Secret of the Sands (6 page)
He wonders if he might see some interesting fish today – the coral reefs are teeming with brightly coloured, odd-looking marine life and Ormsby has been sketching what he sees. It keeps him amused and he is hoping, if he can learn to swim, that he will be able to make a comprehensive study of the shoals of strange creatures, for as his grandfather says, the Lord’s design is in everything.
‘Come on,’ says Wellsted. ‘There is the last of the cheese left. We can toast it on top of the oven.’
The very same day that Zena is auctioned off, on the kind of brisk but sunny English summer morning of which men in the desert can only dream, at his cousin’s substantial, terraced, stucco mansion on Cadogan Place, William Wilberforce, a man of principle and a social pioneer, receives the news that the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery is set to pass the Commons. He celebrates by catching influenza and three days later he is dead. It is decided to bury the old man’s body in Westminster Abbey, close to his venerable friend, William Pitt. He is, after all, one of Britannia’s own – a national treasure. The funeral is an enormous event. Both Houses of Parliament suspend their business for the duration as a mark of respect, and most members actually attend the obsequies personally. All over the British Isles toasts to the new, enlightened age are drunk by Whigs and Tories alike and Wilberforce is universally mourned from the public house to the pulpit and back again. His obituary is read aloud at a hundred thousand breakfast tables. In Wilberforce’s home town of Hull private subscriptions flood in to erect a monument one hundred feet high to his memory. Ladies across the country pray for the great man’s eternal soul, dab handkerchiefs to fresh tears and furiously cross-stitch samplers of the better-known liberal maxims concerning slavery including the famous
Am I Not A Man And Your Brother?
Immediately there is earnest talk of Wilberforce’s beatification, despite his personal commitment to the cause of Evangelical Anglicanism and lifelong antagonism to the Papacy. Mild-mannered, staunchly Protestant ladies in the Home Counties are heard to say, ‘Still, dear Mr Wilberforce was a saint. He
was, wasn’t he?’
All this, however, affects business at the slave market in Muscat not one jot.
Zena is pushed into the clear space in front of the auc tioneer and he calls for offers. ‘Twenty,’ he starts. ‘Anyone at twenty?’
At first there are several low bids, two from the man who treated her harshly in the slave pen. Zena feels her chest tighten. The bidding, however, is spirited and the offers come fast. When the man drops out at fifty, she allows herself a sliver of a smile. The price continues to rise ten silver dollars at a time. Zena can hardly believe this is really happening. That she will be owned and that she is powerless to stop it. Sadness swills around her empty stomach and the world stands still. It is a curious sensation.
As the price rises above a hundred and fifty, it is between two parties. One is an Abyssinian, like herself. The man sits, still-eyed, in a litter at the side of the bazaar, only raising his black finger slightly to register his interest as the price spirals on. Her stomach surges with some kind of hope. At least he looks familiar.
Yes. Him. Someone from home,
she thinks silently as she stands stock-still in the sun.
The auctioneer skilfully bats the opportunity back to the other man still in the game – a blue-robed Arab pulling on a
hookah
pipe beneath an intricately fringed, white parasol.
‘Two hundred dollars,’ the auctioneer shouts triumphantly. ‘Do I have more?’
Zena has to admit, this is a handsome price for an Abyssinian 17-year-old, who may or may not be a virgin. It is certainly more than any of the others have made.
‘Have I any advance?’
There is silence. The bidding is still with the Abyssinian, who nonchalantly refuses to look at his opponent. All other eyes turn to the Arab, who considers a moment, tosses his head and refuses to go any higher.
He has got me!
she thinks.
One of my own.
She wants to tell him, in her own language, where she comes from and what brought her here. Surely he has bought her because they are from a common background. Surely his house will be the same as her grandmother’s, for how else would a wealthy Abyssinian run their home?
Eagerly, she lets them lead her from the podium and tether her to a post beside the clerk. There she overhears the arrangements being made for her payment and realises this man has not bought her for himself. He is a slave, only doing his master’s bidding. He counts out his master’s dollars.
‘My name is Zena,’ she says, with a rush of enthusiasm. ‘I come from the hills. Near Bussaba.’
