by Sanmao
Once I’d examined the handsome books on display, I politely asked Ali if I could meet the rich guy’s wives. ‘Of course. Please come. They also want to meet you, they’re just shy.’
I wandered around the back rooms by myself and saw one opulent bedroom after another, full-length mirrors, beautiful women, Simmons beds, as well as countless fabrics of gold and silver that one rarely comes across in the desert. I really wished José could have met the rich man’s four gorgeous young wives. Too bad they were shy and didn’t want to come out to greet the guests.
I covered my face with a scarlet veil and leisurely made my way back into the living room. The men sitting in there jumped up in surprise, thinking I had become the fifth wife. I thought my appearance perfectly matched the ambience of this home, so I decided not to take off the veil. I just lowered it from my face in anticipation of the grand desert feast.
In a short while, a little child who wasn’t even as high as the chairs brought over a red-hot charcoal stove. He had a deferential smile on his face and couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. He carefully set the stove in the corner by the wall, then went out again. A few moments later he returned, walking unsteadily with a gigantic silver tray. He set this down before us on the big red carpet that was woven with all sorts of colourful patterns. On the tray there was a silver pot of tea, a silver box of sugar, bright green fresh mint leaves, perfumed water and another miniature stove that warmed the tea. I was full of praise, totally mesmerised by this pristine and ornate tea set.
The child gently knelt before us, then stood up again with the silver-white bottle of perfumed water in order to sprinkle some on each person’s head. This was one of the desert’s grand rituals. I lowered my head to let the child pour water on me. He didn’t stop until my hair was completely soaked. For a moment, the fragrance filled this Arabic palace, the atmosphere stirring and solemn. The strong body odour of the Sahrawi vanished, thanks to this.
After a few more moments, the child calmly brought in a big plate of raw camel meat and set a metal grill on the charcoal stove. Our group had been talking loudly. Two of the other Spanish wives were chatting about the circumstances under which they had given birth. Only I was quietly observing the boy’s each and every movement.
He did things in a neat and orderly fashion, first skewering the meat, then putting it over the fire to roast. At the same time he kept an eye on the tea brewing over the other stove. When the water began to boil, he added mint leaves and a few hard cubes of sugar. Then he lifted the teapot higher than his own head and poured, perfectly angling the tea into little cups. His posture was extremely graceful. Once the tea had been poured, he knelt before us again and offered us each a cup with both hands. The tea was aromatic and full of flavour.
After the kebabs were cooked, the boy removed the first batch of meat onto a big dish and served it to us. Camel hump turned out to be a fatty meat. We managed to force down the liver and the other meat, as well. The male guests and I each took a skewer to eat. The child watched us all. I smiled and winked at him to let him know it was tasty.
While I was eating the second skewer, those two uncultured Spanish wives started grumbling with absolutely no sense of propriety. ‘Dios mío! I can’t eat this! I’m going to throw up! Somebody fetch some soda water, quick!’ I felt very embarrassed on their behalf, witnessing their lack of manners.
This lavish meal had been prepared for us and I was the only woman who was eating. What a shame, I thought, that this child was serving us while we sat like useless rubbish. I decided I might as well move closer and sit next to the boy. I could help him put meat on the kebabs and grill it for myself. I figured if you put a little more salt on it, the camel taste wouldn’t be so noticeable.
The boy kept his head lowered, working silently. The hint of a smile remained at the edges of his lips. There was a look of great cleverness about him. ‘You put together one piece of meat, a slice of hump, then liver and add salt, right?’ I asked him.
‘Haqq! ’ he answered quietly. (Meaning yes, correct and so on.)
I showed him great respect, checking with him before fanning the flame or flipping the meat since he really was a capable child. His face became flushed from happiness, I noticed. I imagined it was probably rare that someone made him feel so important. The people around the fire, on the other hand, seemed utterly uninterested. Ali had invited us to eat some authentic desert cuisine, and here were these two irritating female guests with a steady stream of complaints. They didn’t want tea, they wanted soda water; they wanted to sit in chairs, not on the ground.
