* * *
—
Bakhita does not understand what they are saying. She finds it hard to stay standing, can feel Binah holding her hand. Can feel only this. That is all. When the mother asks the leader to kill her, Bakhita does not understand this either. The girl is kneeling, imploring, “Kill me! Kill me!” Bakhita has forgotten what it means. Life. Death. Must they really stay here? She does not understand the things she sees. They happen, and she does not understand them. Stupefying.
* * *
—
A slave bellows furious words at the leader, others join him, and there is a buzz of rage, dialects, prayers, and revolt. Then the leader raises his whip and strikes the mother, whips her until she falls to her knees, until there is nothing left of her but an expanse of torn skin. Now all the slaves fall silent. The only sounds are the blows and the leader’s grunts, as he sweats and slavers with rage. The mother’s body jolts and then peels open to the blows, and the stones turn red. The sound of the vultures’ flight resonates against the stones, a slow heavy flap beating the hot air. The angry young man folds in two and vomits. The men chained to him have to lower themselves too, as if prostrating themselves. The angry young man has lost, his rebellion has achieved nothing, and he knows he will never be proud of himself again, knows he is the man no one will ever turn to for help. Ila al’amam! The leader orders them to walk on. Bakhita is crying in Binah’s arms, she cannot obey. She looks at the sky. Wants to read a sign somewhere. Wishes the guards would order them to dig up the earth so they can lay the mother and her child in its embrace. Wishes they would order them to sing. Wishes that something here, among these stones, represented humanity. Ila al’amam! She starts to walk again. Like the others. She obeys. She no longer knows who are the living, and who the dead. On which side life lies.
After walking 190 miles, the caravan comes to the heart of Sudan, to the great caravanseray center of El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan. The town lives off trading gum arabic harvested from acacia trees and slaves who are sent on to Egypt and the Red Sea. Of this town that she reaches in a state of exhaustion, Bakhita’s first memory will be the noise. After several months of walking, the souks, the calls to prayer, the crowds, and the animals are a violent contrast. She will remember the great depths of this noise, a clash of ironwork and voices, as if everything were breaking. A chaos in which she understands nothing. She is thirsty and in pain, her muscles knotted, rough and creaking, like the dry leaves of baobabs. She can no longer see the slaves with whom she has walked but can feel them around her, heavy shadows, breathing that walks when she walks, stops when she stops, they have become a single stooped, black creature. A single wounded animal. A quarter of the slaves have died along the way. Only Binah’s presence feels real.
* * *
—
In El Obeid’s souk the cries from animals and the cries of men sound the same. A fierce excitement. There is whistling, grunting, shouting across the clammy air, a swirl of smells, leather, tobacco, droppings, spices, grilled mutton, it clutches at the throat, is nauseating, there is dust everywhere, coming from the ground, whipped up by the animals and the wind, and men wait, squatting on this dusty ground beside the goods they are selling, time distorted around them into endless waiting. The town sprawls, lost between the gray earth and disconsolate clouds. This is a place of transience, of mistrust and hard bargaining.
* * *
—
Bakhita is projected into this rabble, relieved to have arrived but terrified to be a part of it. She is thirsty. They are all thirsty. They are exhausted and sick and unsure what will happen now. The guards chain them up, they wait for hours in the sun with no idea why they are waiting. Their guards have gone off to eat, to negotiate with the faroucs and introduce themselves to the faki, to organize their time here. After a few hours, the slaves are given water, and even though they know this is not a humane act but a precaution to avoid losing more merchandise, many of them say thank you. Lone men pass by and study them, appraising the new consignment. One of them, a portly wrinkled man with a huge potbelly under his djellaba, comes up to Bakhita, thoughtfully smoothing his mustache. She recoils slightly but he very soon turns away, drawn to two little boys sleeping nestled together, he looks at them briefly, silently, and then unceremoniously, steps backward, still smoothing his mustache, and moves on.
* * *
—
Like the other slaves, Bakhita is frightened. In every look, every person, there is some implication, something profane. To master her fear, she forces herself to look at all this life playing out before her. She wants to know where she really is, this world of organized slavery, with its armed men who walk past without even glancing at them, its heavily laden, veiled women who are never alone, its child soldiers who carry rifles taller than they are, and she sees other children too, younger still, bringing the flocks back to their pens, as the children did in Olgossa. She does not want to think of her village, of her failed escape, she concentrates as best she can on the present, chained to Binah, piled together with other slaves forgotten in the glare of the sun. Thinking of her family gave her the strength to run away, but for now that thought is too heavy a sorrow to bear.
* * *
—
From her experiences in Taweisha, she knows there will be nothing peaceful about El Obeid. Here everyone is a slave trader or a slave driver, a slave or the wife or child of a slave, even the slave of a slave, a life with a strict hierarchy under the high command of the cleric who himself is under orders to the main traders. Any respect is paid to them, the wealthy and the religious leaders. Here men are laden not only with what they have looted from raided villages but also with what they have ripped from elephants and other wild animals. Their mules and yellow-toothed camels carry treasures of gemstones and gold, they have scraped away at the earth and the trees, disemboweled the natural world. They sell people and horns and hides, salt, gum arabic, and copper, in their view the world is here to be plundered, and Bakhita hears the racket of countless workers hammering wood to form enclosures, the cries of animals and of people, equally captive and innocent.
