# From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier/Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI
A RAIDED VILLAGE
It is a scattered Nubian hamlet of some forty or fifty houses, with one larger building, the abode of the local Sheikh, conspicuous in its midst. Behind it stretch the long levels of the Arabian Desert, and somewhat further in its rear arises a barren ridge of hills to a height of some three or four hundred feet. The Nile, here broad and peaceful, stealing smoothly down to its rocky prison at Bab-el-Kalabshi, has edged the little village with a narrow strip of its richly fertile soil, now thickly covered with green-leaved shrubs of the kiki and sweet with flowering beans. Between us and the river, as we pass along the broken line of mud-cabins, stand the cattle-pens of the peasantry, no longer, thanks ​to timely aid from the Administration, entirely denuded of their stock. Goats and sheep are not wanting, and here and there, through the wattled fences of dura, we catch glimpses of horned cattle. It is just an ordinary Nubian village, such as one passes in scores on both banks of the river between the Cataracts; yet we approach it in a very different mood of mind from that in which we should enter any of its neighbours. Indeed, our very debarcation on a spot so like a thousand others in Upper Egypt is enough in itself to keep its object continually before our minds, and the constant presence of our military escort is not needed to refresh our memories.
From the First Cataract upwards we have been "shadowed" by this sable bodyguard from a Soudanese regiment, each with an honest, round, blubber-lipped face, as black and shiny as a patent-leather boot, but tall, strapping, well-set-up fellows, making as brave a show in their blue and yellow jackets ​and red sashes as the heart of man or woman could desire. We have eight and twenty of them all told, six men and a noncommissioned officer to each of our four boats. Their duty is to guard the bodies of us helpless tourists from Assuân to Wady Halfa, and they perform it with a fidelity so conscientious as to become almost comic. The temples of this part of Upper Egypt are most of them conveniently near the shore, a climb of a few score feet, or a walk of a few hundred yards being usually all that is necessary to reach them. Swift as are its movements, a band of Dervishes could hardly descend upon us rapidly enough to cut us off from our boats. Nevertheless, there stand our black men-at-arms ready even for this emergency. A couple of them mount guard at the landing-place, two others accompany the sight-seers up the bank, a third pair we find waiting for us at the doors of the temple. In the early morning, when the stern-wheeler has been tied up to the ​bank the previous night, you may dimly descry one of them doing sentry-go along the dusty shore. At the great rock-temple of Abu Simbel he was to be seen patrolling one of the lower ledges of the sandstone rock, in front of the four gigantic Colossi, looming awful in the dawn-light, with a peculiarly weird effect. At the end of the hours ride into the desert, which must be taken to reach the rock of Abu Sir, with its view of the Second Cataract, you note the figure of a black soldier silhouetted against the sky on every rocky knoll around you—a look-out man on the watch for any approaching troop of men, visible as they would be for leagues of distance over this boundless waste.
On board our trusty Soudanese appear to pass their time cheerily enough in their quarters on the lower deck, where one may find the men who have been on guard during the night now sleeping like so many logs of black bog-oak, while their comrades sit ​cross-legged, cigarettes between their ample lips, chattering gaily to each other as they clean their Martinis or furbish up the brass of their belts. This week on the Nile is for them, no doubt, a pleasant little outing; but, still, it is, of course, a serious business also, and not by any means intended merely as a treat, so to speak, for a good soldier boy.
No boat, neither tourist steamer, mail-boat, nor steam dahabiyeh, is at present allowed to navigate the Nile between the First and Second Cataracts without an escort. As to sailing dahabiyehs, the Sirdar has stopped them altogether. Dependent as they are on the wind and unable to moor for the night in mid-stream, they would be at the absolute mercy of any predatory horde that chose to descend upon them, while to give military protection to them all would, of course, be impossible. And landing, as we have done, for the purpose of visiting the scene of a murderous raid committed by the Dervishes not much more than a month ago, we are ​naturally better able than we otherwise should be to appreciate the need of these precautions.
