Acts of Faith

PART TWO

Warlord

THE RAINS HAD been sparse throughout the wet season and were falling but once or twice a week as the season drew to a close. Conditions were good for a raid, and Colonel Ahmar ordered Ibrahim Idris to lead one into the Nuba hills, where the infidel’s forces were becoming a nuisance and foreign airplanes were bringing in contraband, in defiance of the government’s decrees. He was to teach the Nubans and the foreigners a lesson by destroying a town and a smuggler’s airfield about two days’ ride from Kadugli. Ibrahim Idris studied the colonel’s maps and hired guides—good Nubans loyal to the regime—and then mustered his men, pulling them out of their fields and pastures—a very big nuisance, for they were busy bringing in this year’s millet harvest and gathering their herds for the annual journey to the southern grasslands. Still, as he’d answered Colonel Ahmar’s call, so did the Brothers answer his. They said farewell to their families, saddled their horses, and with Kalashnikovs strapped across their backs and magazine belts full, they rode out from Babanusa town and across the wadis Ghallah and al-Azraq to Kadugli—two hundred kilometers through hard country in a little over three days. There they waited for a company of militia from the Kadugli garrison to join them. The rest was welcome. The horses were worn out, and so were the men, and so was Ibrahim. How he ached. He guessed he was getting old, he was old, forty-five, possibly forty-six or -seven.

A woman should now be massaging my legs with liquid butter, he thought, sitting in the shade of an ebony tree. Yes, the woman Miriam, with butter churned in a calabash and warmed over coals, not this nephew, who rubs my calves with the smelly stuff from that chemist’s shop in the souk at Babanusa. A balm, excellent for the sore muscles, the Lebanese chemist had said. Half price to you, omda. For the jihad. Ibrahim smiled a sarcastic smile, thinking about the plump chemist, pretending that he was making a sacrifice by peddling his smelly balm for half price. The Lebanese knew how to turn a profit, and that one probably had charged double. He would wager that he was not even Muslim but some Greek born in Lebanon who did not give a damn for jihad or know the meaning of the word. Proud, like all his tribesmen, of his ability to do without, contemptuous of full-bellied townsmen like the chemist, Ibrahim was working himself into one of his fits of rage. I should have told him, “Take off your shirt and pants, fat-ass, and put on a jelibiya and come with us if you want to do something for jihad. Don’t sit here on your fat ass and lie to me, telling me you’re charging half price.”

“Where does this stuff come from?” he asked Abbas.

“Why, we bought it in Babanusa, don’t you remember, uncle?”

Abbas was not as clever as Ibrahim Idris wished.

“My meaning was, where is it made?”

“The chemist said in China.”

“Perhaps it works best if you’re Chinese.”

“It isn’t working?”

“It burns and it stinks.”

Abbas rolled his calves vigorously between his palms, gave each calf a parting slap, and then wiped his hands on his jelibiya, declaring that the burn signified that the balm was working.

“When I was your age, I could spend one month in the saddle and not feel this that I do now. Ya Allah! On our migrations to the south.”

These words evoked an image of himself as a lithe-limbed young man mounted on a white gelding, herding his father’s cattle that flowed like a river through the woodlands, and the image evoked some envy for his nephew, in full possession of the youth that he had lost.

” ‘Mesarna ‘izz al Ataya,’ “ Abbas said, quoting from the poem.

“Our migration is the glory of the Ataya,” his uncle repeated.

“But now we have the glory of jihad.” For emphasis, Abbas smacked the stock of his Kalashnikov. He would have been a handsome lad if not for his nose, bent sideways by the fall he’d taken from a horse when he was a boy. “Tell me, uncle, which is the greater glory, the glory of our migrations or the glory of jihad?”

An odd question, but then Abbas was in the habit of asking odd questions. Why the devil doesn’t he ask something sensible, like what qualities to look for in a breed bull or a riding bull, like which grasses are best for cows? Ibrahim looked around, at the men brewing tea and resting in the shade of the trees, at the horses with noses buried in the feed bales that the militiamen had delivered this morning. He drew in the odors of hot horseflesh and saddle leather and smoke. It all looked and smelled like cattle camp, except of course that no cattle were in sight, nor tents, nor kraals nor hearths nor one angereyb of wood, rope, and leather. Oh, what he would give for one of those portable beds now.

“They’re two different things. The one is a glory of this world. It means, as I’ve told you before, that we Humr together with the Rizeygat and Hawazma and Messiriya taste to the full the fruits of the cattleman’s wandering life. That among all the Baggara Arabs, we are the best. The other is a glory of the world to come. The martyr’s paradise.”

Pleased with this answer—it sounded wise, as if spoken by a mullah—he leaned forward, grunting at the stiffness in his back, removed the copper pot from the warm ashes of the fire, and filled his tea glass. The chay was overbrewed, bitter and strong, and his thoughts turned suddenly bitter, recalling the tea Miriam had made for him. Light and sweet and just right, the best he’d drunk. Surely she must have loved him to take such care with his tea, surely there had been love in her hands as she massaged his legs in the evenings.

