by Wilbur Smith
He sheathed his sabre, turned away and walked away towards the palm grove. As he passed Yakub he said, “Bury Osman Atalan. Do not mutilate his body or take his head. Bury al-Jamal beside him. Nazeera and the children will come with us. They will ride my camel. I will ride al-Buq. When all is ready call me.”
He went into the grove and found a fallen palm trunk on which to sit. He was very tired, and the cut on his shoulder throbbed. He opened his tunic and folded his handkerchief over the wound.
The two children, the boy and the girl, must be Rebecca’s, he realized. What will become of them? Then he remembered Amber and Saffron. They have two aunts who will fight over them. He smiled sadly. Of course, they will have Rebecca’s share of the trust fund, and they have Nazeera. They will lack nothing.
Within the hour “Yakub came to call him. On the way back to the mosque they stopped beside the newly filled double grave. “Do you think she loved him, Yakub?”
“She was a Muslim wife,” Yakub replied. “Of course she loved him. In God’s eyes, she had no choice.”
They mounted up. Nazeera had the two children with her on the camel, and Yakub rode beside her. Penrod was on the stallion, and led them back to Omdurman.
Ahmed Habib abd Atalan, the son of Rebecca and Osman Atalan, became uglier as he grew older, but he was very clever. He attended Cairo University where he studied law. He fell in with a group of politically active fellow students, who were violently opposed to the British occupation of their country. He devoted the rest of his life to the same jihad against that hated nation and Empire as his father. He was a German supporter during both world wars and spied for Erwin Rommel in the second. He was an active member of the Revolutionary Command Council in the bloodless coup that ousted the Egyptian King Farouk, the British puppet.
Rebecca’s daughter Kahruba remained small but she became more beautiful with every year that passed. At an early age she discovered in herself an extraordinary talent for dancing and acting. For twenty years she burned bright as a meteor across the stages of all the great theatres of Europe. With her wild, free spirit, she became a legend in her own lifetime. Her lovers, both men and women, were legion. Finally she married a French industrialist, who manufactured motor-cars, and they lived together in regal state and pomp in their palatial mansion in Deauville.
The Khalifat Abdullahi escaped from Omdurman, but Penrod Ballantyne and his Camel Corps pursued him relentlessly for more than a year. In the end he deigned to run no further. With his wives and devotees around him he sat on a silk carpet in the centre of his camp in the remote wilderness. When the troops rushed in he offered no further resistance. They shot him dead where he sat.
The tomb of the Mahdi was razed to the ground. His remains were exhumed, and his skull was turned into an inkwell. It was presented to General Kitchener, who was horrified. He had it reburied in a secret grave in the wilderness.
After the battle of Omdurman Kitchener became the darling of the Empire. He was rewarded with a peerage and a huge money grant. When the Boers in South Africa inflicted a series of disastrous defeats on the British army, Kitchener was sent to retrieve the situation. He burnt the farms and herded the women and children into concentration camps. The Boers were crushed.
During the First World War, Kitchener was promoted to field marshal and Commander-in-chief to steer the Empire through the most destructive war in all human history. In 1916 while he was on board the cruiser Hampshire, en route to Russia, the ship struck a German mine off the Orkneys. He drowned at the high noon of his career.
Sir Evelyn Baring became the 1st Earl of Cromer. He returned to England where he spent his days writing and, in the House of Lords, championing free trade.
Nazeera helped to raise all the children of the three Benbrook sisters. This occupied most of her time and energy, but what remained she divided impartially between Bacheet and Yakub.
Bacheet and Yakub pursued their vendetta for the rest of their lives. Bacheet was referred to by his rival as the Despicable Lecher. Yakub was the Jaalin Assassin. In their later years they took to frequenting the same coffee-house where they sat at opposite ends of the room, smoking their water-pipes, never addressing each other but deriving great comfort from their mutual antagonism. When Bacheet died of old age, Yakub never returned to the coffee-house.
Ryder Courtney’s cotton acres flourished. He invested his millions in Transvaal gold and Mesopotamian oil. He doubled and redoubled his fortune. In time his mercantile influence encompassed almost all of Africa and the Mediterranean. But to Saffron he remained always a benign and indulgent husband.
