Moving the Palace Page 3

  But things soon change. They enter the territories where Bellal is said to have been active, and have the sympathies of the tribal chieftains. No sooner does day break than horses and messengers set out ahead, east, west, and south, as if radiating from the column’s advance in every direction, and at night, upon reaching camp, which has been pitched as per usual, not only are the colonel’s tent, rugs, and furniture waiting but also four sheikhs from the Kawahla tribes, all in ceremonial garb: great white robes, imposing headgear, and swords at their sides, each accompanied by a small retinue. And this time, the meal is more sumptuous. Quails, partridges, pheasants served in sauce, gazelle chops, and then fruit, one after the next, while the colonel discusses with the sheikhs through the intermediaries of Maher and Samuel. They bring up Bellal, of course, but the chieftains swear they’ve never seen him, that they’re faithful to the government, and that they’ve had enough of war and poverty. When Moore asks them if they’re ready to help him in the event of an encounter with Bellal, they say yes, without hesitation. Everyone is satisfied then, and continues the meal, sitting at a table set in the middle of the savannah. Lanterns light the feast and the long shadows, the crimson of the rugs tossed on the sand, the rigid soldiers waiting on them and the soft murmur of the encampment all around lend the scene a royal allure. And this royal aspect will keep leaping out at Samuel’s eyes. The next day it’s the same thing, groups riding on ahead to organize everything, others riding out to round up tribal chieftains, but this time the column arrives first and waits. Nefaydiya chieftains arrive next, one after another, like biblical Magi, on camels and bearing gifts, acacia honey, dates and date syrup, mutton fat; and dinner is served. Instead of wine, date nectar and perfumed water flow from ewers of silver or brass. Shortly before the chieftains arrive, Samuel remarks to the colonel that receiving these Sudanese at a table is not quite appropriate. Moore’s eye abruptly hardens, then relaxes, and that night, the banquet takes place on the ground, on rugs. They eat, elbows on cushions. They talk of the Mahdist rebellion and Samuel thinks himself in some Orientalist dream. The next morning, however, the troop inspection is fearsomely strict. We have returned to the heart of Western army discipline, the Oriental satrap is back to being a British colonel, and reviews the troops with a scowl; then a captain reads out the day’s agenda, and once more it is all about England, Egypt, the future of the world, of civilization, of order in the Sudan. When they leave this time, Moore, riding beside Samuel, engages in a bit of chitchat—very five o’clock tea—then brusquely changes tone and asks him what he thinks of Colonel Maher. And since Samuel remains quite discreet, the colonel gives him that unyielding look: “Don’t take me for an idiot, Mr. Ayyad. You’ve noticed perfectly well that he translates my conversations with the Sudanese chieftains quite carelessly. He doesn’t like them. To him, they’re all former Mahdists. He makes no effort. And he could’ve warned me earlier about that business with the table.” Samuel makes a face and tries to defend Maher. The colonel gives him another hard stare and then, glancing at the white shirt Samuel’s donned that day in his fanatical ambition to distinguish himself from the soldiers, he grumbles, gaze melting again, “Jolly nice shirt, that. But you don’t match my troops, old chap, you don’t match them at all!” And he bursts out in his famous laugh. That afternoon, it is Colonel Maher who confides in Samuel: “That Moore’s a madman, an unpredictable maverick. But he’s got backing. A childhood friend of John Baring’s, he was. He can get away with doing whatever he bloody well wants. If Baring becomes prime minister in London one day, Moore’ll be war secretary. Meanwhile, he struts about like an Oriental prince.” Samuel listens without batting an eye. He’d like to ask where Moore gets the money for all this luxury in the middle of a country so poor and stripped bare, but he doesn’t say a word, because he has no wish to hear Maher’s petty replies.

