River Spirit E-Book

Leila Aboulela

• Herausgeber: Saqi Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Saqi BookShelf
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When Akuany and her brother are orphaned in a village raid, they're taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As revolution begins to brew, led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Sudan begins to prise itself from Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, a decision that threatens to splinter his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with only Yaseen as her intermittent lifeline. Their struggle mirrors the increasingly bloody struggle for Sudan itself - for freedom, safety and the possibility of love. River Spirit illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. This is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age and unshakeable devotion - to a cause, to one's faith and to the people who become family.

Leseprobe

RIVER SPIRIT

ALSO BY LEILA ABOULELA

Bird Summons

Elsewhere, Home

The Kindness of Enemies

Lyrics Alley

Minaret

The Translator

Leila Aboulela

River Spirit

Saqi Books

26 Westbourne Grove London W2 5RH

www.saqibooks.com

Published in Great Britain 2023 by Saqi Books

Copyright © 2023 by Leila Aboulela

Published by arrangement with Grove Atlantic

Leila Aboulela has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Right Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 86356 917 3

eISBN 978 0 86356 922 7

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A

For Nadir, who also remembers

The Prophet Muhammad said, “I give you good tidings of the Mahdi. He will be sent at a time of conflict and earthquakes. Then he will fill the earth with equity and justice as it had been filled with tyranny and oppression. The dwellers of the heavens will be pleased with him as will be the dwellers of the earth. He will distribute wealth evenly among the people. And Allah will fill the hearts of Muhammad’s nation with contentment.”

Musnad Ahl al-Hadith

The Prophet Muhammad said, “If there was only one day left in this world, Allah would extend that day so that He sends a man from me or from my family, whose name matches my name and whose father’s name matches my father’s name. He will fill the earth with equity and justice as it had been filled with tyranny and oppression.”

Sunan Abu Dawud

Prologue

The Nuba Mountains, December 1881

Rabiha steps out of her hut, sets out to warn the Mahdi. The night is lit by a full yellow moon. She must not be seen by the soldiers surrounding the village. The governor of Fashoda is on the move, intent on annihilating the Mahdi once and for all. She must get to him first. Sounds of a shuffle, a pant: she turns to see the old hunting dog following her. She bends down, rummages on the ground, finds a mango stone, and throws it at the dog. She picks up a chewed bit of sugarcane. It is still in her hand when she reaches the outskirts of the village. The vegetation thickens and rising out of the shadows is a Shilluk warrior, posted to ensure that no one leaves the area, certainly not before the planned surprise attack against the rebels. Spear in hand, muscular torso above his loincloth, the physique of a wrestler. She stiffens, drops the bit of sugarcane. Fight or run, fight or run? She reaches for her knife. She turns so that he can see her in full. Curves, breasts, glow of shoulder, long braids. She forces her body into limpness, hangs her long neck in submission, hides her hand behind her back, palm tight over the knife. He approaches, first with caution, then the start of a swagger. Makes low soothing sounds as if she were a skittish calf, lone antelope, stray prey. He must be near enough now to scent the sandalwood she uses in her hair to drench the smell of grease; she can see the decorative row of bead-like scarring across his forehead. He drops his spear; she waits a beat and aims down at his stomach. There is hardly any sound apart from the thud of his body on the ground. She looks around, grabs his spear, and runs.

She knows this land, every path, where it is smooth and where it is rocky. She had discarded her usual layered shoes, slipped her feet in flat tanned leather, tied the strings all the way up her calves. She can move faster like this, and she needs to be fast. Needs to warn them. Herding her goats as she did every morning, she had passed the hut of the village chief and overheard the conversation. The Turkish binbashi sent by Rashid Bey, the governor, to say that the assembled force intends the village no harm, they come in peace, passing through Kinana land, and heading up the mountains where the rebels have fled. The binbashi requested volunteers from the village but sensed a reluctance. Hence the imposed curfew, the prohibition against anyone leaving, in case they alerted the rebels.

Last week the Mahdi with his community had been received warmly by Rabiha’s tribe. She had been one of the many who gathered to listen to him preach, entranced by his manners and compassionate smile, pierced by his words. She had pledged allegiance to his cause, to renounce material things and not shirk from jihad. These promises felt like a weighty responsibility she would carry forever. She was an orphan, brought up in the care of her older sister. Her father had died worn out by the tyranny of the Ottoman invaders, their cruel incessant taxes, their disregard for people’s circumstances. Rabiha remembered his anxiety the year his sugar crop failed; how could he pay what he didn’t have? Crushed by debt and made small, always.

Rabiha keeps striding, bloody knife stuffed into the wide cloth she had wrapped around her hips and thighs. The new spear in her right hand. There are poisonous snakes, and she must be careful. There are thorny bushes, scattered rocks jutting out; there could be, if she were unlucky, a lion or a hyena. She can hear their cries. All these dangers but the most pressing one is that she might not get there in time. Jebel Gadir is far away, normally a two-day journey. And she must cover that distance in one night. She runs.