General Sir Penrod Ballantyne went to South Africa on Kitchener’s staff, and was present when the Boers surrendered at the peace of Vereeniging in the Transvaal. In the First World War he rode with Allenby’s cavalry against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine. He fought at Gaza and Megiddo, where he won further honours. He continued to play first-class polo well into his seventies. He and Amber lived in their house on the Nile, and in it raised a large family.
Amber and Saffron outlived both their husbands. They grew ever closer as the years passed. Amber flourished as an author. Her novels faithfully captured the romance and mystery of Africa. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Saffron’s marvellously colourful paintings were hung in galleries in New York, Paris and London. Her Nile series of paintings was eagerly sought by wealthy collectors on two continents, and commanded enormous prices. Picasso said of her, “She paints the way a sunbird flies.”
But they are all gone now, for in Africa only the sun triumphs eternally.
GLOSSARY
Arab names will not go into English, exactly, for their consonants are not the same as ours, and their vowels, like ours, vary from district to district. There are scientific systems of transliteration, helpful to people who know enough Arabic not to need helping, but a wash out for the world. I spell my names anyhow, to show what rot the systems are
T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Abadan Riji - “One who never turns back’. Penrod Ballantyne’s Arabic name abd slave aggagiers elite warriors of the Beja tribe of desert Arabs
Ammi aunt angareb - a native bed with leather thong lacing
Ansars - “The Helpers’, warriors of the Mahdi ardeb Oriental measure of volume. Five ardebs equal one cubic metre as ida porridge of dhurra (G.V.) flavoured with chili Bahr El Abiad the White Nile Bahr El Azrek the Blue Nile bombom bullets or cannon shells
Beia oath of allegiance required by the Mahdi from his Ansars
Beit el Mai the treasury of the Mahdi
Buq, al-War Trumpet, Osman Atalan’s charger can tar Oriental measure of weight: one can tar equals a hundredweight djinni see Jinnee dhurra Sorghum vulgare; staple grain food of men and domestic animals
Effendi lord, a title of respect falja - a gap between the front top teeth; a mark of distinction, much admired in the Sudan and many Arabic countries fellah (pi. fellahin) Egyptian peasant ferenghi foreigner
Filfil pepper, Saffron Benbrook’s Arabic name
Franks Europeans galabiyya traditional long Arabic robe
Hulu Mayya Sweet Water, one of Osman Atalan’s steeds
Jamal, al- ‘the Beautiful One’; Rebecca Benbrook’s Arabic name jibba the uniform of the Mahdists; long tunic decorated with multi-coloured patches jihad holy war jinnee (pi. jinn) - a spirit from Muslim mythology, able to assume animal or human form and influence mankind, with supernatural powers jiz scarab or dung beetle kufi Muslim traditional skull cap
Karim, al- “Kind and Generous’; variation of Ryder Courtney’s Arabic name kit tar bush with wicked hooked thorns
Kurban Bairam Islamic festival of sacrifice,
commemorating the sacrifice of the ram by Abraham in place of his son Isaac; one of the most important holidays in Islam kurbash whip made from hippo hide khalifa deputy of the Mahdi khalifat the senior and most powerful khalifa khedive the ruler of Egypt mulazemin the servants and retainers of an emine
nt Arab
Mahdi ‘the Expected One’, the successor to the Prophet Muhammad
Mahdist follower of the Mahdi
Mahdiya the rule of the Mahdi nullah dry or water-filled streambed ombeya war trumpet carved from a single elephant tusk souk bazaar sitt title of respect, equivalent to ‘my lady’ in English
Sakhawi, al- “Generosity’, Ryder Courtney’s Arabic name sirdar the title of the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army shufta bandit
Tej strong beer made from dhurra
Turk derogatory term for Egyptian
Tirbi Kebir the great graveyard, large salt pan in the Bight of the Nile wadi Gully or dried watercourse
Yom il Guma Friday, the Muslim Sabbath
Zahra, al- “The Flower’, Amber Benbrook’s Arabic name zareba fortified stockade of stones or thorn bush zenana women’s quarters in an Arabic household
WILBUR SMITH was born in Central
Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.
He became a full-time writer in 1964
after the successful publication of
When the Lion Feeds, and has since written thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide.I
His books are now translated intol twenty-six different languages.
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