The Burn

MUMBLING TO HIMSMSELF, he staggered past the enclosure where the servants and the livestock slept. Then Tawida heard him fall to the ground with a thud.

“It’s Master Muhammad Junior,” she said to the deaf woman sleeping across from her.

The woman, who lay curled up in her bed, muttered something unintelligible, then turned over on her other side and went back to sleep.

Even if she’d heard what Tawida said, she wouldn’t have had the energy to care. She was exhausted, having spent all day in the kitchen preparing the winter provisions of usban al-shams and jerky.¹ She’d spent an eternity filling one clay jar after another, marking them to show which ones contained just jerky, which ones contains jerky mixed with lard, and which ones contained lard alone.

Wrapping herself in the other woman’s scarf, Tawida went out to help the master inside. She was afraid that if she didn’t, he might call for Jaballah or Aida, only to have them not come in spite of the racket he was making. They were the servants he always called on if he wanted something. Tawida took him by the hand and helped him up, and he readily accepted her help. Then she moved him away from the eaves gutter, which was overflowing and dripping on everything below it.

Running his hand over the cap on his head, he grumbled, “What’s wrong with the sky? Something must have poked a hole in it!”

“Yes, it must have, Master,” she said agreeably.

“What did it?”

“I don’t know, Master. But whatever it was, winter seems to have come early this year.”

His wet body was right up next to hers as she lifted him, and as she placed her hands on his shoulders, he noticed her face.

“Who are you?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m your servant, Master,” she said, flustered.

“Aida?”

“No, Master. I’m Tawida.”

“Aah. So, Tawida, how long have you been here?”

“For a long time, Master.”

“Why have I never seen you before, then?”

“I don’t know, Master. I live in this house, and I see you all the time.”

“Really?”

“I’m the one you poured the tureen of hot soup onto at Master Siddig’s stag party.”

“Oooh! Wasn’t that Aida?”

“No, it was me, Master.”

He slapped himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand as if the pot of soup had spilled right then and there.

“I am so sorry! Really, I am! Were you hurt?”

As he repeated his apology, Tawida escorted him to the door without a word, supporting him from behind.

“That was a long time ago, Master. Don’t you worry about it. Come in now. You’re getting cold.”

“Tell me the truth. Don’t be afraid. You can ask me for any compensation you want. You can even ask for your freedom.”

“I don’t want anything, Master.”

“No. I’m not going in until you tell me what happened.”

“My leg got burned. That’s all.”

“You mean, I burned you?”

“Don’t be angry with me, Master. Please.”

“You mean I burned you, and I caused you pain? Shame on you for not saying anything!”

“It wasn’t you that burned me, Master,” she corrected. “It was the soup.”

“Show me your leg,” he commanded.

“No, Master, I couldn’t do that.”

“So, then, you’re lying to me! I wouldn’t hurt a flea—ask anybody you like, and they’ll tell you! Now I’m going to punish you for lying.”

“I would never lie to you, Master,” she insisted, terrified. “You didn’t hurt me at all. So please don’t hurt me now!”

“Show me your leg.”

“No, Master.”

“Why don’t you want to show it to me?”

Hesitating, she said, “It’s my upper leg, Master.”

“Just lift your dress, then,” he said, “and nobody will see but me.” She was still reluctant to uncover her thigh to reveal the burn. Nevertheless, she did as she’d been told, feeling all the while that her master held her in contempt, especially when he said, “I can’t see anything. It’s pitch dark.”

She thought to herself: That’s just the way you’d expect a white master to treat a black slave woman who’s been in his house forever without his even knowing she exists! He reached out and ran his hand over the burn.

“Here?” he asked.

“Somewhere around there, Master.”

“Here?”

“Yes, yes, there.”

“Does it hurt, my little one?”

“No, not anymore.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tawida, Master.”

He was sitting on the pallet where she normally slept. He could barely keep his eyes open enough to look at her. Then, looking nauseous, he shut his eyelids and went silent. She stood there speechless for a few moments, shocked to see her master, usually so powerful and dignified, in this state of imbalance. Like everyone else in the household, she’d carried an entirely different image of him in her mind: the image of the invincible sovereign who speaks little and whose command is never disobeyed. Under normal circumstances, nothing made him more furious than to have to repeat himself. That, by the way, was what had happened at the lunch banquet that had been hosted for his cousin Siddig’s stag party, so he’d lost his temper and flung the soup tureen at her.

