Slave Shame - Evening Herald

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

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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,

FREE AT LAST: Mende Nazer suffered the horrors of life as a slave

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

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.

‘Mende lived happily in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan until the night Arab raiders swooped down from the hills, slaughtering, raping and plundering.’

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)