Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

And so I talk to you, or, at any rate, write to you. Do please write back to me, so that I will know that there is life beyond the grave! At the moment, as I dwindle, I fear that everything outside me dwindles. Hopes, ambitions, ideals are the first to shrink.

As you see from the postmark — and, yes, they do have a post office, where the pilgrims go to get their documents stamped and everyone else to pay their taxes — I am in Suakin, the City of the Dead, as they so rightly call it. Once it was a big, thriving city, the main port on the coast, through which all the pilgrims passed on their way to Mecca, but the ships got bigger and the water needed to be deeper, and so the whole city had to move further up the coast and became Port Sudan. The houses now are empty. Only the mosquitoes and the flies now wing their way through the deserted streets. Only the occasional stray dog searching for offal. And behind the dog, me.

Life has migrated, Mahmoud, and I alone am left to handle my master’s business. The taint of trocchee shells lies heavily upon me. The true smell of business!

This place is backward beyond belief. Only today I heard that a slaver was expected in the town. Yes, like that, a slaver! Expected! I thought that sort of thing had died out years ago. And now … expected! Part of the natural scheme of things. Taken for granted.

While you and I and fools like us work for the improvement of our country and believe that through our reforms we can make the world a better place! No, Mahmoud, it is not so. Here in the desert everything runs away into the sand. We achieve nothing. Evil goes on, as it has gone on for centuries. They tell me that many of the slaves are children, sold by their families, or kidnapped from their families. And much desired by the wealthy families of the Saudi peninsula. And perhaps they will be better off with them than where they are. Only it sticks in my gullet, Mahmoud. I don’t like it. This is not a world that I can believe in or accept.

I thought it belonged to the past but tomorrow the slaver will come in with his caravan, quite openly, and settle down in the market-place to await the ship. No wonder the place stinks!

I know that if I stay here I shall stink, too. And so, sooner or later, I shall come back to you, Mahmoud, all smelly but with a tiny part of my integrity intact.

Write to me, Mahmoud, before I slip away into the sand, too, and become just a mirage, floating in the air, quivering, just another bad smell in the stale air.

Fish teemed in the tepid water, fish of all sizes and colours. There were pink fish, crimson fish, yellow fish, green, fish white and fish black. There was one striped white and black in rings like a bull’s eye. They nudged at the fallen stonework of the jetty, slid silently through the shadows, rose sometimes to sparkle in the sun.

At the end of the causeway, as tall as the minaret of the adjacent mosque, was the Wakkala, once the glory of the port, its largest warehouse, then a caravanserai into which camels brought loads of cotton, ivory, gum, senna leaves and melon seeds.

And slaves, of course, although these had walked behind the camels on their way to the Wakkala where they would await the boats that would take them across the Red Sea to the great slave markets of the Middle East.

It was to the Wakkala that Abdulla, the slaver, had brought the slaves he had collected. They had arrived the night before, in not too bad shape, his informants had told Macfarlane, of the Sudan Slave Bureau, who had had the caravan watched from the moment it had crossed the border from Egypt into the Sudan.

He had had time to cable Owen and ask him if he wanted to be in at the kill. Owen had said that he did. He had his own reasons for wanting to talk to Abdulla.

He had taken the train down to Luxor and then on to Atbara, the big railway junction in the Sudan, and then another train, the old troop carrying one, on to Port Sudan, a camel’s ride from Suakin. He had reached the Dead City just before dawn and walked along the sea front, admiring the fishes, to the Muhafaza, about the only building still working in the deserted city. The Muhafaza was the old post office and the ottoman half-moon was still carved above its front door.

It was where Idris, Mahmoud’s friend, now spent most of his time.

This was where Owen was to meet Macfarlane and the Camel Corps soldiers he had brought with him. They had arrived during the night and now stood beside their camels outside the Muhafaza.

‘All right,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Shall we proceed?’

The soldiers began to slip silently through the empty streets. Everything was dark and quiet. A few doors hung half open in the street and the occasional mashrabiya window — still beautiful, though lined now with sand and dust — leaned out above. As the sun rose and began to reach the streets there was sometimes a flash of blue as it caught one of the old plates embedded in the mud brick of the walls. The old builders had used anything there was to hand and that included the plates brought over the sea from China by the seafaring Muslim sailors.

The soldiers stopped and then moved forward more cautiously. A whistle blew and the soldiers burst into the large courtyard of the Wakkala. The few men there looked up in shock.

Over in one corner a group of children, huddled together against the wall, turned towards the soldiers, amazed.

A tall Arab came out of one of the buildings. Macfarlane went up to him.

‘Greetings, Abdulla!’ he said. ‘I see you’re still at it.’

The children would go back to Atbara and then Khartoum by train, where arrangements would be made to reunite them with their parents. Abdulla would be going to Khartoum, too, only with the Camel Corps soldiers.

But first, Owen wanted to have a talk with him.

‘Slaving is one thing,’ said Owen. ‘Murder is another.’

‘Murder?’ said Abdulla.

‘Do you not remember Soraya?’

Abdulla shook his head. ‘I had nothing to do with that,’ he said.

‘Did you not speak with her father?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘You tricked him. You spun a web with fine words.’

‘He was willing to be tricked,’ said Abdulla.

‘What did you tell him?’

Abdulla spread his hands. ‘That a fine future awaited her. If she played her cards right.’

‘Not so fine,’ said Owen.

‘It could have been fine,’ Abdulla insisted. ‘It was a worthy household. And she was well pleased.’

‘Tell me,’ said Owen, ‘why did you go to that house? Why did you seek her out?’

‘I was asked to.’

‘By the lady?’

‘By the lady, yes. She had her own designs.’

‘Which included you. She knew you of old. You come from her parts. Are you one of her family?’

‘Distantly, yes. I was never close.’

‘But close enough for her to call on you when she wanted something done.’

‘Close enough, yes. And all she wanted was that I should seek Soraya’s family out and speak to the father.’

‘And tempt him, yes?’

Abdulla shrugged. ‘He was willing to be tempted.’

‘You succeeded, as she went to the lady’s household. With her bride box?’

‘No, no, that was the second time.’

‘Since you had succeeded with your honeyed words the first time, she went to you again.’

Abdulla shrugged once more. ‘I happened to be in those parts.’

‘And again you succeeded. And this time she took her bride box with her. Did you suggest that? Was that part of the web you span?’

‘It was her father’s doing. He wanted to believe and so he believed.’

‘You did not put him straight?’

‘Why should I put him straight? The chance was there for her to take.’