He Sneezes and Coughs!

THE FAMILY had married Aida to Jaballah and Tawida to Salem, giving each couple a tinplate shack of their own in the annex that served as a livestock enclosure. Most slaves were happy to have achieved such a standard of living under their masters’ protection and were relieved to experience this degree of stability in their lives. They would settle down together and have lots of children. And if they left their tinplate shack, they would only leave it for some more spacious shack, or for the afterlife, which was the most spacious of all, of course.

Lalla Uwayshina was delighted to have rid herself of Tawida and gotten her out of her niece’s—and daughter-in-law’s—way. With this arrangement in place, it would be easier to fulfill the long-awaited dream of the male heir. Now they awaited her son’s return to his nest, and the arrival of a grandson.

One night, as Lalla Uwayshina and her husband were alone in their bedroom, she remarked, “Muhammad hasn’t said a word about that slave woman’s getting married. He wouldn’t talk about it even when Fatima brought it up in front of him.”

“May God guide him aright. Hasn’t Rugaya said anything?”

“Poor Rugaya. She’s being so patient, the way a good wife always is! She’s shy around me and doesn’t open up to me about her private life.”

Sighing sadly, Lalla Uwayshina added, “But I know things haven’t changed. He sleeps in his own bed now, but he doesn’t go near her.”

“Sooner or later he’ll need her and then he will,” the father said confidently.

“One time Fatima asked Rugaya why she wasn’t having any more children. ‘Well,’ Rugaya said, ‘they aren’t going to fall out of the sky, or come from me alone!’ Fatima was surprised at what her sister-in-law had said. So, to avoid embarrassment, she flipped her shoes over. In answer to Fatima’s unspoken question, Rugaya turned the shoes over again, saying, ‘Neither.’”¹

“Do you think he doesn’t want her anymore?” the father suggested.

“Why would he stop wanting her now for Heaven’s sake? After she’s given him three girls? She got pregnant with their first daughter within weeks of their wedding. I swear to God, that rotten slave girl’s cast a spell on him! I know what I’m talking about, or I’m not Aisha Bint ash-Shakka, and before long you’ll be saying the same thing: Muhammad’s been bewitched!”

That Thursday night after the wedding ceremony, Muhammad went in to be with Tawida while Salem made himself scarce, allowing other people to think he was with his wife. When Muhammad went in, he found her adorned as a bride, decked out in a new dress, her hands and feet freshly hennaed. He took her hand and looked admiringly at the henna. Confident that his preventive measures would forestall a family dispute that would have led to no good, he closed his eyes and, without a word, held his nostrils to her right cheek. His trysts with Tawida became a nightly occurrence, after which he would come home late, if he came at all, while Salem slept in some corner of the livestock enclosure. As for Salem, he never voiced any objection to this arrangement and didn’t even seem upset.

After some time, Lalla Uwayshina asked Salem how things were between him and Tawida, but all she got in response was a curt, “Praise be to God!”

Whenever she asked him anything more specific and tried to get him to talk, he just nodded. One night, after another of her abortive interrogations, Lalla Uwayshina gave Salem a glass of milk and a plate of dates.

“Take these to your wife,” she said. “They’re a newlyweds’ present from me, and you should both have some.”

As a matter of fact, she had spiked them with some magic love potion meant to ensure that the couple would never part.

The slave nodded and thanked her, saying, “God bless you, Auntie.”

Then he went to the tinplate shack that he shared with his wife and tapped lightly on the door with his fingers. When Tawida opened the door, he handed her the milk and dates, head bowed, and said, “This is for you from the mistress.”

Things went on this way for some time, the love between master and slave blossoming and growing by the day. Then one evening, out of curiosity, Muhammad went to check on the abandoned corner of the livestock enclosure into which Salem disappeared every evening and from which he would only emerge in the predawn hours to clean out the pen and take care of the livestock, wordless and content.

