Various Flavors of Coffee (23 page)

“I looked around the room, seeing the goods through his eyes. Fair-skinned girls, as I said, were particularly sought after. Perhaps he would favor the Hungarian girl with the long fair hair? The trader’s mother evidently thought so: the
hanim
was fussing over the girl, twitching at her clothes, as if she were a bride about to go to the altar.

“And then I noticed another girl, very dark, very beautiful, sitting at one of the chess tables. She was an African—by birth; she had clearly been in the harem some years. She was dressed in a jacket of fine, shimmering red silk, and her expression as she moved the chesspieces across the board was somber.That intrigued me: she was not using the game as an excuse, as the other girls were, darting swift glances at the men: she was concentrating, with fierce determination, on her game. It mattered to her, I could see, whether she won.

“That was her response to the sale, the buyers, the whole undignified circus: she simply blotted them out, focusing instead

on the one engagement where she might actually be able to triumph. I admired that in her.

“I paused as I passed by her table. Her opponent was a very poor player, and in any case was barely thinking about the pieces— she was more interested in what was going on elsewhere in the room. When she had been beaten, in no more than half a dozen moves, I stepped forward.

“ ‘I would be very honored,’ I said, ‘if I could join you in a game.’

“The African shrugged and reset the pieces. I made a couple of easy opening moves. I wanted to see how she played.The etiquette of the harem demanded that she lose to me, to flatter my ego. For a couple of turns, I thought she might. But then—suddenly—a spark of dogged determination came into her eye, and she began trying to beat me.

“As we played I studied her face. She did not meet my gaze— that would have been an astonishing impudence, at least in that setting. But I could not fail to appreciate her beauty.Well, you have seen her: I do not have to describe what she looks like. Perhaps, though, I do have to describe her spirit. This was a girl who absolutely
refused
to be owned—to be beaten. It was obvious from every muscle in her body that she was seething with anger at what was happening, at the way she was being disposed of. Beating me was her only possible revenge; a tiny revenge, perhaps, but a statement of her defiance nevertheless.

“Then I became aware that someone else had come to stand by the table at which we were playing. It was the young courtier. He watched us, and something about his stillness made me think that he too had seen something in this African girl—something extraordinary. I looked up, hoping to scare him off with a scowl, but he had already walked away.

“After we had returned to our seats, the trader announced the next lots. The fairest-skinned girl would be auctioned last, the

climax of the show. First it was the turn of the African.The trader ran through a list of her accomplishments: languages, music, archery, running. It was clear that they were suggesting her as an exotic, a kind of novelty—an educated ape. Two men bid against each other in a desultory way, running the price up to what was in all probability a fairly generous figure. The contest had stalled when suddenly, with a bored wave of his hand, the rich young courtier entered the sale.

“I could see his game immediately—he wanted to suggest that this was an afterthought, that he had decided to make more than one purchase today, and that whilst his real interest lay elsewhere, he would not be averse to taking Fikre away with him as well. His demeanor may have fooled some of the people in that room. It did not fool me. I might not have known much about slaves, but I knew all about auctions. And there was another reason why I understood the young man’s motives so well: I shared them.

“In that brief time, over the chess table, I had fallen . . . I will not say in love with her, but perhaps, under her spell. It was remarkable—a visceral, physical, all-consuming thing: I simply
knew
that I could not let that man, or any man for that matter, take her from me and break her spirit.

“There was a brief flurry of bidding. The young courtier shrugged—named a vast price. The other bidders bowed and withdrew.The hammer fell once. And then—a murmur of excitement; or rather, of puzzlement. Another buyer had entered the auction. Someone had had the temerity to try to snatch this unusual purchase from under the courtier’s nose.With a start of surprise I realized that it was me. My hand was in the air.The courtier raised his eyebrows, and lifted his hand again to signal that battle was joined. I snapped my fingers—a gesture which smacked of rudeness, but I was past caring.The onlookers sat up.The courtier frowned and doubled his bid.There was no pretense now that this

was just some casual afterthought on his part. He wanted her. So did I—but the price was already more than my income for the en-tire year.Again I raised my hand.Again the other man doubled the price. I knew that if I were successful now I would have to mortgage everything I owned—even her. It did not stop me. I raised my finger, pointed it at the auctioneer, and called out a figure so unimaginably large it meant almost nothing. He accepted my bid with a nod, and turned to the other man for a response.Again, the price doubled. Again, the bidding was against me—until, without a moment’s thought, I doubled again.