“I wonder if I will become shaheed tomorrow,” Abbas said, drawing Ibrahim’s thoughts away from the girl, though not completely. “As you say, uncle, to be a martyr for the faith is the greatest glory.”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

Abbas looked at him with a puzzled squint. “What is, then?”

The older man took out his tobacco pouch and paper and rolled a cigarette, licked it lengthwise, and lit it off a twig pulled from the fire. He smoked for a while, calculating how best to answer. Days ago, as he was preparing for this raid, his sister-in-law had begged him to look out for Abbas; she’d pleaded with him to restrain the young man’s zeal, and that was a commission he’d been happy to accept. Having sacrificed one of his own sons to the jihad nearly four years ago, he had no stomach for losing the nephew whom he’d raised like a son after his brother, Abbas’s father, died of fever. He thought the desire for martyrdom, which the government and the mullahs were drumming into the heads of so many young men, was mistaken, but he dared not say that to his nephew, a pious youth who had been a favorite among his teachers at the madrassah in Khartoum. How strange that he, a rich man honored and admired throughout the House of Humr, needed to be so cautious in speaking to a callow boy not yet twenty. He resented it, but that’s how things were these days, with the National Islamic Front so firmly in power. Everyone had to watch his words in matters of religion, even in private conversations, and leaders such as himself had to be doubly careful. His office—omda of the Salamat, one of the ten omodiyas of the Humr tribe—was a government appointment, and this government required its officials to be men of strong faith, or at the least, men who made a convincing show of faith. If he didn’t try hard enough to dissuade his nephew from martyrdom, Abbas was likely to attain it by taking a foolish chance; if, on the other hand, he tried too hard, Abbas could begin to gossip among the other young men that his uncle was growing weak, his belief in the jihad wavering. Such gossip would spread quickly to the ears of his rivals and enemies, who would use it to intrigue against him. It was well known that Ibrahim had set his sights on being appointed nazir over all the Humr, for the present nazir was very ill and expected to die. So his dilemma was to make good on his pledge to his nephew’s mother while saying nothing that might undermine his present position and threaten his future.

“The greatest glory is submission to God’s will,” he replied at last.

That all his uncle’s pondering should produce so obvious a truth appeared to disappoint Abbas.

“If God wills you to become shaheed, you will, if not, you won’t. In any case, He will favor you if you accept His will. There is no shame in not attaining martyrdom if that’s what God wishes.”

“Before the last raid, when I caught the fever and could not go, oh, my mother and sisters were so happy! I couldn’t understand it. I asked my mother, for why you are so happy? Now for sure you will not be umma’l shaheed.”

“And she said what?”

“That it was all right if she was not the mother of a martyr. I couldn’t believe my own hearing, and I was ashamed, uncle. It is my hope to see my cousin Ganis in Paradise, to sit beside him.”

He was getting tired of talking to this kid, but he saw that he hadn’t gone far enough toward fulfilling his promise.

“It pains me to hear Ganis’s name mentioned. Listen, what does the Holy Koran say about those who fight for the faith?” He motioned at his saddle and bags, lying a few meters away. “My book is in there. Let’s see how much you learned at the madrassah.”

Abbas fetched the Koran and paged through it, his black eyebrows pursed.

“Is it this? ‘God has indeed promised everyone Paradise, but God has preferred those who fight for the faith before those who sit still, by adding unto them a great reward, by degrees of honor conferred on them from him, and by granting them forgiveness and mercy; for God is indulgent and merciful.’ ”

“What say you to the meaning of that?”

“Why, that verse is clear. Those who are martyred for the faith are forgiven their sins and go to Paradise straight away.”

“Read what it says, nephew. It doesn’t say those who die for the faith but those who fight for it.”

“Yes.”

“So you see, merely by fighting in the jihad one earns mercy and honor. You will see Ganis even if you are one hundred years when you die.”

“But the mullahs would say that by dying in the fight he earned a higher place.”

“Then you can look up from your place and see him,” the older man said, his patience nearly at an end. “Ya, Abbas! Explain something to your uncle. He’s getting old, see the gray.” He stroked his short beard. “His mind isn’t as keen as it once was. There are things he doesn’t understand.”

Abbas assumed a mature, dignified air, raising his chin while squaring his turban. His skewed nose spoiled the effect and made him look a little silly.

“You’ve laid claim to Nanayi, and you’ve told her father that you hope to return from the raid with cattle for a bride-price, even though I have offered to loan you the cattle.”

“My refusal wasn’t meant to insult you.”

“I know that! You believe that presenting Nunayi’s father with cows you captured in a raid brings you more renown than cows loaned to you. My question is, how will you seize these cattle if you’re martyred? How will you marry Nunayi if you’re dead?”

“The Prophet, blessed be his name, teaches that those who die for God are not dead.”

“Don’t play these games with me, Abbas. You see the contradiction, don’t you?”

“Of course, uncle. Martyrdom is my chief desire, but if God wills it not to be so, my next desire is to capture some cattle and marry her.”

“I understand you now. Esmah, Abbas! Stay close to me, and I’ll lead you to the cattle, I’ll show you which are the best and those will be yours.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“See to the horses, yours and mine. It’s another two days’ ride to the airfield, and I think Barakat has a sore foreleg, the right. Give him some of that stinking Chinese stuff. Maybe it will work for him.”