Muhammad trod softly around the place, which was as dark as a vermin-infested underground cellar. It was as if he hadn’t known anything about this side of their household before. He paused for a moment in the darkness, his ears pricked at the sound of a soft rustling, like the sound made by insects or cats moving through the hay. Before long, however, he heard something else. There was a murmuring coming from behind the haystacks. He paused again, listening intently. It sounded like human breaths coming in rapid, yet cautious succession. At first he thought it must be a male slave having a tryst with one of the slave women. All the more curious now, he crept slowly forward. In the near-total darkness behind the haystacks, he discerned a pair of shadowy human figures. What looked like a two-headed mass moved up and down, up and down. All the more determined now to know who these creatures of the ruins were, he stepped behind the haystacks and came suddenly upon them, interrupting them in the midst of their ecstasy.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

The bodies quickly separated into two distinct forms, one of which was visibly smaller than the other.

“Who’s there?” the master repeated in an imperious tone.

Head bowed, one of the two figures said in a trembling voice, “Please don’t expose me, sir.”

“Come closer,” Muhammad commanded. “Who are you and who do you have with you?”

The figure remained where it was, still as a stone, while the other one hid, slipping as best it could into the hay.

“Come out or I’ll kill you,” the master bellowed.

So out he came, pleading again not to be exposed. What followed came as a complete and utter shock. Never in his life would the master have imagined the sorts of things that went on behind their house without his awareness or knowledge. The blood rushed to his head when he saw their slave naked, his black skin glistening as though it had been greased in preparation to be sold at auction. He was trying to pull his loincloth on and hide his private parts.

Grabbing the slave’s head, the master demanded, “Who’s with you?”

The slave said nothing.

“Tell me who’s with you!”

Again, the slave made no reply. For a moment Muhammad fell silent himself. He understood now what the silence meant.

“So, do you sneeze and cough, you good-for-nothing slave?”²

“I beg you, Master, please don’t tell anybody about me. Please! Nobody knows my secret.”

“And the other one—who is he?”

After some hesitation, the slave replied, “It’s Master Hussein, al-Figgi’s son, sir.”

Hussein!! The shock of the surprise couldn’t have been greater. So Hussein sneezed and coughed too?

“Come out, Hussein.”

Fearful and naked, the young man stepped forward and, like his companion, begged for his secret not to be exposed. Before he could finish speaking, Muhammad knocked him to the ground with a slap on his face. He didn’t dare say anything in objection. As for Salem, he came to Hussein’s defense.

“Beat me, not him!” he pleaded. “I’m the one who deserves it!”

Then both men started receiving the kicks and the slaps together. They submitted in silence to the beating. Salem kept his composure, but tears streamed down Hussein’s face.

Once he’d battered them to his satisfaction, Muhammad drove Hussein out naked.

“Get out of here, you scum! If I see you again, I’ll kill you, wherever it happens to be.”

Enraged, Muhammad turned to a terrified Salem. “Who else is there?” he asked.

“Nobody, sir,” the distraught slave replied. “I swear. Master Hussein’s the only one.”

“Master Hussein’s the only one, you scum?”

Twisting the slave’s jaw in his hands, he repeated over and over, “Talk! Tell me! Tell me!”

“I swear! I swear!”

“Tomorrow you come to the shop and you divorce Tawida.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tfu ‘alayk. I could spit on you!”

Once the battle was over, Salem disappeared, trying to catch up with Hussein before he got to the street corner. Blood dripping from his mouth, he kept going until he found Hussein, who was sobbing in a low voice and walking close to a wall in an attempt to conceal himself. Without uttering a word, Salem took off his clothes and put them on Hussein, hot tears welling up in his eyes. After all, the well-bred slave was expected to sacrifice himself for a free person.

As the boy was about to make his way home, Salem took Hussein’s head in his thick hands and said, “Keep hold of yourself now.”

1. By turning her shoes over, Fatima was asking her sister-in-law if her husband was having anal intercourse with her. By flipping the shoes back over, Rugaya was saying her husband wasn’t having any kind of sexual relations with her at all.

2. A Libyan euphemism for homosexuality.