Moving the Palace

by Charif Majdalani

  From this day on, at any rate, the aide-de-camp and the major’s batmen graciously extend their services to include Samuel, who sees his breakfast brought up every morning to his bedroom balcony, and takes his lunch every other day at the officer’s table. At first, Major White inspects him carefully, because this Syro-Lebnanese fellow who speaks such perfect English intrigues him. He ends up taking a liking to my grandfather, and brings him along in a British Army tilbury to the governor’s palace, where Samuel finds himself once more in the large office in which, from morning till midafternoon, for several months, he reads, then summarizes in English, reports that pour in from all four corners of the country: from Suakin on the Red Sea, from half-ruined and deserted Al-Ubayyid in the middle of the desert, from the depths of the equatorial forest, as well as the steppes and their ancient, still-standing fortresses which all tell the same endless stories—tribes are marching toward southern Darfur, others have reached Wadi el Milk, an unidentified group attacked a caravan near Dongola, a Mahdist preacher has drawn a following in the souqs of Shendi and Metemma. At first he reads these dispatches quietly, deciphering the gesture-rich language of sheikhs and their scribes, the cramped and rigid tongue of Egyptian officers, the dialect of Nubian omdahs aquiver with local expressions unfamiliar to him, then he begins pacing from his table to the wall where a sometimes-incomplete map of Sudan is hung. He plants himself right in front of it for a few long minutes, tracing imaginary routes with his fingertips, then returns to his table and spreads out the reports, sorting them into piles, grouping them by region, theme, rubric, before gathering them all again and writing out his summaries. Once finished, he wanders home through the streets of Khartoum, where Nubians are busy planting slender tree shoots that will one day be jacarandas and, quite soon in fact, will sprout clusters of mauve blossoms beneath which prominent citizens of Sudan, with their massive hands, will pass in their sumptuous white turbans.

  And then, at night, are the ritual gatherings in the villa’s garden; my grandfather can’t tell if these are part of life at the palace or the barracks. In the sonorous limpidity of the night, redolent at times of the Nile and at others of the desert, beneath lamps a generator allows them to use, but which they soon switch off for peace and quiet, they then light kerosene lanterns hung from pear tree trunks, drink Major White’s whisky, and converse. They are, invariably, the major and his aide-de-camp, Naoum Choucair, and three or four of the less uptight British officers, the less martial, the less racist garrisoned in Khartoum, among them a captain once stationed in China, another bored by the Old World, and a third in love with all things French. Now and again, birds perturbed by the light flutter in the trees; occasionally, suicidal insects hurl themselves like pebbles against the tables, and sometimes one will even dive into a glass of whisky. Then the captain once stationed in China will say he saw snakes and even monkeys preserved in brandy there, and swear he never tried a drop, calling for a new glass if indeed it is his glass the insect has landed in that time. But more often, the conversations revolve around battles in the Nuba Mountains, or skirmishes with the implacable Mahdist rebel Osman Digna in the region around Suakin. There are always unlikely tales to be heard, such that one night the lieutenant in love with all things French and recently returned from Suakin sporting a splendid seventeenth-century pearl-handled pistol of Ottoman manufacture, tells of how, during an ambush, one of Osman’s old soldiers shot down one British soldier with it before tossing it like a boomerang at another, dealing him a mortal blow to the brow. The miraculous and sinister weapon is passed from hand to hand; Samuel feels the weight of it in the hollow of his palm and since, in the meantime, the others have begun telling tales of incredible duels, when his turn comes he tells the one about the Lebanese mountain man who one morning found himself face-to-face with bandits laying into two women and an old man. Despite the dust and rocks on the trail, the mountain man is on foot, with his cane and a floppy hat, when suddenly he hears shouting. He heads over and sees a mule braying in the middle of the path, a woman screaming, another howling for help, an old man struggling with two young hoodlums in sirwals. Without a second thought, Samuel continues, he rushes forward, whirling his cane over his head like a saber from the olden days, and routs the two hoodlums. But one of them must’ve gotten a hard blow to the nose, or some more sensitive spot, maybe between the legs, and his anger is such that he draws a revolver. The women’s shrill cries grow even louder, they hold their heads in their hands like Aeschylus’s beggar women, but the man, unruffled, walks over to the boy, stares him straight in the eyes without blinking, spreads his arms, lashes the air, and with a flick of his cane, Samuel placidly concludes, sends the revolver flying. A murmur of pleasure runs through the small gathering, and they take a swig of Major White’s Old Parr, all the more satisfied because the tale was told with such astonishing brio. The officers ill-acquainted with him examine this Syro-Lebanese fellow with interest, naturally unaware that he hails from a family of poets and men of letters, nor of course that the tale he’s just told is that of Nassib Ayyad, his own father.