When she runs, she feels the amulets she is wearing bounce against her chest and biceps, sacred words in tiny leather pouches, the red tassels that tie them fluttering against her skin. The newest amulet was given to her by the Mahdi himself. Not enough that the Expected One smiled at her but to give her this special protection too! First, she had asked for amulets for her two daughters. Then she asked for one for herself. It had been a special day when he arrived, the sky soft, the world bright. Every day of his visit had been charged with a particular aura, his sermons changing the daily life of the people, stirring hopes in them. He was the one they had been expecting, he was the Guided One mentioned by the prophecies. But Rabiha’s husband had been skeptical. He was cautious by nature, and she respected him for that. But his concerns—fear of disruption, fear of change—were what they were, just fears. So, she did not tell him that she was going out tonight. He would have stopped her. Forbade her or at least dampened her resolve. And to cover all this distance, she must not be distracted, not by a marital disagreement and certainly not by lack of confidence. So, she had slipped out of their warm bed as soon as he started snoring. He would not notice her absence until dawn.

The cold breeze scalds her face and bare arm, the right one that isn’t covered by the brown muslin shawl. The breeze finds its way through to her thighs. Running is making her warm, though, and she must keep it up. To cover distance and keep warm. Searching for the flatter paths up the mountain, but perhaps there will be a delay in doing so, better take the shortcuts. Shortcuts she had taken as a child. Not for her the sitting still, clinging to her mother’s clothes. She did not remember her mother clearly. Always ill, spread out on a mat, calling out for water. Enough to break the heart or make you want to run away, up the green mountain, under the sun. Rabiha, Rabiha, it is as if she can hear her mother calling her. Feeble voice, a hint of reproach.

She feels thirsty. The sky is clear, the moon near. She can see the pockmarks on its surface, brown frizzles, unruly. No time for gazing, she must run faster. Her shawl is caught by brambles. Irritated, she yanks it away and hears it rip. Never mind. She can mend it later. When dawn breaks, her absence will be noted. But they will guess where she has gone. All day, as the news spread around the village, they had been whispering about Rashid’s impending attack. When volunteers didn’t step forward, or at least not enough of them, it had been clear that the village was sympathetic to the rebels. Rashid’s next strategy was to encircle it with warriors from the Shilluk tribe, loyal to the government, and enforce a blockade. No one allowed to leave. For the attack on the rebels to succeed, the element of surprise was essential.

Surely by now, if the man she killed had been discovered, they would have been after her. She is safe from Rashid’s men but not from the animals of the forest. Run and stay alert for the gleam of an eye, listen for a low growl. Loud are the frogs, on and on they croak, insects chirp. Pass through the forest or circle round it? The quickest route is the priority, no matter what. She has done this trip before but never so quickly, never with this much urgency, never alone or at night. The moonlight is less yellow now, more silver. On such a night, the moon overshadows the stars. She could have used them to navigate her way too. No matter, memory serves her well. She will not get lost. She must not get lost. There is no time for errors.

This is why she does not stop when she feels the sting. What sting? No, nothing. Her right heel. Must have scratched a tree trunk, picked up a thorn. She is desperate to stop, sit down, cradle her foot, squint to see if there are, God forbid, two puncture wounds made by fangs. Or grope with her fingers to take the thorn out. But she cannot sit. She is halfway there. Pulling herself up on hands and balls of her feet. It could be that she had upset a nest, aroused the one animal she dare not name.

Fatigue. It is to be expected. How many hours ago did she leave her hut, leave her village, encounter the Shilluk fighter? She is definitely more than halfway there. Too late to go back. Too late to go back means she will go forward, she will keep going, she will arrive in time. She stumbles and falls. The spear rattles down next to her, pain in knees. Facedown, she smells the rich, dark soil. How heavy she breathes and wants to stay there just like this, crouched in this ludicrous position, as if prostrating in prayer—a variation of that, distorted, not quite right. Not comfortable either, but she is catching her breath, and it is pleasant not to move, to feel drowsy, to be still, leg muscles burning. How is her foot? She is not sure, the sensations in her body a blur. A distinctive pinch in her right foot. Not good. She should look at it, treat it. Speed is essential for such a bite. But who says it is a bite? Speed is essential, too, for tonight’s mission. She leaps up and smiles because she can leap up. She is not beaten. She runs.

If she had packed some dates, she would have stuffed one in her mouth now. Imaginary sweetness and she runs. Spits out the stone that doesn’t exist, emerges into a clearing. Yes, she remembers this place, a favorite, gives the impression of a small village abandoned, though it might not be so, just her fancy, just because it is flat and clear. Not long to go now, another few hours. She picks up speed.

Her foot hurts. She can’t deny it now. There is a throb in her right foot. There is a strange feeling as if the skin is stretched. She slows down to a walk. Chides herself and starts to jog until she cannot bear the hard impact on her swollen foot. It reminds her of when she was pregnant. The first time, her ankles swelled a week before the birth. She stared at them in fascination, peering over her rounded stomach, wondering why they were suddenly so fat. In the second pregnancy, the swelling started a month earlier than the birth. She would dig her finger in the top of her foot and leave the imprint of a pit. Her feet pliant as mud. Perhaps this is how it is now, but she has no time to sit. Walk fast if she cannot run. Walk faster and faster and faster.

