Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  * * *

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  The gong sounds. The punishment is meted out.

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  —

  For a whole year Bakhita was chained, with a chain around her ankle like a rabid dog. Day and night her leg was a deadweight of pain, an inflamed rod of iron that dragged at her hip, her back, her arm, clung to the nape of her neck, where it throbbed constantly. It was not only difficult for her to walk, climb stairs, crouch down, or stand up, it was also difficult for her to do anything sudden. And that is what the chain intended. For any sort of impulse to be impossible, not only physical impulses but those in her mind too: the caution and instinct without which a slave is reduced to a prey animal.

  With this ball around her ankle, the twelve-year-old Bakhita tottered and puffed like an old woman. She could be seen and heard coming from far off, and although some slaves looked away as she came near, others asked her to make less noise. When the chain was removed for a few days’ indulgence to mark an Islamic holiday, she limped as if her balance was thrown, part of her body needed this weight to stop her from falling. When the celebrations were over and the chain was put back on, it felt as if she were being locked away inside herself. She was her own prison, cut off from everything, burdened and a burden, and her presence disturbed the others, reminding them of the martyrdom they would rather forget, the long journeys walking in chains that had brought them to this hell. Her ankle was swollen, scabbed, and inflamed. And she took to talking to it in the evening, on her mat, she stroked it like a small pet, consoling the punished, tortured part of herself, because this could not go on, she did not want to limp, to be useless. A useless slave is a slave who is fed for no benefit. A slave who is soon discarded. Hawa sometimes managed to steal ginger roots that Bakhita chewed, spat out, and smoothed over her ankle. The inflammation abated slightly. Bakhita could picture her grandmother grinding herbs and healing people, she tried to remember but could not, what were those herbs, which herbs grew in her village, what were the names of the flowers, the plants? What was left of a Daju from Darfur in her now? How many years had she been a slave? Time went by with no points of reference, she tried to count the Islamic holidays, the rainy seasons, but it was mostly muddled and discouraging. She did not want to be discouraged. Did not want to stay chained. Did not want to grow up in the Turkish general’s house. To bear the general’s children someday, as the others did. And then for the master to take them. She could not find her bearings in the passage of time, and yet time was passing and carrying her along with it. Her fears were bottomless chasms. To forget them, she leaned closer to her old-lady ankle, talking to it, tending it, and in this thoughtful attention, without realizing it, she found a way to survive.

  Bakhita is thirteen or thereabouts, a young girl with mutilated breasts and terrifying signs that motherhood is possible, she is afraid that this too is clear to see, that the master, who never misses a thing, knows, everything about her seems to be blameworthy in his eyes, who she is, what she does, even what she sees and hears. She is never in the right place, and everything condemns her.

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  She and Hawa witness an argument between the general and his wife one morning. They are in the mistress’s bedroom and Bakhita, without touching her, has dressed her and arranged her hair just as she likes it, opulently with an abundance of veils and colors. Heads lowered, hands behind their backs, as silent and motionless as the carpets and cushions around them, they wait for the next order. On this particular morning, the light in El Obeid is cold, it is nearly winter and everything is pale, a slow-moving sadness. For once the general’s wife does not shout. She threatens the master with a loathing as icy as well water in winter. Such spiteful words that the general who commands armies, the general who gives the order for attacks and collects medals, the general, beaten down by her words, bows his head. Like a slave. But then he looks up. Steps closer to his wife, and when he is right in front of her, raises his arm above her face for a long, endless moment, his arm shaking with rage. There is silence and the tense buzz of silence. There is breathing, almost choking, the slamming rhythm of it. And then the general lowers his arm, and looks at them, at Hawa and Bakhita. It is not long before they hear the gong.

  * * *

  —

  Two soldiers throw them to the ground in the courtyard and beat them. It goes on so long that it will go on a whole lifetime. Her thigh will always have this hollow, this missing flesh, gouged out by the canes. The master watches the torture, and when he feels fully appeased, he gestures for the soldiers to stop. They stop.

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  Bakhita and Hawa, both unconscious and bleeding, are carried to their mats, and they stay there for more than a month. It is impossible for them to live anywhere but in this pain. They are overrun with suffering, teetering on the brink of consciousness, with no thoughts left in their minds, only pain. There is neither clemency nor help. No one to lean attentively over their mortified bodies. Firstly because it is forbidden but also because pity could make even the most resilient slave weaken, and weakening is dangerous, weakening can be fatal. Every one of them is here at the expense of a tremendous effort of will, colossal strength, and endurance. They have survived. They will not lose this fight out of compassion for two beaten slave girls. Being beaten is an everyday occurrence, standard. Many of them are like Bakhita, young, frightened, unsure where they belong and with no idea how to behave. They should not ask these questions. Every one of them belongs in some way, no slave is ever bought by chance, lives or dies by chance, is beaten or assaulted by chance. They are wrong to believe they are at the mercy of unpredictable violence. Masters take great care of their households and know exactly how to run them. And yet now, in the 1880s, these masters are still deaf to an advancing threat. A man, the Mahdi, the savior of Islam, a Sudanese cleric, is standing up to Egyptian occupation. He promises the enslaved, exploited population that Sudan will be liberated and Islam reintroduced. The Turkish-Egyptian government is unaware of the Sudanese people’s anger and strength, because that strength has always been on their side, has belonged to them, as do the Sudanese themselves. This government rules and oppresses as if the world will stay in its clenched fist forever, but this world is developing cracks, this world will shatter, soon it will fall apart.

