Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

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  What happens next, the sacking, being beaten outside and in, this she knows already, it is the endless abyss, the abyss in which there is no form of help, it is her body and soul held together and crushed together. The crime from which you do not die.

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  When the young master has finished he gets back to his feet. He orders her to stand up too. She cannot. Her legs are shaking, she cannot. He snatches her by the arm and hauls her up so she can stand, but she is still shaking, as if performing a strange crouched dance, she cannot obey, cannot catch her breath, she is wracked with tremors, as if under an evil spell. The young master is still yelling, words she does not understand and others she does, saying she is impure, najas, and he starts to beat her again.

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  And it occurs to her that she is dirtying the carpet, because she has fallen again and is bleeding in several places. She thinks the young master will break his whip, break his own hands and his feet, he batters her so. Thinks the house will collapse with the fury of his shouts. Thinks her body will open in two. Thinks it is over. Also thinks she wants to live. She crawls to get out of the room. The master follows her, kicking her violently as if pushing her on her way. She takes refuge in the young mistresses’ room, Sorahia and Radia are lying on their mattresses on the ground, eating, they eat out of boredom every day, spitting out grape skins, date pips, Bakhita takes refuge behind them, asks for their help. Ainajda…Ainajda…Samir keeps kicking her. His sisters keep eating.

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  Bakhita is now a broken toy. And impure. So she will be driven out. Later, when she is asked why, asked exactly what happened, she will say, “I broke a vase.” To one person, and one person alone, she will tell the truth. One person alone, who will keep to herself the story of the offense.

  After the beating from Samir she is carried to the slave quarters where she stays for a whole month lying on a mat, trying to survive. No one tends to her or talks to her. Someone leaves food and water beside her without a word, not concerned whether she touches it or not. She calls Binah, who does not come. When she opens her eyes, she cannot see her. She never feels Binah’s hand in hers. No longer hears her voice. When she regains consciousness, she is told the master had a gambling debt.

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  She will never remember when she saw her for the last time. Binah’s disappearance is like the disappearance of her own name, like her heart stopping. Binah was her chance of survival. Her humanity. Even freed, faraway and elderly, Bakhita will keep her with her. All the time and until the last day. With Binah, she realized every slave’s dream, they escaped, they disobeyed, they had that special value, that strength.

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  The day she can get up unaided she is deemed ready to work again, no question of her showing her face in the harem, she works in the kitchens at the far end of the yard. It is an unimaginably dirty place that the mistresses never see, a place it would never occur to them to go. The walls are black with filth and smoke wafting from the oven, there is no chimney, cats wander among cockroaches and rats, dogs eat straight from cooking pots. Bakhita gets up every day before the first call to prayer to light the oven and boil water. She fetches wood from the store, and sometimes looks up toward the young mistresses’ windows, the deserted terrace. It is already a distant world and may never even have existed. She prefers looking at the sky, the day about to break, wonders whether, at this very moment, her mother is sitting on the baobab trunk on the ground, whether she is watching this daybreak, as she once liked to. But she dare not speak to her. Has no promises left to make her. Will secure neither her mother’s forgiveness nor an end to her own suffering, and is quite alone as she makes her way through a world that buffets her like a ravenous wind every day. She is lost in this world. Binah’s absence is a separation that rekindles others. To avoid this suffering, some slaves choose never to love, choose to forget a heart that can only ever suffer. Bakhita talks to the hens, the dogs, the blackbirds, the last stars fading in the newness of the day, talks to the wood she fetches, the water, the wind, wonders whether the moon could possibly remember her name, and feels that the last peaceful place, the only shelter is to be found here, in this moment when the night vanishes to give way to day. And then she goes back to work, a stubborn little donkey with its head lowered, always working, always obeying, and being beaten without trying to understand why or who it is that orders the beatings, who deserves them, who decides it should stop or start again, and she thinks of Binah’s hand in hers, the strength it gave her. I won’t let go your hand. It may be true, still. She decides it is.

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  Months go by like this, in the snake house where everyone gets through his or her day behind a shield of indifference, in the turmoil of instructions and beatings, the fear-filled confusion of it. And one day the master sends someone to fetch her. A eunuch takes her to his study on the men’s floor, she walks past the stuffed fox that so frightened Binah, and understands that there in the master’s study, misfortune sits waiting for her casually. Ever since Samir roared that she was impure, the master has wanted to sell her, she knows this.

  Today he is with a man in military uniform who examines her. They go outside so the officer can see her in daylight, watch her run. Tired to the bone, she runs, runs to go nowhere, runs in that glorious impassive garden, and when she stops, she looks down and waits. Money changes hands. And so she walks behind her new master, her hands chained together, held by a guard, off she goes. She tries to take Binah with her, to keep her birdlike heart next to her own and to leave behind their days of suffering, their days of shame. She remembers Binah’s smile as she said, “We’re no longer truly hungry or thirsty.” And takes with her this childish gratitude.

