The tattooist starts with Hawa. Bakhita watches to the bitter end. Until it is her turn.
Bakhita did not protect that child. When she emerged from the slave quarters a month later she looked for her everywhere, wanted to know whether any part of her remained, something she could bury in the ground and offer to the spirits, but it was too late of course, and no one wanted to talk about little Yebit, who was not worthy of a name. Or a grave. So Bakhita looked up at the sky before a new day dawned and asked the stars to forgive her. But the stars remained cold. Bakhita lowered her eyes and asked the earth to forgive her. But the earth remained silent. Bakhita was thirteen or thereabouts, and had spent six years in slavery, and once again she was as powerless and terrified as in the first days, when Binah told her, “They are slaves,” abid, and she had thought of her sister, before grasping that she was one herself. Abda. Like the others. No better or worse. Her body belongs exclusively to masters, her heart has petrified, her soul no longer knows where to live. She did not protect the child, she managed to find Kishmet but could not join her, she lost Binah, and she lives in a furious world that is eating itself up. Of the Madhist army’s advances she knows nothing, and the day she steps out of that building, when she rediscovers the world of the living, it is as if she has been torn from her very self. Her wounds are swollen and, despite the salt, some still ooze and smell bad. She has been decorated with one hundred fourteen cuts on her stomach, breasts, and right arm. The days of suffering, alongside Hawa, trying to survive, will be the last of her ordeal, but she does not know this. For thirty days, she battled with and overcame pain, infection, and the terrible thirst produced by the salt in her wounds. In her semicomatose sleep, she often thought she was on those long treks with the caravans, deprived of water, the hours under the sun spent not wanting to die. Dehydration made her head spin even when she did not move, her mind reeled, passing urine was unbearably painful, her mouth was dry, her tongue covered in scabs, she was feverish, delirious, her body hovering between life and death, and then it adapted to what it had become, this carved flesh, this searing tumescent skin, these scars for life, because there was life. Every day a bowl of water was set down beside her mat, and she did not always have the strength to take it. The tattooist was expensive, the mistresses did not want Bakhita and Hawa to die, they were storing up a surprise for their women friends and knew exactly how they would go about exhibiting the girls in town and which harems they would visit with them.
* * *
—
They will only just have time to do it. The mistresses may well be carrying on with life as if it were a reign, the general’s wife may well beat her slaves every morning before the first call to prayer, the system eventually grinds to a halt…One day, it stops. One day, the general orders that they stop beating their slaves. Then he leaves El Obeid. He goes, no one knows where, but that particular order, the order to stop whipping the slaves, is chilling. It frightens the captives: Something is brewing, something is about to happen, and no change is ever in their favor, not ever. They are no longer beaten, but what will happen next? Their bodies are not used to being left unbeaten. They shudder in anticipation of blows. Their skin is ready, their minds wary, waiting to hear the sounds, the footsteps. In their quarters every evening they ask one another questions: Who heard the masters talking, who was in the market, who went into town with the mistresses, what are the masters’ guests saying, the eunuchs, water bearers, servants, and soldiers? Who knows anything? If they are no longer beaten, it must be to drive up their price. The master needs money, but for what? They are to be sold, but to what end? They are to be separated, dispersed heartlessly. Pregnant slave women sob in their sleep, those who are married hold each other for hours on end without a word, mothers watch their children with terrified love, and at night they say the same words to them over and over, always the same words, words of love that will come to an end. The oldest among them hold their tongues, they have seen it all, they expect nothing and dread nothing, yet they are filled with disgust. The sick beg the cooks for herbs and powders to hasten their death, they know they will not leave the general’s house, will be abandoned in their quarters, where they will die of starvation and thirst, they try to choose an easier death. Bakhita and Hawa talk occasionally in Arabic, their common language, but what binds them cannot be expressed in words. They have twin bodies, twin disfigurements, the same exhaustion and fear, the same daily ritual serving their mistresses with their whips and insults. And little Yebit. They have her in common too. Little Yebit. Dead like so many others under the tattooist’s torture. Sacrificed with no god or ceremony.
* * *
—
One afternoon the mistress falls asleep and, just for a moment, Bakhita stops fanning her. She runs her hand over her own sweating brow. Looks at her hands, two black wings spanned open. She looks at them and all at once she sees Binah’s hands again. And the hands of the young slave girl in Taweisha. And little Yebit’s hands. She feels those childish fingers reaching for her hand again, very gently, like feathers, and then these fingers become more real, gripping hers, moving, almost dancing. She looks at her open palm. Her twin’s hand, her friend’s, the hands of the little girls in Olgossa to whom she told stories, they all come to rest in her palms, they all come, the hands of those she loved when she was free. Then she feels another hand rest in hers. Large. Slender. She recognizes it. Its deep warmth. Its reassuring pressure. It is her mother’s hand settling in hers and closing it gently, with calm authority. Now she understands: Her mother forgives her. Bakhita softly squeezes her fist tighter. She does not know what will become of her in this toppling world, but now, and forever, it will be her mother’s hand in hers telling her, I won’t let go your hand.
