When a male passenger got into a shoving match with one of the crew members, the captain stepped forward and shot the man in the leg. He fell backward into the other passengers as a large bloodstain quickly spread down his pants. Again, there was a brief moment of shocked silence and time seemed to stop as everything came to a sudden, sharp standstill. Then, as if on cue, the passengers rushed the captain and crew in a single furious surge. Panicked, I stood up to move toward the bow, away from the free-for-all that was taking place directly behind me. But I was unsteady from my sickness, and my legs immediately cramped from being stuck in the same position all night, so I was already off balance when someone bumped into me. I heard one final gunshot against the general uproar as I fell overboard.
Several others must have fallen in around me because I immediately became entangled in a frenzied, clawing mass of arms and legs. Kicking and punching wildly at the bodies around me, I struggled to keep my head above water. I managed to break free and give myself some space, but the battle to stay afloat was a losing one. In a final act of desperation, I lunged upward with one arm and, inhaling a mouthful of water, just managed to grab on to a length of rope that tied two large plastic bags together. I hauled myself up until my head popped out between the bags. Gagging and heaving up salt water, I slowly worked hand over hand along the rope until I managed to drag my upper body above the waterline. As it turned out, the rope was just loose enough to create a perfect space between the two bags, allowing me to work myself into a surprisingly stable position by tucking a bag under each armpit.
The boat was behind me now, but I dared not go back or turn around. The surrounding water churned with the frantic sounds of drowning, desperate people. I quickly decided that the only way to survive the pandemonium was to push forward. The shock of falling into the water had revived me, and I kicked my way toward shore, frantically at first but then in a more controlled, purposeful manner. It seemed to take hours, but slowly, bit by bit, I made my way toward the sliver of white beach. When I finally felt the soft grit of sand beneath my feet, a sudden rush of relief overcame me, and I crawled on my hands and knees until I collapsed on the beach. I must have lost consciousness momentarily because when I opened my eyes, it took me several seconds to remember where I was. Lifting my head, I realized that only a handful of passengers had made it to shore; most had either drowned or remained on the boat, which bobbed listlessly offshore in the same general location. It looked like the passengers had taken control; they were plucking bags out of the water and hauling them back on board. I found myself hoping they had killed the crew.
Two men in white robes had to carry me down the beach, eventually depositing me with a small group of others who had also made it to shore. The passengers who remained on the boat slowly made their way in and joined us. Some individuals could barely move after being forced to sit in the same squatting position all night. Others were crying or looked as if they might be in shock. Overall, they were noticeably fewer in number than when we had set out. As for the crew, they were nowhere to be found. I never learned what happened to them or why they suddenly panicked at the end. The men in white robes did not ask or seem to care.
They marched us inland over a series of small dunes. I was still too weak to stand and so had to be carried by several men. They laid me in a blanket to make their job easier. After cresting the final dune, we came upon a natural spring surrounded by a cluster of tall trees and grass. Several large trucks were parked under the trees and, beside them, more men with guns sat about. They watched silently as the exhausted passengers straggled in. I was placed on the ground near one of the trucks.
A man with a neatly trimmed coal-black beard walked up to me and asked, “Where are you from?” I stared blankly up at him, uncertain of how to respond. I mumbled something about arriving on a boat from some far-off place.
The man scowled down at me. “No, no, no,” he said. “I mean what is your home country?”
When I told him Namibia, I was surprised to see the man break into a wide smile and exclaim “Ah, good!” He then had me carried over to a small group of passengers who were kept separate from the others. It included two other girls and a dozen small boys who must have arrived on an earlier boat. The boys clustered together in a jittery little pack, glancing this way and that with uncertain faces.
Despite everything, I still puzzled over the man’s reaction. It was hard to believe that, in the midst of all this chaos, there existed some underlying order, enough at least for someone to be expecting me and know where I was going. It reminded me of the invisible network of trails that connected one water hole to another in the Kunene. They may have been impossible for outsiders to see, but to each and every Himba, they were as plain as any paved road.