  One afternoon, they take a sharp turn and head back north to the gates of a town where Bellal was said to have been warmly welcomed a week ago. When the town is in sight, the colonel decides not to go in, and settles into an armchair in open country, under an acacia, like a king of old receiving surrender from the worthies of a besieged town. Around him, the officers and Samuel remain standing, and then from town come the worthies, in a group, alerted by their children and the local farmers. They bring gifts, which they lay on a rug at Moore’s feet, and launch into muddled explanations about their relationship with Bellal and the fact that they’ve never been able to deny him what he wants, on pain of being slaughtered. “Powerful as all that, is he?” Moore asks, and the town’s worthies, no doubt to justify their position, reply that he has hundreds of men, numbers three whole tribes among his followers, and has rifles. Before dismissing them, Moore reminds them that they haven’t paid taxes for three years, and faced with their contrition, accepts the gifts in compensation for their unpaid taxes, then has these distributed among his troops before setting out again. “Well, don’t look at me like that,” he says to Samuel that evening. “Those gifts are worth less than what they owed, and for once, the soldiers are benefiting directly from taxes. Everyone’s happy. Except you.” Two days later, as they’re nearing the mountains of Darfur and the lands of the Kababish, a caravan is reported to the west. Taking a small detachment that includes Samuel, the colonel hurries to meet it. They reach it at dusk, and it’s like boarding an enemy ship: the horses draw up alongside the camels, pressing close against them; there are shouts, orders, black men running every which way, and then the convoy stops, its leader comes to see what the matter is. During the consultation, the colonel declares there have been persistent rumors to the effect that the slave trade has picked up again. Samuel doesn’t know what to make of this strange excuse. The colonel alone is allowed to take a quick look at the few women in the convoy: three wives of a shopkeeper from Dongola traveling with their husband, and a nomad’s daughter he’ll marry up north. But no slaves. Meanwhile, night has fallen, swift as a stone. The rest of the regiment arrives, camp is made not far from the caravan, and as the night begins, the caravan’s leader insists on inviting the colonel and his officers to dinner, a meal also shared with the merchants from Dongola. During the vigil, around a fire that seems to take part in every conversation with its crackle—shooting out little sparks, slinking flat as a sheepish dog, or coming back to life at a bundle of twigs fed it by a black man who never opens his mouth, there is talk of desert routes and the slave trade, and such a good time is had that the next morning everyone sets out to hunt gazelle together. They leave at an hour when the sky is soft, and throughout the morning, Moore’s latest stylish rifles and the Sudanese’s long-barreled guns with their mother-of-pearl stocks, mingle their joyous dins and bring seven gazelles to the dust, an almost miraculous number. That night, in camp, the animals are carved up and portioned out. Colonel Moore has the English troops served wine and date syrup from his own share of gifts received. The bivouac is transformed into a great gathering that with its songs, its fires where gazelle fat drips and drink flows copiously, comes to resemble an encampment of barbarian mercenaries.

  That night, Samuel thinks to himself that it wouldn’t take much for Colonel Moore’s troops to turn, by slow degrees, into a column of irregulars imperceptibly outside the law, who would then set to scouring the lands they traveled, gradually going native and finally declaring their leader king of these realms. Just as these images are passing through his head, the colonel addresses him: “I know what you’re thinking, Mister Ayyad. You’re thinking that, instead of going to confront Bellal, I’m wasting my time with distractions worthy of a satrap. But can you tell me where to find this Bellal of yours? Besides, you’re probably right to think what you’re thinking—that I don’t want to go fight him, because I’d crush him like a bug. And I don’t want it to come to that. Have you read Slatin Pasha, Mister Ayyad? Yes? Then you must remember the Austrian’s descriptions of the Mahdi’s weapons, thousands of Negro soldiers with their white turbans, their rifles, and above them in the wind, thousand
s of banners. I’ve dreamed of such a sight for years. But since I’ve been in this country, all I’ve found is poverty, black men on mules, and preachers begging in the street. My secret hope, you see, is that Moussa Bellal finds me, with his Negro horsemen and his banners in the wind. But if that happens, do you think I’ll want to fight him? Who wants to crush the stuff of his own dreams? Tell me that. You, perhaps? I hardly think so. So stop looking at me and judging me. We’re made of the same stuff, you and I. I know it. I can read your thoughts, just as you read mine.”