Muhammad Junior was answerable for all the family’s affairs to his father, Master Imuhammad, who had delegated more powers to him than he had to any of his brothers, both older and younger. Unlike his brothers, Muhammad had nothing to do with the slaves, and wasn’t inclined to sleep with the black slave women that filled their household as white masters generally did with “what their right hands possessed.” His personal preference was for white prostitutes. But when he did go to them, he was circumspect about it. Never once had anyone seen him in a state of debauchery or indecency.

Knowing that Jaballah and Aida were together in the livestock pen, Tawida wasn’t sure what to do. She was determined not to ruin the two lovers’ happiness, even though she knew somebody might come looking for the master and find him in her room.

She crouched next to the door in her soggy dress. The situation was so novel and unprecedented, she hardly realized her clothes were sopping wet. She stared at him in the lamplight, incredulous that this was the same harsh, stern Master Muhammad that people told such frightful stories about. What would she say to him when he woke up and found himself in his servant’s lowly bed? What would she say to Lalla Uwayshina the next day if she asked her where Jaballah and Aida had been?

When she realized that the master’s burnoose was wet, she jumped up. Then she crept apprehensively over to the pallet where he lay, but hesitated at first to take it off him. At last, however, she bent over him and began removing it ever so slowly and deliberately. It was heavy, and it smelled of a fragrant local brew known as Nazli Durna.² Emboldened by the fact that he was too drowsy to realize what was happening, she took a good look at his face, studying it one bit at a time: broad eyelids closed over a pair of almond-colored beads; a lovely nose with just a hint of pugness; a raised moustache and a red beard with a soft sheen that lay down flat over his cheeks; thick, silky hair and a pearly white neck; long fingers covered with thick hair; and an engraved ring set with a small blue stone on his right ring finger.

She removed his shoes and set them aside to reveal a pair of clean, oval-shaped feet with long, slender toes. He was the first man she’d ever had the chance to see at such close range. And he was white, not black. She devoured him with her eyes, memorizing his appearance down to the last detail so that, if what had happened on this night never repeated itself, she could recall it later. Here was a man who was neither a slave nor an ordinary freeman. He was someone she would never have imagined herself having a conversation with. How much more unimaginable would it have been, then, for him to sleep in her bed after his body had leaned on hers as she lifted him up from under the eaves gutter? From now on, that eaves gutter would be one of her favorite things. She would even love the rain, and never again would she hang the sieve under the gutter to keep it from dripping into the atrium. After all, the rain was what had brought this most lovely of coincidences into her life—the loveliest coincidence, she felt certain, that any slave woman in all of Benghazi had ever experienced. So how would she tell Aida about it? What would she say?

Her heart started to pound again under the influence of a shock she hoped never to recover from. She was the black slave girl no man had ever wanted, whether slave or free. Unlike all the other slave girls and women she’d known, she’d never even been touched. Never yet had she experienced the thing she’d heard about and waited for so long. Nobody in the household or in the market had ever fondled her or flirted with her, so she’d concluded that she must be so ugly that no man would ever want to come near her. That special membrane she’d been born with was still intact. Aida, by contrast, had had relations with a number of men before Jaballah—some white, others black.

Then there was Ahbara, a thirteen-year-old the family’s oldest son had slept with, and who had gotten pregnant in less than a week. Looking over at the deaf Negro woman asleep in the same room, Tawida thought out loud, “Even this woman, who’s over forty, has a man who comes to be with her. All the servants know about him, too. And of all people, it’s Master Muhammad’s cousin Siddig, who got married not long ago!” Siddig was a young white man, but he had a thing for older Negro women. He was so wild over them, in fact, that he wasn’t satisfied with the ones in his household, and would go after them wherever he could.

Tawida went quietly back to her spot next to the door, absorbing herself till daybreak in thoughts about the earthquake that had struck inside her. She didn’t sleep. How could sleep have graced her eyes when her soul echoed with the realization that a man who held sway over countless people had lifted her dress and, with his creamy white hands, had touched the place that had been burned by that pot of soup? He’d touched the very place where he had wounded her!

In the early hours of the morning, the master woke to find himself in the servant woman’s bed. He had no idea how he’d gotten there, and when he saw her slender silhouette huddled at the door as though she’d been waiting for him to wake up, he was stupefied. She came and knelt in front of him. Moments passed without him knowing what to say to her. He might have thought that when he got drunk the night before, he’d slept with her, which worried him.