Once separated from the other passengers, our group was left alone. We soon discovered how lucky we were. The men in charge, whoever they were, set upon the second group, dividing them further into those who had money and those who did not. Those with no money did not fare well. The men had mobile phones, and from what I could figure out, they made each person call their contacts in the new country to collect additional money. One individual after another wept into the phone as they pleaded with friends or family members on the other end of the line. Those who were not able to call someone or were unsuccessful in their efforts to collect money were beaten. At this point, I was immune to the violence. I fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
I was riding in a donkey cart through the Namibian veld. The rush of air on my face was warm but pleasant, and when I tilted my head back and looked up, I saw that it was night. The stars massed in cloudy streaks across a brilliant, midnight-blue sky. All around me the tall grass shimmered in the darkened glow, fluttering in sheets and waves as the wind swirled across the tops.
I was sitting beside my grandfather, who was staring straight ahead with his usual stony visage. He gripped the reins with one hand and held a whip with the other, bringing it down with a sharp crack in regular intervals, driving the donkeys faster and faster across the sea of grass. Astounded, I wondered how he was able to see where we were going. Yet he drove us on zealously, whipping the animals with a thunderous purpose and propelling our tiny cart into the night.
And then I felt an overwhelming presence behind us. Turning to look over my shoulder, I saw that we were spearheading a surging army of wild, trumpeting elephants. They stampeded forward as one, leaving in their wake a solid wall of dust and flying grass that spiraled above us like an angry storm cloud. There must have been thousands, I thought, as I turned back and gripped the wooden bench seat with excitement and anticipation. A feeling of euphoria swept over me and I laughed delightedly into the oncoming night. As the elephants bounded like gazelles on either side of us, I looked up at the Old One and was not afraid.
* * *
Early the next morning, I was awoken by the general commotion of people being loaded onto trucks. My group was loaded together into one of the smallest trucks. Initially, the ride was rough, and I prepared myself for another long, uncomfortable day, but we soon linked up with a paved road, and the ride became as smooth as any I had experienced up to that point.
I would not even have remembered this particular leg of my journey if not for one notable event the first night. I was jolted awake as the truck pulled off to the side of the road. After the passengers were allowed to clamber out and relieve themselves, the guards herded the group of boys to the front of the truck, and from out of nowhere, three men on horseback materialized out of the desert. They produced a long rope and tethered the boys together by looping it around their necks, then tied off the end to one of the horses. After concluding some business with the driver, the mysterious riders climbed back on their horses and slowly rode off into the night. As the boys trailed silently behind, pulled along by the rope, the last boy turned questioningly toward me and the other girls. But all we could do was stare dumbly back. It was as if their footfalls were aimless and muted, I thought, as I
made a conscious effort to apply my dreams to what was happening around me. Their stories were already finished.
Two days later, the truck door was flung open for the last time to reveal an old woman dressed in a long black robe and headscarf. She stood in the middle of a large, empty courtyard framed by high cement walls topped with large metal spikes. Peering into the truck with sharp eyes set against an angular, weathered face, she said something in a language nobody seemed to understand. Scowling in frustration, she then barked, “Who speaks English?”
We turned toward one another for a few seconds before I stepped forward from the shadows. “I do,” I answered.
The old woman slowly looked me over from head to toe. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“I come from Namibia,” I answered. “That is my home country. My name is Tupa.”
The old woman’s eyes widened. “Ah,” she exclaimed. “Our Namibia girl.” She pronounced “Namibia” slowly and with a funny emphasis on the first syllable, revealing how little she knew about my country, other than the fact that she was waiting for a girl from there.
