“…in Hell there is a valley reserved for ‘ulama [guardians of true religion] who visit kings.”

“There are peoples whose rulers have no knowledge of The Good. These peoples have no common good, and are ruled by force.”

Suvee was her name. It meant ‘mourning bird’, for her singing had been sweet from a very young age, and she had been tasked by her mother with singing for the dead when they passed from life. She had been born in a green land within sight of the Moon Mountains.

One day, as she lay crying in Mother’s lap, Father traded Suvee to a man up from the sea, for a pair of knives, one of them of the very long type she had since come to know as a sword. Unlike many of the girls she had met in this vast town on the river, her passage had been relatively easy; first by mule, then by ship, and then by camel.

Suvee had been sold to Master Efran, who kept ten of the finest girls in his ‘flesh house’ for the pleasure of visiting men. Suvee had learned Arabic, and submitted before Efran to his God-invisible who judges cruelly, so that she might possibly be selected as a wife by some daring man. At least this had been her fantasy. She said the words and performed the observances of Islam, even as she held out hope in her secret place that Mother Tree had roots that grew so deep and spread so far that She might watch over Suvee even here, in this sunken garden in the desert lands.

After a year in the house of Master Efran, a warrior of dark complexion began visiting, a warrior who would only see Suvee—no other girl would do. Getting the idea that this man might purchase or steal her, Suvee ignored Master Efran’s admonishment to never get pregnant.

The dark warrior did not return to her couch.

*Master Efran was furious with her and, as her baby began to grow, moved her into a bedroom, where she would lay face down on the padded platform that was cut so that her baby belly would hang beneath while the visitor had his way. Eventually the midwife came, and as Master Efran and his cruel eunuch looked on, delivered her baby, a boy. Just as her son should have been laid between her breasts it was given to the eunuch, who drowned it in a bucket of water. What became of the bucket and its sorrowful contents she knew not.

*Practices currently used in the brothels of Middle Eastern Islamic nations in 2014.

Suvee dared not cry before her cruel master as that would give him pleasure, and certainly not before the visitors, as it would not give them pleasure. So she began singing the mourning songs taught to her by Mother; sang for her baby, and her ancestors, and all of the flesh house babies, at many times and in many ways.

The visitors liked her songs, sung in her own native tongue.

Certain visitors liked her expanded motherly body as well, so Efran fed her well to keep on the weight. Also, ever eager to profit at another’s expense, Master Efran began, almost immediately, to rent her out as a wet nurse to wealthy women. That is what had gotten her into this nasty bind that she was presently in, as her life flashed before her eyes like a picture song.

‘If not for these big swaying milk jugs I could outrun these vile men and have my freedom. But I am shackled to this cruel city by my very body. If only I could reach a roof and dive headfirst to the street, than I might know peace.’

Then came the famine, sixteen moons into her bondage, almost immediately after her baby was drowned. She fancied in her mind often times that perhaps the famine was Mother Tree’s punishment upon these wicked people for drowning her baby; that perhaps Her great roots had sucked dry the life-giving waters of the Nile that all knew began deep in the Black Lands.

Master Efran then declared that they—all ten of them—would become pregnant, and began seeing to that himself. After a moon of famine the visitors began to slacken off. Only the richest men came to visit. These were frail men who liked the petite pale squeakers like Zahira and Miram, not a maternally-shaped girl. After the second moon, it was plain to her master, despite his strenuous efforts, that Suvee would not become pregnant, so she was sold.

Suvee was sold to the Horseman’s Wife, Mistress Ebil, whose grandchildren she cared for. Ebil’s husband and son were away on military duty. Her son’s wife had died mysteriously at the outset of the famine, just after giving birth to the youngest child, the boy babe Abol.

As the famine progressed, Ebil purchased a chef from the Gold Coast, Zesse a slave who had been known in his native land for the preparation of human flesh. By the time that people of the countryside had crowded the city the fat servants of the household were all gone—mysteriously disappeared, usually after being assigned to help Zesse in the kitchen—except for plump pale Enice. This dimwitted washer woman, when ordered to the kitchen by Ebil, looked about like a trembling monkey, and then ran screaming into the street, right past the gate guard, only to be torn apart and eaten live by the assembled rascals who occasionally rampaged through this quarter looking for beggars and servants.

Looking through the window bars at the savage scene below had moved her to tears, for she would be next, the closest thing to a fat person left in the house. Sensing her anxiety Mistress Ebil came to Suvee and kissed her passionately—such was her way among the female staff when her husband was away—and said in her confident husky voice, “Dear Suvee, you are my favorite, and the nurse to my grandchildren. Our walls are high, our windows barred, our doors strong, our guards loyal, and my husband’s reputation for vengeance unmatched. You are safe. Please don’t be a stupid little girl like Enice.”