  She leaves the snake house with nothing, not one item, not even a stone, a handful of dirt, a word, a goodbye, a glance. Nothing. Only fear of the unknown, and this impurity that everyone, she is sure of it, can detect in her downcast eyes, her featherlight breathing, and her voice that has changed, become so deep, and now sings out of tune, wavering and rambling. She talks less, is cautious, unsure of herself, and it is not her words that are a jumble but herself. She is ten years old and does not know how to grow up. Grow up well. Grow up gentle and good, she the impure, damaged girl robbed of innocence. Her life is like a dance performed backward, a whirlpool of dirty water. She casts about for some point of reference, thirsts for something she cannot find. A piece of advice. A wise word. She does not know which way to turn.

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  The man who has bought her is a Turkish general. He oversees armies of slaves serving the Turkish-Egyptian government whose laws preside over Sudan. His militias of slave-soldiers instill order, collect taxes, arrange livestock raids and slave raids.

  The general’s house is expensive but austere, a huge square red building with grilles at the windows, the yard is bare with no flowers or trees, the fountain has run dry, and in the dovecote the doves’ cooing is as weary as a lament. The central courtyard is dark, never reached by the sun. On the first day, Bakhita does not notice the gong standing here. She will very soon dread hearing it sound because it broadcasts the masters’ anger, anger that always demands the same appeasement: A slave must be brought down into this yard and beaten.

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  The house is ruled over by two women, the general’s mother and his wife. They despise each other. Their mutual loathing is like a sweetmeat they feed off of constantly, seeking it out, stirring it up like old embers that can always be rekindled. This loathing exhausts them and yet fires them up, they sometimes revel in it, their disgust for each other so powerful it unites them, hatred as a shared asset, a common illness. It is to these two women that the general gives Bakhita, she is to serve his wife, to learn how to
style her hair, dress her, without ever touching her, she will learn to predict her orders, her every wish, to anticipate her blows and accept them. Her mistresses speak Turkish, the slaves Arabic, and once again Bakhita understands things “by ear,” from intonations, gestures, expressions. She is mostly very happy not to understand what the two women say, words that sound so coarse that more than once she is surprised their tongues don’t burn under the weight of their vulgarity.

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  It is Hawa, a Dinka slave girl a little older than Bakhita, just twelve, who trains her, teaches her how to take care of the mistress without ever touching her, how to remove her robes, nightshirt, and long pants in the morning, to untie the cord, knot the golden belt, slip on the percale djellaba, ensure it falls perfectly, remove the night veil to brush and braid her long hair before hiding it under a gauze veil, and, still without touching her, put on her earrings and diamonds, her huge rings and pearl necklace. Repeat the process in the evening, in reverse, help her remove her dress, slip a long white simar over her linen pants, and, without touching her hips, secure them with a hemp tie, and when her mistress asks her to tie it tighter Bakhita knows she is prolonging the ordeal, boosting it with the occasional rather repetitive and predictable variation, then, standing on tiptoe, Bakhita puts on her nightshirt and two or three robes over the top. She puts the night veil over her head and lets her hair fall to her waist. Without ever touching her.

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  The whole exercise is a terrible ordeal. The ceremony is impossible to carry out without coming into contact with her mistress’s body, her skin, it is a refined form of torture, a game in which her mistress delights and which invariably ends with the gong being sounded, and the arrival of a eunuch who leads Bakhita into the courtyard where a slave-soldier beats her conscientiously. Her mistress calls this “handing Bakhita over to the crows,” black against black, tone on tone. A slave beating a slave. Slaves obey orders, Bakhita hears them swearing about these jengas, these “Negresses,” all part of the hierarchy of captivity, there are higher slaves and lower slaves, and because of—or perhaps thanks to—her beauty, Bakhita is not the lowliest of the low.

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  The household and farm slaves sleep in two separate buildings—one for men, the other for women—two dilapidated buildings that reek of damp straw and urine, that swarm with rats and are rife with sickness, but most of all that are governed by fear. The slaves are frightened the whole time. Frightened of sleeping when it might be time to get up. Frightened of not sleeping and being too tired to work the next day. Frightened of the beating that will wake them and the beatings of the previous day. Frightened of the beatings that do not materialize but will later catch them by surprise. Frightened of the old slaves and newly arrived slaves, those who know too much and those who arrive full of dangerous innocence. Frightened by day and frightened by night, because the general’s wife comes to beat them every morning before the rooster crows. And those who have worked through the night and have barely settled on their mats are beaten all the same. And the women who are with child, and those just surfacing from a dream, and those whose minds are still lost in the night, and those who are sick with fever, and those who are so old they will soon be thrown on the dung heap, and little children still at their mother’s breasts, all of them, still lying on the ground, are beaten just the same. Every morning before the rooster crows, the general’s wife shrieks with furious relish, “Abid! Slaves! You animals!” And then she seems better.