“What happened last night?” he asked her at last.

“Nothing, Master,” she reassured him. “You fell in the rain, and I brought you in.”

He hung his head in silence.

“And where did you sleep?” he wanted to know.

“I didn’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“I sat at the door all night.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you were sleeping in my place.”

He fell silent again, trying to think of something to say.

“Who are you?”

“Your servant.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Tawida, Master.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I’ve been here for a long time, Master.”

“So why haven’t I seen you before?”

“I’ve been in this household for a long time, and I always see you.”

“But I don’t recognize you.”

“I’m the one you poured the tureen of hot soup onto the day of Master Siddig’s stag party.”

“Whoa!” he exclaimed after a short pause. “Wasn’t that Aida?”

“No, Master. It was me.”

He got up off the pallet and she handed him his cap. Then she bent down to put his shoes back on him. He didn’t speak. His usual surliness had been softened somewhat by this act of self-abnegating obedience on the part of a servant he had belittled by not recognizing her, and who had even been the victim of one of his angry outbursts. What’s happening? he wondered to himself. He touched her hands as she handed him his burnoose.

“Your hands are freezing,” he noted with concern. “Keep yourself warm!”

She didn’t say a word. As he passed her on his way out, her heart sank at the realization that this night, in which she had enjoyed his presence near her, was over, and wouldn’t be followed by another. As he headed back to the house, he could smell himself. He’d picked up the scent that was unique to slave women. He sniffed himself all over. The scent had clung to him so powerfully, it was as though he’d spent the night in her arms, not just in her bed, as though she hadn’t spent the night huddling at the door, but bathing him in kisses.

In order to get rid of the odor, he would have to take a full bath. He filled the large bathtub, immersed himself, and closed his eyes, his features somber. Then he repeatedly scrubbed and sniffed himself to make sure the smell was gone. As he did so, he recalled all the things Siddig had told him about black women and the sweetness of having sex with them. He himself had never tried a single one, and no matter how much he thought about it, he didn’t feel inclined to. On the contrary, he had doubts about his cousin’s taste, and suspected that he was exaggerating his descriptions. When he came out of the bathroom, he felt like a new man, or like someone who’s grown an extra organ of perception. He’d recovered his ability to feel certain things, although he still held them in contempt. He saw such urges as a kind of youthful vanity that caused some men to get carried away before coming to their senses again.

A few days after his encounter with the fragrance that had taken him over so unexpectedly, his common sense starting coming back into operation, and he spent more time thinking about that tureen of hot soup than he did about the details of the slave woman’s face.

As he and Siddig stood measuring out barley and wheat, he turned to his cousin.

“Siddig?” he began.

“Yes?”

“What makes you go after older black women when you’re married to one of your most beautiful cousins?”

Taken by surprise, Siddig put his measure down.

“And why do you ask about things that don’t concern you? Haven’t you always told me I’ve got rotten taste?”

Muhammad turned his head away before looking slowly back at Siddig.

“Come on now, cousin,” he chided. “Forget about the joking we used to do. I’m asking you a question man-to-man.”

“So, the lily white Muhammad has started asking about Negro women! What’s the story?”

Siddig added with a chuckle, “What would you know about that warm feeling a man gets when he’s in a black woman’s arms? It gives you a high so sweet you wish you never had to let her go.”

Muhammad pursed his lips and shook his head as if he didn’t get the point of his cousin’s hyperbole.

“So that’s how it is!” he said flatly.

Sticking by his claim, Siddig affirmed, “Yeah, that’s how it is, and more! Just ask Mahdi, Sharef, and Hamza. They believed me when I told them about it and gave it a try, and they’ve never regretted it. You’re the only holdout. I don’t know what you’ve got locked inside that head of yours. What are you waiting for?”

“Well, since you’re an expert on these things, I’ll tell you about something weird that happened to me a few days ago with one of the slave women. She’s one of our most miserable slaves. But what hap-pened really got to me.”

“So, did you sleep with one of your own slave women, or somebody else’s?”

“You know the only women I go for are short, petite, and white. But when I got drunk the other night, I found myself with a servant woman of ours that I’d never even noticed before. Who knows what back corner she’d been hiding in.”