“And you?”

Miriam, Miriam, she was there again, her hands digging deep into his legs.

“It doesn’t burn anymore, and yes, I feel better, so maybe that fat Lebanese knew what he was talking about. I still prefer butter.”

As his nephew walked off, he poured a little water out of his goatskin flask and rinsed his glass, recalling the days, not very long ago, when young men left Dar Humr only to work for wages so they could save up to buy a cow and start a herd. Quite a few still did, but there were too many like Abbas who went away to madrassahs and government training camps, from which they emerged impatient to die for the faith, to the point that nothing else mattered. They had no interest in cattle, nor in the sweet things that owning them brought to a man—women, prestige, power. They could tell you what the Prophet had to say about this subject or that subject, but nothing about which grasses grew in what kind of soil and where and in what seasons they grew there. Why trouble yourself, acquiring such skills and knowledge, when your purpose was to die? Why yearn for prestige and position when your true yearning was for the martyr’s grave?

Ibrahim Idris couldn’t understand it. The old saying was true; cattle were fadd umm suf—silver with hair—yet they were more than that. His attachment to his own considerable herd was almost mystical. Everything he had and everything he was he owed to cattle, and he owed his cattle to God, from whom all blessings flow; to God, yes, but also to his own shrewdness, for the proverb states that the owner’s eye brings increase; to his industriousness, for the proverb states that wealth lies between the upper and lower millstones; and to his pastoral skills, the sharp bargains he’d driven with his daughter’s suitors, and the years of self-denial that had given him the resources to add to his herds. Today more than eight hundred head bore his brand. Rarely did he sell his stock for cash, but when he did, the proceeds were more than enough to keep his wives in tea, sugar, soaps, and perfumes. To each he’d provided one riding bull and several milk cows, so each could churn butter for sale and thus keep herself in good blue cloth and gold earrings and other luxuries.

Wealth had brought him power; power, responsibilities. His poorer kinsmen came to him for milk and millet. He provided calves to nephews, nieces, and cousins as well as to his own children. Guests from all over were drawn to his tent, and to them he extended lavish hospitality. His advice was sought on various matters, from stockbreeding to politics to clan disputes over property and women, which he arbitrated with fairness and wisdom. Although Ibrahim had achieved fame among the Salamat for his physical courage, his generosity was what had made his name. The minstrels sang in praise of his liberality, not only in the camps of the Salamat but in the camps of the other omodiyas as well.

Nevertheless, slanderous campaigns continued to be mounted by factions determined to unseat him. He fought them off successfully, thanks be to God and to his relationship with the nazir, cemented by the marriage of his eldest daughter to the nazir’s youngest son. Despite his cares, he was sometimes able to enjoy the fruits of all his effort. Whether in the dry-season camps in the south or in the wet-season camps amid the millet fields and ebony trees of the north, he would sit or lie beneath the Men’s Tree, drinking the tea and eating the meals his wives brought to him, talking to guests who honored him with their presence and whom he honored with bowls of sour milk and with a slaughtered sheep from the flocks his cattle wealth had enabled him to establish.

The hours would pass in ease and comfort, and before he knew it, evening would come, and that was the sweetest time, with the heat gone and the smoke rising from the wood and dung fires his servants had built and his sons and kinsmen returning with the cattle, bawling and lowing as they milled into the kraals. It was a pleasure to walk among them, inspecting them for ticks or signs of disease, smelling them, rubbing their humps and dewlaps and bellies, filled with the best graze his sons had been able to find. A pleasure too to watch the calves released for milking. Sometimes, as one wife sprinkled his tent with scent, he would milk a cow himself, and another wife would churn liquid butter from the milk and massage his legs with the butter before he entered his fragrant tent to sleep contentedly until awakened by the sound of someone churning the morning’s milk outside his door.

Such days were rare, and after the coup that brought the National Islamic Front to power, they all but vanished from his life. News of the coup reached the Humr quickly, but few paid much attention to it at first; far removed from Khartoum, the Humr and the other Bagarra tribes were seldom affected by changes in government. But this coup was different, it was a revolution, and like the haboub, the cold wind from the northern deserts, it soon blew into the tribal lands, bringing changes. The provincial governor was removed from office for displaying insufficient zeal for the new regime’s policies, and replaced by a man of Khartoum’s choosing; in the towns, civil officials, police officers, and military commanders were purged for the same reason, and it was rumored that some had been imprisoned or executed. The tribal leaders were left alone; even this militant new government was afraid of infringing on the rights and privileges of the fiercely independent nomads. Still, it was clear to Ibrahim, and to all the others, that their wealth and popularity among their people would no longer guarantee their appointments; from now on they would also have to prove their fitness by displaying loyalty to the regime and that other virtue, piety, the virtue in which Ibrahim had always been deficient. Fearful that his laxity would provide new ammunition to his enemies, he made sure to behave properly. He would break off conversations with his guests or negotiations with disputing parties and bow to Mecca, trusting that his devoutness would be noticed and remarked on. Fortunately, those who witnessed these exhibitions couldn’t see that his thoughts were usually far from God, dwelling on some quarrel he’d been asked to arbitrate, or on the sale of a bull calf, or—oh, he’d hoped he wouldn’t burn in hell for this—making love to one of his younger wives.

