We’re All Looking for a Lost Key

AUNT SABRIYA told me about a time when a storm blew up over the Slave Yards and sent huts flying. It was the season of wild winds, and the more they blew, the more fragile the things in their path became. The motto you had to live by in the Yards was: only trust in the bad things, since they’re the ones most likely to come true.

People got busy fixing their huts, repairing what had been broken or torn away, and tacking down the rest. They did what they could to help each other prepare for the worst if the winds proved as destructive as the water had done twice before, turning the Yards into a floating mass of wooden planks, bulrushes, corpses, and debris.

People stayed put, prepared for the onslaught. Their previous experiences with Nature’s storms hadn’t been happy ones. One winter, the sea had overflowed and gobbled up all sorts of things. Before coming to its senses, it had scraped the place clean with deadly force within the space of just two days.

Whether hot or cold, the wind was another enemy of the poor in those parts. When people sensed danger, they would pack up their clothes and whatever else they could carry into bundles so that they could be on their way if the storm didn’t die down. After the storm had passed, the sun would come out with a kind of unruffled neutrality. Then, with the help of the sea salt and the air, its heat would disinfect the place, clearing out the pockets of disease that had formed here and there. Otherwise, this sickly piece of Benghazi would have rotted through and through.

During one bout of crazed weather, the three of us were huddled together in our hut for a whole day and a night: a baby girl still nurs-ing, a little white boy, and a black woman. Miftah told Aunt Sabriya that he wouldn’t go to sleep and leave her and his sister to listen to the storm alone. “Instead,” he said, “we can overcome our fear and defeat the winds by talking to each other.”

Not letting on how distressed she was, Aunt Sabriya smiled, held him close, and sang him something about the family’s little hero:

I’m crazy about my little gazelle

He’s as fine as fine can be.

He means the world, and more, to me

I’d give him my eyes if he couldn’t see!

Wondering why he didn’t say anything about food even though he hadn’t eaten since the day before, she asked, “Are you hungry, Miftah?”

“No, no,” he replied stoically.

She squinted at him skeptically. What he’d said wasn’t true, of course. He was starving, and if there’d been a handful of zummaita in front of him, he would have gobbled it right down.¹ But he was patient and stoical by nature.

Bracing himself against his hunger, Miftah stuck out his tongue, saying, “See? My mouth isn’t even dry!”

Wanting to lighten the atmosphere, Aunt Sabriya told him playfully that as soon as the winds died down, she’d go to the city and do some work there so she could feed her favorite boy. And if she didn’t find any work to do, she’d go to her friend Aida and borrow something from her house—like some zummaita and dates or some barley flour.

“No, no!” he broke in. “Not barley flour! I don’t like it! Bring us a little couscous from her house. Then I’ll go with Uncle Mustafa Al Huwwat and help him fish. We’ll catch a fish that’ll stretch from one end of our shack to the other. You can make couscous with it, and we’ll give some to the neighbors.”

To add to the fun, she said, “But couscous calls for onions, oil, tomatoes, and green vegetables!”

“Don’t worry about that!” little Miftah said reassuringly, determined to keep his dream alive. “I’ll bring you whatever you need!”

“But how will you do that, my little gazelle? And where will you get it?”

“Let me see,” he said pensively. “I know! I’ll get it from God. Don’t you always tell me God will give us whatever we need? I might go ask Bouga how to do it, and she’ll tell me. Bouga’s a nice old lady, and she knows all about God.”

Amid the whistling of the wind and the rattling of the huts, a neighbor called to Aunt Sabriya from outside her shack, saying, “There’s somebody looking for you!” Surprised that anybody would be looking for her in such stormy weather, she braced herself for the worst.

Pulling back the flap that covered the shack entrance, she peeked out and saw a neat, impeccably groomed white woman.

When she saw Aunt Sabriya peek out, she said, “Peace be upon you. I’m looking for Tawida.”

Sabriya remained silent as Tawida thought back on the past.

After a pause, the woman said, “That’s all right. All that matters is that you know the story behind this piece of cloth, and the pink towel a certain baby was wrapped in once upon a time.”

This said, she reached under her farrashiya and brought out a piece of fabric that matched the one that had been tied around Miftah’s wrist on the night he was born.² Tawida felt undone. However, Aunt Sabriya replied calmly on her behalf that the two women would have to go inside so that they could speak in private.

Miftah was eyeing the stranger who’d come to visit, and she him. To get him out of ear range, Tawida said to him, “Go to Bouga and ask her how we can get some onions and oil to make couscous.”