“Describe her to me. I’m a connoisseur of black beauty and I know things you don’t.”

“She’s an ordinary-looking girl. In fact, she’s in a hard way—kind of wretched.”

Siddig rolled his eyes. “Wretched, you say? Ha! What you don’t know is that that wretchedness can turn into a deadly boldness when the time is right. Believe me, cousin, you’re the one who’s wretched!”

His curiosity piqued by his cousin’s story, Siddig concluded secretly that this was a new treasure he’d have to check out for himself at the earliest opportunity.

Meanwhile, Muhammad went on, “She pulled me out from under the eaves gutter, brought me inside, and had me sleep on her pallet. Then she kept vigil by the door all night in the cold.”

“Did that surprise you?”

“Yes, especially after I found out that I’d hurt her at your wedding. I threw the soup tureen at her and burned her upper thighs. So why was she so good to me even though I’d maimed her like that?”

“That’s how servants and slaves are. They’re extremely good-hearted, patient, and devoted.”

“She’s been on my mind ever since that morning. Maybe I sensed how degraded and humiliated she felt. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought about a black person this way. You know my only dealings with them are as master to slave.”

“Go try her out,” Siddig whispered to his cousin. “You’ll be forever in my debt!”

Muhammad frowned haughtily. “I’m not like you,” he retorted. “You brush up against them so much your skin’s nearly turned black. Look! Your hair’s even started to get kinky like theirs!”

“So then,” Siddig said with a mischievous grin, “do I have your permission to take her from you?”

“Don’t you dare, Siddig,” Muhammad replied ominously. “When it comes to things like this, I’m dead serious.”

Hearing his cousin’s sudden change of tone, Siddig said, “Hey, what’s with you? You trash something, then you begrudge it to me!”

Muhammad furrowed his brow slightly. Then he got a strange gleam in his eye as he made up his mind to act with a rashness he would never have expected of himself.

“Don’t you dare, Siddig,” he repeated. “When it comes to things like this, I’m dead serious.”

Enraged by Siddig’s request, Muhammad had said what he did in the full certainty that the girl he had encountered that night—who, for all he knew, was married to one of their slaves—would never give herself to anyone as a joke or an “experiment.”

As the two men finished measuring out the grain, they discussed the merchandise and how to transport it to the storehouses. On his way home, Muhammad passed by the spice merchant’s shop. For the first time in his life, he stopped to observe the female slaves in the market as they bought and sold herbs and spices. He watched them turn them over in their hands and test them with their noses and mouths, and listened as they babbled away in a language that only slaves understood. The market was teaming with blacks shopping, selling, working, and begging. He paid close attention to the women, as though he were out to discover what it was that gave them their secret allure. The scent of the black girl whose pallet he’d spent the night on, which had clung to his spirit even though he hadn’t slept with her, came wafting over to him again. Reminiscent of the scent of the spice merchants’ shops in the Jarid Market, it brought to mind what Siddig had said about the sweetness of slave women and the keys to ecstasy God had given them. With this thought he felt upset again, as he suspected that his cousin would try to get to the slave girl with the burned thighs. He felt like an idiot for having told Siddig about her, since now the word was out.

By the time he got to the end of the street, Muhammad’s paranoid ruminations about Siddig had reached a fever’s pitch, since he was sure to spare no effort to get to her. Siddig might even ask the elder Imuhammad to send her over to do some chores at his house so that he could be alone with her. And who would bat an eyelid at something that happened all the time? As Siddig’s image impressed itself on his mind, he turned back in the direction of the spice merchant’s shop. When he got to the door, he hesitated, but then he firmed his resolve to go in.

As he walked into the shop, Muhammad greeted the shopkeeper. Then, as the shopkeeper was asking about Muhammad’s father and his cousins, he surprised him by requesting perfumes that women used as aphrodisiacs for their men, something to prolong an erection, and something that would make a man more lovable to a woman. After making his purchase, he hid it in his pocket and proceeded hurriedly to his destination.

1. Usban al-shams is a Libyan dish made from sheep’s stomach stuffed with salted, dried sheep’s lung, heart, and muscle meat finely chopped and seasoned with salt, hot pepper, dried mint, caraway, and coriander. The stuffed tripe is held together with strings made from strips of the sheep’s intestines, dried in the sun, and fried.

2. A locally made alcoholic beverage known for its refreshing fragrance.