Beyond the new emphasis on religion, life among the Humr didn’t change much for about a year after the coup. The harvest came in, the millet was stacked and threshed. The cool winds of the early dry season turned warm, then hot, and the Humr moved south with their herds. No matter what passed in the affairs of men and government, cattle had to heed the call of the green grass. They stayed in the south till the air grew heavy and still and thunderstorms filled the wadis and insects began to swarm, sending the Humr northward again, there to plant a new millet crop and let their herds graze on the stubble of last year’s fields. The big rains came and went, the skies grew miserly once more, announcing the advent of another harvest, and as the mown grain rose high on the drying platforms, the wind spun around to the north and the herdsmen began to muster their stock for the next migration to the southern pastures.

But that migration was to be like no other that Ibrahim Idris could remember. A short time before it began, army officers arrived in the Humr camps to call for young men to fight in the war. Ibrahim’s was visited by a major and a captain, who came one afternoon in a Land Rover accompanied by a lorry filled with soldiers in tan uniforms. The officers, Humr themselves, declined Ibrahim’s offer to stay for a feast of roast mutton, pleading that they had to see another omda before the day was done. As they relaxed under the Men’s Tree, the major told him—in case he hadn’t heard—that a fatwa had been issued in Khartoum declaring that the war was now a jihad. Ibrahim Idris nodded. And it was high time, the major said, sweating through his uniform. The way the previous government waged the war was a disgrace. So many defeats, so many soldiers deserting, so many officers tearing off their epaulets when ordered to the south. All that had changed. The army had been purged of cowards and traitors and reorganized into battalions of Islamic warriors trained by the Iranians. The major gestured at the soldiers in the lorry, some of whom wore scarves around their heads, printed with the profession of the faith, La Allah ill Allah wah Muhammad rasoul Allah. Already these warriors had won important triumphs, the major went on, sweating even more from the excitement he’d worked up. More were to come, inshallah, until the whole of the south was claimed for Islam. And now it was time for the nomads to join the holy cause.

He wiped his forehead and hands with a rag and pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

“First, I wish to read to you some words from the fatwa—”

“I can read,” said Ibrahim, gesturing for the paper.

The major told him to pay attention to the words at the bottom, which said: “All Muslims who deal with the rebels or who raise doubts about the legality of jihad are hypocrites and dissenters and apostates to the faith, and shall suffer torture in hell for all eternity.”

The major looked at him intently.

“One thing it doesn’t say is that such dissidents and apostates will suffer tortures on this earth as well.”

“Perhaps my honored guest will tell me what he means?”

“Ya, Ibrahim! Esmah!” His hand went to his heart to sign his sincerity. “I am Humr, and I know that our people have made friends with many Dinka and other abid. I know that we are in the custom of making arrangements with them to allow our cattle to graze in their pastures in the south. That is the kind of thing that must now stop. That is the kind of dealing the fatwa forbids.”

“Tell me, does the fatwa say how, then, we are to graze our cattle?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see it here,” he said, scowling at the smudged paper.

The major smiled a broad smile. “Ya, Ibrahim! Has it ever made sense to you that abid should have such fine pastures as they do? Has it ever made sense that we should bargain with them for grazing rights, when grass such as theirs rightfully is ours?”

He replied that, no, it didn’t make sense; nevertheless that was how things were.

“No longer.”

At a nod from the major, the captain drew out a map from the case he carried, spread it on the ground, and pinned its corners with rocks.

“We’re clearing the blacks out, from here to here.” Joining three fingers, the major swiped a vast corridor of land. “It will be, inshallah, a land without a people. And all the Baggara tribes will help make it so, and their reward will be all that pasture. It will be theirs alone.”

Ibrahim stared at the map, his heart racing at the vision of those lush, immense savannahs, there for the taking. But how, he asked, would the Baggara help make that so?

“The army asks for each omda to furnish a certain number of men, as many as can be spared,” the major said, wiping his brow once again. “The omdas will choose the men themselves. These murahaleen will be our cavalry.”

Each fighter would be provided with a modern rifle, an enlistment bonus of fifty thousand pounds, and a horse if he didn’t have a mount of his own. The army would give the recruits a fortnight’s training, to learn military discipline and how to use Kalashnikov rifles. From time to time during the dry season, or whenever conditions were suitable for mounted operations, the murahaleen would be ordered to make raids on southern villages and towns. Sometimes they might be commanded to escort government trains and convoys, to protect them from rebel ambushes. And of course anyone who was killed in this sacred struggle would be honored as a martyr, and his family would be paid a pension for life.

“The murahaleen will be under the command of my commander, Colonel Ahmar,” the major said. “Colonel Ahmar knows the army is asking a lot of you. With so many men away on operations, who will look after livestock? Who will tend the fields? So he has authorized me to tell you omdas that the taking of captives on the raids is permitted. Those old laws forbidding it are lifted. Those laws were imposed by the English.” He spat. “The government encourages you to seize as many captives as you wish, to do the work the fighters would be doing. After all, these blacks are not called abid for nothing. They are slaves. Why pay for labor when you can get it for nothing?”

