The Platform

THERE’S NOTHING EASIER than getting rid of an obnoxious slave girl. Just sell her at market, or give her to someone whose favor you hope to curry, or to somebody you want to hurt!

One day as Hajj Imuhammad and al-Figgi sat chatting in the mosque after prayer about the state of the market and the city, Hajj Imuhammad confessed suddenly, “I’ve got a problem in my household, Sheikh.”

“What’s going on?”

“My son Muhammad is in love with a slave woman of his, and he’s neglecting his wife.”

“It won’t last. He’s young and fickle, and pretty soon he’ll get over her and come to his senses. Have a talk with him.”

“We’ve done that, but it didn’t help. His wife’s complained about him to his mother. They’re living together like brother and sister.”

“Doesn’t he do anything?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all, Sheikh.”

Al-Figgi just sat staring at the ceiling at first, while Hajj Imuhammad fiddled with his prayer beads waiting for al-Figgi to say something.

After some time he said, “Maybe he just wants to make his wife jealous.”

“I know my son, Sheikh, and I don’t think he’d do that. In any case, he’s being stubborn, and I’m tired of hearing his mother complain about him. He’s married to my wife’s niece, and her family are influential merchants in Misrata who’ll make things hard for us if they hear how our son is treating her. His infatuation with this slave woman is just making problems for us.”

“Ah, I get it now! So it’s a matter of business and family ties.”

Adjusting his sitting position and stroking his beard, al-Figgi went on, “The best solution would be to sell the slave girl as soon as he goes on another business trip.”

“Where’s he going to go when he just came back from a trip that took him away for several months?”

“It doesn’t have to be a caravan trip. Ships are coming and going all the time to and from Malta. Malta isn’t far from Benghazi, and it’s an easy, short trip.”

“How’s that?” queried Hajj Imuhammad, a glint in his eye.

“There’s a steamer leaving in two days with a shipment of wool and barley. You can send him out on that. Captain Ali Rayyani told me about it the day before yesterday. If your son goes to Malta, he’ll see things that will make him forget all about that servant girl!”

“But Rayyani and I aren’t on good terms. There’s a problem between us that goes way back.”

“Well, give it some thought, and leave Rayyani to me.”

Hajj Imuhammad cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Then he said, “But I haven’t got enough money for a mission like this now.”

“I’ll lend you whatever you need.”

“No, no,” he protested uneasily. “That’ll just put me deeper in debt. I haven’t even paid back the loan you gave me for the Tunisia trade yet. Do you think I’m going to go piling another debt on top of that one?”

“Don’t worry,” al-Figgi said reassuringly, squeezing his friend’s shoulder. “My money’s your money, and yours is mine. Besides, don’t you think it’s better to spend your time worrying about a debt than to be upset over a disobedient son? Our children are precious. So if they’re sick or unhappy, we have to sacrifice for their sake. We owe it to them.”

Hajj Imuhammad went home and reported on his conversation with al-Figgi to Lalla Uwayshina. She approved of the plan, and even devoted a whole prayer session to calling down blessing on al-Figgi. Then she told Aida to prepare tea for her and her husband in the house’s inner courtyard. She instructed her to set out her special embroidered cushions and perfume them with oud al-gmari incense,¹ to put a few drops of rosewater in the hajj’s clay water jug, and to light the kerosene lamp and hang it in the tree. It was a perfect evening for some intimate exchange.

As Aida came and went with this and that, she caught snippets of the conversation between the husband and wife.

At one point Lalla Uwayshina asked the hajj, “So when will the market open?”

“A new slave caravan will be arriving from Jalu tomorrow, and the sales will start right away.”

“How much are you going to ask for them?”

“I’ve told the middleman to sell the mute slave woman at the market price. For Tawida, I’m asking 130 gold coins. As for Masoud, I plan to barter him for another slave. He’s been coughing for months now and he can’t take the chaff dust anymore, so he wouldn’t sell well. But I might trade him for a mute or lame slave who could work bagging merchandise.”

Then, as if he’d just thought of it, he snapped his fingers and said, “Maybe I could repay some of my debt to al-Figgi with what I make on the deal.”

As she poured the tea, Lalla Uwayshina asked, “How could you repay a debt by just selling a couple of slave women?”

“Well,” the hajj replied, “I’m not going to use the new slave myself. I’m planning to hire him out to grain merchants, and I figure he can make me a fairly good income.”

Pleased with her husband’s plans, Lalla Uwayshina took a handful of peanuts and added them to his glass of tea. Then she whispered something in his ear. He smiled and bowed his head, embarrassed at the thought that somebody in the house might see them flirting.

“Shshsh . . . ,” he whispered back. “Now isn’t the time for such talk.”