  *

  If these evenings’ invitees are selected from among the less uptight and less martial of the garrison’s men, it is fairly uncertain at first whether Colonel Moore, under whom Samuel worked in the years that followed, is one of them. The two men meet for the first time during a reception at the governor’s palace, one of those receptions that contrast violently with the low-lit vigils at the villa, notably due to the dazzling light pouring down on the great hall from two massive chandeliers the Madhi once had transported to Omdurman, which the English brought back after reconquest and restored to their former place, this time supplying them with electricity, such that the salon at this moment is no doubt the best-lit spot in all Sudan, and that, seen from the Nile where the feluccas of Sudanese fishermen glide, its windows seem an immense diamond in the midst of the night. Inside, the clamor is intense, cubes of ice more precious than gold make a crystalline clink in the whisky glasses, the wine itself is chilled, there are epaulettes on every shoulder while the Sudanese sofragis are flawless in their dignity, their sheer size silently conferring something royal on this military hullabaloo. Samuel attends this reception and is profoundly bored. He tosses back whisky after whisky and discusses French naturalism and English realism with Covington, the captain in love with all things French. On his way home in the tilbury, he tells Major White he won’t be going to one of those evenings again, but three weeks later, it is Naoum Choucair who comes to his office specifically to tell him that he has been assigned to the staff of Colonel Edward Moore, in whose honor a reception will take place that very night to welcome him to Khartoum, and Samuel must absolutely attend. That night, no sooner has he entered the salon with White than Choucair takes him by the arm and leads him to the colonel, who is of course, surrounded by a palette of braid-trimmed shoulders and brightly decorated chests. Just as Samuel is shaking the martial hand of the guest of honor, whose gaze is immediately distracted by something else, Major White walks up, cigar in hand, and announces to Moore that he envies him for having someone on staff as remarkable as this young man. The colonel turns back from his distraction, gathers his wits from their wandering, and looks right into Samuel’s eyes. Whereupon my grandfather experiences, for the first time, that shifting gaze he will have so much to do with, an ever-darkening gaze accompanied by a stiffness of feature on the whole and a hardness, even a cruelty, of expression that almost immediately relaxes, opens, and grows limpid, light gray, imbued with almost naïve kindliness.

  For now, let us say that it is in its hard phase, a cold metallic hardness that quite simply plunges into Samuel’s pupils and stays there, as if to gauge their internal pressure. But Samuel doesn’t look away; with a polite word, he leaves his gaze open to Colonel Moore’s predatory one. Immediately, the colonel’s gaze changes, enters its retractile phase, brightens, and grows almost affable. And the officer speaks, probably says something like, “So you’re the young man I w
as told about,” or “Any young man both White and my friend Naoum Choucair (he pronounces it Choogair) recommend can only be of the highest order” (and with this, Major White and Choucair make little bows of false modesty and raise their glasses), or even “Such an appealing young man (and this time, it is Samuel who must, if not bow slightly, at least smile or make some gesture of acknowledgment, though he does not move), who speaks three languages—for you speak French, too, I’m told (and this time, Samuel is quite obliged to nod imperceptibly in assent)! Now that can be quite useful, quite useful indeed” (and maybe then, in a moment of wit inspired by the situation at Sudan’s borders, he might throw in a little joke along the lines of “Now does he speak Amharic? If so, I resign!” and his eyes freeze, darken, as if a bitter memory had crossed his mind, then he softens and now he’s even laughing at his own bad joke). He must say something of the kind, surely, after which—and this is the important part—he adds, locking eyes with Samuel again and launching the piercing arrow of his gaze into Samuel’s own: “In a few days we leave for Kurdufan. Come see me first thing tomorrow. We must talk.”

