Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [20]
“Of course,” I said, nodding to the young man, who meandered away with the bag toward the edge of the crowd.
We followed slowly along, with my cousin pointing this way and that at various buildings and alleys and streets, saying names I did not catch. I was feeling a bit disoriented, walking on land after my days on the ocean, and the sun lay like a thick cap upon my head and like a heavy cape upon my shoulders. I blinked against its brightness, and felt suddenly rather sleepy and struggled to catch my breath.
“This weather…” I said.
My cousin laughed, and Rebecca reached for my arm.
“You will become accustomed to our weather,” she said. “After a few years…”
“I am not—” I said. And then laughed at her joke, enjoying the sweet and appealing way that she laughed in response.
“Are you hungry, sir?” my cousin said. “Because if you are we can take food here or begin our drive to the plantation.”
“My head says drive, my stomach says stay here a while.”
“Good man,” my cousin said, clapping a heavy arm tightly around me. “Rebecca, let us treat him to our best.”
Rebecca shook her curls and took me by the other arm.
“I am so happy you are here!”
We ate beneath the shade of a large umbrella at an open-air market near the docks, served by African waiters who carried plates of fried fish and vegetables galore to our long table. After my days and nights on the water I found that I had developed a huge appetite and concentrated on meeting it when I became distracted by shouts and cries from the market building nearby, as though some athletic competition were transpiring. It wasn’t until I remarked on it that my cousin mentioned the auction.
“Auction? What kind of auction?” I said.
“Come, I will show you,” my cousin said, a thin smile curling at his lip.
Rebecca shook her curly head.
“I was afraid of this. Please, no.”
“He should see it, Rebecca, don’t you think? He will sooner or later, so why not sooner? It is one of the major attractions of our fair city.”
The noises grew louder, and I set down my utensils, my appetite piqued for another variety of hunger.
“No, please, sir,” I said. “We are here now. I want to see it, whatever it is you speak of.”
“I will not,” Rebecca said, with a shake of her curls. “These poor Africans…take him without me.”
“Africans?” I said.
“Today there are no Africans,” my cousin said. “The federal government allows us no more Africans at our ports, you know.”
“You know what I meant,” Rebecca said. “You will go alone. Show your cousin, if you dare. Show him what life is really like down here.” She gave a toss of her head and turned from him. “I will wait for you at the carriage.”
My cousin pretended that his wife had not shown any scorn toward him in public.
“If you will excuse us, my darling,” he said. And motioned for me to rise and follow him.
“Women are the frailer kind, are they not?” he said to me.
And so it was only an hour or so after my arrival here on a delightful morning, in bright sunlight, in lovely warm air, with the perfume of flowers on the breeze mingling with the fresh odors of sea salt, that I, a descendent of slaves from Egypt and Babylon, witnessed my first trading in human flesh.
Chapter Seven
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In My Margins
What Are the Origins of the Body?
Life and freedom, inextricably bound, can we ever know which came first? I have read the Bible, I have read the Qur’an, I have read Darwin, I have read the commentators, and what do I know for all of that? That I don’t know, no, I don’t, not unless I say I don’t know and I’ll let some bearded who-dah in a collar or skull-cap or turban tell me that he has the word of God and will now tell me what I am supposed to know.
But I hold certain ideas over others. Sometimes I walk along the cliffs and stare out at the rushing ocean, the power there nearly convincing me that we began as ocean soup and divided, cell from cell, until we grew more complicated and complex than the early cells