terror before the Arab's hand flashed out and gripped him by the throat, depriving him of breath.
In a moment, the hut was aflame, as were the other huts; and the air was filled with the screams of terrified women and children trying to escape into the jungle. But all routes of escape were cut off and the whirling pangas of the slavetraders finished the job as efficiently and expeditiously as one accomplishes well-rehearsed and relished task. The timing of the raid was perfect. The menfolk of the village, except for the decrepit few now lying dead on the ground, had gone on a fishing expedition. It was the women and the children that the slavetraders were after.
And so began the long trek to Omdurman, and beyond that to Alexandria where lay a ship to carry the slaves to the market in Istanbul.
Of the hurried preparations for the long journey, he remembered nothing. He could now only picture in his mind the long column as it wound its way through the jungle. His mother, like all the women of the village, had carried the heavy forked pole on her shoulders, head locked in crossbars, hands tied to the pole in front. Like the other children he was bound to his mother by a metal chain passed around his neck. The loot, the village's store of grain, the ivory, even the beads and the colourful stones cut from the dead, was stacked up front on a few mules. Everyone had to walk very quickly or even run to avoid the lash of the slavetraders' whips, whose horses matched the whiteness of their turbans and robes.
They walked and walked. They crossed rivers and climbed mountains. They passed through forests, savannah country, swamps, and dune deserts, but always shunned inhabited places. And all the time he was thirsty and hungry. The water was rationed and they were fed only once a day, after...