For each of these things, Ali sharply rebuked the child and made him remedy the situation. He had to manage the stove, then rush out to buy soda water. After buying soda water, he had to bring over chairs. After bringing the chairs, he had to hurry back to grilling meat. His face was full of bewilderment from being so busy.
‘Ali, you’re not doing anything and neither are those women,’ I declared. ‘It’s unfair to make the littlest one work so hard!’
Ali swallowed a piece of meat and pointed the meat fork at the kid. ‘He has more responsibilities than these,’ he said. ‘He got lucky today.’
‘Who is he? Why does he have to do so many things?’
José immediately changed the topic of conversation. After José was done talking, I continued to ask questions over the flame. ‘Who is he? Ali, tell me!’
‘He’s not a member of this family,’ Ali said awkwardly.
‘If he’s not a member of this family, then why is he here? Is he a neighbour’s kid?’
‘No.’
The room fell quiet. No one made a sound. At the time, because I hadn’t been in the desert for long, I naturally didn’t understand why everyone seemed so uncomfortable. Even José wasn’t speaking. ‘Well, who is he then?’ I grew impatient with this hemming and hawing.
‘Sanmao, come here.’ José waved his hand at me. I set down the kebab and went over to him. ‘He’s a slave,’ José said softly, so that the child would not overhear. I put a hand over my mouth. I stared at Ali, then surreptitiously at the child with his lowered head and didn’t say anything more.
‘Where did the slave come from?’ I asked Ali, my face cold.
‘They are born into it and passed on from generation to generation.’
‘Are you telling me the first black person who was born had “I am a slave” written on his face?’ I looked at Ali’s light brown complexion, refusing to give up on this enquiry.
‘Of course not. They were captured. When they saw black people living in the desert, they went out to capture them. They knocked them out and tied them up with ropes for a month so they did not escape. With the whole family captured, there is even less of a chance. Like this, they become property passed on from one generation to the next. Now you can also buy or sell them.’ Seeing the look of unbearable injustice on my face, Ali quickly added, ‘We do not mistreat slaves. Like him, this kid, he goes back to his parents’ tent at night. He lives outside of town. He is very happy to go home every day.’
‘How many slaves does the master of this home have?’
‘Over two hundred, all sent out to build roads for the Spanish government. At the beginning of the month, the master goes to collect wages. That is how he got so wealthy.’
‘What do the slaves eat?’
‘The Spanish agency for contracted projects gives food to them.’
‘So you make money from the slaves, but you don’t provide for them.’ I gave Ali the side-eye.
‘Hey, let’s get a few for ourselves!’ one of the female guests whispered to her husband.
‘Shut your damn mouth!’ I heard her husband scold her angrily.
As we were saying goodbye to this wealthy household, I took off the veil and returned it to one of the beautiful wives. The rich guy walked us out. I thanked him but had no desire to shake his hand. I didn’t want to see this kind of person ever again.
The group of us walked abou
t a block or so before I noticed the little black slave had come out after us and was watching me from a corner by the wall. His large clever eyes were tender as those of a deer. I left behind the group and jogged towards him, taking out two hundred pesetas from my purse. Pulling over his hand, I put the money in his palm. ‘Thank you!’ I said to him before turning and walking off.
I felt really ashamed of myself. What good was money? Was money the only means I had to express something to the child? I couldn’t think of anything else, but it truly was a low-level form of goodwill.
The next day I was collecting mail at the post office when I remembered the matter of slaves. I decided to go upstairs to the courthouse and pay a visit to the old secretary.
‘Ah, Sanmao, you haven’t come in a while, but I see you still remember me.’
‘Señor Secretary, that you openly allow slavery in a Spanish colony is truly admirable.’
The secretary let out a long sigh, hearing this. ‘Don’t say another word,’ he said. ‘Every time a Sahrawi and a Spaniard get in a fight, we always lock up the Spaniard. We can barely keep up with appeasing these violent peoples. Who wants to meddle in their affairs? We’re scared to death of them already.’