  In the days that follow, the column resumes its brisk march, and none of the derelictions Samuel’s dreamed about occur: beards don’t go untrimmed, or shirts untucked, not a single turban makes an appearance among the British army uniforms, no banner unfurls over the men—everything remains impeccable and according to the strictest European discipline. Moore grows nervous, sometimes seeming to dodge any possible encounters with Bellal, and at other times seeking them out, making straight for watering holes or zeribas where he’s been reported. But Bellal remains nowhere to be found, and after a week, the column enters the territory of Ali el Tom, chieftain of the powerful Kababish confederation. Colonel Moore’s good spirits return, his eye starts its musical, mercurial back-and-forth, the idea of going to meet this powerful vassal of England fills him with jubilation. One morning, warriors appear, great fringed pennants flying over them. The scouts announce that these are the banners of Ali el Tom who has come in person to meet Colonel Moore, accompanied by several chieftains of subsidiary tribes. The meeting takes place at the foot of the rocky hills known as the Jebel Abu Asal. Ali el Tom is a young chieftain with a princely way about him and a dreamer’s eyes. His skin is dark, but his features are more Arabian, and he knows a few words of English, which he uses to welcome Colonel Moore. The latter is delighted, and responds with the few words of Arabic he knows. Samuel and Maher can then intervene, and a conversation begins between Sheikh el Tom and the colonel as the two troops come in view of Sowdiri, a prosperous oasis surrounding hundreds of wells where Ali el Tom holds court. Vast herds of camels watch the soldiers pass and by night, at the ochre-walled palace of Ali el Tom, in gardens of astounding baobabs, there is feasting and discussion atop low beds of sculpted wood. But news of Bellal is rare; he was recently spotted near Al Widan, then—nothing. Rumor has it that he has stirred up tribes near Taba. Colonel Moore listens, nods, then reaches out for a morsel of grilled lamb. Dozens of lambs are grilling over dozens of fires; the colonel is sitting to the right of Ali el Tom, who continues his explanations, speaking of Darfur as well as the principalities to the west where Bellal is beginning to worry local princes with his preaching and threats.

  The next day, the two leaders are off to inspect the regions bordering the sultanate of Darfur. Although north of Um Badr, scouts report the presence of a sizeable Nihayat group near Jabal el Kadim. It is half a day’s ride away on horseback, and Colonel Moore decides to go there. But on the way, during a break by a sycamore grove, a delegation of Nihayats is announced. It approaches, consisting of five imposing black men in immas, sparkling necklaces, and daggers on their belts. Speaking for their chief, they declare that Moussa Bellal has inadvertently strayed onto Kababish territory, that he has no hostile intentions, and that to prove it, he is inviting the colonel and Sheikh el Tom to dine with him that very day. Sitting in armchairs under the trees, Moore and el Tom deliberate, surrounded by their advisors. Ali el Tom is guarded about how to respond to this proposal, freighted with menace, but since Moore is in charge, they finally tell the delegation that they accept, and will attend.

  *

  The site of Moussa Bellal’s banquet is on the fringe of an acacia wood, at the foot of a rocky hill known as the Shoulder of Beef. Assembled for it are Moore and his advisors, a few Kababish chieftains around el Tom, and Moussa Bellal’s main warriors around their leader, who has enormous rings, a golden breastplate, and an unsettling gaze. They all gather at nightfall, because Moore and el Tom make their entrance only after a few reinforcements arrive from Sowdiri, a company that dismounts a stone’s throw from where the banquet is being held. It is dark, then, when everything begins: the guests form a great circle. Massive bonfires that hurl nervous sparks toward the very stars light slaves slicing and serving mutton and grilled beef on giant platters, stuffed giraffe neck and monkey tongues browned in lamb fat.

  “I wonder where you can have gotten all these ingredients,” says el Tom to Moussa Bellal. “All these dishes lead one to believe you planned for this feast, that you didn’t decide on the spur of the moment. I’m sure you’re up to no good.”

  “You take us for impoverished Negroes, el Tom,” Moussa Bellal replies. “And now you’re simply finding out that isn’t the case. But rest assured,” he adds with a laugh, “I am no Muhammad Ali.”

  As Moussa Bellal has directed this allusion to the banquet during which the Egyptian viceroy exterminated all the generals in his army at Colonel Moore, the latter, seated on a saffron rug, declares, to lighten the mood, that there are worse crimes than Muhammad Ali’s, and launches into the tale of how Atreus threw his own brother a lavish banquet whose dishes were made from the flesh of his nephews, cooked in the most extravagant sauces. Exclamations of horror and curses ring out from the pagans at the same time as Bellal’s laughter, which Moore contemplates with amusement, satisfied with the effect his story has had. After which, Captain Covington recounts the dinner the fox served the stork, and the one the stork served in return. The decidedly very cultured Sheikh el Tom remarks that the tale is one taken from the fables of Ibn al-Muqaffa’, which Covington refutes, alleging it is by the Frenchman La Fontaine (which he pronounces La Fantayne). Moussa Bellal, apparently bored by literary debates or finding the whole business has gotten out of hand, turns to Samuel then—he has not taken his eye off him since Moore’s troops arrived, seeming to wonder just who this civilian (for Samuel wears a hat and tunic) can be, looking British as he does but speaking Arabic, a very smooth Arabic, not Egyptian Arabic, much less the effeminate or falsely virile Arabic of British translators. So he turns to Samuel and asks him if he, too, has a story about a banquet. Samuel tells the one about the youngest, somewhat disdained son of a rich Beiruti family whom cousins from the elder branch of the family invite to dinner one night, offering him a miserly meal with neither variety nor the slightest display of pomp common to their house. The young cousin is cruelly offended, but by chance he hears about the famous French illusionist who is now the talk of the town’s high society. He then decides to extend an invitation to his cousins in return. When the night comes, the cousins are pleasantly surprised to find the illusionist himself among the guests. None of them realize he is there not as a guest, but to ply his trade for a tidy sum. All throughout dinner, the ladies with their stylish hair, the self-important gentlemen, and the young, stuck-up daughters from the family’s elder branch ask him loudly and laughingly about his powers, not for a moment suspecting that the sumptuous meal of stuffed lamb, cooked calf’s brains, and as many sweets as an Oriental imagination might conjure is in fact but an illusion, and they are spending their evening, under the quietly ironic gaze of their host, the cousin scorned, eating bluster from empty dishes and delightedly relishing puffs of nothing from platters laden with thin air.