The woman squeezed his hand as he left, saying, “Do you need onions and oil? And would you like some sweets too?”

With a confident, slightly stern air the child replied, “We don’t need sweets right now, Auntie. My mother and I just want to eat, and I want milk for my little sister.”

“No worries,” the woman said with a smile. “I’ve brought you all a basket that’s got the things you’ve mentioned in it.”

“And how did you know we needed food?”

“Sidi Abdussalam Al Asmar sent me to you.³ Hasn’t your mother told you about visitors the saints send to people when they need something? They usually come when it’s windy and rainy!”

Miftah had heard all sorts of “once upon a time” stories about saints and their magical emissaries.

“So has the fairy come to see us?” the little boy asked.

“That’s right,” Sabriya replied with a nervous smile. “But you still need to go ask Bouga about the onions and the oil. Tell her your mama says hello, and that she also needs some shidd ma jak.”⁴

“What’s shidd ma jak?” he asked curiously.

Ready with a quick reply, Sabriya told him, “It’s a medicine they give to little children to help them sleep and not be afraid of the wind. Tell her we need it for your little sister Atiga.”

So off he went.

Smiling sadly, the woman asked Sabriya, “Is that really my son? You’ve raised him so well!”

“God’s the one who’s raised Miftah.”

“So his name is Miftah—Key?”

“That’s right. He has a way of opening things up, both for himself and for others.”

Then she added, “You’re late, by the way. I expected you to come for him when he was a baby!”

“Allah ghaleb,” the woman said, bursting into tears.⁵

They say the woman hankered after Miftah so much that when she got pregnant again, she had two babies who looked just like him. They also say that when a pregnant woman looks often at something she either hates or loves, it will affect the child she’s carrying. If she’s been looking at a person, the baby will look like that person. If she craves a certain kind of fruit that’s out of season, the shape or color of the fruit will be imprinted somewhere on the baby’s body, and when that fruit is in season, the birthmark will glow. If she looks often at somebody she loves during her pregnancy, and if she drinks water over this person’s head while he’s sitting down without his realizing it, the baby will be identical to the person concerned.

Like religious doctrines, superstitions work to conceal things that people aren’t allowed to talk about, or speaking of which might bring someone harm. So we need superstitions to keep painful realities hidden away. When Miftah went to serve in that woman’s house, he was actually going there to be near his real mother, who’d been forced to give him up in order to avoid a scandal. So when Sabriya agreed to give him to her, she was simply giving him back to his birth mother. In his new home he would be living with his own flesh and blood, but as a servant. Sabriya had no wish to deprive this woman of her own son or to punish her for a fleeting rush of passion. What good would it have done to keep him away from her or expose her to ridicule? She had no authority to do such a thing and, even if she had, it would have been unthinkable to her.

Since other people didn’t know the real story behind her relationship to Miftah, Sabriya had to put up with their criticism for having allegedly abandoned a bright, obedient, well-mannered boy who had come to her as a gift from Heaven. She couldn’t tell people she was just giving back to others what was rightfully theirs. Some people would have found the truth offensive. It would have been as devastating as the storm winds that used to rage through the Yards, and people would have hated it, no matter what hidden blessing it might have brought.

Besides, what good would it have done for her to tell anyone? Nobody would have stopped hurling accusations. They would just have shifted the blame from Sabriya to Miftah’s mother, and the pain and condemnation would have gone on. Besides, if the truth had come out it would have spelled a far worse catastrophe for Miftah’s mother, and for Miftah especially, than it would have for Sabriya.

So the only thing Sabriya could say was that she hadn’t “sold” Miftah, as rumor had it, but that she had just sent him to serve at the lady’s house, and that the money and food the lady had given her weren’t “payment” for her priceless Miftah.

Lest her heart shatter under the weight of people’s suspicions, Sabriya asked Miftah’s mother not to send her anything that could be seen by hateful, envious folks in the Yards, who were sure to use them as an excuse to gossip about her. She was more than willing to sacrifice for Miftah’s sake, but she couldn’t bear to hear other people saying she had sold an innocent child that she had raised as her own son. If rumors like that got around, Miftah was sure to get wind of them sooner or later, and she didn’t want to hurt him. Instead of sending Sabriya things, the mother could help her find work that would enable Sabriya to endure hunger, drought, and poverty, and, at the same time, allow her to stay closer to Miftah.