* * *
—
After an endless stretch of time, the guards come for them. Night is falling and a chill is gathering with the dusk, features that invariably go hand in hand, as if the stifling heat of each day could only possibly be followed by biting cold, there is violence in everything, a violence that never capitulates. The traders, guards, and faroucs start their sorting process. Women on one side. Men on another. The healthy to one side. The sickly to another. The slaves dread this dispersal, their whole lives are at stake, yet again. The guards have been drinking and smoking, their orders are brutal, unintelligible, and contradictory. They are in a hurry, cannot bear the fact they still have to deal with these slaves, almost resenting them for all the miles they have endured, hating them for this work that goes on and on, a stench of anger and frustration hangs in the air.
* * *
—
A few gawkers watch the selection, the turmoil and racket of it, and among them Bakhita recognizes the man with the thin mustache and huge stomach. He comes closer, talks briefly to the farouc, who appears to be the agent in charge and who soon issues an order, his voice deep, his words clipped, he is swiftly obeyed, and the two little boys who were sleeping side by side earlier are brought over. They are immediately frightened. Being picked out always means being under threat. There is the instinctive fear of a violent beating, the fear of being separated from the group, as if being together constituted security. The man, a minor subcontractor, wants them both. He takes out his money. The farouc brushes it aside angrily. The man comes back at him. The arguing begins, a customary game, a ritual. The two little boys whimper, turning around to look at the other slaves, none of whom is family to them but from whom they do not want to be separated. They scratch their legs, their arms, sniffle, succumbing to panic. Eventually, when it is completely da
rk, the farouc pockets his fee and hands the man one child, not two. A standard little scam, he will strike the boy from his list, the trading boss will never know. Bakhita has watched the scene and grasped that the boys are brothers. She expects wailing, sobbing, some sort of resistance, but the little boy who has not been sold says nothing, hides his face with one forearm while his body very slowly folds, lets himself drop to the ground, and, curled into a tight ball, shudders soundlessly on the thin soil, with his arm still covering his face, his whole body shakes and stirs the dust. The guard picks him up with one swipe of his arm, the child weighs very little, he stands him on his feet and thrusts him toward the group of healthy men. One of the men is struck by the boy, as if by a ball thrown at random, and he opens his hands and gathers the child to him. The cry that Bakhita then hears does not sound like the cry of an animal, nor that of a man, nor that of the other brother, but the cry of pure pain, calling out, above and beyond all that is human. It is the cry of loved ones separated, but what she wants to remember of this scene is the child gathered in by the slave’s open hands.
* * *
—
She is disoriented, she has Binah’s hand and Binah is dragging her to join the group of healthy women. They are to be washed with great pails of water, fed, allowed to recover. The other group, the sick, will be treated and then sold off to Bedouins. The third group, those who are too old and too weak, are thrown into a ditch. In this last group is the angry young man, the boy with the blazing eyes.
* * *
—
When they left that hill, after abandoning the mother and her baby, the young boy had vomited and then started to cry like a little child. He had lost all his anger, all his pride, all his maturity. His was in terrible distress, and it shamed the men chained to him. They told him to pull himself together. He was tall, he must have been initiated into manhood already and surely had not slept in his mother’s hut for a long time now. But he did not hear them. He wept and his teeth chattered, perhaps he had a fever, a terrible fever freezing him inside. The guards took turns whipping him until it became a habit, he and he alone was the one to be whipped, one blow after another, all along the way. He walked hunched, his knees bent, his arms dangling the length of his mangled body. And after miles of walking, when the caravan was trudging down the other side of the hill, when the whip had laid bare his shoulder blade and ripped the skin from his back, it took out the angry young man’s eyes, the eyes of this boy who no longer had any anger left in him.
Over the course of several days in El Obeid, they are given food and water, they are washed, their hair is shaved or braided, their nits killed, their nails trimmed. They are dressed in pagnes, ointments are applied to their wounds and palm oil to the soles of their feet, they are given bitter herbal infusions to drink and muddy roots to chew, they are allowed to sleep. Now they can be sold.