Still, one finds it hard to believe that this quiet little village, lapped as it is now in the sleepy peace of a glowing tropical forenoon, has so lately been given over to rapine and bloodshed, and that seventeen corpses of its innocent, feeble folk, shot or speared by these savage robber-fanatics of the desert, were so short a time ago laid out in the dust of the little village square to await the inspection and examination of those to whom this duty belongs. Assuredly there is nothing to indicate it in the demeanour of the survivors. The little train of villagers which has attended us as we march ankle-deep through the soft, hot sand increases but slightly in bulk with our progress, and is rather more apathetic than an ordinary crowd of fellaheen, They do not even beg for bakshîsh, so primitive is their civilisation. It is indeed more than possible that they have never seen a body of European tourists ​before, for "the season" above the First Cataract is barely a fortnight old, and the calamity which has singled out the inhabitants of Atandan from all the other nameless groups of their fellow peasants along the Nile is itself not very much older.
But their tongues are soon unloosed when they know the object of our visit, and the information which they are all of them ready to pour out at once into the ears of our interpreter leaves nothing to be desired in point of quantity at any rate. Like the common people in all countries, they are proud of their tragic experience, and would not for a moment think of sparing us a single horror. Yes, it was just here that they slaughtered seven of us, and here—pointing to a wide-eyed Nubian boy with a ring through his left nostril—is the son of one of those whom they slew. This was his house; and we stoop our heads to pass under the low doorway of the hovel. A mud hut is not exactly a decorative building anywhere in the world; but to the inhabitants of ​Western countries it carries with it associations of squalor and misery which unfairly, though naturally, prepossess him against its Eastern counterpart. You soon perceive, however, that in a land of scorching heat and in an atmosphere of intense dryness mud is a much more eligible building material than you had supposed. There is nothing of the poverty-stricken Irish cabin about this Nubian hut. Its interior, furnished only with a low truckle bed, and otherwise, indeed, entirely empty, save for a barrel of meal and a little heap of fruit and vegetables in a corner, is well swept, well kept, and deliciously cool, and though lacking windows not wanting them, since the narrow streams of brilliant sunshine that filter here and there through its dura thatch serve all the purposes of lighting and ventilation.
In short, it is a typical Egyptian peasant's home, pathetically bare and rude to the eye of a dweller in great cities, but comfortable enough, no doubt, for the inhabitant of a land where nature is so royally bountiful of light ​and warmth that man owes little even to the most rudimentary of the arts of life. Such as it was, at any rate it held all that life had for its simple peasant owner, and it sufficed. Probably his small and quiet world wagged well enough with him till that fatal afternoon in December, 1895, when he heard shouts and shots in the street of his village, and stepped out, or, more likely, perhaps, was dragged out to his cruel death.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when these desert-wolves swooped down on this wretched flock. This is the first thing that we gather from the son of the Sheikh, to whom a brisk member of our party, who suddenly develops the gifts of a heaven-born examiner-in-chief, proceeds to put a series of very pertinent questions. It is investigation under difficulties, since the English vocabulary of our worthy dragoman is not extensive, neither is his speech fluent; but on the whole we make out enough to satisfy any reasonable mind that the raid was really the work ​of Dervishes, and not, as certain wiseacres of Cairo would have had us believe, of some mere wandering tribe of, so to speak, private banditti.
"From which direction did they come?" is one of the first questions asked of our witness, and "From over there" is the answer, as the young fellow points to the rocky ridge in the background. "Were they dressed alike?" he is next asked, the object being to ascertain whether the men were in the Mahdi's uniform or in the go-as-you-please costume of a mixed band of freebooters. The reply was "Yes," and that they wore red turbans. A bugle, adds our informant, was sounded on their approach. They divided themselves into three parties, which re-united again at the sound of the bugle, when their work of plunder and massacre—a business of some three hours—was over.
"How were they armed?" we ask. With spears, we are told; and some of them with ​rifles—Remingtons, we afterwards learnt, a weapon with which the Mahdi's soldiers were known to be equipped. Everything, in fact, whether in the appearance of the raiders or in the mode of their advance, attack and retreat, unmistakably pointed to the existence among them of military discipline and organisation; and this last detail about the rifles completed the proof of their identity. It was no longer possible even for the most sceptical to doubt that they were followers of the Khalifa acting under orders from headquarters, and executing what probably was as much a planned demonstration against the English protectors of Egypt as a mere adventure after "loot."