  The next day Samuel goes to see him in a white suit with a handsome ascot and laced-up ankle boots, deliberately too civilian and too much the citified dandy, to remind Colonel Moore that he’s no soldier, and that the somewhat rough attitudes at the heart of the hierarchy in no way concern him. For we can imagine that his first meeting with Moore has not left him with a very pleasant memory. But upon his arrival, he is greatly surprised. For when he presents himself at the ancient, recently restored clay-brick dwelling where the colonel is housed, he is made to wait a moment, then shown in and made to wait some more in a courtyard garden before a batman bids him follow. He crosses through ornately wood-paneled rooms with grand rugs and English armchairs, goes up a flight of stairs, and stops before a sculpted wooden door he is surprised to find the Mahdists haven’t already carried off to Omdurman. When at last the door creaks open and a noncommissioned officer appears, then steps aside to let the two men in, Samuel finds himself in a vast room—giving onto a mashrabiya, covered with a few rugs, and furnished with a Damascene chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl—in the middle of which stands Colonel Moore, arms held straight out to either side. At his feet, a few Egyptian tailors bustle about taking in his shirt and pants cuffs, while seated in European wing chairs, forming a larger circle, English and Egyptian officers and even a civilian or two fill the air with chatter. Right when Samuel comes in, Moore exclaims, “Ah! There’s our Lebanese friend!”

  After which, during the entire week that follows, every morning when Samuel arrives at the colonel’s residence, the latter is always busy, now with his barber, now with his armorer, now with his watchmaker, and every time, whether covered in shaving cream, a giant towel on his belly, from beneath which his hands leap and reach out in welcome, or else absorbed in inspecting a few American rifles (which Samuel thinks may be for the soldiers’ use but not at all, they’re for future gazelle hunts in Kurdufan) or new pocket watches a young Frenchman is presenting, seated across a rosewood table from the colonel as if for a game of checkers—every morning, upon seeing Samuel come in, the colonel lets out his unwavering “Ah! There’s our Lebanese friend!” such that Samuel is finally put out. But he says not a word and, every time, merely takes a seat amidst the colonel’s court, between two captains or beside a petitioner, a Greek shop owner, or an Egyptian broker or even, one morning, beside two camel drivers come to ask a favor concerning their caravan’s route. They are sitting clumsily in their djellabas in the Empire wing chairs, and their henhouse stench is so obvious that Colonel Maher, an Egyptian advisor of Moore’s, pulls a face and keeps bringing a handkerchief to his nostrils. Which earns him a sidelong glance from the colonel who, after dealing him the icy steel of his gaze, retracts it, relaxes it, and announces in booming tones, “Maher, drop that handkerchief, you’re behaving like a demoiselle at one of Alfred Soussa’s salons.” Then he bursts out laughing, casting a complicit glance at Samuel, doubtless proud of this allusion to the uppercrust salons of Syro-Lebanese Cairo. Everyone laughs, and joins in with their own jokes, waiting as they do every morning for the colonel to finish getting himself a ceremonial outfit made to order, or getting shaved, or picking out a rifle, a watch, a pair of shoes. For only afterward does Moore begin hearing the officers on his staff and receiving complaints, responding to the soldiers’ concerns, seeing to a case of Egyptian deserters, or another about merchants suspected of selling his regiment wheat with too many oats mixed in. He has a few notes taken by a lieutenant who sits down beside him, or refers an affair to his liaison services, then abruptly, unpredictably, gets to his feet before he’s done listening to all the requests and reports, sometimes interrupting a lieutenant mid-sentence, and leaves, followed by his little court, with whom he’ll call on the governor or tour the streets of Khartoum, on foot or in a calash along the Nile, and Samuel finally thinks that Colonel Moore acts less like an officer of the British Army than a bey in the Lebanese mountains, an Ottoman pasha, or a viceroy of the Khedivate. And then, one day, he is admitted into the calash that dashes along the banks of the Nile, and takes this opportunity to ask the colonel exactly what is expected of him. Moore turns to him, examines him with that open water lily of an eye, amiable and almost merry, and then, addressing Captain Covington and Colonel Maher across from him, declares laughingly, “Ah! Our young Lebanese friend is getting impatient!”

