Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River (28 page)

Belladonna, ratsbane, the potato bug, vitriol; laurel water, wood-ash lye, monkshood and antimonial wine; thorn apple, Jamestown weed, ink cap and lead vinegar – all had their own signature, their own tell-tale signs. Hellebore, Indian poke, hemlock and henbane – you had to be careful: mistake one for another and the antidote would exacerbate the damage. The antidote was the last line of self-defence. One did not, after all, want to die doing this job. Naturally the poison taster always had a tame doctor at hand in case of emergencies.

At the first sign that poison was present, one induced vomiting – the best method being an emetic of ground mustard or powdered alum in a syrup of molasses. If hemlock is suspected – known by a dryness to the throat, tremors and dizziness – then the stomach must be fully
emptied, using ammonia, if necessary, to complete the job.

Indian-poke poisoning produces symptoms of violent vomiting and bloody stools. The vomiting need only be speeded up through the intake of draughts of warm water and molasses. Oily purgatives and clysters of strong coffee, camomile and opium will all help counter this pernicious plant poison.

For a mineral poison such as oil of vitriol, bloody vomiting may precede excessive thirst, convulsions and death, with the mouth and lips excoriated, shrivelled white and yellow. Calcined magnesia mixed with milk to the consistency of cream, if taken immediately, may be remedy enough. When the poison is got rid of, slippery elm tea and flaxseed gruel will aid recovery.

Aconite or wolfsbane poisoning leads to numbness and tingling in the mouth, and bit by bit all regions of the body likewise submit. It was used in ancient times to poison wells, as well as for tipping arrows and spears used on a lion hunt. A form of aconite is present in the common buttercup; it is very unwise to put its leaves and petals in the mouth. Should aconite poisoning be suspected, a strong emetic is needed straight away followed by a tiny measure of ammonia every half-hour. If cold well water is available, douche the head and chest with it, though apply warmth to the extremities.

Deadly nightshade or belladonna is an old favourite of court poisoners as there is no known antidote. The plant has little odour and only a small bitterness easily concealed with molasses or honey. Belladonna poisoning causes dryness of the mouth followed by loss of vision. Since there is no cure save hopeful reliance on a prompt emetic it is best to keep stimulating the body through alcohol and opium until either the symptoms pass or death prevails.

Laurel water (the active ingredient is cyanide) in a large dose is almost instantaneously fatal. In smaller doses there is loss of control of the voluntary muscles. The odour of almonds is usually enough to alert a poison taster to this concoction. If afflicted, spirits of hartshorn largely diluted may be given, the vapour of it cautiously inhaled.

It is quite possible to murder a prince or a king with opium. The symptoms are giddiness and drowsiness at first, a feeling of wellbeing that rapidly descends with the fatal dose into stupor; the pulse slows and weakens, the pupils contract, and as death approaches the extremities become icy cold, the sphincters relax. Naturally an emetic of strong proportions must be administered. Strong coffee is also advised. In
extreme cases belladonna may be used – tiny amounts every twenty minutes, the exact quantity gauged by watching for the pupils to expand. Use whatever method is available to prevent the onset of what may be the last, fatal sleep.

Nux vomica, or in modern parlance strychnine, exerts a peculiar effect on the body that is immediately noticeable: all the muscles contract and the spinal cord becomes a rigid column of bone. A profound calm soon descends followed by a second, titanic seizure, longer than the first, and during which respiration is halted. These symptoms then cease and the breathing becomes easy, leading to a stupor, followed by another attack; the titanic seizures return with increasing ferocity until the onset of death. If any part of the body is touched during a quiescent period of the poisoning it immediately sets off another seizure. Interestingly, even threatening to touch the victim can trigger a fresh titanic seizure. A purgative clyster should be taken along with a strong emetic. Oil of turpentine can be administered as an antidote after the stomach is cleared. Opium, too, has some success in extreme cases. Oils and butter taken into the emptied stomach are also useful.

Thorn apple perverts the vision and leads to vertigo. It is to be treated in the same way as belladonna poisoning.