“Suddenly, the courtier blinked, shrugged, shook his head. It was over.There was a brief smattering of applause—which quickly died when those present recalled that it was hardly politic to clap the success of a poor merchant against a powerful member of the court.The auction moved on.

“Fikre, seated in the middle of the room, had been staring fixedly at the floor during all this. Now she raised her head and glanced at me. I will never forget that look. It was a look of utter contempt.

“I had risked everything to become her owner—the man who would have the power of life and death over her—and she displayed no more fear or interest in the matter than if I had been a foolish young suitor calling compliments after her in the street.”

Somewhere behind us in the silvery darkness a camel gargles tremulously, smacking its lips together with a kind of clapping sound. Its owner speaks to it, a low murmur of Bedouin.

“Yes, I was her owner,” Bey mutters, almost to himself.“Think, if you can, what that meant. The responsibility—the decisions I had to make.Think what a dilemma I now faced.”

“Why?” I ask.

Bey starts.“Why what?” “Why was it such a dilemma?”

I get the impression he has been talking as much for his own benefit as mine. He certainly seems quite surprised to find me questioning him about it.“That, my friend, will have to be a story for another occasion,” he says curtly, kicking his camel forward to the front of the column.

[
thir ty
]

nother stop, another day of attempting to sleep

through the heat.When the sun finally begins to ripen like a fruit to a deeper red, we load up the camels.The sand underneath us is no longer quartz-colored but black as tiny beads of jet; we are in volcanic country now, the
samadou.

Desmond Hammond rides alongside me. He has wrapped a Bedouin shawl around his neck, against the drifting sand: with his leathery, sun-lined face, he has something of the air of an African himself. For a long time he says nothing, then,“Forgive me,Wallis, but you don’t seem much like a planter.”

“Two months ago I would have taken that as the highest praise.”

He grunts.“Come out for your own reasons, have you?” “Pretty much.”

“There won’t be many Europeans where you’re going. Let alone many Englishmen. If you have problems . . . You could try getting a message to us via the Bedouin.They’re surprisingly reliable, if a little slow.”

“Thank you,” I say, with genuine gratitude.

“We could do some trading, if you want. I hear there’s ebony, gold, diamonds, up there. Anything you need in the way of trade goods, just send me word.”

“I suppose Bey will be my nearest neighbor. In Harar.”

“Bey . . .” Hammond almost says something, then appears to change his mind. He nods at where Fikre walks by Bey’s camel, one hand resting on his stirrup.“Do you know the story about that woman of his?”

“Yes. He told me last night, in fact. How he bought her in a sale.”

Hammond grunts again.“So he says.” “You don’t believe him?”

“I don’t believe it’s the whole story. There’s no one slipperier than an Arab, and an Arab merchant’s the slipperiest of all.”

“My employer’s firm has dealt with him for years. I myself have tasted his coffees. His goods are always of an unusually high quality.” As I say it, I realize that this may be the real truth about Fikre and the slave auction—Ibrahim Bey simply cannot resist buying the best, whether it’s coffee or a slave.

“Do you know what the Bedouin say about Bey?” I shake my head.

“They say he’s a sentimentalist.They believe he bought the girl for the worst reasons—because he fell in love.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“It’s mixing business and pleasure. Think about it. So he buys her.What then?”

I have already imagined in vivid detail the grunting, ecstatic de-floration that would follow such a purchase. Hammond continues, “It’s not like buying a whore. Such a girl, in their culture, is very different from a whore, and a great deal more expensive. But her price depends on two things. One is her virginity—and don’t for-get, he paid a small fortune for her. The moment he has her, she loses her value.That’s the way that particular market operates. She’s

only worth what he paid as long as she remains untouched, by him or any other man.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Her youth,” Hammond says bluntly. “Rich Arabs buy their wives at puberty, or not much older. By the time a woman’s eighteen, she’s lost most of her value. By the time she’s twenty-five, she’s worth nothing—she’ll certainly never be taken into a great harem.