With a bawdy laugh, she whispered, “You’ve been promising me a new pair of hoop earrings. Are you planning to buy one for me soon?”

Aida rushed to tell Tawida what she’d heard. The minute she heard Aida’s report, her heart sank. She had no idea what to do. She wept the way slaves always weep when they learn they’re to be sold. They weep as though it were their first day in slavery. They weep because they know things will be different under a new master, with new work, and new companions. Despite their nameless existence, they still fear the unknown—the nameless future. They know things might be somewhat better, of course. On the other hand, they might be a lot worse. Either way, they weep over the loss of the familiar which, miserable though it is, is still less frightening than being placed at the mercy of some new master.

In short, no one wants change for fear that the new will be harder than the old.

Muhammad had set sail for Malta several days earlier with a shipment of hides and salt. It was said that Rayyis Rayyani had been slow to grant the ship permission to sail, which was why Muhammad hadn’t been informed of his departure until the last minute. Consequently, he had bidden Tawida a hasty farewell, saying, “I’ll sell my goods and come right back.”

Knowing there was nothing she could do to save herself, Tawida shed bitter tears, hoping against hope.

A few hours after sunrise, the city began awakening to its usual hustle and bustle. The market opened its doors, and the auctioneer began putting young slaves on display in the market’s main square. They were naked, barefoot, and malnourished, their bones about to pop through whatever skin they had left. Nevertheless, their freshly greased bodies gave off a sheen that was certain to entice potential buyers. When the slaves who had come on the Jalu caravan encountered those who had arrived from Fezzan, they exchanged looks of recognition, as though they were bound by an ancient tie. The slaves who had come from households in Benghazi were visibly better off than both those who had been brought from Jalu and those who had crossed the desert on foot, and who had been whipped, starved, and deprived of proper clothing. The three slaves who were led away to the market from Master Imuhammad’s household knew where they were headed. Grief hung in the air, and Tawida couldn’t stop crying. Her last night with Muhammad had been just days before, and now she was bound for a destination unknown. Would she ever see him again? Or, as she mounted the platform half-naked to commence her new sojourn in slavery, had everything between them come to an end?

She was approached immediately by a Bedouin who had been sitting on the ground next to his donkey and devouring a piece of bread. Still chewing on the bread, he grabbed her breasts so hard that his thick mustache quivered. He tugged on them twice, not with any intention of buying her, but just for the fun of it. She realized that most of the men who grabbed her breasts did it for the same reason. After all, slave women for sale were a source of entertainment for anybody who came to the market to look around. The Bedouin was followed by a foul-smelling old man. Scrutinizing her, he lifted her robe and ran his hand over her private parts. He hovered around her for such a long time, she thought he was going to buy her. However, he had apparently been more interested in touching her than he was in making a purchase. When the auctioneer asked him why he’d changed his mind, he said her hips were disfigured, and he described her vagina with a word so vulgar that even the crudest of plebeians wouldn’t have used it unless they had been in the middle of a brawl. Calling him every name in the book, the auctioneer drove the old man away for fear that what he had said might ruin his chances of selling her.

Other men behaved in similar ways, and never once in the course of all their inspections did anyone take notice of the tears trickling down her cheeks. They all squeezed her breasts and touched her pubic hair. Meanwhile, the women to her right and the men to her left endured the same humiliations. While the women were being pinched, squeezed, and tugged on, the men were having their testicles handled, and if they’d been castrated, they were punched in the nose. This was potential buyers’ way of determining how much strength a slave had stored up in his or her blood. It was thought that the slave whose eyes got teary and red was a “purebred,” born to a Negro mother and father. Otherwise, or so it was thought, he wouldn’t be suited for strenuous labor, since it was only the pure, unadulterated Negro blood that made a slave as strong as an ox and as tough as a mule.

It would hardly have occurred to anybody that when a slave’s eyes got red and teary, this wasn’t some reflex reaction that proved the purity of his or her Negro lineage but rather a sign of an urge to weep in a normal human response to pain and humiliation. No one race or lineage has a monopoly on tears. But when they come from a slave, no human value is attached to them.

In front of a small shop not far from the slave bazaar, an elderly black woman sat on the ground sifting barley, her face covered entirely with dust except for a few creases here and there. As she sifted, she sang:

Don’t shed many tears, no purpose will they serve,

No good from them will you glean.

Be patient in trouble, ’tis the will of God,

The future remains to be seen.

Your tears won’t help you, there’s nothing we can do,

Our lot is ours to bear.

What you’ve got no hand in, endure no matter,

God’s deliverance is near.

1. Oud al-gmari is combined with other types of wood to produce the traditional Libyan incense, or bukhur, used to ward off the evil eye.