It wasn’t difficult to find recruits. Some were zealots, but many were from the poorest of the Salamat. The ownership of a horse made each of them a knight, at least in his own eyes; the fifty thousand pounds was more than enough to buy a cow, and what stock it didn’t buy could be got on raids, so that the most destitute had a chance of accumulating a bride-price. And so the herds trekked south that season watched over by children and graybeards while Ibrahim Idris and two hundred men of fighting age went north to an army training ground to learn how to maneuver their horses in battle and to fire the Kalashnikov rifle. The Humr had not practiced the arts of war for a long time, not since the slave- and cattle-raiding days of their grandfathers’ time, but war was in their blood and the men learned quickly. When they were through, mullahs blessed them and presented each fighter with a booklet of sayings from the Koran and with a key that would open the gates of Paradise if he was martyred. The men hung the keys around their necks by leather thongs—keys of different shapes, sizes, and colors, some, like the one given to Ibrahim, attached to plastic tabs with mysterious writing and numbers on them. Curious about what they said, he asked several Brothers if they could interpret the message. None could. The major who’d recruited him cleared up the mystery, explaining that the words were in English and that they said “Khartoum Intercontinental.” With an incredulous laugh, Ibrahim Idris asked, “I am to unlock the gates of Paradise with a hotel key?” The major smiled his broad smile. “Put it away, omda. These are things for the young men, to inspire them.”

The day before they left on their first operations was marked by a great rally on the field where they had practiced mounted drills. It was attended by a general and the provincial governor himself, who arrived on a military airplane. Horsemen came from all the Baggara tribes mustered. A battalion of militia was there as well, drawn up in formation in their light-brown uniforms. Tall, black-bearded Colonel Ahmar stood on a reviewing stand with the generals, and one, a short, big-bellied man from Khartoum, made a speech promising victory. At the end of it the colonel stepped up to the microphone and reminded the murahaleen of their heritage—they were descendants of the warriors who had followed the Divinely Guided One to triumph over the infidel General Gordon. He held a Koran high over his head in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other and declared:

“With these we will conquer the south! The rebels who resist us are enemies of God, and they will find the murahaleen are God’s scourge upon them! Allahu akhbar! Allah ma’ana!”

Like the sere wind that ruffled the horses’ manes and the riders’ white jelibiyas, the colonel’s voice, strong and deep, swept through the ranks, stirring hearts and souls, and to the crash of rifles fired in the air and the crack of braided whips, a thousand throats hurled the words back at him: “Allahu akhbar! Allah ma’ana! God is great! God is with us!”

Ibrahim Idris, who always considered himself a man with a cold eye and a calculating head, was surprised to feel his own heart rising and to hear that same cry fly from his lips as he snapped his whip overhead. The order to march past the reviewing stand was given. The militiamen went first, stomping their feet in time to a drumbeat, then the Messiriya, and then the Humr. Riding at the head of his brothers, the men singing, “Carry the rifle whose fire burns the liver and sears the heart, for I need a slave-boy from the country of the blacks,” Ibrahim Idris seemed to be borne along not by Barakat, his chestnut stallion, but by some invisible force that was outside and within him at the same time. For once he gave not a thought to his cattle, his wives, possessions, and responsibilities. He was, at least in that transcendent moment, no longer omda of the Salamat but a captain of holy warriors, and as massed riders surged through the roiling dust shouting and singing, he knew with certain knowledge that this was what it had been like to be with the Mahdi or with the True Believers who had first carried the faith with sword and fire to the far corners of the earth. Yet some part of his eye stayed cold, and through it he saw that the jihad offered an opportunity to distinguish himself in battle, as Humr men had done in the old days, and that with luck and the help of God, he might rise further than he’d ever dreamed.

That was five years and a century ago, and though he had won honor in several skirmishes, though his men had seized more than their share of cattle and captives, though they had obeyed to the letter the mullahs’ calls to kill infidels wherever they found them, his ardor for the jihad was indeed fading, leaking, drop by drop, out the hole that Ganis’s death had torn in his heart and that nothing could repair—not the honor bestowed on a martyr’s father, nor the songs praising his son’s valor, nor the mullahs’ assurances that Ganis had earned a favored place in the garden where rivers flowed, nor the revenge that Ibrahim Idris had taken. That was something he’d had to do—no Humr man could retain his self-respect and the respect of his wives and kinsmen if he failed to avenge the loss of a favored son—but he hadn’t done it only because it was demanded of him. He’d thirsted for it from the moment he’d beheld Ganis’s body, shredded by the hot steel claws of a rebel mortar bomb. He had five more sons, but Ganis had been the one most like him, with ambition and an eye for judging stock and a knowledge of soil and grasses that most men didn’t acquire till they were much older.

On the next raid Ibrahim Idris left his Kalashnikov behind and carried a spear instead. That was the proper instrument for exacting retribution. The power of an automatic rifle was in the rifle, but a spear’s was in the heart of the man who hurled it; it was an extension of his sinew and bone, flying from his own hand, not a gun barrel. With it he killed an infidel soldier, a Dinka, in personal combat. Youth for youth, blood for blood, he thought, then tied a rope he used for binding captives to the corpse’s ankles and dragged it behind Barakat, calling out to the Brothers that Ganis had been avenged.

