The Slave Woman
Slaves should not be sold in the hottest part of the day, they tremble on the block or sometimes faint away and no-one will buy a slave who shows signs of weakness.
Besides, the customers grow weary of standing in the heat themselves and are unlikely to buy, growing ill-tempered and tight fisted.
The heat today is reaching its zenith and my father is anxious to finish his work for the day and retire for food and drink.
“A fine man! Broad shoulders, calloused hands. Long legs. A good worker sir, he will serve you well.”
There is a pause while my father watches his customer’s face as he inspects the slave. Standing by his side I murmur something and my father pretends to give me water to drink, the better to hear me.
“He is afraid,” I say, speaking directly into my father’s ear. “A slave beat him once.”
My father does not change expression, nor ask how I know.
He pats me on the head before speaking loudly.
“Be off with you, stop pestering me now, Hela. I have business to attend to.” I move away and become wholly engrossed with a doll, a ragged little thing I have very little interest in.
My father’s camel whooshes in my ear and I slap its hairy face and stinking breath away from me.
My father turns back to his customer. “Of course, one must be careful with such an ox of a man that he has also a good temperament,” he says.
“One cannot be too careful.” Without warning, he cuffs the slave’s head.
The unexpected blow causes him to stagger.
He regains his stance looking a little bewildered but shows no sign of anger.
I watch the customer’s face relax in relief and know that my father has made a sale.
***
He makes many more sales that morning. A slave girl of unusual good looks to a man filled with lust, a giant of a slave to a man convinced his enemies are trying to kill him, a rounded slave woman suckling a child to a household where the mother needs a wet-nurse.
Each time a slave is brought to the block I find some way to draw my father’s attention to the person in the crowd most likely to pay a high price.
I feel them. I feel their desires, their needs, I feel their fears and hopes. I sense what they feel when they gaze at my father’s wares, the silent men and women whose lives hang in the balance, their destinies chosen by me, a child barely ten years’ old.
I feel the slaves as well, if they have feelings.
Some of them do not. Their feelings have been buried somewhere so deep I cannot touch them, cannot penetrate beyond the numbness that fills the space where they should be.
Sometimes I will feel their shriveled hopes and fulfil them if I can, a frightened and broken woman going to a lonely old mistress rather than a hard master.
But I am a child and mostly I think of my father’s profits and the little gifts he will give me if I choose well for him.
When a customer pays more than a slave is worth because of their own desires, then my father will nod to me and I know that I will be rewarded.
Perhaps with a fine leather belt, a sweetmeat, once even a kitten of my own.
My father says that when I am a grown woman, I should marry a slave trader myself, for I will undoubtedly bring him much success in his business.
To my mother, when she enquires, he tells her in good humour that I am no trouble to him at all, that I may play nearby when the slave auctions are held and she smiles, thinking him a kindly man for indulging his little daughter’s fondness for being near him.
She does remind him, though, that as a girl, my place is with my mother and that one day soon I must learn her trade.
***
My mother is a quiet woman, a skilled woman.
A wise woman. Her rooms are silent and cool, nothing like the heat and noise of the slave market.
Neat jars line the walls, her pestles and mortars below them, ranked by size and use.
Some may be used for more than one purpose, others are set far back and used for only one ingredient, for even their taint could be dangerous.
It is mostly other women who come to my mother.
They enter hesitantly, greet her with respect and a little fear, whisper their needs.
Sometimes my mother nods and bids them return another time for what they seek and they will disappear.
Sometimes, if she can make what they ask for quickly, she will tell them they may wait.
They do so, squatting by the door, as far away from her as they can manage.
They watch her with hope as she chooses and grinds, mixes and pours.
They look about them with awe at the myriad containers and most of all at the books.
My mother can read, a rare skill for a woman.
She reads slowly, one arm cradling the heavy tomes, one finger tracing the words.
Sometimes I see her struggle to mouth a new name.
She spends time looking at the illustrations, nodding to herself at the uses for leaves, stems, roots, flowers and berries, seeds.
She can write too, in a careful hand, each stroke laborious.
She is careful because her little jars must not be confused one with another.
Sometimes I watch her when she is grinding herbs, but it seems dull work and I flit away soon enough, back to the noise and smells of the market.
***
Now there is only one slave left to sell.
My father pursed his lips when he saw her and muttered under his breath.
She is twisted, one shoulder higher than the other.
Her body is scrawny, no tempting curves here to sate a man’s desire.
The few clothes she wears are mere scraps and at her waist she carries some kind of pouched bag, badly made from reddish leather.
Where the other slaves stood still and silent behind the block, awaiting their turn to stand on it, their eyes cast down, the woman sits hunched up on the ground, her head twisting this way and that.
Occasionally I hear words coming from her but she hails from the Dark Kingdom and I do not understand her.
My father glances at me when he sees me looking at her and I shrug.