Nothing in her hand. Where is the spear? She must have dropped it but can’t remember. No matter, she can see her destination. She can see her destination now. She sprints, her foot protests, she hobbles, she runs, lopsided, drags her foot. Dawn breaking and she is there, there, at her destination, passing those sleeping in the open air, makeshift tents, livestock, thatched huts built in haste—all that she expects of a new community. Fragile, fledgling, fresh with hope, alive with promise. And where is he? She will speak to no one else. She will report to no other.

People are waking up, the clank of water pitchers for ablutions, time for the prayer. She is sweating, wants to quench her thirst, but she must speak out first. She makes her way through, keeps going, asks for directions, arrives, requests to see him. Her progress is blocked. They ask, Why do you want him? Who are you? Who sent you? She is panting. Best to pause until she gets her breath back. If she wants to be taken seriously. The sky lights up, night recedes. She dares not look down at her foot. Instead, she looks at the ivory bracelet on her left arm. It has high ridges, and she can make out the engraving of the lion in the middle. She can distinguish people’s faces, a nose knocked out, a wild white beard. Woman, what do you want from him? She can make out people’s expressions. One lanky fighter after the other looks her up and down, assesses her, approves her body, doubts her story. Rage flares through her. She hits out against this wall of belittlement and disregard. Because she’s a woman. Is that why she is doubted? No, she will not be silenced; she will not be brushed aside, not after what she has gone through. She stands her ground, stands her ground tall, though the pain in her foot is intense now, sending up waves of nausea. She must not be sick, not now. Not now.

She will speak to no one else but him. She will not be patronized, brushed aside, doubted. She raises her voice and demands. Insists. What she has to say is crucial. No, it cannot wait. Yes, she is sure. Where is he? She pushes her way. She pushes her way into a space where there is not a single woman. There is nothing to be afraid of. She has transcended shyness, politeness, anxiety. Even femininity. There is only her urgency and there is no time.

He will see her. He has just finished praying and he will see her. She must not look at those surrounding him, those who judge her a waste of time, label her a distraction, brand her an entertainment, even before she has opened her mouth. It is to him she had been running all night and to him she will talk.

She starts, “I am Rabiha from the Kinana tribe. I came to warn you.”

“I remember you,” he says, and around him those who had been skeptical start to listen. Those who were distracted and talking among themselves pay attention.

He remembers her. He remembers her. Confident now, she says what she knows. The planned timing of the impending attack, the size of Rashid Bey’s army, the route that they are taking. He believes her. She knows he does because of the way he listens, the questions he asks. The way he says, “You ran through the night.”

When she is done, when her words result in men leaping to their feet, in action being taken, in plans being set in motion, preparations being made, when she is done, she can look down at her swollen foot.

She can see what she didn’t want to see, the two puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs. The poison is spreading as she staggers around, not knowing where to go. She has fulfilled her mission, said her piece, and now this pain. She gives in to it, after holding out for so long, there are no defenses, no need to fight, no need to run. She does not faint, she chooses to stretch out on the ground. How tired she is!

She wakes up in a tent. There is movement outside. “You are our guest,” a woman says. The Mahdi’s guest. She is his wife and looks down at Rabiha with concern. Offers her a drink of water. Rabiha swallows and wants to know what happened. Did Rashid attack? The woman replies, and Rabiha visualizes what she tells her, sees images of the forest where the Mahdi’s men hid, the brilliant trap he set. Divided his men into three groups. Arranged them in a crescent. Springing out just as half of Rashid’s army were emerging from the forest and the other half still inside it. Chaos and victory. Rashid Bey killed. Hundreds taken as captives. Spears and sticks overpowering guns. And the booty—a lot of it—the booty! Firearms, horses, uniforms. The news spreading across the country, another spectacular victory for the Mahdi and, consequently, more tribes joining his cause. Rabiha, you saved us. Strengthened and saved us all. We will drive these foreigners out of our lands. It will be Al-Ubayyid next. Sennar, Darfur, Khartoum.

She swims in and out of consciousness, her whole right leg now swollen rigid. She hears the whispers, grim. The poison has spread; we’ve called for her family.

It is her sister who is hugging her, tears in her eyes. She has brought with her the girls. Rabiha basks in her daughters’ sweetness, breathes in the scent of their youth, draws them close to her, close, close. Where is your father? He is on the way.

Rabiha understands his reluctance. It is disapproval that makes his feet slow. Disapproval that she had done what she had done without telling him. Let alone asking for his permission. But he will come. She knows he will. When she sees him, he is a shadow, sitting at a distance. It is the girls who are with her, their lips near her ear, “Yumma, Yumma,” their arms heavy on her neck.

“Ask your husband for forgiveness,” her sister says, but Rabiha twists away from tradition. With each last breath, she is a rebel, striving to become more than an obedient wife. She is Rabiha, the woman from Kinana who changed the course of a revolution.