* * *
—
They keep going. All of them. Given that they are not beaten, they could rebel, mutiny, avenge themselves, flee. But they do not know what is happening. There have always been wars between different militias, armies squaring off against each other, men taken captive, villages and zarebas attacked, they were born into this violence. And most of all they are hungry. And frightened. And have nowhere to go. They do not speak Arabic well. They are half naked and completely broken. They still cling to each other slightly, afraid of losing each other. They work less efficiently. Sometimes Bakhita touches her mistress when arranging her hair, and when she backs away, anticipating a beating, all she hears is things being thrown to the floor. Her mistress takes out her anger on everything around her except Bakhita. But the words she shrieks are for her. And these words are so full of rage, Bakhita thinks someone has cast a spell on the woman, because her anger at her slave girl is like a mountain she tries to climb but never succeeds. She has invisible chains, Bakhita can see them.
* * *
—
The slaves live like this for a few months, a life trapped in the cloying unwholesome mists of uncertainty. And then one night they hear the master’s horse, its gallop more terrifying than the gong. He has them woken and brought into the courtyard, all of them. It is the first time they have been gathered in this way, men and women, all generations, countless tribes, there are those who were asleep in their quarters and those who never leave their masters’ sides, at their service day and night, ordinary grooms, the Circassian girls and cooks, advisers and blacksmith, the slaves who are close to the master and the less-than-nothings, a whole society collapsing in a single night. Slave-soldiers help the master, as usual. The others wait, black in the black of night, thin in the slow chill, those that love each other and cling together praying, those that recognize this paralyzing fear, those standing in readiness, they all wait for the sacrifice. The master will sell them to private owners, dividing them into lots, drawing up lists and connections, they are herded, broken up, Bakhita is sent to the far end of the courtyard, on the right near the dovecote. Hawa does not join her. Bakhita tries to spot her but no one can recognize anyone, they simply hear the occasional cry in
the darkness as someone says goodbye and a pitiful smattering of other words to a loved one, the whip cracks, swearing mingled with the supplications, children’s shrill wails with the hoarse sobs of the old and the screams of mothers on the verge of madness. A glow appears at the mistress’s window, Bakhita looks up. Now alone in her deserted harem, the general’s wife watches everything she is losing teem beneath her and understands nothing of the injustice of it.
* * *
—
The general has decided to return to Turkey. He and his family will leave Sudan as soon as possible. The preparations are made in furious agitation, the masters must leave all their possessions in El Obeid, their wealth is slipping through their fingers and they are drowning in panic. They have so few slaves left, barely ten, and their daily routine is in chaos, they can feel they are falling, falling with nothing to help them, and suddenly everything disgusts them, everything appalls them, they realize they never liked this country, the constant wind, the soupy humidity, the freezing nights, and the desert all around. It is like waking from a long sleep. They look up, see where they are, and what they see is hostility and threats, a world that does not speak their language and mistreats their customs, they cannot wait to escape now, to go home and be back where they belong.
* * *
—
Bakhita stays with the masters. She is not chosen for her beauty this time but for her skill in serving the general’s wife, who made her, what Bakhita wears on her person, forever, her scarified skin, her body was quashed and fashioned by her mistress, Bakhita is her creature. The general has granted that she may keep her, but Hawa is sold to a prominent landowner and farmer, and the general secured a good price for her, she was expecting his child, he made a double killing. Not one pregnant woman has been kept, they are to travel by camel all the way to Khartoum, nearly four hundred miles away. They need strong effectual slaves.
* * *
—
Leaving, in Bakhita’s mind, always means hope. She does not realize that by leaving Kordofan, by heading north, to the shores of the Red Sea, she is traveling farther from Darfur. When she mounts the camel, when she is heaved onto this towering animal, she hides her fear, does her best to hold on, and sees the world from above. She is close to the wind as it dances through the trees, flutters flags, whips up sand and dust, close to the sky, and she looks out over fields, deserts, and mountains as far as the eye can see, El Obeid is smaller than she thought, which direction did she come from four years ago, where is Darfur, she is hardly even aware it is in the west, hardly knows which way is west, she remembers endless walking and changing landscapes wiping away the traces of her village; she has forgotten where she was born. And yet she is stirred as if it were possible, as if she were being given this opportunity, now, to be reunited with her loved ones. She is afraid of wasting time, screws up her eyes, looks in every direction, like a bird about to take flight. But what stretches as far as the eye can see during these days and days of traveling is the desert, with its vast dunes, its bare mountains, its invisible snakes, its elongated shadows, its sand dancing and clogging eyes, mouths, the tiniest patch of skin, and, rubbing against the saddle, Bakhita’s permanently injured thigh opens and bleeds, she hides the wound as best she can, knowing she will be abandoned at the first sign of weakness. She is vigilant, obedient, but the whole time, through exhaustion, thirst, and pain, she looks out for Olgossa.
