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 mysterious 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 fecundity, the sheer generosity of the provisions on display seem an impossibility