  When Samuel is done, Moussa Bellal lets out a great roar of laughter, and then, just as gazelle tripe stuffed with pigeon hearts is being served, he declares to Colonel Moore with delectation, “Don’t worry, I haven’t had your nephews roasted. Everything you’re eating is halal, and I guarantee you that it’s good meat from actual animals, butchered and served up by my slaves—actual slaves, too (and here, he seems to take pleasure from insisting on the subject of slaves, for slavery is banned in Sudan, and faced with this insistence which is itself a provocation, no one bats an eye, because Moore doesn’t say a word), actual slaves,” Moussa Bellal goes on with jubilation, “all wearing what slaves always have and always will.”

  Then, fallin
g silent, he gives a wave of his hand. A slight, imperceptible swell rolls through the ranks of his warriors and their chieftains. A brief glimmer of worry shows in Moore’s eye, but the colonel remains still, sitting cross-legged, left hand on his knee. Ali el Tom exchanges a furtive glance with one of his relatives; meanwhile, Samuel is still wondering about Moussa Bellal’s insistence on what slaves wear. Then a cry rings out: Captain Covington, letting out a swear, has just gotten to his feet, one hand on his revolver holster, even as Colonel Maher holds him back by his pants leg. Ali el Tom remains still as stone. Moore, who hasn’t moved either, has a pout on his face that might be mistaken for a smile; the other officers seem paralyzed by what’s going on, or their leader’s icy immobility, and what everyone has just discovered, Samuel finally sees, though he’s been staring at it for several long seconds: the sudden appearance of dozens of slaves, bearing on their shoulders a new batch of spits or large platters of meat, and all identically clad, as in some burlesque spectacle, barefoot but with regulation caps, in the green dress uniform blazoned with the Order of the Garter of officers of the British Empire.

  The chase begins half an hour later, in the middle of the night, just enough time for Moore and his companions to rejoin the reinforcements, on the alert all this time. The utter darkness makes things difficult. The site of the feast, where fires still burn, is soon occupied, but nothing remains save leftovers of outlandish victuals and dozens of sheep and oxen ready for roasting, soon to be the occasion of another feast, one for vultures and hyenas. Two hour later, the first group of Moussa Bellal’s warriors and slaves are caught by surprise in a pass between two rocky hills. Once they are captured, the hunt must stop, for the darkness is thick and the thousand stars that bring sky and earth closer together cannot make up for the glow of an absent moon. Only a few scouts of Ali el Tom’s venture on ahead. They return at first light. Thanks to them, the armies are soon on Bellal’s heels. As soon as the chase resumes, Colonel Moore, galloping beside Samuel, keeps grumbling about how he can’t believe what that man did, he just can’t believe it. By the time day has fully dawned, they are encroaching on the borders of the Sultanate of Darfur, riding full speed through a savannah of rolling hills dotted with acacia groves, when suddenly Moussa’s warriors come into view. They are quickly surrounded and surrender without a fight. Moussa has gone on ahead, they explain. Ali el Tom awaits a signal from Moore, who nods, and the chase goes on, British soldiers and Kababish warriors together. A bit later, it is a whole tribe, with its women and slaves, that is caught unawares, surrounded and stopped on the spot. Moussa Bellal has evidently left everything behind. All that was once his is now in the hands of Moore and Ali el Tom.