Later, with the sun high in the sky, the Mahdi leads her funeral prayer.

1

Akuany

Malakal, September 1877

The river was her language. Eleven-year-old Akuany stood in the shallow, humming Nile, listening to what the water was saying, believing. Reeds moved in the breeze. The river smelled of fish; its surface was silk. Akuany pressed her feet in the sticky mud, looked down at the shifting cloth that covered her hips. The raised tribal decorations on her stomach were now in the water. She bent her knees, and her breasts became wet. They were uncomfortable these days, the areolas soft and stretched. Older boys pinched them and laughed even though it pained her. Women looked at her with sympathy. Motherless child, her toddler brother, Bol, perched on her hip. They thought her mature for her age, but here in the water she was carefree, teasing the fish because they were too slippery to catch. The river was a place to draw water and wash, to fish and set sail, and for her it was more, the spirit of who she was. The place that kept her safe when they raided the village.

On the bank she could see Yaseen, the young merchant from Khartoum, her father’s guest, sitting reading. Bol was squatting near him, reaching to clasp his ebony prayer beads. A wisp of smoke rose over the village, more than a wisp. She saw it, but it did not alarm her at first. Hitting her palms against the water, she could hear Bol babbling, the merchant saying something to him in return. The woman who was washing her clothes admonished her daughter. None of them heard the horses neighing, the huts catching fire, the screams of those who were speared and those who were shackled to be driven away to the slave markets farther north.

When the woman washing the clothes turned and saw the smoke, she cried out. She ran up the bank, anxious about her younger children, hurling herself toward danger. Yaseen, the merchant, called out to her, but she didn’t listen, and her daughter went with her too. Akuany and her brother stayed with Yaseen. He understood the meaning of the smoke. The three of them waited for hours. Akuany’s skin dried, and she held Bol on her lap. At first, she was soothed by the songs of the river. Then she felt hungry and Yaseen had no food. Her brother whined and Yaseen told him to be quiet. “Go to sleep, both of you,” he said. And they did. They curled up next to him and fell asleep with their stomachs rumbling.

Akuany had always liked Yaseen. He came from Khartoum to buy gum from her father, carrying back the balls in large baskets hitched to his camels. He came once a year after the rains stopped and the roads dried. When he was younger, he used to come with his father, but Akuany had only shadowy memories of the older man. Yaseen brought sweets for Akuany, and because he smiled and had a nice way of talking, their home would change in his presence. It would feel like feast days even though it wasn’t. Yaseen usually stayed with them a week but to Akuany it always felt longer. There was the excitement of preparing for his arrival. For days her father would pick or tap gum from the acacia trees that grew wild. How beautiful the gum looked, glistening in the sun! She had tasted it once and it got stuck to her teeth. There would be a special welcoming meal for the Khartoum merchant, which, now that her mother was gone, was cooked by the neighbors with the millet flour and vegetables brought by her father. After Yaseen finished eating, he would look up, his fingers still sticky with food and say, “Akuany will take me to the river.” He said it as if he could not go there on his own, as if he had forgotten the way. She would lead him, charged with pride. When she was younger, she chatted all the way. This time, though, she had been uncharacteristically shy. He did not go into the water with her. He never did. He would sit with a toothpick in his mouth or his prayer beads or book, the folio pages held between hard covers, which he was careful not to smudge with water or mud. He would gaze at the water or if it was late afternoon up at the sky, and often Akuany, playing in the water, would forget his presence.

Fearful, they spent the whole night at the river. The merchant kept saying, “Some of the raiders might still be there. They’ll take us too.” Then he would sigh and say, “Oh the loss.” Then he would pray. On the morning of the following day, he went back on his own. He was not gone long, but Bol would not stop crying. When Yaseen came back, he looked like he had been crying, too, but he had food with him. Sesame seeds, a bruised mango, and dried bread that the children gobbled while he sat away from them with his face in his hands. He told her not to go back with him to the village, and when she insisted, he said she must close her eyes. “Don’t look, don’t look, Akuany.” But she did look and saw things broken, upside down, distorted and in their distortions lopsided and looming up at her. Homes burnt to ashes, beddings and utensils smashed, livestock vanished. Healing powder knocked out of a horn, cracked mortar, grains of millet scattered on the ground. The elderly roamed like ghosts in the remaining smoke. The disabled and ill tossed aside. Not a single beautiful white cow to be found. All the vitality gone or going, for it was not safe to remain in such a vulnerable spot. The raiders might come back for the remaining able-bodied. She choked on the smoke, gulped fire; tears ran down her face. Yaseen kept saying, “Close your eyes, don’t look!” She closed them and still saw horrors, could not keep them closed. Opened them to see the worst thing of all. In the epicenter of the devastation was her father, splayed flat in front of their hut, speared to death.

