Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

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  Bakhita sobs and through the tears that scald her dust-filled eyes, she sees a young slave woman tearing out her own hair and screaming. “Her little brother,” Binah explains. “Brother. Of hers.” She shows Bakhita the string of boys following the important cleric. They are not chained but walk calmly away, holding hands, the faki told them he has selected them for a very special life, they are the chosen ones. They do not understand Arabic. But they go meekly to their fate, they have seen the punishments handed out to anyone who disobeys so they are careful to be well behaved. One of them turns momentarily to look at the girl gesticulating dementedly, just a look, filled with detached affection.

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  After this the slaves become agitated and start to shake with exhaustion under the white sky, they start leaning on each other, hurting each other, pulling at each other’s necks. The guards are worried the goods will be damaged, they unlock the padlocks to move the chains from the slaves’ necks to their ankles, then they open the gate to the large round huts, and chivy the women into one hut and the men into another. No fornication, they say. The slaves do not understand these words, but who would have the heart for intimacy, which of them would have the strength for coupling? This is not life. It is survival.

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  Bakhita quickly realizes that being in the hut is worse than being outside. She rediscovers the oppression of her time in the hole where she was locked away by her captors, and here the scorpions are as big as a hand, the rats like small foxes. She drags Binah to the far end of the hut, they cling together and she sings her funny song “When children were born to the lioness,” not really saying the words, only the melody trickles from her dry lips. She goes on and on singing the same notes, trying to escape inside her own head again, but all about her there is wailing and groaning, the world around her is stronger, she cannot remove herself from it. She feels Binah next to her, bone-tired, silent, resting her head on her shoulder and saying, “I like your little song.” Bakhita does not understand the words but grasps the gist. And this is how she will go through life now. Connected to other people by intuition, sensing what emanates from them by their voice, their stride, the look in their eye, sometimes a gesture.

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  She watches. The women with whom she lives. Those who were here before and the newcomers, like herself. They are young mostly, there are other little girls, who eye each other, seek out their own kind, ask for news in a mixture of dialects and Arabic, and then, weary and disappointed, return to their fate as girls for sale. The place smells of vomit and shit, sweat, pus and urine, menstrual blood, they all sleep on the bare earth, when and if they sleep. Where will they all go? What will be done to them? How long will this last? They don’t know. Guards come to fetch the sick, they are taken away and never seen again. Some adolescent girls are called out for a few hours, and when they return they stumble like drunkards and talk of killing themselves. Others tell terrible stories that no one wants to understand, and if they do understand, they choose not to believe them. Bakhita hears the story of the slave woman who could no longer keep up with her caravan, and her dealer hung her from a tree by her neck, to be sure that she had no rest, sure that she died and no one else could profit from her. She does not catch the young slave woman’s name but thinks of her sister, and knows that she too was rebaptized, what is her name now? A Muslim name to make a Muslim woman of her, but also so that they can all be mistaken for one another, so no one can ever find anyone, the facts are scrambled, they are part of the big herd. There is talk of slaves abandoned, still yoked about the neck, by buyers who can no longer afford to feed them; slaves stabbed to death or shot; there is talk of the woman whose baby was thrown to the crocodiles and who threw herself into the river to join him, and of the woman whose pregnant belly was split right open because her captors had laid bets on the baby’s sex. Bakhita does not want to hear these tales that she struggles to understand. Above and beyond the overriding mistrust in the hut, the loathing and the madness taking hold among the women, there is her love for Kishmet, and for one fleeting moment, all the captives look like her. The woman scratching her cheeks till they bleed. The one knocking her head against the mud walls. The one who has stopped talking but just grunts and moans. The one praying. The one snoring. The one laughing and crying at once. And this tiny little girl who has come to huddle against her, who refuses to speak and keeps her eyes closed. Bakhita can feel the child’s heartbeat, notices her habit of patting her arm with one finger, perhaps she is lulling herself, perhaps she is marking out time to a story, perhaps she is losing her mind, how to know. She is like a baby bird held on a scrap of straw, a tiny place of warmth in which to find rest, her eyes closed against Bakhita, her breathing outside any notion of fear. Bakhita does not know her. Not her name, where she is from, or how she came here. She is four years old, maybe five. Bakhita senses that every one of these imprisoned women would like to do what this little girl is doing. She puts her hand on the child’s head and can feel her pulse against her palm. She in turn is soothed. She dares to think about what is precious to her, dares to conjure her mother’s face. Her laugh. Her voice. Her smell. That other life. When her name was…When her name was…What was her name? And her twin’s? And her older brother’s? And her friend’s? What were all their names? She tries to remember, then falls asleep with the little girl next to her dribbling and heaving deep sighs.