It was whispered in the halls among the servants that while the staff dined on beggar fricassee—and Suvvee, as the wet-nurse of an important child, dined upon imported fruits and grains and cheeses—that Mistress Ebil dined upon the fat slaves that had gone missing.

A few weeks after poor Enice was eaten in the street, Mistress Ebil began adopting babies, one, and two at a time, who Suvee would be charged with caring for. Some were scuffed up and bruised, some ill, some just hungry. It was known that babies were being eaten among the poor. While Mistress Ebil claimed to be bringing these babes back to help the parents, and to adopt them out to well-to-do families, no baby was ever seen leaving the house, and it was known that the Mistress locked herself away for a feast in her private quarters the very night that she took each suckling babe from Suvee’s arms.

Each time a baby was taken from her arms it was as if her son had been drowned again. She softly sang the mourning songs on their behalf, just as she sang one now, for she was being escorted through the streets toward Efran’s flesh house to pick up the last poor baby in all of Cairo, so that her evil Mistress might dine upon its innocent flesh.

The hulking eunuch Bibi, and the two wiry errand boys whose names she had never bothered recalling, and whom the other servants referred to as ‘the Jackal Twins’, walked behind and beside her as she came to the door of Efran’s House. Bibi, always callous, nudged her, “Why do you sing so Suvee? Why do you not sing in Arabic, the language of our masters, so we might all enjoy your song the more? Are you stupid?”

She looked up into his eyes as if she loved him—she had perfected that look—and sang the words to the most vile curse that Mother had taught her for damning an enemy’s soul, and the fool looked down into her eyes as if they were lovers, despite his missing parts.

The door creaked upon, and she was moved to deepest pity when she realized that she was taking off Miram’s baby. The other girls had already given up their babies, so that Efran cold enrich himself from the purse of Mistress Ebil’s eunuch. This was the eighth and last baby born to the girls of the house, and she could hear Miram wailing within.

The midwife who was her betrayer came through the door beside Efran and handed the baby to Suvee, this time with tears in her eyes, tears she could not hold back any longer. As the eunuch and the soul trader counted coin the midwife—leaving this house for good now—whispered in her ear, “I am so sorry Suvee. You may be a vile black whore, but you are mother to them all for as long as they do live. God forgive us.”

‘Mother to them all?’

With that she was off, hustling down the street as Efran cast an evil glare in her direction. She held the babe of Miram between her heavy breasts and walked off under guard, between the two wiry errand boys, barely men, in the shadow of the hulking Bibi. It was close to nightfall. Before long the call to prayer would go out and she would be sitting with this doomed babe fattening her up for the nastiest woman of the world to feast upon.

‘No, I shall run. I was the fastest girl of my district.’

‘Fool girl, your breasts are bigger than your head, and you are burdened with the baby. You will not get far.’

‘Bibi cannot catch me—ever!’

‘The Jackal Twins will catch you like a cat catches a mouse.’

‘But I must—I will—try! I cannot let the last baby die for a spicy dinner. This baby is the last thing left to us girls of the house.’

They were walking briskly along the pottery row, where men still did business providing wares for the hauling and storage of water. Of particular interest to her was a new wide-mouthed variety of jug that she suspected was being used to bake babies in. Zesse had two of these in his kitchen. A dozen or more of these were lined up ahead to her right, before the barricaded mouth of the Ravening Way, behind which could be heard the terrible snarling of its occupants.

‘There! I shall leap in there and trust to my size among the dogs. These jackals will—if they have the courage to pursue—fall before the beasts!’

A moon ago the larger feral dogs that had not been eaten by rascals or slain by guards were beginning to run in aggressive packs between the slums on the other side of the canal, and this quarter of well-to-do households and the shops that catered to their needs. The guardsmen arranged a drive of the dogs from both quarters and corned them in the alley that used to hold pottery supplies. Barricades were thrown up on either end of the long narrow alley and the dogs left to fend for themselves.

There was a method to this madness, as the dogs served as a potential food reserve and were no longer a danger. Also, criminals had been thrown into the ally rather than taken to the Commandant, who was busy with the flesh-eaters. For this reason a ladder was maintained on this side where a boy climbed up daily and dumped buckets of dirty water into a makeshift cistern on the far side of the barricade.

They were now abreast of the barricade. One more step would take her beyond the ladder that was this baby’s only hope.

‘There must be a hundred hungry dogs in that alley.’

‘I can do it—let them bite my heels.’