“So now think what it must be like to be Ibrahim Bey.You’ve paid a fortune for this girl—all your wealth is invested in her. You’re her owner: you can do with her whatever you like.And you do dream of those things, of course you do. Just look at her—any man would. But you also know, as a merchant, that the moment you do, she’s worthless. Your money, your investment, will have vanished as surely as water poured into the sand.

“Sell her, or fuck her? It’s an irrevocable decision. So you wait, paralyzed, trying to decide. But—the terrible irony—even as you wait, she’s losing her value, day by day.

“Still you can’t decide. A year passes. By now everyone knows about your predicament.You’ve become a laughingstock—and for a merchant, that’s a terrible thing. People won’t deal with you; or if they do, they try to cheat you. You can’t get credit—how could you, when everyone knows you can’t bring yourself to sell your only asset? Your rivals joke behind your back. Meanwhile, the girl herself grows ever more spoiled and unruly. You know that the only way out is to grasp the nettle and sell her. But still something stops you . . . sentiment.”

“He mentioned his dilemma,” I say. “That must be what he meant.”

Hammond nods. “I’ve been knocking around East Africa for quite a while now.You see quite a bit of the different races: Arab, African, European. The Europeans—we decide what we’re going to do, and then we get it done. That’s our strength. The Africans

have a different mentality—they wait and see what happens: they believe life is outside their control. That’s their strength, too, in a way—their resilience. But the Arabs—they’re the fascinating ones: you never know where you are with them. Their judgment is al-ways being clouded by something: religion, or vanity, or pride.” He pauses. “I suppose what I’m saying is, keep Bey at arm’s length, Wallis.When all’s said and done, he isn’t one of them and he isn’t one of us.”

We trudge
through the shifting black scree all night. Occasionally a wind gets up, warm and dry. It makes the blackness whisper and lift around the walkers’ ankles. Sometimes I could imagine that we are trudging through an endless desert of roasted coffee beans.

The water runs low. The camel drivers are rationed: two mouthfuls each. No one dares to suggest that the white men should be rationed, too, but I try to stick to their allowance.

When it is Mulu’s turn to drink he only moistens his lips, then passes his cup to Fikre.

There is no
moon tonight; it is necessary to go slowly. Gradually we become aware of a ripple in the air: a vibration, which eventually resolves itself as a sound, like distant thunder. But it is not thunder. It is drums.

In the absolute darkness it is impossible to be sure where it is coming from. Then, with a shock, I realize it is all around us—in front and to either side, the darkness is speaking to itself, the sound echoing across the empty desert much as thunder rolls around the sky.

We fall silent. No one knows what it means.

“It must be a Galla raiding party,” Hammond says at last.

We keep going, but cautiously.Then, out of the darkness, comes

the sound of chanting. It is very close, but we can see no one.We draw together and travel four abreast, the camels on the outside. The Bedouin loosen their daggers anxiously. Hammond checks his rifle.

“What are they singing?” I ask. Hammond shrugs.“It’s in Galla.”

Fikre says suddenly: “It is a war song. They are singing ‘Love without kisses is not love.A spear without blood is not a spear.’ ”

It is the first time I have heard her speak English. Her speech is heavily accented—like the English a Frenchman would speak— but her grammar is oddly correct. Her voice is low: she has a slightly sibilant pronunciation, as if her tongue were catching on her teeth.

“I’ll spook them.” Hammond raises his rifle and fires four shots into the air.The camels, alarmed, break into a trot, then slow.

The chanting stops abruptly. Now there is only the squeaking, sighing rustle of the black sand underfoot.

At dawn
we stumble upon a group of bones. First we see the vultures, circling lazily over something ahead of us on the sand.Then we see the humped silhouette of a camel. A bird is sitting on its back, tearing at it methodically with its beak.