The man hisses at her like a spitting snake, affronted by her impertinence. One of his attendants roughly ushers her away. She glances back at the man in slight confusion. He is still counting out her price and making his
salaams
to the auctioneer. She wonders if he was sold here himself. She wonders if he can remember what it felt like. There will be no fellow feeling, she realises sadly as she is tethered again. When the business is concluded, she follows the litter, docile and under guard with two other women,
sidis.
They come from another shipment, seemingly purchased earlier at a far lesser price. As they progress through the cramped, busy streets, Zena’s appetite is so sharp and her sense of smell so elevated that the aroma drifting from the street stalls selling thick, sticky pastries hits her like an assault of honeyed sesame sweetness in the warming air while the nutty scent of coffee almost stops her dead in her tracks. She can think of nothing else. The truth is that right now she would thank someone more for a plate of food than for her freedom. The business of the marketplace is so frantic that she is diverted by the constant stream of images.
Just breathe in,
she thinks as the honeyed sweetness wafts towards her. Instinctively, she knows she must not think about what is happening or she will cry.
Not far from the palace on the front, but away from the direction of the
souk
they step through a huge wooden gate studded with dark nails. Inside is a shady courtyard lined with blue and green tiles and dotted with huge bronze planters sprouting dark, glossy leaves interspersed by an occasional splash of garish brightness – an exotic flower or two. White archways lead away from the entrance over two storeys. Zena could swear she smells orange blossom and cinnamon and just a hint of a chicken boiling in the pot.
The litter is set beneath a date palm and the gold muslin is drawn back as the man swings his plump legs to the ground. He walks past the three women, inspecting his purchases slowly from head to foot. The one to Zena’s left whimpers. She smells, Zena suddenly realises, as the other women do, of the oil used to burnish their skin – the odour is acrid, stale and unsavoury. A flicker of emotion crosses the man’s face though it is impossible to read. He waves his hand airily and the two other women are led off by a male slave. Zena watches them go. Then the man walks around her again, inspecting her even more slowly.
‘Bathe her,’ he orders at length.
He speaks Arabic with an accent. Zena drops her head as a mark of respect. She will try to talk to him again. This time in his adopted tongue. She has to.
‘Sir,’ she says, ‘I am very hungry. Please may I eat?’
It is an audacious request from one who has spent the past two weeks up to her ankles in excrement, sleeping only periodically, propped up against a black-tongued corpse. Worse, it is a request from one who is a mere chattel and who has already been berated for even talking. But she cannot stand it any longer.
‘You speak Arabic? Ha!’ the black man laughs, though what comes out of his mouth sounds more like a dry bark.
He has no heart to laugh with,
Zena thinks, but instead she tells him where she learnt the language they are speaking. ‘My grandmother taught me. In her house she had guests who were traders and I learnt to talk to them.’
‘That is good. Good,’ his brown eyes widen, pleased at his luck. ‘You speak the tongue – you are a bargain.’
He smells of butter and honey and Zena is so hungry that she would willingly lick his skin.
‘Please, sir,’ she ventures, emboldened by the conversation, blurting out the question. ‘What are my duties here?’
The man stares blankly. ‘I was once a stranger too. I came from the marketplace. You will work hard here. Your master is a great man – you will work to please him.’
He does not tell her she can rise in the household as he has done. He is anticipating that he will win his freedom soon, as some slaves do, having proved their worth as family retainers. He will never leave the service of his master, but he will not be owned, or indentured, he will be a free man – a
huss
. He does not mention it. There is no point. After all, this slave is merely a woman and, apart from her beauty, and now the advantage she will have because she speaks Arabic, she has fewer uses than a skilled person like himself. His master has bought her only as a bauble and as she gets older her decorative effect will diminish and her value lessen.
‘What work will I do, sir?’
Another dry bark. ‘Nursemaid,
habshi,
’ the man says.
Zena feels an immense wave of relief wash over her. She has no experience with children, but nonetheless it sounds like an easier job than many who have been bought that morning will face in the afternoon. She smiles.
‘Feed her,’ the man orders as he turns away. ‘Then bathe her.’