Hemlock is known through the exquisite dizziness it causes, followed by a dry throat and a creeping paralysis of the limbs. The stomach should be emptied with mustard and then dosed with small amounts of ammonia. It may be that air needs to be blown into the victim’s lungs by an attendant physician, if the breathing weakens to a dangerous extent.

But Aybak’s status as the husband of Shajarat al-Durr was not enough to convince the Bahri Mamluks, so a co-reign involving six-year-old Musa, the grandson of a previous Ayyubid sultan, became the front for a curious three-handed regime.

Under the Turks, a rule, the harsh rule of the wolf pack, endured. The man who kills the ruler is the only one fit to rule. Those who served with obedience and competence but did not wish to despatch the ruler when the time was mysteriously right, perhaps when he had begun to lose his power, luck or abilities, such people did not deserve to rule. This ideology, brutal but effective, reached its apogee in the behaviour of Turkish princes murdering their siblings to ensure that they had no obvious rivals for the throne.

Aybak became cocky. He managed to oust the Mamluks behind little
Musa and proclaimed himself the sole ruler, omitting Shajarat al-Durr’s name from newly minted coinage. He went one step too far, though, and sought to marry the daughter of the Emir of Mosul. It was purely political – you can imagine him explaining that to his enraged wife back in Cairo. In any case the decision would cost him dear. As he reclined in the harem in his ornate tiled bath, with rose water being poured over his head, he was seized by the bath attendants, slaves loyal first to Shajarat al-Durr, and his throat was cut, so deeply that his head almost fell off, filling the bath with arterial blood.

But Shajarat al-Durr had miscalculated her power. The Mamluks realised that their time had come. In some versions of the story the Mamluks encouraged Aybak’s former wife to avenge herself on the woman who had supplanted her in his affections, before arresting her for murder.

Shajarat al-Durr locked herself in the Red Tower of the Citadel to escape capture. Growing weaker and weaker from lack of food, she spent her days grinding her jewels on a flat granite stone used by Bedouin in the desert for crushing grain. Determined that no woman would ever wear her finery, she managed to destroy an enormous amount of her wealth. In one version of the story she even, in her final delirium, ate the powdered jewels because she was so hungry. Eventually, utterly starving, she opened the door. Dragged out by the other female members of her dead husband’s harem she was beaten to death with clogs and her body discarded in the ditch surrounding the Citadel. In this ditch, 500 years later, the last of the Mamluks would meet his doom at the hands of the Albanian brigand Muhammad Ali.

And what of Baiburs, who would soon take over the throne from the ill-used Shajarat al-Durr and her poison-tasting husband? He would lead the Arabs to great victories over the Mongols and the Christians, securing the Middle East for several centuries. He would die aged sixty-four in 1277 from drinking
kumiss
, fermented mares’ milk, a favourite drink of the Kipchaks and Mongols. Baiburs, who had become increasingly paranoid and was afraid that he would be killed, insisted that the mares’ milk used be coloured with his colour – saffron yellow – so that he knew it came from his safe stock. Baiburs’ paranoia was fed by other ailments – poor digestion and a failing memory. Food and drink sometimes turned up under the pillows where he rested. If left too long,
kumiss
turns into a deadly poison; it seems that Baiburs may have poisoned himself.

12
•
Baiburs’ city

Do not buy the swift strong horse, buy the one already tamed
.
Egyptian proverb

The best time to see Old Cairo, the Cairo of Baiburs and Al-Nafis, is around 6 or 6.30 on a Saturday morning. No one is around. The sun has just risen and is catching all the great mosques and walls and palaces in its rosy-fingered glow. If you’re on a motorbike you can get down any number of narrow alleys and overhung streets; walking works too, but somehow having wheels multiplies the grandeur of the place, as you can take more in more intensely. And you can zoom past dogs. Hire a taxi and just drive around.

Of course I only rarely follow my own advice. Often I used to be driving through the old city last thing at night, its ancientness illuminated by green mosque lights and the stuttering glow of a street arc welder.

