CHAPTER TWO: A SON OF THE NILE
EPISODE SIX

In 1954, when this book was written, I was either fifty-three or fifty-five years old, depending on whether I was born, as I once thought, on June 28, 1899, or, as I now think, on February 20, 1901. The discrepancy arises from the fact that births, deaths, and marriages were not officially recorded in Sudan until just before the First World War. If anyone knew my exact age, it was my father, Yuwsif Nagiyb, but he died before I understood the position in our family of my brother `Abbas. My mother, in trying to forget that `Abbas existed, succeeded only in forgetting the year in which she became my father's wife. All she could remember was that I was born in Khartuwm about one year later.

My father kept a little notebook in which he recorded such events as the six battles in which he fought, the day he was wounded, and the day he killed a viper. On one page of the notebook was a list of dates that seemed to correspond with the births of nine of his ten children. But whether the list began with the birth of `Abbas and ended before the birth of Mahmuwd, My youngest brother, or whether it began with my own birth and ignored the birth of `Abbas is a question that I have never been able to answer satisfactorily. All I know is that I was allowed to assume, until my father died, that I was born on June 28, 1899, the first date on the list. But after my father's death, when I finally realized that `Abbas was my half brother and not my full brother, as I had thought, I began to wonder.`Abbas himself was not very helpful. He was a simple fallah, or peasant, who had grown up in Nahariyah, my father's native village in Lower Egypt. Like most fallahiyn, he was unsure of the exact date of his birth. It seemed probable, though, from what little he could remember, that he was born in the Muslim lunar year that corresponded with the Christian year of 1899. If so, I was born myself in 1901.

My father married again soon after returning to Sudan in 1900. My mother, his second wife, was Zahrah Muhammad `Uthman, an orphaned daughter of an Egyptian officer who was killed in the siege of Khartuwm two hours before the death of General Gordon. Her family came from Mahallah al-Kubra, now a textile town, which is not far from Nahariyah. Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad `Uthman, my maternal grandfather, was an acting brigadier at the time of his death in 1885. Three of his brothers, who were also officers, were killed in the same massacre. My father asked Zahrah's mother, whom he assumed to be her legal guardian, for permission to take her as his wife. To his surprise, my grandmother refused. She reminded him that proposals of marriage, according to Muslim etiquette, should be addressed to the senior male of the household. My father apologetically explained that he was unaware of the senior male's identity. As things turned out, he was none other than Lieutenant `Abd al-Wahhab`Uthman, whom my father had known when they were both cadets at the Egyptian Military Academy. `Abd al-Wahhab, who was still in Cairo, was Zahrah's eldest brother. When my father wrote to him to ask for his sister's hand, he cordially consented, and my father married my mother a few weeks later.

(To be continued)