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  It is in this house that Bakhita grows up. She does not speak much to the others, who never speak to anyone, and she is afraid of growing up like them, exhausted, starving, their eyes empty of all aspiration, with no wish to live nor even to die.

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  Although she still lives in El Obeid, Bakhita feels far removed from all humanity, Kishmet is nowhere, Binah is lost among the crowds of captives. She tries to remember her, her stories, her language, her daydreams, but they all belong to another girl, another girl who has no name. Tries to piece together her mother’s face but it slips through her fingers, tries to hear the voices of people in her village but is losing the dialect. The effort she puts into surviving every day wears down her mind, and at night, no dreams bring back a taste of past happiness, the seven years of her life as a Daju, a twin, a gentle and good little girl who was afraid of snake tracks and who rested her head in the crook of her father’s neck in the evening, while the sun disappeared behind the hillside. One day she closes her eyes and sees her heart. It is a bird with its wings folded back, sleeping softly. This image soothes her, it is as pretty as a present, but most significantly it means she is not dead. Just asleep. She is asleep. And one day she will awake.

  Bakhita will spend four years in the Turkish general’s house, until she is thirteen or thereabouts, in 1882. Her body is starting to grow tall, like the people of her tribe, it is supple and a deep black, her slightly almond-shaped eyes still have a remarkable innocence, like a diffident interrogation, her face has a beauty she herself cannot see and it is a burden to her, a perfect oval, high cheekbones, and most strikingly a nobility derived from her natural grace. This face maturing and this body growing in a house full of furious souls are a source of misery, like a tree in the wrong field.

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  She is almost twelve and her breasts are beginning to show. Her masters and mistresses are clothed. Slaves wear only a wrap at the waist. Bakhita would like to be hidden, invisible as a spirit, covered up like a mistress. In Olgossa being naked was as natural as the grass in the wind, wearing nothing but a wrap in the master’s house is a permanent source of shame.

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  The Turkish general called it the rag game. It was quick and always made him laugh, like a magic trick that startles every time. She cannot remember the first occasion. The master calls for her, she runs to him, prostrates herself, begs forgiveness, he tells her to stand up, she gets to her feet, in a flash he snatches her budding breasts with both hands and twists them as if “wringing out a rag,” as if trying to detach them from her body, tear them from her flesh, melt them away, that is what he says, he wants to make them melt away, to be relieved of seeing. She cries out in pain and terror, it is brutally painful, dumbfounding. She thinks the master has invented this torture for her because of what she has done, what she represents, she does not realize the master never invents anything. This rag torture has been inflicted on women for centuries, and if only she had been told she was not alone, perhaps she would have resented the master and not herself.

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  Occasionally the slaves talk among themselves. A little. Brief stories, in snatched moments, lightning flashes. Because the rations were slightly more generous that evening, because they had time to watch the sunset, because they saw a foal being born, because they remembered a song from home. Because life cannot be cut off from life all the time. And so, just for a moment, they risk a sense of beauty, which reminds them that they are a part of this life. They talk using the words of the poor, scant concrete words, a brief interlude stolen from the anonymity of exploitation. It dies as swiftly as it arrives, a letup amid the struggle, and then they head off alone again, each in his or her own silence, his or her own past, they stop talking, to get on with the business of enduring.

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  One autumn evening when Bakhita is cuddling a kitten only a few weeks old, she feels happy. She is astonished to rediscover the feeling. It is a disturbing kind of joy, almost a sadness, because it is such a powerful reminder of what once was. The days when she was a part of life. Hawa is sitting on the ground beside her, they should be heading back into the house, but they appropriate this moment, allow themselves a taste of the evening, of the sky and the softening air, they are accomplices, these
two girls who share the daily ordeal of serving their mistresses, the sadistic without ever touching her exercise, they sometimes laugh about it together, the absurdity of it. On this autumn evening, with this kitten in her hands, as warm as a loved one’s neck, Bakhita confides in Hawa in a proud whisper, “I escaped once. Do you understand? Firar. Do you understand? I ran away. With Binah, my friend, we ran away.” Hawa understands and Bakhita describes it. She strokes the cat and rediscovers the pleasure of storytelling, of another person listening, the simplicity of sharing: “In the tree, yes, we slept in that tree! The big cat walked right by! Under the tree!” Hawa laughs in places, sighs, and listens to the story, Bakhita carries her along with her, whispering about her foolhardy escape, and whispering she may be, but she is heard. The general’s mother, who always announces proudly that she speaks and understands no Arabic, hears and understands every word.