Acts of faith (35 page)

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.”