Yaseen buried their father and took charge. Akuany and Bol were his responsibility now. He would take them back with him to Khartoum. A month ago—a week ago—such a prospect would have filled her with adventurous delight. To be with him on a journey, to be taken to his home, which must be grander than hers. His city, which was bigger. To be with his family eating the same food. A day ago, she might have been beaming, but now she could hardly understand what he was saying. His voice, his orders, reached her from a faraway place, his face close to hers repeating her name. “You must stop crying and look after your brother. We must pack what we can and get out of here!” Where is this, where is that? In one surreal moment he found her mother’s jewelry and pushed bracelets up her arms and around her ankles, strung beads around her neck. She would sink and he would yank her back. She would drift, and he would pull. She would drown if he lost his grip.

A storm in her body, still wailing, and they were on the road. He had lost his camels of course, lost his merchandise. There was one donkey left and they set out on it. The three of them. No lingering aunt or distraught villager disputed the merchant’s claim over the children. An adult rescuing two orphans? Or human flesh as compensation for his material loss? He seemed to know what he was doing, and the alternative was to remain in the carcass of the village with neither means nor protection. He was the children’s savior and now they were his.

The road was not without its dangers either. Or raiders. The donkey might collapse before they reached the next village. Her little brother was not well; he fidgeted and fretted for water. Sometimes, he felt listless in her arms. In the villages they passed, people knew the merchant and he knew them. The travelers were given food and hospitality, Yaseen holding court, repeating the tragic events, enumerating his losses. This was not tribal warfare in which prisoners were enslaved until they were ransomed. These were unscrupulous raiders looking to sell human flesh up north! His listeners shook their heads in sympathy or muttered prayers for the coming of the Expected Redeemer, the promised Mahdi, who would pull them all out of their misery, who would bring justice and peace to the world after it had been filled with tyranny.

Akuany could not grieve for her father. She could not remember how he looked or sounded before the spear struck him. That was the most vivid memory she had of him now, horrific and evil. Everything before that faded. When her mind drifted toward him—and it did so often—his murder obliterated everything else and she was gripped with pain, the kind that didn’t bring tears to her eyes. Instead, it made her shiver in a strange way so that the merchant would ask, “What’s wrong with you?” He would put his warm hand on her forehead and throat, which she found comforting, and then say, “But you don’t have a fever.”

She was afraid of the men who had killed her father, who had destroyed the village and taken the other children away. She had heard about how the boys were shackled and thrust into the army and how the girls were sold as concubines. She had heard that they were never ever reunited with their families again. Was this what was happening now to her best friend, Alek? To her neighbors, Kenyi and Deng? To Taban, the bully?

After days on the road, her head began to clear. Her father’s death withdrew from the rest of her body and settled as a concentrated pain in her chest. She could look around and see the land they were traveling through, the different browns and lesser greens. She could feel the burning sun on her head and the weight of Bol leaning against her. She could bathe in the small streams and waterways they stopped at. She could watch the merchant giving water to the donkey. He had been tense; now slowly he was becoming more like his usual self. She felt a new ache for him that she didn’t understand. It came from the loss of her father, the wildness of the past days. He held her when she screamed, until her eyes turned red and her voice rasped in her throat. He brought her water and said, “Drink.” He lifted his finger and said, “One thing. Only one thing I want from you. Do you know? I want you to eat.” Repeated it until she was, at the end, able to chew and swallow.

After a couple of weeks, soothed by the rhythms of the journey, she began to note her new life. At sunset, the merchant would start to find a suitable place for the night. A shelter from wild animals and potential enemies. He would pray, and then they would settle under the starlight. He would lie down, toothpick in his mouth, and she would sit next to him asking questions. “What is Khartoum like? Does it have a river?”

“A mightier one.”

“Does it hum like our river?”

“It roars.”

“Are there boats on it?”

“Lots. Steamers too. Government steamers.”

“I saw a steamer once in Fashoda. My father took me there.” The whole family had gone to visit the homestead mound of the Chollo king. But she could not talk about her father without breaking down.

They traveled northwest. Away from the White Nile, circling the Nuba Mountains, heading toward the desert. On the outskirts of a village, they stopped at the hut of a woman who seemed to live on her own. She was effusive in her welcome, warm, and plump; her lower lip and gums were tattooed with indigo, breasts big and soft under her wrapper. She greeted the merchant with familiarity, then lamentations at his story. “And these two were all you gained!” She put her hands on her hips. Her food was better than they had eaten for days. Asida freshly pounded, spinach stew with goat’s meat. The woman held Bol in her arms, cleaned the mucous from his nose, poured warm oil in his ears, fed him mouthful after mouthful. She bathed him and he slept after that, the kind of peaceful sleep he had not enjoyed for a long time.

The children lay down in the clearing in front of the hut, while the woman and merchant chatted by the fire. Listening to the sounds of the night, searching for the tunes of the river and not finding them, Akuany started to doze. She woke to the laugh of the woman. “How old are you, anyway? Eighteen?”

“Twenty.”

“Because you’re penniless, that’s what’s keeping you from going in the hut with me?” The merchant’s reply was inaudible.

“I can take the boy.”

Akuany now heard his sharp reply. “Of course not.”

