Their situation was like that on the day of the incident.

Some of the Ansar were plowing land when the army arrived. Among them was a man named Billeh (who was drowning). When he saw the army, he raised his axe and shouted the famous Mahdist cry: "Religion is victorious." The army, in response, opened fire and killed seventeen people. Then our army decided to execute Khalifa Sharif and the sons of the Mahdi.

They announced this decision to us and were about to tie up the condemned. They refused, saying: "We are patient in the face of death." The army then shot Khalifa Sharif, Al-Fadl, and Al-Bushra Al-Mahdi, and they died.

The death sentence had included others, including Abd al-Qadir bin Sayyid Muhammad and Abd al-Samad bin Haj Sharifi, but they were released at the last moment.

As for me, I was seriously wounded in the chest by a bullet and was bleeding among the wounded. The Ansar who were killed were buried, except for Khalifa Muhammad Sharif, Al-Fadl, and Al-Bushra, whose bodies were stoned and thrown into the Nile River. Perhaps the rulers wanted them to have no graves to be visited.

The sons of the Mahdi who were not killed or wounded were: Abdullah, Al-Tahir, Nasr al-Din, and Ali. They were taken prisoner in Omdurman, where they stayed until the prisoners of Umm Dubaykarat were added to them. They were all taken prisoner to Rashid. The wounded were taken to Sennar. I did not go with them, and perhaps the expedition did not want to include me among the wounded, fearing the responsibility that would result from striking a boy who had not reached puberty.

Elephant Island God willed that I should leave and be left alone with the women and the elderly after the events of that black day, the day of the Shakaia incident, which history will reveal its ugly face to future generations to see, learn, and take heed.

Our remnants gathered after the incident under a group of trees next to the village of Al-Bariyab, and we stayed there for several months, sleeping on the ground and the sky as our roof. We were accompanied by a force led by the Jaweesh Fadl Allah, consisting of eight soldiers. Then we moved to Elephant Island, where we stayed for ten years, subsisting on rain-fed agriculture in the lands of Shakaia. We worked, children and women, and carried our harvest to Elephant Island, where we lived. After we had stayed for seven years on Elephant Island, our families who were prisoners in Rashid were returned to