them. When they were placed on board a large trading dhow to be carried across the Nile to Omdurman, she went on board with them, and when one of the crew questioned her presence Ali Wad snarled at him so belligerently that he scurried away to attend to the hoisting of the lateen sail. From then on Nazeera was accepted as the servant to al-Jamal and al-Zahra, the concubines of the Mahdi. The three squatted together in the bows of the dhow.
While Nazeera made Amber drink again from the waters king Rebecca asked fretfully, “What am I going to do, Nazeera? I can never allow myself to become the chattel of a brown man, a native who is not a Christian.” The full extent of her predicament began to dawn on her. “I think I would rather die than have that happen to me.”
“Your sense of propriety is noble, Jamal, but I am brown and a native also,” Nazeera replied. “Also, I am not a Christian. If you have become so fastidious, then perhaps it would be better if you sent me away.”
