The eyes, painted with antimony,
flashed extraordinary fires; the exquisite smile revealed,
beneath the vigorous lips, white upper teeth with a V-shaped
space between them-- the certain sign of fortune. His turban was
folded with faultless art, his jibbeh, speckless, was perfumed
with sandal-wood, musk, and attar of roses. He was at once all
courtesy and all command. Thousands followed him, thousands
prostrated themselves before him; thousands, when he lifted up
his voice in solemn worship, knew that the heavens were opened
and that they had come near to God. Then all at once the onbeia--
the elephant's-tusk trumpet--would give out its enormous sound.
The nahas--the brazen wardrums-- would summon, with their weird
rolling, the whole host to arms. The green flag and the red flag
and the black flag would rise over the multitude. The great army
would move forward, coloured, glistening, dark, violent, proud,
beautiful. The drunkenness, the madness of religion would blaze
on every face; and the Mahdi, immovable on his charger, would let
the scene grow under his eyes in silence.
El Obeid fell in January, 1883. Meanwhile, events of the deepest
importance had occurred in Egypt. The rise of Arabi had
synchronised with that of the Mahdi. Both movements were
nationalist; both were directed against alien rulers who had
shown themselves unfit to rule.
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