Once, out later than usual, I stopped at a café with
shishas
(water-pipes or hookahs) just below the Citadel, not far from the City of the Dead cemetery. Two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, were performing for the small audience, who were, I must say, only mildly interested. Not me. These boys were the real thing, thin as wire in their grubby tracksuits and dusty sandals, armed with just a Baraka water bottle full of gasoline, a small bucket brazier filled with glowing charcoal and a few rags. While the older one ate fire, the other, who had dyed his hair on top an odd light-brown colour, juggled with it, thin sticks each wrapped with a cotton wad soaked in petrol. When they saw I was interested the tricks got better. The fire eater took a length of metal – iron or steel, I guessed – and heated it until it glowed red from the brazier. Very slowly, but with little other ceremony, he bit off the end and spat it into a water glass where it hissed and sizzled most convincingly.

The other handed him some grubby sponges quickly doused in petrol. He held them in the
meshi
, the tongs used to tend a waterpipe. Then he lit each one with a concealed lighter and tossed it high into the night sky. He caught each burning sponge in his mouth as it came down – yet at the end his mouth was empty. I alone applauded this, though two other old gaffers were watching with amusement. I knew I would be the one paying, but it was worth it.

The last trick was almost the most impressive. With no warning and none of the fandango of a ‘real’ magician, almost in fact as an afterthought, the boy picked up with a fork a piece of charcoal from the red-hot glowing brazier. With no pause for it to cool he popped it in his mouth. Then another, and another. One, two, three, four – down they went, and all he did was smile. He showed his empty white-toothed mouth – the red-hot charcoal all swallowed, it seemed.

I gave them money, about four pounds, which was a lot for that kind of place, and took the older boy’s mobile number, explaining that I wanted to take some pictures of the act. Two days later I was waiting in the same place at four in the afternoon but they didn’t turn up – and after answering my first call they did not return my calls or pick up when I phoned. The owner of the café, a man with a cast in one eye, remembered me and asked what I was doing as he riffled through an immense wad of grubby currency. He told me that the magician boys were homeless and the phone was probably stolen. They had got scared. ‘But he can tell you how they do those tricks.’ He gestured at an incredibly thin man in a grey
galabiya
sucking on a waterpipe with what looked like a toothless mouth. It wasn’t – the man smiled and revealed a couple of blackened stumps. He beckoned me over, patting the plastic chair next to him. He was keen to talk, wired on tea and
shisha
. He told me he knew about these tricks from years of watching. ‘Only watching.’ Judging by the condition of his teeth he looked like he’d done his share of fire eating too.

‘So why do you think they always come here?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

‘Because this spot is famous for such fire acts since the time of the first Arabs, even before, since the fire-eating Persian priests came to Egypt. I tell you I learnt as a boy all those tricks – though those lads are good. Take the fire eating – that’s easy as long as you exhale all the time, not too strong or people can see. Then when you shut your mouth on the flame it goes out instantly. As long as the gasoline isn’t dripping it won’t hurt – and you keep your mouth wet drinking water and yoghurt beforehand, all day in fact.’

‘What about biting off the steel?’

‘That was iron, not steel. They get it from old barrels. Beforehand he’s bent that iron back and forth a hundred times to weaken it so that it will drop off almost if you touch it. Granted, it’s red hot when he grips it in his teeth, but if you don’t touch the lips or gums the teeth
can hold something very hot for a second or two. When he spits it out he is really just dropping it from his mouth with a little extra force by swinging his head. Easy to make a mistake on that one though, I would say.’

‘But the burning coals – how was that done?’

‘Without you seeing, he’s dropped some pieces of soft pine in among the coals. It burns up and goes as black as charcoal but remains soft – that’s why he uses a fork. The only one that he can stick the fork into is a piece of black pine. Unlike charcoal it loses heat very quickly and you can chew it up and swallow it easily. But there’s one they didn’t do which I always like. If you see someone drinking boiling lead this is how they do it – they add bismuth [same word in Arabic] and tin to the lead – this makes it melt at less than the boiling point of water. So they cast a spoon from this metal and produce it as an ordinary teaspoon. They demonstrate by stirring some tea with it (which it will just about stand). Then the showman melts the spoon into a ladle over the brazier and pretends this is white hot. Then he takes the molten metal into his mouth where it cools and hardens again.’

‘Isn’t it poisonous?’

He laughed. ‘These boys don’t care about such things as long as they get a pound for it. The older one is ill anyway, he has bilharzia.’