The old woman rummaged around in the folds of her robe before drawing out a piece of paper. She studied it and glanced at me several times before scowling again and thrusting it toward me. It was a photograph of a young Himba girl dressed in traditional garb, bare breasted and covered in the red ocher mix I knew all too well. I had seen hundreds of such images before; almost every travel magazine, brochure, or commercial advertisement related to Namibia had a photograph like it.
“Is that you?” The old woman asked. “Is that your . . . tribe? Your people?”
“It is a Himba woman from my tribe, yes,” I said.
The old woman looked me over again. Finally, she said, “Good. He has been waiting for you and will be pleased to know that you have arrived.”
While I had no idea who “he” was, I could not help but feel a sense of relief that my journey might finally be over.
Motioning for me to climb down from the truck, the old woman asked me, “Do you know where you are?”
“No.”
“You are in Dubai,” she said. “This is your new home.”
8
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, I was confined to the servants’ quarters at the back of the complex. Servants were housed in a narrow, windowless building partitioned into tiny rooms that were barely big enough to hold a cot or, in my case, a thin, badly worn foam mattress deposited on the cement floor. During the day, the rooms got so hot that they were unbearable, and it was better to sit in the narrow alleyway between the main house and the garage, where the high walls created an almost constant shade and even a slight wind tunnel effect if you were lucky. During their daily thirty-minute breaks, staff members often napped or ate here since they were not allowed to spend their breaks in the air-conditioned main house.
“You are much too skinny,” Madam Dua told me when I was finally brought before her again. The old lady’s eyes narrowed and roamed over my body with a look of disgust. “I cannot have you looking so sick and pathetic. I hope you did not get AIDS from some savage in Sudan. If you are HIV positive or pregnant, he will never have you. You must focus on eating and gaining weight. Meanwhile, we must test you.” For now, Madam Dua commanded, I was not to work or even “move around with too much energy.” Instead, I was to do nothing other than sit, sleep, and eat several large meals each day, which consisted mostly of big chunks of red meat and piles of pasta. I was only too happy to comply.
Sitting in the alleyway by myself each day, I had time to reflect on everything that had happened to me. I had been taken against my will, placed under a curse by a powerful witch doctor, raped, appraised, sold, and thrown in the back of a truck and shipped to some distant part of the world. And for what? To sit in an alleyway waiting to become somebody’s servant? It did not make sense to me. Did Himba women have a reputation for making good servants in Dubai? Why me? There were just so many unanswered questions.
I wondered if any of it even mattered any longer. After all, I was ruined now—spoiled and shamed—a common whore with little use or value to my family or others. Even if I did manage to return home someday, how could I face my people? And then there was the curse I was under, which made it all but impossible anyway. I could feel it working inside of me, a kind of heaviness that spread throughout my body like a disease. Sometimes, I was convinced that others could see it, too, as they talked about me behind my back. I imagined them pitying me like some doomed creature with no hope or future.
My thoughts also turned to my father. Why had he not done more to prevent his only daughter from being taken? When I considered his actions on that day in Angola, I was filled with so much disappointment and anger that it was difficult to dwell on. I even began to wonder if my father and uncle had arranged for my abduction beforehand. Maybe they were promised a lot of money for me. Maybe they had raised me for this very purpose. Why else would my father so easily agree to give me away? It made me feel hollow inside. Everything and everybody I had ever known or trusted had deserted me.
A few days after my arrival, another servant—a strikingly beautiful girl from Ethiopia—came to my room and invited me to share her dinner. “You must eat,” she said, looking at me with concern. “You eat when the food is ready and speak when the time is right. That is what we say where I am from.” She flashed a big, open smile and brought me to her room, which contained an actual cot, where we could sit and eat together.
Her name was Almaz, and she was from a small town on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. She told me that when her husband had died in a traffic accident, she had been left to fend for herself and their two children. She had answered an ad in the newspaper calling for domestic workers in Dubai that promised salaries much greater than anything she could hope for in Ethiopia. “Many women from my country come here to work,” she said. “It is very common, and there are always advertisements in the paper for maids and nannies. Just imagine: they offer maids one hundred fifty dollars a month here, while in Ethiopia the same job will only pay ten dollars a month, if you are lucky enough to get it.” The main reason she took the job, she explained, was to send money home to help her children survive.