* * *
—
And one morning they are exhibited on the open market. A day they have anticipated and dreaded. Being put up for sale. They are crammed into a large shed on a stretch of wasteland, and they wait, chained and silent, outwardly resigned, terrified deep down. Binah is next to Bakhita, they are not the only little girls, but they stand very close together, and no one has anything to say against this, they are together, one lot. The clamor of animal cries and men shouting in the rancid air, the drums, the calls to prayer, all this has fallen silent to Bakhita’s ears. The smell of tanned hides and coffee, of mint and burned iron have disappeared. She is standing, half naked and for sale, and she hears and feels nothing of this particular reality. At dawn her mind flew high into the sky, free, like a bird, a bird that knows nothing of El Obeid. She took it and cradled it in her hands, then set it free over the marketplace, and she can see it flitting across the sky like a veil in the wind. She watches it inquisitively, has this ability to imagine herself somewhere else, to escape a body that belongs to everyone and live her own secret life. She is inside the shed, and she is with this bird. Occasionally, of course, she does hear the men. Djamila. Someone points to her, she is unchained, steps forward, and does what she is asked to do. As usual. From the front. From behind. Quickly. Slowly. Eyes lowered. Head tipped back. Calm and expressionless. Patient and obedient. Sometimes the hands are fat and clammy. Sometimes it is just a finger, prodding and studying one body part after another, like a bird’s beak. Bakhita thinks about the clear skies, she adds some white clouds, for her bird, draws shapes, throws outlines onto the sky. She is asked to speak. She speaks. It makes people laugh. She smiles. Flies settle on her lips. She closes her mouth. A stick splays open her intimate parts. She adds another bird in the sky, to come and meet her bird, and wonders what will come of this. This is what sells best. Bad luck for you. She goes back to her place. Is chained again. Cannot focus properly on the second bird, and it vanishes all too soon.
After she has been exhibited, her concentration founders and she hears what is being said around her.
“How much for that Negro girl?”
A man in the crowd is pointing to a beautiful girl with generous curves and muscled thighs. The man asking her price is a slave himself, a soldier, privileged. He has come to buy himself a wife this morning. She will go on campaigns with him, be his servant, and bear his children. He has eleven children already, from his two other wives, he is respected. The chosen slave girl walks up and down for the soldier, while the dealer points out how strong and submissive she is. She knows that if she becomes the soldier’s wife, she will have children to serve in his army, children who will not be taken from her, few slaves have such luck. The soldier is an aging man, he looks at her through half-closed eyes, his mouth twisted, he steps closer and she can smell the beer and cold tobacco on his breath, he hesitates, clicks his tongue against his teeth, touches her halfheartedly, and suddenly asks to see another girl, a younger one, barely twelve years old, almost fully formed.
“This one’s Abyssinian,” the dealer says, “and that’s always more expensive.”
The first girl has gone back to join the others. She is not as pretty as Abyssinian women who are the most sought after and renowned. She is not young enough to be trained for the harems. Too beautiful to be a simple servant, working in kitchens or doing housework. Not tough enough to work in the mines. She is still one of the valuable slaves, perhaps another soldier will come and buy her, perhaps she will have children, her own children by her side her whole life, that is all she can think about, this hope she has invented for herself, because everyone needs some kind of hope, must tell themselves the story of a possible life. But the soldier has already struck a deal, the business quickly concluded, he hardly asked the Abyssinian to walk and bow down before he paid for her, she is not only beautiful but healthy too, he is pleased with his acquisition, will have her in his bed this very evening. Twelve years old…He smiles in spite of himself. A young landowner comes over, eyes the soldier’s acquisition, he has recognized the girl’s race, is slightly sickened and frustrated, even though prices have dropped, he cannot afford much, if only he weren’t throttled by taxes he’d buy himself a little girl too, but everything goes into the fields, all his savings, the moment he has so much as a piastre put aside he buys new equipment or older slaves who’ll die after barely a couple of years. It’s all down to the British governor, Gordon Pasha. Even though he works for Egypt, he’s been trying to wipe out the slave trade, it is at its height, a huge industry, no one flocks to the Nile with its steamboats anymore to buy slaves and ivory along the riverbanks, they seek out merchandise farther afield, in Uganda, southern Sudan, and southern Darfur, Darfur is a good breeding ground, but you have to get there, cross deserts and impassible rivers, many die on the way there or the way back. Still, the country’s crammed with people for sale, and he doesn’t even have a scrap of a girl in his bed. He leaves in the same state as he arrived, tired and jealous. The dealer has unchained Binah, a wealthy negotiator is organizing a celebration and has come to find gif
ts for his guests. Binah looks at Bakhita, how can they stay together? Bakhita asks her imaginary bird to protect her friend, speaks to it, using simple words that the bird will understand, she is sure it will, wants it to, and the bird hovers over them both, its wings open like a caress, drifting from one to the other. The negotiator looks at Binah, feels her perfunctorily, he is tired before he even starts, she’s beautiful, yes, but a tad too young, bound to have no idea how to, wouldn’t be effective…It’s not that his friends don’t like children, but he wants his next party to be wild, intoxicating, with dancing, singing, erotic youngsters, this little thing’s almost in tears already. He gives an exasperated wave and the guard takes the child back. Bakhita totters, and there is a furtive movement as Binah’s hand slips into hers, she confuses it with her bird’s beak, its soft, soft head, and so she thanks it, bows her head in turn. Binah sobs quietly, relieved and tired. I won’t let go your hand.
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