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  She wakes with a start in the morning. The rooster has just crowed for the first time. She hears the call to prayer. Is snapped out of a colorful, violent, incoherent dream. She is sweating and her heartbeat thumps in her throat. The little girl has intertwined her legs with hers, two skinny scarred legs. The child is frowning, pursing her lips, brittle as dried grass. She too must have a Muslim name. A name that does not speak of what the world was like the day she was born. But neither of their fathers made their pledges to the moon in vain. Their fathers are powerful and kind. And she knows with certainty that her forgotten name lives on somewhere, protected. She can make out the sleeping bodies amid the foul stench and intimate noises, and decides she is happy to be called Bakhita. She makes this decision, accepts it. Bakhita. Abda. Slave. Like the other women and the little girl in her arms. She says yes. And then goes back to sleep. Slips into a dream in which her mother holds her close. Tries to find the words to tell her that she loves her, to reassure her, but she loves her so much she cannot find the words. For a love like that there are none.

  After a few days they are herded out of the hut. Not only to work and serve men’s pleasure. They are all herded out. Men, women. Adolescents, little children. Out they go. The dead have been discarded, the sick sold off to passing peddlers before they lost all their value, leaving the prime choice, strong healthy young people and children. They come outside and discover daylight once more. The smell of baked bread, grilled corn. Barking, goats bleating, donkeys braying, the calling and chatter of the village, this is life, and it is unbearably beautiful. Bakhita hears the wind in the leaves of a baobab, loud and so familiar it brings tears to her eyes. She does not know why something beautiful grieves her so much, why the chaotic sway of these leaves constricts her heart. They are shoved around, lined up in rows, and fear instantly has them in its grip. A little way in front of her she hears the child who slept in her arms crying. Over her lament is the sound of the wind in the baobab leaves. A swelling, discordant music. It is already hot, and in every slave’s mind there is the same terrible dejection at the thought of setting off again, walking and managing not to die.

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  The faroucs must decide which of them will be sent to the coast, to the huge market, to Khartoum, the home of the three great traders who between them run the slave trade. So far the slaves have simply passed from hand to hand, middleman to middleman, now the final destina
tion is drawing near. They are inspected again, evaluated, and divided into groups, the faroucs manage this process and the faki is there too. Deliberation, discussion, endless debate. Bakhita knows she must not open her eyes wide, must walk gently to get used to it again, knows she must not touch babies’ feet, look adults in the eye, talk to Binah, show signs of exhaustion, or ask for water, knows how she must behave but she is so afraid of being separated from Binah that her legs shake. Every now and then their fingers brush against each other’s and say, I won’t let go your hand, but they see young men and women leave, one after another, forming a caravan, they leave and it is starting all over again, the keys and padlocks, the chains, one after another they are chosen, and she thinks that if she and Binah are separated she will go mad, like the women she saw in the hut, and she thinks of her mother again, “My little daughter is gentle and good.” She is still her mother’s little daughter. Is still gentle and good. Has not gone mad. And she will not. She sees the tiny child who slept in her arms stumble and set off, her face turned up, eyes searching helplessly for a woman to latch on to. The group moves away, a cloud of dust captured in the blinding light.

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  When the cacophony of ironwork, whips, and orders has dwindled, when she can hear only the barks of dogs following them, and then the barks of dogs returning, there are not many slaves left at the zareba, and she and Binah are among them. Together once more, maybe only for a day or two, but together. Perhaps there were too many children in the caravan that has just left, it’s tricky, this precious merchandise that slows down consignments. They have been set aside for another convoy. This is an unbelievable gift, pure chance and such a joy, the urge to whoop and clap their hands, the urge to jump up and down, to throw themselves into each other’s arms and feel against her own body her friend’s thin body, her little-girl bones, her smell of damp, urine, and dust, her smell of old age that belies the power of this brief happiness. Of course they do none of this. They take the risk of becoming attached to each other but with no outward signs of this affection, no accesses of human emotion.

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  The guard chains them together and shuts them in again, and they talk. Without understanding each other’s dialect, they understand their suffering. Without really following each other’s words, they describe their misdemeanors, their villages, their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins, ancestors, those who have died and those who still wait for them, and it all becomes real again, and never-ending too, as if they already have long lives behind them. They assimilate each other’s words, sometimes the process is disheartening and incomprehensible, sometimes it falls into place, the words fly, then they repeat these foreign words over and over, and when they fall silent and are left alone with everything they have disclosed, sorrow washes over them with such brutal force that one morning, in a flash of lunacy, they do it, they decide on it, they tell each other: They are going to find their way back to their families. It is a sign of madness, of youthfulness, of life. They are going to run away.

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  It goes on like this for three days. Talking and dreaming about their homes and their escape. They belong to a world that has not disappeared, given that they remember it, and they will go home to it, retrace their steps, return to the starting point. Bakhita pictures herself in her mother’s arms, held close to her with her eyes closed, she will breathe her smell of milk, her sweet sweat, her twin will be there, that other self who has waited for her and thanks to whom she has not entirely left the village, one part of her is abda and the other has remained free and takes refuge on her father’s lap every evening. Emotion is a driving force and a form of paralysis, Bakhita is caught in the countercurrents of the dream and her fears, she wonders whether Olgossa still exists, whether her capture saw the village set on fire, whether the inhabitants have fled this now dangerous place, do places still exist when they have been abandoned?