‘You are all accomplices. More than just not meddling, you’re using slaves to build roads and you give their owners the money. What a joke!’
‘Hey, what’s it got to do with you? Those slave owners are all heads of their tribes. The most powerful Sahrawi serve as representatives in the congress in Madrid. What can we say about it?’
‘A dignified Catholic country where divorce is illegal, but still you can own slaves. How absolutely bizarre. Felicidades. Hmph! My second motherland, my God…’
‘Sanmao, stop stirring up trouble! It’s so hot…’
‘Fine! I’m going! Goodbye!’ I strode quickly out of the courthouse.
That same evening, there was a knocking on my door: a courteous series of three gentle raps, then nothing. I was truly puzzled. How could there be someone so civilised coming to see me?
Opening the door, I saw a middle-aged black man whom I didn’t recognise standing before me. His clothes were ragged and dirty, practically scraps of cloth hanging on his body. He didn’t wear a turban, his long grey hair fluttering in the wind. When he saw me, he immediately bowed with great humbleness, hands folded at the chest as if in worship. His manners were in stark contrast to the rudeness of the Sahrawi.
‘You are?’ I waited for him to speak.
He couldn’t speak. Hoarse sounds came from within his mouth. He pantomimed something at the height of a child, then pointed at himself. I couldn’t grasp his meaning.
‘What?’ I asked gently. ‘I don’t understand. What is it?’
Seeing that I didn’t understand, he quickly took out two hundred pesetas and pointed in the direction of the rich guy’s home. Then he pantomimed again. Ah! I understood. He was the father of that child. He insisted on giving me back the money, but I absolutely refused. I also gesticulated that I wanted to give it to the kid because he had grilled meat for all of us. He was very smart. He understood right away. This slave obviously hadn’t been born mute because he could make some sounds with his mouth. It was just that he was deaf, so he had never learned to speak.
He looked at the money as though it were an extremely large amount, thought it over, then tried returning it to me once more. We pushed it back and forth for quite some time. Finally he bowed to me again, pressed his hands together and smiled at me. He thanked me over and over before leaving. That was the first time I met the mute slave.
Less than a week later, I got up bright and early one day to see José off to work beneath the starry heavens. As usual, it was around quarter past five. When we opened the front door, we unexpectedly discovered a head of lush green lettuce sitting there, still dripping with water. I carefully picked up the lettuce, waiting until José was in the distance before closing the door. I found a wide-mouthed bottle and stuck the lettuce upright inside like a flower. Then I put it in the living room, reluctant to eat it.
I knew exactly who this present was from.
Around here we were lending out or giving away innumerable things to the Sahrawi neighbours every day. But the person who’d repaid me happened to be a slave, so poor that not even his body belonged to him. This touched my heart even more than the lesson of the widow’s mite in the Bible. I really wanted to find out more about the mute slave, but he didn’t reappear for a long time.
About two months passed. The neighbour behind us was about to build a room on their roof. All their cement blocks were shipped and piled on our doorstep, then hoisted up.
The scene in front of my house was a complete mess. Our powder-white walls had also been scraped into oblivion. I was afraid to bring it up when José came home. I wanted to avoid incurring his wrath and hurting our neighbour’s feelings. I could only hope that they’d begin construction quickly so we could have peaceful days once more.
Sometime later, there was no sign that the project was starting. Whenever I went to hang clothes up on the roof, I would go over to the neighbour’s square hole and peer down, asking them why they hadn’t started.
‘Almost there. We are renting a slave. In a few days he will come, once we agree on a price. His master’s asking price is very expensive. He is the best bricklayer in all the desert.’
This first-class bricklayer arrived a few days later. I went up to the roof to take a look and found the mute slave up there, squatting and mixing cement. Pleasantly surprised, I walked towards him. He saw my shadow and looked up. Seeing it was me, a sincere smile emerged on his face like a blooming flower. This time I extended my hand as soon as he bowed. I shook his hand, then gesticulated my thanks to him for the lettuce. His face reddened when he saw that I knew he’d sent it. He pantomimed to ask if it tasted good.