Not but that the raid would have been well worth making for plunder alone. To those who are unfamiliar with the habits of an Oriental peasantry, the amount of the spoil carried off by the robbers from this little settlement of mud cabins may seem well-nigh incredible. It has been estimated ​after careful investigation by competent English inquirers at from three hundred to four hundred pounds. Its magnitude is, of course, mainly due, not to the value of the cattle, sheep and other live stock lifted from the village, but to the aggregation of the modest hoards of money found in many of the hovels, and to the silver ornaments of the women.
Nevertheless, to do these ruthless ruffians justice, they doubtless prized the victory higher than its spoils. The joy which swelled their savage hearts as they passed southward home across the desert was not mainly inspired, one may well believe, by thoughts of the booty with which their camels were laden, or of the half-dozen hapless women whom they carried with them, and one of whom was found dead a few days afterwards on the track of their retreat. What, no doubt, fired them with a far fiercer exultation was the consciousness of having for once evaded the vigilance of the English patrols, of having swooped down upon the territory ​under our protection, and made their way back again before our troops could cut them off.
The son of the Sheikh having duly deponed, there are, of course, any number of his fellow-villagers ready to take up the dismal tale. We are surrounded, like the Apostle, by a great cloud of witnesses, some of them prepared with exhibits as well as with oral evidence. Will we see Hassan Abdullah? Hassan Abdullah was shot in the neck, but he managed to flee and hide himself, and so by the blessing of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, he escaped. Come forward, Hassan Abdullah, and there stands before us a spare and grizzled old peasant, between the wiry muscles of whose lean brown neck a rifle bullet might certainly stow itself comfortably away without making any external difference in his cervical conformation. Another villager adds a pathetic detail to the story. At a little distance from us can be heard the droning of a sakkiyeh, ​one of those ancient water-wheels turned by a bullock, which are almost as familiar to the traveller on the Nile as the shadûf itself, and which, with their long complaining note — often heard far into the night-watches when the river is falling and time is becoming precious to those who still need water for their lands—might well sound to a fanciful imagination like the secular moan of this patient race of eternal toilers under eternal taskmasters, echoing through the ages. It was on the labourer at the sakkiyeh that the Dervishes first lighted as they came down the hill, and whether in mere wantonness of blood-lust or from fear lest he should give the alarm they shot the poor wretch dead beside his water-wheel. The two ideal archetypes of predatory barbarism and of peaceful industry could hardly have come into more dramatic conflict, or have acted and suffered more exactly after their kind. It was the history of Egypt in little—an epitome of the everlasting fate of its timid and defenceless ​people, the prey of every spoiler and the victims of every sword.
The sakkiyeh is droning and dripping again now after its former wont; the patient beast that turns it has a new master no less patient and even more spiritless than itself; the dead have been buried, the wounded have been returned cured from the military hospital at Wady Haifa, where everything was done for them that surgical skill could do; and the world has resumed its unspeakably slow revolutions in the little Nubian village of Atandan, The stoicism of the Mohammedan superposed upon that blissful apathy of the labourer in all countries which so soon deadens all sense of loss and sorrow for the departed with the numbing anodyne of daily fatigue has already done its work. Except for the occasional pleasure of rehearsing the story of their calamity that revives the villagers' recollection of it, it is probably almost forgotten. The handful of ten-piastre pieces, the yield of a hastily whipped-up subscription, which in ​their presence we entrust to the son of the Sheikh, they receive with gratitude, but without effusion. As has already been said, they have not asked for bakshîsh, and seemed surprised that strangers should give without being asked. They accompany us, the same placid, listless, little crowd, to the landing-place, and tranquilly look on at our re-embarkation and departure. Perhaps they will watch the steamer till its smoke disappears from view, but then they will go back to their everlasting round of toil and rest and toil again—good human bullocks, turning the sakkiyeh of life as untiringly and resignedly as their fathers and their fathers' fathers up to a past that loses itself in the mists of legend.