I was incredulous. “You came here on your own? You were not forced?”
“Yes,” Almaz answered. “But it is not what I expected.” She described how the recruiting agency had flown her to Dubai with five other women. When they arrived at the airport, the women were led to a room where their passports and all of their belongings were taken. Then they were made to sign papers that they were unable to read or understand because they were written in Arabic. Following that, they were delivered to their respective “sponsors.” In Almaz’s case, she discovered that her salary was to be $20 per month rather than the $150 promised to her, because, as the recruiting agency informed her, it would be docking money from her paycheck to reimburse itself for her flight to Dubai.
“I think that is what those papers I signed at the airport were all about,” she told me. “So now I am here, and it will take me many years to pay my debt back. But twenty dollars a month is still good, and I manage to send most of it home to my children.” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “So, here I am.” Snatching some food from her plate with a piece of folded bread, she exclaimed, “Ech. They do not even give us a knife, these stupid people.”
Almaz gave me a more thorough tour of the servants’ quarters, showing me the shower and toilet area, which was a small room shared by everyone; the laundry and ironing area; a supply room; the gardener’s shack; and a few other outbuildings. As we walked around the compound together, Almaz pointed to the walls surrounding us. “Everything is high walls here, always walls, everywhere walls. Everybody is separated by walls. You will see.”
In fact, I had already taken note of the many walls and their menacing spikes. “Do they have many criminals here?” I asked, as I ran my hand along the rough cement.
“No, not here in these neighborhood
s,” Almaz responded. “These Arabs are funny people—very secretive. But I think these walls are for keeping us in. We are not allowed to go out. It is only work for us.”
“Are we prisoners, then?” I asked.
Almaz considered this for a few seconds. “Yes, maybe. We are servants—invisible servants—but we suffer like prisoners. So yes, maybe.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But we suffer so our children can have better lives.”
“I do not have children,” I said.
Almaz smiled. “Ah. Well, maybe one day you will.”
It seemed pointless to me—to have children and never see them in order to work like this. No, I thought, I was not ready to accept that. If I ever had children, I would never allow myself to be separated from them. I would not be like my father.
Almaz explained that the family we worked for was rich and powerful—even by Dubai standards. The man held a very high position in a government ministry and also partnered with his eldest son in a private business venture. She thought it might involve real estate development, but she was not certain. The man’s wife did not work but kept busy by entertaining guests and doing a lot of shopping. Otherwise, she preoccupied herself by supervising staff, inspecting their work, and generally hounding them. “She is not a good person,” was all that Almaz would say, shaking her head. In addition to the eldest son, who lived on his own, the couple had three other children—another son and two daughters—who still lived at home. The man’s father, who was old and required almost constant care and attention, also lived at home.
The family had many domestic staff members, including eight full-time individuals who lived in the servants’ quarters and two part-timers who stayed elsewhere but helped out with special occasions like parties. All were women with the exception of one man, who worked as a gardener and groundskeeper. “These people are lazy,” Almaz said in response to my astonishment at the large number of servants. She added that the Arabs considered it shameful to do domestic work. “You see, they are very much full of pride. It is a sign of wealth and importance for one family to have many servants; it tells everybody that they are powerful.” She explained that it was considered fashionable in Dubai to have servants from all over the world, ticking them off on her fingers as she listed them: “Two from the Philippines, three from Indonesia, two from Sri Lanka, one from Pakistan, and now two from Africa.” She rolled her eyes and laughed incredulously. “It is a collection. And since we are Africans, we are at the bottom. We have the worst jobs and are paid the least. You will see what I mean as you begin your duties.”
I Am Not Your Slave Page 12
