Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [42]
The trader did not respond, instead kneeling alongside Lyaa and tying something around her neck. He then pulled at a chain and she felt the collar tighten at her throat. When he yanked her to her feet she nearly choked.
“My men are fetching the others. And then we depart. You’ll have your cattle tomorrow before sundown.”
“Thank you,” she heard her father/uncle say, his voice more subdued than usual.
“I want to return to my mother,” she said in a raspy voice, her throat constricted by the chain.
“Oh, yes, yes, she will be meeting you,” her father/uncle said.
“She is ill. She needs help. She cannot take a deep breath. Did you see her back in the village? Did you?”
Lyaa felt strength flow into her arms and she reached up and tore at the chain.
Her father/uncle turned away.
“Tell me!” she shouted, at terrible cost to her throat. “Did you see her?”
“Take her,” her father/uncle said.
And the trader led her away, pulling her along for some distance before they stopped and he removed the hood. She stood quietly, confused, numb at heart, while he and the rest of his band rounded up others from the village. Women sobbed, nervously clutching handfuls of belongings, children cried because their mothers cried, unknowing, innocent. The monkeys overhead joined in, chattering, screaming. Finally she herself began to weep, for her mother, for all of them. When the slave returned to where Lyaa stood he stared and stared with coal-black eyes so fierce that she turned her head aside.
Pinching the flesh on her arm, the slaver said, “Worth every cow, worth every cow.”
Chapter Seventeen
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In My Margins
What Are the Origins of Woman?
It is He who created you from a single person, and made his mate of like nature, in order that he might live with her in love. When they are united, she bears a light burden and carries it about unnoticed. When she grows heavy, they both pray to Allah their Lord, saying: “If you give us a goodly child, we vow we shall ever be grateful.” (Koran, 7:189)
What then are the origins of woman? All the stories have her born of man’s clay or man’s rib. But she gives birth to men, rather than men giving birth to her. Can all the oldest stories be wrong?
The new science says we first came out of water, and our ancestors, odd fish from the salt sea, flopped onto shore on stubby fins like legs and with rudimentary lungs breathed the sulfurous air before retreating to the ocean. And, oh, we liked the air! More and more often we stumbled ashore and stayed longer and longer, so that eventually some of our old folks stayed behind when the tide withdrew, making a life free of the vagaries of the tides and subject to the new light of the sun and the cool reflections of the moon.
But clay? But ape? But man?
All these stories whirling about on the fumes of a newly explosive land, where after the heat settled and the chemistry of place set in tiny green plants clung to the rocks and small insects whirred through air warmed by fire. First clay? First ape? Did we all come from clay and then did woman break free of man’s clay and become a creature of her own? Or did the salt sea creature with lungs one morning a million million years ago ascend a tree as fish and descend some millions of years later as ape?
What are the origins of woman?
The first upright female wondered, turning her liquid eye to the moon, and breathed a sound of surprise.
What are the origins of man?
The first upright male turned his blinking eye to the sun, and looked away, down at his shadow.
Chapter Eighteen
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First Morning
My first Carolina country morning awakening! And if I had been opening my eyes after a good sleep in Eden I could not have been more astonished and pleased—the air, just cool enough to make me feel as though I should arise, the light, milky with early morning fog, the odors, such a mix of flowers and trees and grasses my New York nose could scarcely begin to engage with them beyond the awareness of a wonderful new perfume.
The odors!