Once we talk about railways in Africa, well, we all may think of Cecil Rhodes as he is spreading his feet as a colossus towering over Africa, equipped with gun and topi, one boot on the Cape the other one on Cairo, between both boots a railway-line … you may know this cartoon. But, how did the Africa-map look like at that time?

CONTROL! THE MAP PLEASE!

What we see is a chain of pink spots more or less in a straight line from South to North, marking the British influence in Africa.
Along this line, Rhodes had laid out the drawing for his dream. In the centre, the dark purple of German influence blocks this dream. And what is shown as pink immediately before Egypt was, at Rhodes’ time, not pink but rather green. It is not Italy’s map-colour for her colonial influence in Africa, but rather the colour of the Quran!
We recognize: it is the Sudan; and this territory was for some traumatic years withdrawn from British influence by the radical-Islamic Mahdi, a self-proclaimed prophet of Allah who had ordered his camel-riders to drive away all infidels from Sudan’s territory.
To the horror of the British public, one of its favourite heroes, the famous Gordon Pasha, lost his head when on 26th January 1885 the riders of the Mahdi took Khartoum and presented their boss the trophy at the tip of a lance …
The Empire needed now a man who would not loose his head that fast … and on the stage appeared a military engineer who had surveyed Palestine and Cyprus and who, due to his knowledge of Arabic culture and language, had served as an army-spy in Egypt.
His mission: to re-conquer the Sudan from the Mahdi’s grip (without causing too much cost) ...
His idea: to construct a railway-line (to solve the complicated and costly supply-problem) …

CONTROL! ATTENTION:

TUNNEL-CONNECTION BETWEEN TWO POINTS IN HISTORY!

1896 > SUDAN < 2004

„Go down in a high angle, not in a low one“, shouts Costello Garang Ring, son of a Sudanese king, and the pilot thumbs his understanding. The Cessna drops steeply towards the bush-track. Since the time when rebels took the town of Kapoeta in Southeast Sudan, some three years ago, no one is shooting anymore, but Garang Ring is not sure about it. The plane rumbles towards a crowd of people at the end of the track. Garang Ring disembarks and behind him his friend from Bad Oldesloe in Schleswig-Holstein / Germany. Afternoon-heat and vibrating drums beat on them, naked children sing, the conducting woman wears a green dress. A girl presents the German a thorny plant with red berries in a tin. The tin wears the label ‚Del Monte Fruit Cocktail‘. The girl seems a bit puzzled. Now the delegation moves along the main-street, passing the scenario of a civil war: destroyed trucks and tanks on either side, ruins shelled by machine-guns, in-between grass, some bushes, some cattle and the red soil of Africa.
The fight for Kapoeta lasted for twenty-one years, the Arabic government of the Northern capital Khartoum versus the black secessionist-army SPLA. The secessionists may now get their own state, the South Sudan. That is why they are here: the king‘s son Garang Ring, who studied in Germany, and his German acquaintance, the heavy-weight railway-entrepreneur. Assisted by big German companies they want to create out of Kapoeta the nucleus of a new country. In four years from now, in this remotest corner of the Third World a daily train may stop in Kapoeta, exactly at 8:30, that‘s how engineers in far away Bad Oldesloe have calculated it.

If RINGELNATZ would only know, how close I am.

Ah, that‘s where he is going to? Mr. Moon’s specialist seems to have been right: this blasting white fellow has to be counted with!

CONTROL! REVERSE OF TUNNEL-DIRECTION!

… And now, Mrs. Lessing, your hunch becomes part of the game!

„THE TRIUMPH OF THE SUN“, Wilbur Smith‘s tastily narrated story of love and grief among European settlers, traders, diplomats and army-officers in times of the Sudanese Mahdi-plague.
But Wilbur Smith also tells us about Osman Atlan, leader of a camel rider-army.
Out of the harem of the Mahdi, who had fallen victim to the cholera, Osman inherited the beautiful Rebecca, daughter of the British consul who was slaughtered as well when Khartoum fell.
Whilst — after the death of the Mahdi — British-Egyptian troops move close to the Sudanese border, in a Sudanese desert-tent Osman and Rebecca move close to each other in an intensive act of love.
After detailed description of the latter, Wilbur Smith lets Rebecca, on page 591, discover the gloomy expression on the face of her master …

