Umm es Shole (the mother of Shole—Shole being the name she had given her first child) was an Abyssinian brought up from childhood in a Greek family settled in Khartoum. On reaching womanhood, she was married to one of the sons of the family. On the fall of Khartoum, her husband, with seven male relatives, was butchered in the house in which they had taken refuge; Umm es Shole, with her three children, was taken as “property” to the Beit-el-Mal, where she was handed over as a concubine to the Emir of the Gawaamah tribe. Refusing this |189| man’s embraces, he in revenge tortured her children to death, upon which Umm es Shole escaped to Omdurman. Through Abd-el-Kader, the uncle of the Mahdi, she had her case brought before Mohammad Ahmed, who, after listening to the details, gave her a written document declaring that, as she had been married to and borne children to a free man, she was a free woman, but to make certain that she might never be claimed as a slave, the document also declared that she was “ateekh” (freed) by him. When Abdullahi succeeded the Mahdi, he ordered every woman without a husband, and every girl of a marriageable age, to be married at once. He was most particular that every one in the “Christian quarter” should be married. Umm es Shole married an old and decrepit Jew, whom she nursed until he died two years later. Returning to a woman relative of her husband’s, she supported the old woman and herself by cooking, preparing food for feasts, sewing, and general housework. This was the wife my friends had selected for me, and I accepted her thankfully; but when she was approached on the subject, she positively declined to be married again, and it was only upon her being told that I was ill, and might die, that she consented to the marriage. I had to appoint a “wakeel” (proxy, in this instance) to represent me at the marriage and the festivities; Nahoum prepared the feast at his house, the bride preparing the food and attending to the guests. At the conclusion of the few days’ ceremonies and feastings, Umm es Shole was escorted |190| to Khartoum—a married woman, and introduced for the first time to her husband. She set to at once with her household duties and attendance upon me, and during a long and weary five months nursed me back to life.