Sabriya, Bouga, Aida, and Jaballah knew whose son Miftah Daqiq really was, but they didn’t let on to anybody. After all, he’d been flourishing so beautifully, none of them could bear to think of doing anything that would spoil his growth and keep him from finding happiness. Life is cruel enough as it is without our making it that much crueler!

Hunger hadn’t dampened Miftah’s hopeful spirit, nor had the hardship of life in the Yards taken away his smile. He was a white boy growing up in a black community, he was poor and served in people’s homes as a white slave, and he did backbreaking labor breaking up and gathering salt on the seashore. But none of that could break his determination. Nothing could diminish his conviction that everything is foreordained by God and that life is a precious gift that deserves to be lived.

Miftah adored Sabriya, who’d raised him as if she were his own mother, and he believed the things she told him about his family and his origins. It was through her words that he’d come to love his family, a family he thought had died. He dreamed of being able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca not just once, but twice—once for himself, and once for his mother, his father, and his two sisters. The distant future—the only time when it seems hopes can be realized—always holds out the promise of happiness.

He told her, “When I grow up and get married, I’m going to name my daughters after my mother and my sisters. And if God gives me a boy, I’ll name him after my father. But the first girl has to be called Sabriya. That way I can get back what the sea took away from me. But I have to love the oldest girl in a special way, the way I love you. Then you’ll be both my mother and my daughter!”

Touched by his childlike transparency, Sabriya burst out laughing. She gathered him in her arms and, between one kiss and the next, said, “God bring you joy, my little one!”

She didn’t make fun of his dreams. On the contrary, she believed in them herself. She went along with even the impossible ones, saying, “Of course, some people will tell you the name Sabriya is old-fashioned. So forget about using that one. What matters is for you to have a family of your own and to live a happy life.”

Sabriya always came to Miftah’s defense and would do anything to spare him disappointment or humiliation. She would rather have died than have him discover that he’d been an illegitimate child, conceived out of nothing but somebody’s greed for pleasure, that he’d been born to a girl who’d surrendered herself to the man she loved only to have him abandon her when she was pregnant with his child, doomed to endure her brokenness alone. Fortunately for her, her family had dealt honorably with the situation. If they hadn’t, she could never have married and lived a life of ease. But as it was, no one outside her family ever knew she’d borne a child out of wedlock and had to leave him at the door of a mosque. And when an older man came and asked for her hand, the family guarded her honor by telling him that when she was a little girl she’d been playing among some trees when she fell on a sharp stick, perforating her hymen.

If a girl’s parents confess to her suitor that she isn’t a virgin, it’s viewed as a sign of their honesty and integrity. Consequently, the man married her and treated her well. She bore her husband a daughter and they lived comfortably together until, one day, she told him she wanted to hire a male servant. Her husband was the jealous type, and he would obviously have objected to having another man in his house. But when she told him that the servant she had in mind was a young boy who’d been recommended to her by a trusted friend, he agreed to her request. Her husband worked for the national patrol and traveled frequently. So, knowing that a male was present in his household, he could rest assured that his wife and daughter would be well looked after. As for the person she had chosen to fill the post, it was none other than Miftah Daqiq.

Miftah met all the woman’s purported conditions, and went to work for her convinced of the reasons his mother Sabriya had given him. She’d said, “Your sister and I need to eat, and you need to work to make us a living. The country’s being destroyed by famine and drought, and people are having to choose between staying here and dying or emigrating to survive. The work God has given you at this lady’s house will be a lot easier than breaking up blocks of salt with a sledgehammer and gathering them in. I’ve got pneumonia most of the time so I can’t work very much, but I’ve got to be strong and hold out. What else can we do?”

Miftah would have done anything for Aunt Sabriya. So he accepted everything she said and shouldered this new responsibility for his multihued family like a little man. Who could have helped but love him?

1. A traditional Libyan treat, zummaita is made by kneading a mixture of ground roasted wheat (or barley) and cumin with water and oil, then dipping it in sugar.

2. A farrashiya is a traditional white Libyan robe worn by women in public. Its shape and design generally reflect its owner’s economic status.

3. Sidi Abdussalam (1455–1575) was a renowned Muslim ascetic and mystic known for having performed numerous miracles on others’ behalf. He was born and died in the Libyan town of Zliten, where his grave was a place of visitation until 2012, when it was destroyed at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists on the pretext that Islam forbids the veneration of saints and their tombs.

4. An expression that means “keep the person who’s come to you at your house.”

5. Meaning “God is victor”—in other words, “God is the one who decides everything,” the expression Allah ghaleb is used to express resignation in the face of circumstances beyond one’s control.