His thirst was slaked, but the tear in his heart was a wound beyond healing. Nor had jihad made the land of the abid a land without a people; clear them out, and they flowed right back in. One might as well try sweeping water from a swamp with a broom. Though a man his age could retire from the fighting without disgrace, he stayed in it because he didn’t trust anyone else to lead his men. His first duty now was to preserve as many Salamat lives as he could, so as to preserve the Salamat. Each man’s loss diminished the next generation. Half his men would now be dead if it weren’t for him, for he’d shown as much skill as courage in battle. When there was resistance, he attacked from the rear, or from the flank, and if a frontal charge was unavoidable, he made sure to come at the enemy when the sun was in their eyes. In recent months he had made separate truces with some Dinka commanders, promising to avoid attacking them if they refrained from attacking him and allowed Salamat cattle to graze on their land. It was forbidden by the fatwa, but so many omdas had returned to that practice that the government would have to arrest them all to stop it. As for Ibrahim Idris himself, no one dared to denounce him; he was the father of a martyr.

He continued to make war on those abid who refused the hand of his friendship, but now the stench of burned villages and corpses seemed ingrained in his nostrils; he could smell those smells when there wasn’t a flaming house or a dead body within a day’s walk. And he could not get out of his head the cries of the women his Brothers raped as they were brought to the slave markets or to the government’s peace camps. He’d tried to get them to stop, telling them that the jihad didn’t license rape, that rape was indeed haram, forbidden, but the Brothers seemed to think it was their right, and so he’d stopped trying. A jinn was loose in the land, making men crazy.

Miriam. Once more she rose to the forefront of his consciousness. He saw her, in the blue cloth he’d bought her, walking toward him with sinuous grace to bring him the sweet tea she made, felt her strong fingers rubbing the liquid butter into his calves, heard her say “I am here” when he came to her at night; and the memory of the way she pleasured him now caused him to long for her with an unbearable longing. To remember the first time he saw her . . .

“I’ve heard that the abid here go without clothes, and now I see that it’s true,” the militia captain had said scornfully. His company of infantry had been attached to the murahaleen for the operation, the first the murahaleen had run in the Nuba hills.

He passed his binoculars to Ibrahim Idris. The village on the opposite hill appeared so close that Ibrahim could see the little gardens planted alongside the tall, round houses, the lines made by the layers of grass thatch on the roofs. The men threshing grain in the field between the hills looked to be only a few meters away. Some wore shorts, but the rest nothing more than wide leather belts.

“Shameful, isn’t it?” whispered the captain, a young man wearing a green headband with the profession inscribed on it in white. “People like that deserve what we’re going to give them.”

“Would you not give it to them if they were clothed?” Ibrahim asked.

“What do you think?”

“Then you see, we’re giving it to them because these Nubans support the rebels, not because they’re naked.”

Ibrahim scanned the countryside, looking for armed men, and stopped when the lenses brought into plain view a girl grinding grain or nuts on a stone at the edge of the village. She was kneeling, ankles crossed to anchor her, and had not a stitch on except for a white bead belt and a red bead necklace that swung between her breasts as she rocked back and forth, pressing the stone in her hands against the grinding stone at her knees. Her black skin sparkled with sweat, and when she pressed down, the muscles in her arms and along her ribs stood out, like those in a slightly underfed leopard. Her braided hair trailed to her shoulders and was slathered with ochre and oil so that it glistened like her flesh. He doubted he could have taken his eyes off her if he wanted to. She brushed the ground-up grain or nuts into a basket and stood, looking, it seemed, straight at him, and when she stretched her tired arms overhead, it was as though she were displaying herself for him alone. Her long legs, the mounds of her breasts, the flat belly that told him she had not yet borne a child—all of this stunned and captivated him. He caught the gleam of the gold ring in her nose, but the binoculars weren’t strong enough to reveal her features; still, he sensed that her face was as beautiful as the rest of her, and he nearly groaned with desire as she turned and walked toward a house, her back straight, her high, lean buttocks switching under the white girdle of beads. He returned the binoculars to the captain and pointed the girl out to him and declared, his voice thick: “I’m claiming her now.”

“That’s no girl for an old man,” the captain remarked. At least he had a sense of humor.

“Listen,” said Ibrahim in case his companion wasn’t joking, “you tell your men, I’ll tell mine, that anyone who seizes a girl with a long red necklace brings her to me unharmed.”

Yamila—that was her name in her tongue. His claim on her had spared her from the Brothers that day of the raid. In his camp he’d spared her from the abuse of his wives, jealous of her beauty and the attentions he paid her; and when the time came to have her genitals cut, he’d spared her from that as well. Though she was a concubine, he treated her like a wife and perhaps better. Bought her the blue cloth to cover her nakedness, gave her a tent of her own so she did not have to sleep in the kraals and goat pens like his other slaves, and when she became pregnant, told her that by the laws of the Humr all children she bore him would be freeborn, full members of his lineage, and that he would lavish wealth upon them so they would have plenty to take good care of her after he was summoned to Paradise.