¹⁵ "There is aught that troubles you, my husband." She sat up and covered herself with the light bed cloth. "We spoke once of the steamer that runs on land, that travels on ribbons of steel," he said.
"I recall that, my lord, but it was many years ago."
"I wish to discuss this machine again. What was the name you gave it?"
"Railway engine," she enunciated slowly and clearly.
He imitated her, but his lisped and garbled the sounds. He saw in her eyes that he had not succeeded. "It is too difficult, this language of yours." He shook his head angrily, hating to fail in anything he attempted. "I shall call it the land steamer."
"I shall understand what you mean. It is a better name than mine, more powerful and descriptive." At times he was like a small boy and must be jollied along.
"How many men can travel upon this machine. Ten? Twenty? Surely not fifty?" he asked hopefully.
"If the land over which it passes is levelled it can carry many hundreds of men, perhaps as many as a thousand, perhaps many thousands."
Osman looked alarmed. "How far can this thing travel?"
"To the end of its lines."
"But surely it cannot cross a great river like the Atbara? It must stop there."
"It can, my lord."
"I do not believe it. The Atbara is deep and wide. How is that possible?"
"They have men they call engineers who have the skills to build a bridge over it."
"The Atbara? They cannot build over a river so wide." He was trying desperately to convince himself. "Where will they find tree trunks long and strong enough to span the Atbara?"
"They will make the bridge of steel, like the rails it runs upon. Like the blade of your sword," Rebecca explained. "But why do you ask these questions, my husband?"
"My spies in the north have sent a message that these God-cursed Englishmen have begun to lay these steel ribbons from Wadi Halafa south across the great bight of the river, towards Metemma and the Atbara."

On page 603 (it is a voluminous book!), Osman Atlan is on the way into the desert together with a troupe of his confidant aggagiers …
You would like to know what „aggagiers“ means? Didn’t we tell you that Wilbur Smith is always researching meticulously? We read in his glossary:

¹⁵ „aggagiers“ — élite warriors of the Beja tribe of desert Arabs

He was searching for the railway line from Wadi Halafa that the Bedouin had reported. The railway had been in the forefront of his mind since al-Jamal had described it to him.
When he came upon it, it seemed innocuous, twin-silver threads lying on the burning sands. He left al-Noor and the rest of the band on the crest of the dune and rode down alone to inspect it. They were fastened by fish-plates to heavy teak sleepers. He kicked the rail: it was solid and immovable. He knelt beside it and tried to lever out one of the iron bolts with the point of his dagger. The blade snapped in two.
He stood up and hurled away the hilt. "Accursed thing of Shaitan! This is not an honourable way to make war."
Even in his scorn and anger he became aware of a sound that trembled in the desert air, a distant surroration, like the breath of a sleeping giant. Osman stood upright on al-Buq's saddle, and gazed northwards along the line of rail. He saw a tiny feather of smoke on the horizon. As he watched, it drew closer, so rapidly that he was taken by surprise, the alien shape seeming to swell before his eyes as it rushed towards him. He knew that this was the land steamer of which al-Jamal had told him.
He swung al-Buq's head round and urged him into a gallop. He had a quarter of a mile to cover before he reached the foot of the dune. The machine was coming on apace. He looked ahead to the crest of the dune and saw his aggagiers on the skyline. They had dismounted and were holding their horses, allowing them to rest.
"Get down!" Osman roared and he raced across the open ground. "Let not the infidel see you!" But his men were four hundred yards away and his voice did not carry to them. They stood and watched the approaching machine with amazement. Suddenly a blast of white steam shot up from the land steamer and emitted a howl like a maddened jinn. Stupefied, making no effort to conceal themselves, they stood and stared at it. It was a mighty serpent, with a head that hissed, howled and shot out clouds of smoke and steam, and whose body seemed to reach back to the skyline.
"They have seen you!" Osman tried to warn them. "Beware! Beware!" Now they could see that the rolling trucks were stacked with steel rails and crates. On the last they made out the heads of half a dozen men, who were crouched behind some strange contraption.
"Beware!" Osman was racing up the slip-face of the dune, almost at the top. His voice held a high, despairing note. Suddenly the yellow sands under the feet of the group of aggagiers and the hoofs of their horses exploded into flying clouds of dust. It was as though a khamsin wind had torn over them. The terrible sound of the Maxim gun followed close behind the spray of bullets. The troop of men and horse disintegrated, blown away like dead leaves.