* * *
—
The heat is dangerous, weighing down on the caravan with its suffocating grip, so they travel mostly at night, navigating by the stars. The nights are freezing, they plow on, unsteady silhouettes on their swaying camels, and the masters’ nervousness is matched only by their own anxieties. The masters’ orders reverberate off the stones in the darkness, ancient echoes of the orders that came before them, from warlords to their slaves, every flight and withdrawal, the trafficking and bartering, the desert’s pink-and-blue vastness greets this procession of figures who know no rest, these silhouettes swaying atop their elegant, foul-tempered camels, and bearing the downfall of a whole world on their shoulders.
Bakhita has looked out for her village but what she finds after these nights of traveling is a city, it is Khartoum that appears before dawn one morning, its pink hues dancing to the camel’s queasy rhythm, through her sand-filled, sleep-thick eyes, she sees the city in the distance, its pinpricks of light in the expanse of night, and from the excitement taking hold of the masters, she knows that, once again, something is about to happen.
* * *
—
They do not go into the city but stop just short of it, the nearest outskirts, the first inn they come to will do. Bakhita follows the mistresses, she will sleep outside their door, on the bare floor, ready to obey their orders, their constant, uncalled-for, increasingly futile and pointless orders. The familiar feel of domination reassures them, keeps everyone in his or her rightful place, the general’s wife uses any excuse to slap Bakhita, pull her hair, spit in her face, soothing her own rage and disorientation, she insults her in Arabic so that Bakhita understands better and everyone can hear, and realizes with sickening bitterness that she is fond of this stupid girl. She hates her and wants her. She weeps with anger in her bed with its holey mosquito nets, in this shabby hotel infested with mosquitoes and cockroaches, the moist air that drives you mad, and the shame of having only a handful of slaves to serve her. Is her life worth so little?
* * *
—
Bakhita is exhausted, her body a ragbag of pain, her soul searching for Kishmet. The city is so close, it looks so big, they say it is the huge crossroads of trade, where everything converges, everything lives, they say the Nile becomes a single river here, combining the Blue Nile and the White Nile, they say Egypt is close to the sea too, the so-called Red Sea, they say so many things, this is not just a stuffed desert fox opening its jaws but the Egyptian government. The master of masters. And she is abda. Trapped in her torment as if in a sandstorm, she sleeps on the doorstep and her tears scald and cleanse her sandy eyes. The general’s wife cries out in her sleep. A mixture of Turkish and Arabic words. Bakhita clenches her fist to hold her mother’s hand in hers, puts this fist into her mouth to avoid crying too loudly, and once again, in spite of herself, she hopes.
* * *
—
The next day is almost an ordinary day. Orders. Beatings. Hunger. Thirst and pain. Except. The master is losing his hold and his unyielding assurance. He is a nervous soldier now, as if stranded on too large a battlefield. He does his sums. Does them again. And the mistress sobs in bitter disappointment. Her husband is just a tiny scorpion, Akrep! she keeps saying, hounding him, Akrep! she says with her face veiled and with her face uncovered too, she is so beside herself, going so mad, Akrep! Akrep!, and Bakhita hears from another slave that they are to be sold, again. Will she not go to Turkey? The master has put the word about, Slaves for sale. Will he sell all of them? He needs money, more money still to get home to Ankara. The mistress is not wrong. The master is a scorpion stinging itself, he is losing the game, he was under pressure and he capitulated.
* * *
—
The mistress can no longer bear to have Bakhita tending to her, wants to kill her, bury her underground, wishes she could bury them all underground, along with her mother-in-law, who helps the general with barbed triumph. Bakhita puts down the hairbrushes, hair clips, and veils. Stays standing there, useless and petrified. Makes calculations. If the general does not keep her. If she is bought, that would be her fifth master. Is that right? She thinks it over. Remembers the two captors by the banana palm, remembers the endless walking, the sorting centers, her escape with Binah, remembers the shepherd and the snake in his dog’s jaws, remembers Samir and the young mistresses, remembers the knives and whips and subjugation, she was so young when this started, and she now knows so much, and knows nothing. She has unlearned her customs and beliefs, would no longer know how to
take a flock down to the river, beat sorghum, or sing in her dialect, and she wonders: If my mother said my name now, would I recognize it? As she asks herself this question, she hears someone call her.
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