In spite of his kindness, she’d run away at the first opportunity, fleeing back to the Nuba. She’d taken their infant with her, and the loss of him had widened the hole in Ibrahim’s heart. It tortured him to think of the boy, growing up among savages, never learning all the things a father could teach about cattle and soil and grasses. What did he look like? Was he well and strong, or sick, and if sick, who among those heathens with their kujurs and silly superstitions could heal him?

What had he done to earn this torment? Ya Allah! He knew. He’d sinned, bribing the woman who was to circumcise Yamila not to do it but to pretend she had, and then bribing her further to ensure her silence. It was then that he’d bestowed the name Miriam on Yamila, proclaiming to his kinsmen that the concubine was now a Muslim, and he supposed that public falsehood had aggravated his offense. His thoughts were turning bitter again, his longing congealing into anger. You would think that Miriam would have shown some appreciation and gratitude; he’d damned his own soul for her sake. It was she who’d begged him not to allow her to be cut, though he’d granted her wish for his own sake, too. Circumcision would prevent her from taking pleasure in the sexual act, and the pleasure she got from it had heightened his own, so much so that he’d begun to neglect his wives. Abruptly, his emotions swung back to longing. Oh, the way she would whisper “I am here,” and then turn over on the sleeping mat and arch her back, presenting herself like a lioness in heat, and then make sounds in her throat and move against him, the little stifled cries and the thrusts of her buttocks restoring the powers of his youth. Surely she could not have taken such delight from him if she didn’t love him. Surely she could not have been deceiving all that time. Everything was in God’s hands. Perhaps God had willed Miriam to escape with their son to punish him for his sins. If that were so, then he had to submit himself to God’s will, but he was incapable of such resignation.

“Ya, uncle. It was a thorn.”

“What?”

“In Barakat’s leg.” Abbas showed him the thorn, long as a man’s thumb. “It was in very deep. I pulled it out with my teeth,” he said, baring his teeth, which were strong and white and straight.

“Barakat can be bad tempered. You’re lucky he didn’t kick you in the head.”

“God told him I was trying to help him, and so he was quiet.”

“You see the hand of God in every little thing.”

“I see it because it’s there.”

Ibrahim Idris again motioned at his saddlebags. “I wish to further test what you learned. Read to me what the book says about the coveting of women, if you can find the verses.”

“I think I can.” Abbas sat down with the Koran opened in his lap, his lips moving as his finger moved across the pages. “Yes, here it is. The twenty-third sura. It says a man may know only his wife and the captives he possesses. If he covets any woman beyond these, he is a transgressor.”

“So it’s not a sin to covet a captive woman?”

“The verse is very clear.”

Then Ibrahim spotted Kammin, his chief servant, and called to him. “Make fresh tea and tell my guests I’m ready to receive them.”

Kammin, a good Dinka who’d converted to the faith, jerked his head in acknowledgment, removed the pot from the fire, and went off.

“Ya, Abbas! Have you cleaned your rifle yet?”

“Of course, uncle. It’s the first thing I do every morning.”

“Go somewhere and clean it again. I wish to speak to my guests in private.”

Led by Kammin, the Messiriya trader Bashir approached with his companion. They sat down, folding their legs, and Kammin poured them each a glass of tea and they exchanged greetings with their host, who asked if they’d slept well. They looked tired. Bashir scratched his beard and replied that the hospitality of Ibrahim Idris made the hardest ground as soft as a bed.

“A new acquisition?” he asked, gesturing at Bashir’s wristwatch. “It looks very dear.”

“It is. A Rolex. Entirely of gold.”

Bashir took it off and passed it over for his inspection and admiration. The watch was heavy for so small an object and the band gleamed and there were two small dials within the big dial, which, Bashir explained, gave the date and the day of the week. He handed the watch back to the trader.

“So business must be good for you to afford such a watch that does all those things.”

He leaned against his saddle and waited for Bashir to say something. He had little respect for men who bought and sold for a living—it wasn’t man’s work, like raising cattle—and he especially disliked Bashir. Dealing with him was a tiresome chore but a necessary one. The government provided horses to the men but not feed, saddles, and bridles; they were expected to furnish those themselves, and because many could not afford such items, the cost came out of Ibrahim Idris’s pocket. The fifty-thousand enlistment bonus had been for one time only; the government did not pay the murahaleen wages for the time they spent away from their herds, and that was another expense he had to bear. For all practical purposes, he was a privateer, and the jihad had been draining his treasury before his path crossed with Bashir’s, during the last dry season. God be praised for causing their paths to cross! He’d come upon Bashir and his associate, making their way home from the south with bags of money, a great deal of money, and after he persuaded them to reveal how they had acquired so much treasure, he proposed that they enter into an arrangement of mutual benefit. Bashir could not refuse. He traded with foreigners and infidels who stood in enmity to the regime and to the jihad, and knew full well that Ibrahim Idris had the power to shoot him on the spot, or to turn him over to the military authorities, who would shoot him later. His life and the liberty to continue doing business—those were what he would get out of the arrangement while Ibrahim got income to defray his expenses.

“This trip wasn’t as profitable as my previous ones,” the trader now said. “As I’m sure you know, we were able to collect only ninety-two this time.”

