THE COMMONWEALTH: Fuzzy Wuzzy

‘E’s a daisy, ‘e’s a ducky, ‘e’s a lamb!

‘E’s a injia-rubber idiot on the spree,

‘E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t give a damn

For a Regiment o’ British Infantree!

So ‘ere’ s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan:

You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;

An here’s to you Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ‘ayrick ‘ead of ‘air

You big black boundin’ beggar for you broke a British square!

Last week Fuzzy Wuzzy (Osman Digna, called “The Ugly”) died in Wadi Haifa, Egypt. He was 90. He had spent 22 years in prison, more than 20 years slave trading, some 25 years fighting. His father was a Scottish sailor or Beelzebub. Perhaps he had an Arab mother, or perhaps his mother was a Turk. Nobody is sure. History recognizes only that ugly Osman Digna* spent his boyhood and adolescence helping his parents sell slaves. The Digna family was very rich. In 1882 the British again forbade slave-trading. The Dervish Mahdi proclaimed a Holy War and Osman Digna, brown and skinny, with an evil face, round shoulders, a hawk nose, joined the rebellion, achieved a title “Emir of the Dervish of God.” He beat General Baker at Tokar. He fought General Gordon at Khartum and Kitchener at Omdurman. Three times he was reported dead. He came to life again. With his brown spearmen he broke the British square.

Men said his life was enchanted. Nor ivory knife nor silver slug could pierce the Swarthy armor of his skin. His chest was as hairy as the pelt of a bear. His teeth were sharp as stakes. He taught his soldiery to play a game-first you took a village, then you lined up women, tore the babies from their breasts, tossed them in air, impaled them on spear points. Some say that a British propagandist, not Osman Digna, invented this game, but Colonel Horatio Kitchener (young then) took it seriously. He went after Fuzzy Wuzzy at Handub but a black archer pinked the Colonel in the neck, and the man with the ugly face escaped. For a while he hid in the hills, played a deadly kind of squat tag with all the British troops that came where he was. At last a sly captain named Burges chased him into a cave that had no back door. He was tried for rebellion, sentenced to life imprisonment in a hot cell in Egypt. After 22 years Parliament remembered that this fighting man was still alive. Judged him harmless, let him out. He spent the quiet evening of his days playing with a gourd rattle in the door of a hut. He died in bed.

* Literally, “man with a beard.”

A body of troops formed in a square, formerly often solid, in modern times hollow with the ranks forming the sides facing outward.