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  During this month of suffering, lying on her mat, Bakhita is also alive and, in her own way, not part of the world. Locked away in pain, her body works at surviving, healing, and very gradually her mind wakes and hears. She hears the earth shudder beneath her, shaken by the bodies of slaves who were here before her, who slept in the same place, on the very same mat. The earth has kept traces of these bodies, their breathing and their warmth, the water of their tears and the thickness of their blood, and it remembers everything, how different they all were, how their minds could never be mistaken for one another, and each of them would have so much to tell, the landscapes they saw, the animals they loved, their favorite time of day, the food their mothers made, the person they secretly loved, their personal talents, the earth remembers everything. And this earth tells Bakhita that this is not right. A slave’s place in life is not right. There is no other girl on earth like her, she is irreplaceable. She may not truly remember her mother’s face, may not be able to draw it in the sand, but her mother sitting on the baobab trunk on the ground, as she waited for the sun to set, this she has not forgotten, and this is all that matters. Her mother’s face has changed and will change again, but her love for the next day will go on forever. For days and nights, Bakhita listens to the earth, and one morning she gets up. She sways and clings to the walls to help her take a few steps, looks straight ahead, gives her painful leg a chance to familiarize itself, to relearn, you cannot stay among the sick for too long, you must not be one of the useless slaves, you must not die. The earth has spoken to her, the sacred earth that honors the people of her tribe has singl
ed her out. And so she gets up.

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  She steps, staggering but resolute, into a world on the edge of a precipice. Mahdi’s armies are growing larger and larger. The masters’ slave-soldiers are joining his armies, men who will now fight for their own country. Their battles are bloody, their offensives increasingly frequent, the belly of their rebellion swelling. In the general’s house in El Obeid, the masters throw parties and buy a pair of Circassian slave girls and a eunuch, in the Turkish general’s house they live a life of decadence and pride.

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  It is in this atmosphere that the general’s wife wakes one morning with a new idea. She is pleased with her idea. An idea that cannot wait a moment longer. “So beautiful! They’re so beautiful!” Djamila! Güzel! She gazes at three of her slave girls and points at them, shrieking as if she has forgotten something that is in fact right in front of her. Güzel! she cries to her mother-in-law and points to her three Negresses, Bakhita, Hawa, and another girl, such a young girl, six at the very most, who has arrived so recently that the master has not yet given her a name and she is known as Yebit, “she who deserves no name.” This child never seems to understand what is going on, what she is doing here, in the women’s quarters, where she clumsily hands around the tray with the washbasin and jug, where she drapes mosquito nets over the beds, brings in the night lamp, cigarettes, an ashtray, always with those great astonished eyes of hers that she forgets to lower as she hopes for approval but finds nothing. The master brought her home from the market one evening with three other little girls, who played a role in the men’s feasting and celebrations. Little Yebit speaks no Arabic or Turkish, Bakhita does not know where she is from, nothing about her gives any clue as to her story. She does not complain, keeps her big black eyes open like two perpetual questions, and seems to be waiting for something that never comes.

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  Djamila! Güzel! The general’s wife points at them with an eager impatience that her mother-in-law shares, yes, the two are in agreement for once. They come up to the three slave girls, fingering them with their cold hands, their nails, they assess them, stroke them, scratch them, and clap their hands. “Why did we never think of it before!” They step back to look at the girls, evaluate them more fully, Bakhita thinks they plan to sell them. The three of them. As a lot. They will leave, go somewhere else, serve another purpose. She is wrong. They are not for sale. They are to be adorned.

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  The wife and mother want to be proud of them. They want to show their friends that their slave girls are beautiful and belong to them, like symbols proclaiming the fact, like drawings, markings, like a flag or a coat of arms. Some people have taken to dressing their slaves, and they do not like this new fashion. They think a clothed slave is as ridiculous as a monkey in slippers. No. Their slaves will be admired naked. And it is their skin that will be adorned. Their Negro skin that will display their masters’ wealth for all to see.

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  First they are taken to a room. A room they have not seen before. Dark, with heavy drapes at the windows, cutting out the daylight and thick with dust, like powder. Bakhita looks at this dust for as long as this takes. And it takes a long time. The tattoo artist they have summoned, who is the best, brought pages with designs on them, and she shows these to the mistresses. Before Bakhita’s lowered eyes, the dust is like stagnant sand, gray and weighty. The mistresses study the designs to choose which ones the tattooist should use, and they cannot decide. There are so many choices. And they are very beautiful. Güzel. Djamila. Really very beautiful. Bakhita does not yet understand what form the danger will take, but the tom-tom is back hammering all over her body, and the sound of this tom-tom is as powerful as the dust is inert. Little Yebit, who is usually so gentle and passive, so trustingly submissive, moans softly. Bakhita brushes the child’s fingers with her own, Yebit clutches hold of them as hard as she can, her nails as pliable as a baby bird’s beak, her fingers slick with fear, Bakhita knows the child is calling to her mother, so she squeezes her little fingers tightly, these fingers that have not yet been disfigured by slavery, these very young fingers that know so little. And then Bakhita understands. What is to be done to them.