She fell asleep after this until the pale light. When the merchant was busy feeding his donkey, the woman spoke to Akuany. “You are a fresh pretty girl and valuable too. Do you understand? You can’t go around like this covered only in a skirt! I will give you something.”

It was an old and tattered piece of cloth, but its color was still bright. She showed Akuany how to wrap it crossways over her chest. “Anytime now you will bloom, and your virginity is precious. He is your master now, and you must save it for him. He is still young, without a wife and children; he will get them in time, but you are separate from all that. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Your body isn’t for anyone else.”

Akuany turned to see him walking toward them. He looked grumpy, impatient to get going.

“Aren’t you going to tell Akuany she’s pretty, all dressed up?”

The merchant grunted. He was not interested in Akuany’s clothes. “I suppose I now owe you for that.”

She laughed, such an attractive laugh, which captivated Akuany. “I don’t trust you. Men are fickle. The cloth is between me and the girl.” She touched one of the blue bead bracelets on Akuany’s arm. Akuany took it off and gave it to her. The woman looked at it and smiled, then shook her head and handed it back to Akuany. “And wrap up your mother’s jewelry too. You can’t go about laden like that.”

They continued to travel. Days squashed against him in the saddle, nights gazing up at the sky. She watched how he lit a fire, the way he hoisted her brother up in the air, the way he opened his palm, and it was full of peanuts. It was his custom to have a nap at midday. He would find shade and barely disembark before passing out on the sand. She liked watching his face when he woke up, how his eyebrows twitched up high before he opened his eyes. He would then raise a hand to swat away a fly or wipe his face. There would be a confused look in his eyes, one that she cherished, as if he did not know who she was and when he realized he would smile and say her name. She did not know that she was living some of the sweetest days of her life. How would she guess, crushed between the horror left behind and the unknown future, the discomforts of travel, the disorientation? They were often thirsty, now that the river was behind them, now that they were treading sand and dry scrub. The merchant bought water from other travelers who carried large waterskins on their camels. Once a camel knelt and rolled over a waterskin. It punctured and they watched as the sand soaked up every drop, while the camel’s owner tried in vain to hold on to what remained in the damaged waterskin. The merchant knew the way and they never got lost. They passed villages whose languages Akuany couldn’t understand, whose ways were different, and the only two people she knew were her brother and the merchant.

The town of Al-Ubayyid had a color; it was reddish brown. Rows of mud and straw houses stretching out, a brick tower in the center surrounded by a low government building with an arched entrance, the bustle of western Sudan’s most prosperous markets, soldiers on horses. There was a special excitement the day they arrived, and they found themselves caught up in the crowd that was gathered to greet the new governor-general of Sudan, Gordon Pasha. He had been seconded from the British army to the Ottomans, appointed by the khedive in Egypt. There he was on top of a lithe, feisty camel that he had purchased from one of the local merchants. A camel that was capering now and dancing to the delight of the crowd. Akuany had seen Europeans before, the overdressed, puzzling missionaries who built a large house in Fashoda, who planted roses and liked the sounds of bells. General Gordon was just like them. When he lifted his helmet, the rays of the sun caught the brightness of his hair. “That camel should run with him now to his palace in Khartoum,” people in the crowd said. They chuckled at the delight he took in his new camel. They said that he had been listening to claims, that his remit was to end corruption and end the slave trade too. Akuany, listening, wanted to know if they would be set free then, her friends, her neighbors who were taken from her village? Alek, Deng, Taban, Kenyi? Would they go back home? The merchant didn’t reply. How fine General Gordon’s saddle was! Embroidered and with colorful tassels. How pleased he looked with his hopes and his camel.

The merchant’s sister, Halima, lived in Al-Ubayyid. Her husband, Hassan, was an officer serving Gordon Pasha’s host, the local Turkish governor. They had five children, all girls, the eldest ready for marriage, the youngest Bol’s age, the middle ones close to Akuany in height. It was bewildering to enter this home. In an instant she lost her merchant. He became the honored guest, the bachelor uncle arriving empty-handed without his laden camels and usual gifts. But what did you bring us this time, Uncle? A scrawny, sickly toddler and an unkempt little girl.

She became an object of ridicule. “Don’t you know anything?” they said. Although the family’s house was simple—a hoash, a women’s room, a men’s room, the latrine—Akuany was confused. She could not feel the river, not a single note nor a whiff of its water. People lived like that! And water came to them from wells. When the cannon was fired to mark the departure of General Gordon, Akuany was petrified. She made a better impression helping with the household tasks, milking the goats and sweeping the hoash.

“I want to keep the boy,” the merchant’s sister said.

Akuany held her breath. It was getting dark in the hoash, and she was sitting with the other children. They had just finished eating.

“He needs his sister,” the merchant replied. “I don’t want them separated.”

“Fine,” Halima replied, and Akuany breathed. They would be back on the road, the three of them like before. He would take them to Khartoum.

But Halima then said, “Leave them both. The boy’s health has just started to improve. He would be better off here. You can take them when you come again. You won’t wait a full year, you said. So, it won’t be too long.”