I cannot feel her own desires and so I must think of who might want her, must spot them in the crowd and feel their need for her.
But when she mounts the block there is nothing in the crowd, already fast dwindling.
The woman limps when she walks, not a small limp but a strange, whole-body lurching.
She would barely be able to carry water without it spilling.
She may not sell at all and if she does not my father will be angry, he has no use for slaves who do not make him money.
She stands for a moment and then sinks to a low crouch, my father cuffs her but she will not stand again.
My father tries to entice the crowd forwards. “She’s strong enough,” he says. “I’ve had bigger, stronger women die on the journey here, but I never heard a whimper from her. She may be a cripple but that won’t stop her working. Might stop her running off though, eh?” he smiles.
The crowd begins to drift away. My father names a price for her but only receives shaking heads as a reply.
I look about me and spot one of the tannery-masters.
I tug at my father’s robe and he nods, climbs down from the block where he has been standing and joins the master, speaks smilingly with him.
Anyone who works in the tanneries is likely to die soon enough, their skin scarred and burnt by the foul vats of stinking mess they use to soften and dye animal skins.
It’s a hard life, carrying heavy pails of bird droppings, water, lime and ash, your back bent beneath the burning heat of the sun, your legs trembling from the endless stamping down of the skins in the skin-stripping liquid.
The tannery master buys plenty of slaves at a knock-down price: the old, the crippled, the mute or stupid and uses up what is left of their broken lives.
My father does not usually sell much to them, for he prefers a better quality of stock but on this occasion, he has been let down and he is not about to waste much time on such an unlikely proposition.
I see the negotiations going on between them while closer to us the crowd has dispersed entirely.
I’m growing hungry and my father could be a while.
If I set off now, I will be home ahead of him to warn our household to prepare a meal.
My mouth waters at the thought of fresh hot flatbreads dipped into lablabi, a thick soup of chickpeas and garlic, or perhaps wrapped around slices of spiced sausage.
Maybe my mother will have made sweet samsa, nuts and pastry flavoured with rosewater syrup.
If she has it is probably still cooling, made for the evening meal but I might beg some from her while it is still warm. I stand up.
“Girl.”
I turn, surprised. The old cripple has spoken in my own language. “You can speak?”
She shakes her head. “Little.” Her voice croaks, as though she has not spoken for a long time or is desperate for water. Either is possible.
I shrug. “You’ll learn. You don’t need many words at the tanneries.”
She makes a slow gesture, a beckoning.
I step closer to her. I am not wary. My father is close by and what harm can she do me?
She is scrabbling about in the red pouch, searching for something among her meagre belongings.
At last, she pulls something from its depths and holds it out to me.
It is a cup made of a dark carved wood, the carvings rough and not very clear, for the cup looks to have been used for many years, so that what were once sharply etched images are now almost smoothed away by the touch of many hands.
It has been stained red at some time, but again the redness has been worn away, leaving it mottled here and there.
I look at her without touching the cup. “Your new master will give you water when you reach your home,” I tell her, miming drinking and pointing to the tannery master, who is now nodding agreement with my father.
But she becomes agitated, perhaps realising she does not have a lot of time left before her new master will claim her. She thrusts the cup towards me and I reach out and take it, one finger brushing her skin as I do so.
The jolt knocks me to the ground. I lie there, clutching the cup to me, rage and an unholy power flowing through me as though I am possessed by a djinn.
Above me the woman lurches to her feet and looks down on me over her twisted shoulder.
Her eyes fix on mine and I whimper and wriggle away from her, but I do not let go of the cup.
I have never sensed such feelings from a slave, nor even from any free-born man or woman.
I have felt the uncontrolled rage of small children, stamping their feet at some perceived outrage, I have felt the power emanating from desert warriors but this …
this is a rage that would make a grown man kneel in fear, a power that would topple kings.
How can a crippled slave woman possess either?
I stare up at her and she points at the cup.
“Yours,” she rasps and then she smiles. It is a crippled smile, like her body, a lopsided thing that does not offer comfort.
I have spent the rest of my life wondering about her smile at that moment, whether she saw my abilities and meant to give me a gift or whether the cup was a curse on me for sending her to the tanneries.
I am still not sure.
***
My father rejoins us and does not notice anything amiss.
I am upright again and the cup has disappeared into my own bag, a cheerful thing of yellow leather, a previous gift for my services.
The slave woman is led away and although I watch her every step she never once looks back as she follows her new master across the square and into the dark souk beyond.
The next time I accompany my father I do not tell him anything useful, nor the time after that.
I am wary of the slaves now; I do not trust the numbness that is in them.
I am afraid of what they may do to me if I send them towards a bleak destiny and there are not many destinies I could choose that would not be bleak in one way or another.
And so I remain silent until finally he tells my mother, not unkindly, that it is time I learnt her trade, he cannot have a half-grown girl loitering near the slave block, it is not proper at my age.
I must learn her trade and then I will be married.