  * * *

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  The two women eventually agree on the designs that the tattooist should draw on them. That will look perfect! And then suddenly they disagree. Their voices grow louder, the insults fly. Bakhita and Hawa dread hearing the gong, and obscurely, in spite of themselves, they feel this is their fault, this arguing, this indecision. It is to do with them. It is their fault. The younger girl is crying now, and her tear-stained face looks up to Bakhita who smiles at her and, still holding the child’s hand, swings her arm back and forth gently, like a game. She wishes she could cradle her, all of her, carry her in her arms and rest her face against her neck, so she would stop seeing and hearing any of this, would simply inhale the smell of her skin…Fear creeps back again. Bakhita wonders where, on which part of their bodies the tattooist will be working. That is precisely the subject of this quarrel that cannot be resolved. The two women call for the general. Whose side will he take? His wife’s or his mother’s? Which of the two will win? Soon they hear the sound of boots, his furious virile stride.

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  Bakhita wishes she were the dust. Wishes she were the drapes over the windows. She truly wishes she were an object. Not a slave. A real object. When the general comes into the room, fear arrives along with him. Please don’t let him touch them, don’t let him stay long, let him pacify his mother and wife. His mother speaks first, explaining: She wants the slave girls’ faces to be cut as well, she’s right, isn’t she? Bakhita and Hawa glance at each other. The little girl does not understand their Turkish words. Their faces to be cut as well. Now Bakhita wishes the general would stay. A long time. Wishes he would cancel what is about to happen, given the situation, given there is no common ground, wishes the tattooist would leave and they could get on with something else, another entertainment, singing, dancing, games, an outing to the bazaar. The general turns to his wife, who shrieks, “It’s out of the question! Not their faces!” His mother sniggers and says her friends have their slave girls’ faces scarified as well, that’s how it’s done these days. “That would ruin everything!” says the wife. She has her arms crossed resolutely across her chest and gives her husband a defiant stare full of familiar threat. In Bakhita’s hand little Yebit’s fingers shake like tiny animals wanting to flee. Oh, little sister, Bakhita thinks, you won’t get away! And she realizes that what is about to happen to them will be terrible, she has already seen it, on other people, and it always makes her shudder. The swollen ridges all over their bodies, like plowed land, like a lion’s lacerating scratches, their skin burned, prominent, deformed. “I agree with you.” The general says this to his wife. He is rallying behind her. Not their faces as well.

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  The gong sounds. They are taken down to the courtyard. Bakhita releases the young slave girl’s hand, and the child turns to her with eyes full of desperate questions, so she blinks at her subtly to mean I won’t let go your hand. She knows the child understands. She also knows she is accompanying her to appalling suffering and wishes she could apologize to her, apologize for this life.

  * * *

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  Two slave-soldiers are waiting in the yard. Two strong men. And the general’s wife asks them to do it. To put little Yebit on the ground, on her back, and hold her down, while two bowls are brought for the tattooist: one full of flour, the other of salt.

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  Bakhita has not protected little Yebit, has not consoled her, she watches her. The child is shaking so much that the tattooist has to start the designs in flour on her body all over again three times. She looks up at the mistress resen
tfully. The mistress gestures to a slave to calm little Yebit, he slaps her, and this knocks her out for a few minutes. Then the tattooist starts her designs again, working carefully, her wrists dancing, it is almost pretty, these arabesques, her skill, a form of craftsmanship, white against black, luminous and so aesthetic. And then she takes a razor from her apron and follows the flour patterns, slicing into the skin twenty-three times, very deeply, starting with Yebit’s stomach, where the blood springs up, as if the old woman were releasing red rivers, her stomach, then her arms, her thin legs, such short little legs, the child howls like a wild animal, the tattooist’s hands and arms are bathed in blood, but she pays no attention to this, sees her work through to the very end, and once the cutting is done, she assiduously opens each wound to fill it with salt, then presses down on it very hard, so the salt penetrates deeply. The child’s furious screams die down, grating in her throat, then she groans and falls silent, her body like an angry ravaged land convulses before freezing like an animal brought to ground. The soldier slackens his hold. It is over. With a nod, the mistress indicates for the little corpse to be removed. The tattooist is back on her feet, a pitcher is brought for her, she rinses her arms and hands, drinks some mint tea, breathing quite heavily. Bakhita falls at her mistress’s feet, begs to be spared. Hawa sobs, begging along with her. Their mistress studies them with irritation and disgust, snaps a few sour words, and then instructs the slaves to beat them, a means of subduing them before they are tattooed. They receive the blows, wishing they could pass out, not be there for what is to come, forget what they have seen, what is about to happen, but they do not pass out, and when it is over the mistress comes up to Bakhita and, speaking very quietly this time, she calmly looks her directly in the eye and says, “You will watch to the bitter end!”