Six months. She would have to wait months, live among strangers. In addition to the children, the household also included Halima’s mother-in-law, who was bedridden. The elderly woman addressed Akuany as khadim, fetch me this and fetch me that. Halima corrected her, saying that Akuany and her brother were orphans and not enslaved. She corrected her mother-in-law once, twice, and then let the matter drop.

As for Bol, he was adored in this household full of girls. “Our boy,” Halima would say, and soon she was feeling possessive about him, making plans for his circumcision ceremony. When he was a little older, she would do it. An opportunity to invite her friends, a celebration, a meal. “But we will be in Khartoum by then,” Akuany said.

“You might be in Khartoum,” Halima laughed. “But not our boy.” She was not being unkind to Akuany. She gave her new clothes for Eid and medicine for her eyes when they once got red and scratchy; she showed her how to hide her mother’s jewelry by digging a safe spot in the corner of the hoash. She was attentive and motherly when Akuany started her monthly bleeding. But Bol came first; he mattered. Halima wanted to give him a new Arabic name; she would send him with the other boys to the khalwa to learn to read the Qur’an. Perhaps in the far future she would arrange a marriage between him and her youngest daughter. Then he would truly become the son of the house. A legitimate son-in-law. At first no one took her seriously, not even Hassan, but with time her fantasies started to sink into the fabric of the house.

Akuany waited months for her Khartoum merchant. She learned from his nieces how to wear slippers, how to speak Arabic, how she must never shave her head. Buthaina, the eldest niece, was beautiful, with a full round face and clear skin. Akuany tried to copy her as much as she could, covering her hair and not laughing out loud. Sometimes Buthaina sneered at her, often she was kind, but she and her sisters were always superior because Akuany was an orphan, because they were dark brown and she was dark black, because they were circumcised and she was not. She learned how to fast in Ramadan; she tasted tea for the first time. The azan started to sound normal, so did the cannon fired at Eid, so did the fearsome sight of the Turkish governor’s bodyguards, known as the Baltagiya, walking in town in their white tunics, brandishing their whips.

She loved running errands in the souq, the green courgettes and red onions, black aubergines and yellow peppers, sugarcane stacked high, sacks of sesame, senna, and tamarind, dusty ostrich feathers. The livestock souq was even better. There invariably would be a beautiful white cow, one she would gravitate toward, cooing even before she reached it. She could not help but rub her cheeks against its hide, speak her language, gaze into its eye and recognize a kind of sadness. Then the din of the souq would recede, the clamor of voices bartering and calling out, the smells of sweat and wares—and she would be back in her village, the cow prized and coveted, a measure of wealth and pride.

She avoided the slave market. The misery of it, pain pressed tight in human chests, the humiliation of the viewing. It filled her with dread. Instead of searching for familiar faces from her village, her instinct was to look away, to duck her head and move unnoticed. She was not capable of helping anyone. Violence was not far away. The governor’s Baltagiya did not brandish their whips for show. Grown men (and sometimes women) yelping and slithering in the dust, their skin split open, their clothes stained with blood, watched by crowds made merry with relief that they were not the ones being punished.

News came from Khartoum of Halima and the merchant’s father’s death. She wept and the neighborhood women gathered round, came and stayed with her for a few days. Akuany served them water and tea. Some of them called her khadim and others would correct them and say, “Halima is bringing up her brother as her own child.”

Did this mean that she would be going to Khartoum without Bol? Should she stay? But she could not stay; if she were staying, she would not be waiting, waiting like she was now, conscious of the months passing, heat, dust storms, rains. She belonged to him, but at the same time the tie with Bol was tighter; they were kin. But if he stayed in Al-Ubayyid, she could not stay here with strangers who didn’t know about the river like her merchant did, who didn’t speak to her like he did, who hadn’t seen her as she truly was, mouthing the water words, naked and listening to the river. Oh, how she missed it and could never feel settled in a town where people could not feast their eyes on the moving blue or set sail or eat fish. Her merchant, her river—she yearned for them both.

He did come before the year was out, glorious on a camel as she used to see him arrive in her village. The rush of joy, but she was oppressed with shyness, struck dumb in his presence, silent as his nieces and Bol captured his attention. And why not let them? They could have him here in Al-Ubayyid as much as they wanted. She was the one who was going to travel with him. She was going to ride his camel, up high. She was going to listen to his voice and wake him up each day from his siesta. It was enough for now to meet his eyes as he spoke to others, to hold her breath when she overheard him saying her name to guests and family. “I used to barter with her father down south . . .” “Her father supplied me with the best gum, may Allah have mercy on his soul.” She would smile and not be able to stop smiling because he was speaking about her; he was telling them who she really was. “Yes, from the Shilluk,” he would say. “Chollo,” she would correct him, wanting him to notice her, reveling in the description of her village. Verdant, green, lush, the White Nile pouring—yes, true, it had been like that and more.