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  In their innocence and their hope, in their rambling discussions, she and Binah imagine their villages are near to each other, their families together, finding one would mean finding the other. By day they work on one of the zareba’s farms, among other slaves, world-weary taciturn old women, they are watched by a guard and still chained. And yet they will find a way, they know they will, escape starts in the mind. In the evenings, Bakhita sings her funny song, she teaches it to Binah deep inside that hut full of images, songs, and anecdotes about her family, stories too, they tell each other stories, the one about the magician who mends little girls, the one about the wild mother, it all comes back to them, and the game with pebbles, the game involving the moon, it all blossoms again, feels so close at hand, their world is about to change, is already changing.

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  It happens one evening. The guard comes in from the fields with his cart full of corncobs. He is irritable and in a hurry. He hauls them out of the hut and tells them to sort through the corn, he needs to sell it before nightfall, they’d better be quick about it. He removes their chains so they can work more quickly. They hear the chains fall. Feel their feet glide freely over the ground, their ankles dance back and forth, they can stand up, turn around, move without hurting someone else, their legs feel like feathers, they could fly. It makes them shake all over. Almost frightens them. Because they know. Now is the time. They must do it now. It needs no discussion. They must do as they are told and sort the corn to avoid being beaten, but they must also not sort the corn and run away. Their hands shake, they grade the corn and glance around, quickly, like birds, turning their heads, the corn, the village, the corn, the paths leading out of the village, the noises, the smells, the world breathing, the corn, the world opening up and closing in again, the corn, and then the guard goes into his hut. He leaves them. Quite alone. The two of them. Unchained. They hear the call to prayer and the voice does not frighten them, it is a voice on the wind, in the sky, somewhere else.

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  Bakhita’s heart starts its tom-tom beat again, as it did when the men snatched her behind the banana palm, the same call beating in her ears and gently leading her body away, thumping, insisting, never stopping, thumping, insisting, until her head spins…They can no longer concentrate on sorting the corn into cobs worth selling and those to be fed to the livestock, they toss them at random, wherever they fall, they look toward the guard’s door, still closed, they watch, hopeful, waiting for the moment when they will start to run. Children are playing on the hillside, their shouts and laughter carried in the fading evening light, the braying of donkeys waiting for food, dogs hovering around men who are about to feed them, and it is very lucky for the two girls that the dogs are hungry. There is that woman, beside the well. She has filled her urn, drawn it up, settled it on her head, and is now standing there. Binah starts to cry because the woman has stayed by the well for no reason, all alone, with her tiredness and laziness. The guard’s door is still closed. A man walks past the hut, hesitates for a moment, and then decides not to knock, heads off again, he has prayer beads in his hand, shunts them very quickly through his fingers, looks down at the beads, then walks off, his great tall twisted body rolling, and the woman leaves the well. It is dark. There is no one around now. In the silence they can still hear the donkeys’ braying. It sounds like cow horns blown into by musicians. Sounds like distress. Sounds like a signal. Without a word, without a look, they lob the last corncob and take each other’s hand. And run.

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  Aimlessly. As fast as they can. They run. Night is closing in, and they run over a land with no sky and no light, the moon has hidden behind clouds, the darkness protects them. Their hands are clenched, clutched together, and their breath whistles like flute music, they run, without thinking where they are going, no longer feeling tired or afraid, straight ahead they flee. I won’t let go your hand.<
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  They come to a forest. Impossible to run fast through the trees and roots, they slow down. The trees are full of birds calling to one another for the night. From among the branches comes the sound of their wings, quick erratic flapping. There are monkeys, with their shrill cries. The tall, tightly packed trees, so close together, their branches reaching toward the sky, drawn by the open air. They walk quickly for a long time. And then stop. It hurts to breathe. Their sweat streams like rain. Their mouths are hot and dry. They don’t know where they are. Don’t know which way they should head. They must keep going.

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  And they walk through the darkness, which is a new world, gathered weightily around them, but at the end of this world their mothers wait for them. They can no longer feel their legs, they are beyond exhaustion and pain, beyond all thought. All at once there is a light, a glow coming from the depths of the forest, a flame passing between the trees without burning them, held high and steady, the girls set off again, running once more, their feet catching on roots, and the whole forest suddenly lights up. There are flames everywhere, as if the one following them has lit others, fed them with its fire, both in the forest and in the sky, these quivering yellows and reds, they are surrounded by war. Still they run. They fall, hurt themselves, get back up, and just before they are caught among the flames, they give up altogether, the fire has won, they stop. Bakhita’s bleeding legs shake as if pursued by whips. She catches her breath. Looks around. The forest is filled with darkness. There are no more torches. There can never have been any. They were threatened only by their own imagination, hunted down by their incoherent thoughts. They hear the last few birds call to one another, the last leaves rustle together, the monkeys howl, and then everything, absolutely everything, falls silent.