Four black slave women guide Zena through an archway into the house. Through a series of shady passages their strong arms shepherd her without touching her skin. She smells the roasting meat and the baking bread so keenly that she almost breaks into a run. The slaves speak a mysteri ous African language that sounds like music – a cacophony of clicks and long vowels that soothes. Zena does not understand but it is clear where she is meant to go. Their chatter heightens the pace. This house is a maze, a labyrinthine warren of passages. It crosses her mind that she will never know what is around the corner here – there is no pattern. The place is vast and sprawling – one long corridor turning the corner into another short one, one room locked and another without a door at all. After two or three minutes of increasingly fragrant and warm corridors they cut into a huge room, lit by high windows. At last – it is the kitchen. For a moment, the group hovers in the doorway.
After being shipbound and starved, the delicious fecund ity, the sheer generosity of the provisions on display seem an impossibility to Zena and she is stunned. Hand-hammered, bronze pots hang from the ceiling. On a table as far away as possible from the fire, fruits are laden onto wide, clay ashettes. It is all Zena can do not to rush over and reach for a pomegranate, sink her teeth into the ruby-coloured flesh and let the sweet juice run down her chin as she sucks it dry. A bough of dark, succulent grapes, trailing its leaves, is propped against a clay bowl of oranges with glossy foliage, darker in contrast to the vine. Bunches of fragrant mint fresh from the farm stalls of Muttrah hang above from a shelf of honey jars and preserved nuts that are so close she swears she can almost taste them. Around the oven, two thin boys are baking pitta bread, which they pile onto a huge, bronze sheet. A dead animal is butchered by a fat man with a cleaver. His bare chest is speckled with bone and blood as he flings the pieces of meat into a wooden box of marinade that smells of lemon, garlic and chilli. And overseeing it all, a huge Nubian chef is directing all the work, while kneading a handful of pale pastry with fat fingers that send clouds of flour into the air over his head and dust his figure into a ghost-like apparition.
Zena’s knees feel suddenly weak and she thinks she might faint until one of the slaves fetches a bone cup of milk and a small dish of thin gruel with a long-handled spoon and some dry
zahidi
dates. She remembers to thank the man, only just, nodding and clasping her hands in a pantomime of gratitude, before she falls, open-mouthed and ravenous, upon the meagre meal, her stomach retching at the sudden plenty, her throat swallowing at the same time. Tears stream down her cheeks. There has never been a meal more delicious. As she rouses herself from it, the cup drained dry and the plate empty, she notices that they have all just stood there and watched her gorge herself, sucking in the food, almost without chewing. Licking her fingers of the remnants, she feels suddenly ashamed. The other slaves show no emotion.
Perhaps they never felt the same hunger,
Zena thinks as the crockery is taken from her with dead-eyed efficiency and without skipping a beat the party moves on, back through the unnavigable passageways of the house.
She knows they will wash her next.
I wonder what the children will be like?
she thinks and she places a hand on her full belly as she follows the party upwards to the tiled bathhouse, replete with a brazier for making steam.
The water is tepid. It feels cool in the heat of the day and makes a delicate trickling noise as the old woman scoops it up in a glazed clay jar and then pours it over Zena’s hair. Another girl, not much older than herself, mixes oil of lemon with oil of thyme and thickens it with date paste. It is as if she is being basted – prepared for the pot. The efficient hands simply do their work, sponging her, soothing and anointing her skin with oil, combing out her long plaits and resetting her hair into a smooth coil. They are neither gentle nor rough and they say nothing. Zena asks, first in her own language then in Arabic, what they are doing, where she will be taken next, what the family is like.
‘Please,’ she says, ‘tell me about this place.’
But not one of the slaves even acknowledges that they understand what she is saying and she gives up and simply allows them to pummel her clean.
When a slave arrives bearing a diaphanous, aquamarine
kaftan
of fine, silken gauze, Zena does not even wonder. Who can say what is unusual in such a place and what is common? The others are dressed in plain, pale robes of rough cotton
,
but what does that mean? Surely personal servants of the family merit a more luxurious uniform than common house servants. The hands dry her with white linen and as she slips into the dress they bind up her hair in a golden turban and draw leather sandals onto her feet, instructing each other in the strange musical language that Zena cannot understand. After the
dhow
and the slave market this is heaven – no matter that they are only doing what their superior has bid them. No matter that they do not acknowledge her in any way.
