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