WEEKEND HERALD SATURDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2004 19
OPINION METRO
SLAVE SHAME
Recent revelations
of modern day
slavery in a
harrowing
autobiography by a
Sudanese girl have
shattered our
complacency about
freedom in the
civilised world
A
S A child growing up in
Australia, my mother was
warned never to use public
toilets for fear that she might
be captured and sold to Arab
slavers, never to be seen again. To me this
seemed absurd, and I would laugh at the
lunacy of such mythical madness.
But looking back, I realise that my sense of
the ridiculous was based on the assumption
that this sort of thing just didn’t happen.
Or at least such archaic barbarism didn’t
happen in civilised western society. If it did,
if it had ever happened it certinaly didn’t
any more.
But the recent reports on the Irish
sex-slave trade have revealed that barbarism
is still with us. And while the enslavement of
these women by circumstance and economic
desperation is hard to believe, a recently
published book has shown that there is
worse — much worse.
TERRIFYING
Slave provides a terrifying glimpse into the
far-from-mythical madness of the
modern-day slave trade. The horrific reality
of its existence highlights the almost pious
naivete of our collective declarations.
It’s 50 years since the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which states
that all human beings are equal, and that no
person shall be a slave of another. Yet,
according to organisations like Anti-Slavery
International, stories like Mende Nazer’s are
numbered in their thousands.
Mende lived happily in the remote Nuba
mountains of Sudan until the night Arab
raiders swooped down from the hills,
slaughtering, raping, pillaging and
plundering her village of its most valuable
resource: the children. Twelve-year-old
Mende and her friends were taken to
Khartoum, where they were sold as abids
(slaves) to Arab families.
For seven years Mende was beaten,
verbally abused, fed scraps from the family’s
plate, locked in a garden shed at night, and
worked to the bone, with out pay or rest.
Called yebit — an Arabic insult meaning
“girl worthy of no name” — she was stripped
of her very identity.
During this time, Mende not only feared
that her parents no longer existed but that
she did not either.
What makes Mende’s story truly shocking
is its ability to shatter our complacency
about time and place. This atrocity is not
happening in some dark, unknown corner of
the world. It is happening now and it has
crossed the boundaries into what we
describe as the civilised world.
In the spring of 2000, Mende was passed
to her master’s relative who was a diplomat
with the Sudanese embassy in London. Here
she finally escaped, and after a fierce legal
struggle was granted asylum by the British
government.
Mende’s story was not an isolated incident.
Her masters in London had had another girl
before her, who had also escaped and sought
asylum. How many more girls are there like
this in London?
It also begs the question, if slavery exists in
London, could it exist here? And if your
initial reaction is anything like mine, think
again, it may be too close for comfort, but
anything is possible.
For me, reading Mende’s story brought
home the uncomfortable realisation that
with human beings, any inhumanity is
‘Mende lived happily in the remote Nuba
mountains of Sudan until the night Arab
raiders swooped down from the hills,
slaughtering, raping and plundering.’
possible. I ached over her attempts to find
some small amount of affection or mental
escape: a tiny stuffed bear, an afternoon
when the spray from a hose suddenly
transports her back to a childhood game. I
wondered at the strength of her spirit, and I
cried when she escaped.
EMOTIONAL
If reading her story was an emotional
experience, meeting her was ten times more
moving.
I met Mende in the plush lounge of the
Shelbourne, and as I watched the
photographer taking her picture, I was
struck by how far she had come.
According to Damien Lewis, the British
journalist who helped free her and write her
story, she was a shell of a person when she
first escaped.
Now here she was, speaking out about her
experience, telling her story over and over
again, and talking in a tongue that was not
her own.
“It is a very strange feeling. Sometimes I
am feeling, is that true, is that me? I’ve
become so public and have so much support
from people.
“I can’t imagine that little Mende; she was
a slave one day and now she is so powerful,”
she said.
Although Mende draws strength from the
knowledge that she is helping to raise
awareness of those who continue to suffer,
she still finds telling her story painful.
FREE AT LAST: Mende
Nazer suffered the
horrors of life as a
slave
The book has also re-ignited her fears.
After her escape, Mende received
threatening phone calls.
She was scared for herself and her family,
who had survived the raid.
“I convinced myself that nobody can take
me away again, but I have a fear that they
will try to cause trouble again because of the
book,” she said.
What she must be going through, I can
only imagine. But I felt privileged, as we
clinked teacups, to share some of the
postscript to her experience.
TRUST
For Mende, the years of slavery have not yet
ended; the physical enslavement may be
over, but the mental one is not.
It has affected her ability to trust, form
friendships, and even to make simple
decisions.
“I can’t take a decision because all these
years I did not use my own mind, my mind
is all frozen. It is actually really hard for me
to do anything on my own, to be
independent and take my own
responsibility,” she said. Even more difficult
is the process of reconciliation that Mende is
going through as she tries to make sense of
what has happened.
unspeakable
“I don’t think I can put everything of my
experience in a book, some of it is still in my
heart because I can’t find words for these
unspeakable feelings,” she said.
But at the end of the day Mende feels she
has done her best and hopes her book will
help to set people free.
I hope too that this book will remind
people that, for many, freedom is still a
privilege and that the price is “eternal
vigilance”.
Lest we forget.
Slaves, by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis
(Virago, ~15.83)