The Network - Jason Elliot [90]
His most famous victory resulted in the slaughter and humiliation of the British and their Egyptian allies after the ten-month-long siege of Khartoum, where General Gordon waited hopefully and in vain for reinforcements from Egypt. Gordon’s command and life ended on the point of a Mahdist spear. The Mahdi himself is said to have respected Gordon greatly, but was mystified by his refusal to accept Islam, choosing instead a humiliating death. The Mahdi died of typhoid a year later, and a shrine was built over his body in Omdurman.
The Sudanese paid a heavy price for their defiance. Thirteen years later, under no-nonsense imperialist General Kitchener, an Anglo-Egyptian force returned to avenge Gordon’s death and reclaim the Sudan. They were heavily armed with the latest weapons. On the outskirts of Omdurman 50,000 tribesmen threw themselves at the British Maxim guns and were decimated by waves of dumdum bullets. The white jellabiyas of the slaughtered warriors were said to resemble a thick carpet of snow across the battlefield. Twenty thousand wounded were executed where they lay, and their bodies thrown into the Nile. Moored in the water beyond the town, British gunboats took range on the Mahdi’s shrine and reduced it to rubble with volleys of fifty-pound explosive shells, the cruise missiles of the era. Kitchener had the Mahdi’s body burned, but was discouraged by fellow officers from presenting the skull as an inkwell to Queen Victoria.
The silver dome of the tomb rises from a palm-filled enclosure like the nose of a rocket. Jameela greets the old guardian with affectionate respect, and calls him uncle. We walk barefoot around the custard-coloured walls of the octagonal shrine while the old man rubs the steel-grey stubble on his chin and recounts the more famous exploits of the Mahdi and his ill-fated warriors.
‘I said you were a Muslim brother from Britaniyyah,’ whispers Jameela mischieviously as we enter the shrine, savouring its cool stillness for a few minutes before emerging blinking into the sunlight.
The old man asks if we will be his guests, and insists on tea. He leads us past the accommodation for pilgrims and dervishes adjacent to the shrine, and we settle at a table under a tall acacia tree. By both tradition and law, he tells us, the grounds of the shrine are a place of sanctuary, an ancient version of diplomatic immunity. When it’s time to leave, he heaps blessings on our families, and we promise to return.
We drive back to the city as the sun is setting. The temperature has dropped to a comfortable thirty-five degrees celsius. It’s also Thursday evening, so I suggest we go to the Pickwick Club, where Halliday has put me on the guest list. We are shown straight in and head for the bar, close to the swimming pool. On the far wall Pickwick is written in lights. There’s a plastic parrot at the bar, and I’m reminded Halliday has told me that the club takes its name from the late embassy parrot, which is buried inside the wall.
After the intensity of life on the streets of Omdurman, we feel out of place among the clientele of mostly lonely and bored-looking foreigners, and I suggest we go somewhere more real. Jameela agrees gratefully. We walk to an Ethiopian restaurant. There are no knives and forks, so she takes my hand gently in hers and shows me how to fold the food into the traditional pancake-like bread called injera. It’s the first time we’ve touched since we shook hands, and this tiny act of closeness feels like a landmark to me, as if I’ve discovered the source of the Nile.
The pyramids are her suggestion. I’ve heard of the enigmatic site at Meroë, two hours north of Khartoum,