  Then, speaking to Samuel once more, “We leave for Kurdufan the day after tomorrow, Mr. Ayyad. You’ve now met my entire staff. You have only to be ready.”

  3

  THE VAST PROVINCE OF KURDUFAN, WEST OF THE NILE, is where the great Madhist revolt of 1880 first broke out, where hundreds upon hundreds of tribes rose up and followed Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mad Mahdi, where the populations of whole cities and towns placed themselves at his service, forming a giant army with thousands of banners for him, endless civilians trailing in its wake, that swept the armies of Egypt and their British commanders aside and seized Khartoum in September 1882. Bound to the north by the desert, to the south by the Bahr el Ghazal, and to the west by Darfur, where the ancient sultanate was restored in 1900, Kurdufan is not yet entirely at peace when Colonel Moore’s troops begin their march in spring 1910. Though the pitiful remnants of the tribes scattered or slaughtered by the Mad Mahdi’s tyrannical successors have begun returning to their lands, their villages, which the 1890 famine emptied out, have never recovered, their cities lie in ruins, and above all, preachers calling for Mahdist purity have continued to rise up. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, another Mahdist uprising is behind Colonel Moore’s expedition, and thus Samuel Ayyad’s departure from Khartoum.

  That morning, Samuel, who has been furnished with a handsome mount and a second horse for his baggage, bids farewell to Major White and his aides-de-camp. He is in his army uniform, but without any insignia, and to emphasize that he is no military man, wears a paisley burgundy silk scarf, a gift from one of his sisters, knotted airily round his neck. His mustache is trim and his gaze jubilant. He leaves around ten, crosses the White Nile on a barge, and joins Colonel Moore’s regiment a few miles from the river, heading south. Moore watches him arrive, waiting until he’s ridden up the length of the column to exclaim, of course, “Here’s our Lebanese friend!” and Samuel, concealing his annoyance, openly extends his hand as he draws abreast of the colonel, who after a moment of incomprehension takes it in his own. Then the two men ride side by side, ahead of Colonel Maher, whom Captain Covington graciously keeps company.

  At first, the purpose of the campaign is uncertain, and the direction it takes undefined. Word arrives that a chieftain of the Nihayat tribe by the name of Moussa Bellal, a native of the western sultanates, has declared it his mission to retake Kurdufan and even the whole of Sudan. The hotbed of the revolt, the place where informers most often place Moussa Bellal, is at the foot of the mountains of Darfur. At first, the British task their allies the Kababish tribes
with bringing the rebels to heel. But the volatility of Bellal’s initiatives, his raids and appearances much farther east, then south, have driven headquarters in Khartoum to send out Colonel Moore after him. And so, at first, Moore leads his column west-southwest, to cover all the territories where Bellal is said to have been spotted. The first few days are flat as the landscape, and just as colorless. They skirt miserable hamlets, most often deserted, and market towns where half the houses, mud or brick, seem to have slowly melted, returned to the earth or subsisting in the form of dirt mounds or sculptures of sand. Now and again, by a well, a few rickety donkeys seem to be awaiting the hour of the resurrection and, upon a second glance, from the white spots of their turbans in the shade of the old acacias, donkey drivers can be made out squatting or sitting on woven mats, indifferent to the troops passing by. In the early afternoon, the colonel sends a group of soldiers on ahead, and when the column catches up to them at nightfall, they’ve already made camp, pitched the colonel’s tent, prepared his dinner, and set out by the door to his transitory dwelling a rug, chairs, tables, and even a small escritoire of African manufacture, with several drawers. The officers gather, Samuel the only outsider. Dinner is spartan, after which Moore hears a few reports, then without further ado, goes to bed.