I nodded vigorously and said José and I had eaten it. He smiled happily again and gestured that our kind of people must eat lettuce or else our gums would bleed. I was stunned. How could a slave in the desert have this sort of common knowledge? The mute slave used simple and straightforward hand gestures, the language of a thousand countries. Most convenient indeed. His face was also very expressive. One glance at him and his meaning was clear.
After the mute slave had been working for a few days, a wall about half a person’s height had been built. It was a scorching hot August at the time. At noon, the poisonously hot sun poured down like lava from a volcano. I was inside with the windows and doors shut tight, pasting strips of paper into the window joints so waves of heat wouldn’t burst indoors. I wiped down mats with water, wrapped ice cubes in a towel and put it on top of my head. But still, that temperature, close to fifty-five degrees, could make a person go insane.
Whenever this wild heat was tormenting me, I would lie on the straw mat, counting down the minutes and seconds until sunset. Only when the cool winds blew at dusk could I manage to sit outside for a moment. This was the greatest pleasure to which I could look forward.
Many days passed before I thought about the mute slave working on the roof. Somehow I’d forgotten him. What was he doing when it was scorching hot? I steeled myself and immediately ran up. When I opened the door to the roof, a wave of heat surged at me and I felt severe pain in my head right away. I rushed forth to find the mute slave. There was not a sliver of shade to hide in on this open rooftop.
The mute slave leaned against the side of the wall, a torn straw mat from the goat pen covering his body. He looked like an old dog that couldn’t put up a struggle, fallen to his knees. I walked over quickly, calling him, pushing him. The sun scorched my skin like molten iron. It had only been a few seconds, but my head was whirling, unable to bear it any longer.
I pulled the straw mat from the mute slave and pushed him again. Slowly he raised his pitiful face, which looked like he had been crying, and gazed at me. I pointed to my home. ‘Let’s go down,’ I said to him. ‘Quickly. Let’s go.’
He stood up
weakly. His pallid face seemed uncertain, unsure of what to do.
I couldn’t take the heat and gave him a forceful shove. Finally he bowed with great embarrassment, passed under the canopy that José had built and slowly made his way down the stone steps. I closed the door to the roof and descended quickly after.
The mute slave stood under the makeshift ceiling cover by our kitchen, holding a piece of bread that was hard as a stone in his hand. I recognised it as old bread that the Sahrawi get from the military camp. Usually they shredded it and gave it to the goats to eat. Now the neighbour who’d rented the mute slave for labour was giving it to him to sustain his life. He seemed enormously nervous standing there, afraid to move. It was still unbearably hot under the ceiling cover. I told him to come into the living room, but he wouldn’t budge at all, pointing at himself and his skin colour. There was no way he would enter.
I gesticulated to him again. ‘You, me, we’re the same. Please go in.’ No one had ever regarded him as human before. No wonder he was scared out of his wits.
Eventually I saw how upset this poor man had become and decided not to force him. I let him stay in a cool spot of the hall and set out a straw mat for him. I brought out an ice-cold bottle of orangeade from the refrigerator, a soft and fresh piece of bread, a piece of cheese and a hard-boiled egg that José hadn’t had time to eat that morning. I put them all next to him and gestured that he should eat. Then I walked away into the living room, closing the door so that he could eat undisturbed.
At half past three, lava was still pouring down from the heavens. It was boiling hot indoors; hard to imagine what it was like outside. Worried that the mute slave’s owner might scold him, I went over and told him to continue working. He sat in the hallway, still as a statue. He had drunk a little of the orangeade and eaten his own dry bread. The other things were untouched. Seeing that he hadn’t eaten, I crossed my arms and looked at him calmly. He got the picture, immediately standing up and gesturing to me not to get angry. He hadn’t eaten because he wanted to take it home to his wife and children. He had three kids, two boys and a girl.