He was busy in Al-Ubayyid. Every morning at the souq, every evening visiting other merchants or at the mosque with Hassan, or sometimes they would visit him, too, and chat by lantern light. Complaints about the extortionate taxes levied by the Turks, a story of how General Gordon granted mass liberation to the enslaved in Al-Fasher, all because Egypt had signed an anti-slavery convention with Britain. And what does that have to do with us? Bad enough the Turks and Egyptians are ruling us; now they went and got us a Christian to meddle in our affairs!

One night, after seeing his guests off, he found her in the shadows waiting, as she had been instructed by Halima to clear up after the guests. Alone with him for the first time. He said, “How are you getting on, Akuany? Are you happy here?”

She replied as his nieces would have replied, decidedly demure, “Alhamdulilah I am well and happy.”

He said, “Halima is clinging to Bol. She will not let him go.”

“Yes.”

“And what do you say about that? Shouldn’t you be with your brother too?”

“No.”

She sensed him smile in the dark. “Why not?”

“Because I am going with you to Khartoum.”

“You would be better off here, Akuany.”

The tears rose to her eyes, but she would not make a sound. He continued, “You see, my circumstances have changed with my father’s death. He left us, his children, a shop, and I decided to sell my share to my brothers and go to Egypt to study. The life of a merchant is not for me. It’s too full of temptations and insecurity. This trading trip is my last. I’m doing it to settle my debts. You see, I want the peace in books. I want to study at Al-Azhar, and when I come back, there will be employment for me.”

“I will come with you,” she said. “I can serve you wherever.” She reached for his hand. It was warm, just like she remembered.

“You’re far too young. It is better that you stay here with Halima. Better for you and remember, you will be with Bol. It is the right decision.” He let go of her hand. She needed it after all, to cover her face.

He was gone four years and in those four years many things happened. Buthaina rejected a suitor with so little prospects that his offer was deemed an insult; instead she married the son of a local dignitary. Bol became Ishaq and started Qur’an school. Dust storms came and the wells filled up in the rainy season. People were taxed and they were taxed and they were taxed. They comforted themselves with talk of the Expected Redeemer, the Guided One who would appear and save them from destitution. During these four years, Akuany emerged from childhood to find that she could not be safe. And though Halima had made promises to her brother—to care for Akuany as if she were one of the family, to honor her as an orphan should be honored—when the time came, Halima could not protect her.

2

Yaseen

Cairo, May 1881

At night, the streets are lit by gaslight and even after living here for years, I am still in awe. I walk among the throng of people heading to the Azbakeya garden pulled by the tunes of the military band. The air crackles with smoke from the vendors grilling. How can there be so much beauty in darkness, so much wakeful movement! Now that the khedive has given us this nighttime glory, no one wants to go to bed. His Majesty has built gardens and planted trees, extended neighborhoods. There are mansions here that I only imagined existing in Paradise. My heart fills with gratitude that I can be a witness to such progress, that I can return home to Sudan and tell others about this.

I am completing my studies at that most prestigious of universities, Al-Azhar. There are a handful of us from Sudan, like my good friend Isma’il, and many who are dark-skinned such as myself, brothers from Mauritania, Senegal, and the lands of the warrior Usman Dan Fodio. There are students from India and China, yes, China. And from islands that are even farther away. It took them months to get here. I revel in their company and respect the effort they put into studying the Arabic language, which is not their mother tongue. I attempt to ease their burden by reminding them that my mother tongue is a colloquial form of Arabic and that is the situation, too, with our teachers. We do not converse socially in the language of the Qur’an. We, too, need to be taught to understand it.

I excel at my lessons because of a natural aptitude, all praise to the Almighty; more than one teacher has remarked on my precision. I will return to a junior post in the central government or a position with a wider reach in the provinces, administering the religious affairs of the people. Justice, justice, justice. It is instilled in us every day. Without it the strong squash the weak, men tyrannize women, the rich steal from the poor, and corruption ravages the land. Daily I study Allah’s words so that I can expand, so that I can be alive and not only living, so that I can tell the real from the fake. I pore over books and imbibe the words of the learned so that I can weigh options and choose the path of least harm. So that I can distinguish science from superstition, vanity from initiative, so that I can understand that even scholars make mistakes, act on ego; so that I can be suspicious of anger, mindful of self-interest, cautious of my instincts, and all that put together to uphold Allah’s religion, so that His word can be supreme, so that His light can benefit my people. For years I dreamt of this student life, wanted it but was not certain I could acquire it. In Sudan, I traveled to the south and the west buying gum, cayenne pepper, sorghum, spices, and ostrich feathers to sell in Khartoum. Commerce never interested me, but travel did.

Travel is a component of our religion. If it were not so, then the Hajj would not be compulsory for every able man or woman who can afford it. We are commanded to travel the world and to contemplate Allah’s glory in the vast differences of His creation, to see with our eyes the remnants of past civilizations. I myself have made a point of visiting the pyramids and of reminding myself of the tyranny Pharaoh practiced over the children of Israel. I stood on the shores of the sea in Alexandria. I visited the shrines of saints and companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. The world is an open book, but few know how to read it.