Bashir reached under his jelibiya and produced his machine and pressed the buttons and turned the machine around to show the figure. The machine fascinated Ibrahim Idris. So small it fit into the hand, yet it could make calculations faster than any man could speak the numbers.

“There is what comes to you. The machine doesn’t lie,” Bashir said, tilting his jaw.

“Only if the one who uses it doesn’t lie.” Ibrahim motioned at his saddlebags and said, “I’ll count it later.”

One of the other men removed the bound bills from a pouch slung over his shoulder and leaned over and stuffed them into the saddlebags. It wasn’t necessary to remind Bashir that he and his companion were to remain his guests until the money was counted.

“This business would be much more simple and quick if you accompanied me with the murahaleen.” Ibrahim was voicing a thought that had been on his mind for some time. “As soon as I have the captives rounded up, I sell them to you on the spot, then you bring them to your foreigners and they pay you. Halas.” Wiping one hand with the other. “It’s finished with.”

Bashir did not appear enthusiastic.

“It would spare you from going from owner to owner, buying one here, two there,” Ibrahim added. “It would spare me the trouble of bringing a lot of people to the markets.”

“Ya, my friend! It’s not so simple. With what money would I buy them from you on the spot? To pay you, I need first to be paid by the foreigners. They come here only a few times a year. What would I do with all the captives in the meantime? Also, the foreigners ask the captives to tell their stories. They record their stories, word for word. If we made an arrangement as you propose, the abid would say they were sold to me by you on the very day you seized them and the foreigners would see what we’re doing and stop dealing with me.” Bashir cupped his knees with his hands, as if to push himself to his feet. “You could count it now, Ibrahim? We have a long way to go.”

“Moment, moment.” Motioning to the trader not to be so anxious. “How often do your travels take you here to the Nuba?”

“Why do you wish to know?”

“A Nuban girl, a serraya, escaped from me some time ago, with our small son. One of my wives, the youngest, arranged for their flight in secret.”

“Jealous, was she?” Bashir asked with a knowing leer. “You know the proverb, ‘Beat your wife each morning—if you don’t know the reason for it, she will’? Ya, with a wife who did that, you would both know the reason. And I would divorce her after beating her.”

“What I did is no concern of yours. This serraya’s name is Miriam, but her Nuban name is Yamila. The boy is called Abdullah. The girl is perhaps eighteen years. Tall and very good-looking, with two lines of marks across her forehead, like this”—he traced his finger over his brow—“and more marks on her belly, in the shape of bird’s wings, and still more marks around her upper arms, like bracelets. Also—”

The trader rather impolitely stopped his speech by raising an open palm. “You wish her returned to you.”

“I do.”

“Ya, Ibrahim! It’s not our trade to take captives or to retake them when they get away.”

“It isn’t necessary to tell me what your trade is. Esmah! You must see and hear a great deal in your journeys. The blacks speak freely to you. They consider you a brother, while I’m their enemy and all our conversing is with guns. Should you hear of her or, inshallah, discover where she is, I ask you to report it to me. If I am then able to get her back, I’ll extend to you the hand of brotherhood.”

“Brotherhood with you—a thing to value highly,” Bashir said, kissing the tips of his own fingers. “But may I say that I would wish there to be something else in the hand you extend?”

“Provided your information is accurate and the girl once again with my house, there will be.”

“How badly do you wish for that?”

“One hundred thousand.”

The trader gazed at his associate, who offered no expression with voice or face, and then he picked up a stick and made marks in the dirt.

“That’s four times what the foreigners pay for each captive,” Ibrahim Idris reminded him.

“A little less four times. Twenty-nine thousand per head they pay. But that’s for any abid, young, old, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, man, or woman. A serraya such as you described is extraordinary, worth ten to one, I would judge. In addition, there is the son. Your own blood, omda.”

“I’m not offering to buy them. I’m offering to buy information.”

“But in this case, the information would be the same as buying. Without it, you have nothing. Three hundred.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“For a young and beautiful woman? For your own blood?”

“I’m not going to bargain for them as I would for cows.”

“Very well then, don’t bargain.” Bashir, in the time-honored custom, made a show of anger and disgust, flinging the stick aside, rising suddenly. “You have a lot of spies and good ones, too. They certainly know what I’m up to, day to day.”

“Yes. Those spies are to help you resist the temptation to make off with your income without paying my percentage.”

“Ask them to find her.”

“I have, but they have not been successful.”

Bashir tsked in contempt, and as he turned, pretending to leave, Ibrahim Idris offered one-fifty.

“Two-fifty,” the trader countered. “What you’re asking won’t be easy. It would take a lot of time, and if I ask too many questions, the abid would become suspicious. Two-fifty, no less.”

“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Ibrahim Idris stood to his full height and willed a glint to enter his eyes. When it came to shows of anger, he took second place to no one, and in this instance, it was not entirely a show. “I’ll tell you who. The omda of the Salamat, the owner of eight hundred head, a captain of murahaleen, the father of a martyr! A man about whom songs are sung!”

“I’ve heard them,” Bashir said calmly. “And most are in praise of your generosity.”

He paused. The remark had pricked his pride in his reputation.

“Two then. Two hundred thousand and no more.”

Again Bashir glanced at his companion, who gave a quick nod.

Bashir said, “Done.”