White Men In Black Skin

Black Harvest-1

Part II

Black Harvest

CHAPTER ONE

A bunch of Arab pirates were caught in a storm in the great Indian Ocean. Their sailing vessel was swept away by the strong waves and smashed against rocks at some foreign shores. Some very black n***d people who pulled them out of the waters held them captive. They took them to the fishing village where they were interrogated by the village chief. After the villagers established through some sign language that the strangers were shipwrecked fishermen, the villagers offered to assist them to repair their badly damaged fishing boat.

They accommodated the ochre looking strangers for such a long time that the strangers learned the local language and could easily communicate in the language of the generous black people. After enquiring which part of the world it was, the natives informed the Arabs that they were in the land of Afrikania.

The homesick Arabs were anxious to leave as soon as their boat was ready. Their departure was celebrated with a big feast. The youthful and muscular village chief accompanied by some young men and women offered to escort the Arabs with gifts of foodstuffs and other artifacts to the Arabs’ dhow and bid them farewell.

While the chief with his men and women were preoccupied in bidding farewell to their guests in the dhow and urging them to visit again, some Arabs were busy secretly setting sails. Along the shores, villagers were singing, dancing and waving, at their departing pleasant, light colored and woolen‑haired visitors, who had even mated with some black women. The chief and his people did not realize the boat taking off until they were far out into the ocean. Before they knew what was happening, the Arab pirates pounced on the black natives with drawn swords. They were shocked and terrified when the Arabs bound their hands and legs with strong ropes. The chief and his people could not understand why their guests would decide to kidnap them after hosting them for so long, with such hospitality and even allowing them to sleep with the most beautiful black girls.

The mean, threatening, and cruel Arabs did not bother to offer any explanations. And in spite of the plentiful supplies of food that had been provided by their black hosts, the Arabs almost starved their captives to death. The grueling voyage to the Arab world was hostile, long and rough.

The whole Arab world was extremely fascinated and excited by the existence of black people. They came from far and wide to view the bewildered black chief and his natives. The pirates, who had become celebrities overnight, narrated with gusto their ordeals and feats in the ocean, before being swept and tossed at the shores of Afrikania land, where they captured the black, people‑like creatures, after chasing them through the jungles for days like wild animals. The sly pirates did not mention that the black people had hosted them for a long time and helped them repair their dhow, even to an extent of escorting them to the boat with gifts and enough supplies of foods before k********g them.

Rich Arab merchants offered to buy the black people at whatever price. The shrewd pirates conceded to auction their captives to the highest bidders, except the chief whom they intended to keep for future use.

Word spread fast in the Arab world about the discovery of a world with black docile people, who could easily be lured, fooled and captured. It was learned that the black people could be used for menial and dangerous tasks, entertainment, and as warriors in battles, porters to carry luggage and people where horses and camels could not navigate, gladiators for royal entertainments, and a host of other activities that the Arabs could invent. A new market and a high demand for the black people suddenly emerged.

To secure his release and a return home, the black chief agreed to cooperate and collaborate with the Arabs in helping them capture his villagers and other neighbors. The hyper high prices the black captives fetched triggered the Arabs’ greed. There was nothing to stop them from going for some more black people no matter what it took.

The Arab rulers and the elite agreed to support an expedition to Afrikania for the black commodity. There was excitement in Asia as word spread through traders that there appeared to be no other faster way to wealth than trading in black people, who could revolutionize the labor economy in the whole of Asia. Black people would perform all the hard labor for free.

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Mighty merchant ships set sail headed for Afrikania. The Arab pirates who were the leaders of the expedition had mapped out the route from the land of black people so carefully that they had no much difficulty retracing it. In good weather, it was a few months’ voyage sailing in the Indian Ocean from the Arab world to the land of the black people.

The black chief was told to convince his people that they had been swept away by strong currents as they bid their hosts farewell and that his colleagues had perished in the ocean, but he was lucky to be rescued with their Arab guests by some fishing boats. The royal villagers were overjoyed to see their chief once again after several seasons’ absence. They had long given him up for dead and chosen another chief, who immediately stepped down for his former chief.

The black natives easily fell prey to the Arabs in the waiting ships with the chief’s connivance and collaboration. They were lured to the waiting ships with gifts after the chief assured them that the ship occupants were friendly and just needed to exchange Arab items for food. The natives went to the ships in great numbers. They were captured and securely bound as soon as they entered the ships. The ships set sail at night as soon as they were packed to capacity with the black natives.

Selling the almost patronizing black people became the most lucrative businesses of all times in Asia. After some years, all the black people along the ocean shores were taken away by the Arabs in conspiracy with black traitors, who also gradually fell prey to the shrewd Arabs. After cleaning the entire eastern coastline of the black natives the greedy Arabs were convinced that there were more black people in the hinterlands but could not figure out how to reach them, due to the dense jungles and hostile wild animals.

The profits made out of selling black people were so high that the Arabs were determined to penetrate the jungles under any circumstances. The demand without supply for the black people was so high that the few black people circulating in the slave market in Asia, changed hands at such exorbitant prices that the Arab governments were in full support of major expeditions to penetrate the land of Afrikania, make it an Arab territory renaming it ‘Afrika’, and officially launch full‑scale slave trade as a major economic activity in Asia and beyond, through the Arab World.

The Arabs reserved the right and monopoly to supply black people wherever there was demand in the whole of Asia and the rest of the world. Arab governments armed and contracted Arab sea pirates to capture, steal the black cargo and destroy any foreign ships carrying black slaves in the entire Indian Ocean. In the early centuries, slave trade remained the sole monopoly and a preserve of the Arabs. The Arab governments committed large budgets to support the first large‑scale slave expeditions across the Indian Ocean to the land of Afrikania.

CHAPTER TWO

It was the largest armada of all times to set sail in the great Indian Ocean. Driven by the madness of money, greed and adventure, pirates, crooks, thugs, robbers, opportunists and fortune seekers set sail in hundreds of all sorts and sizes of armed crafts and vessels. They were headed for the dark continent of Afrikania that was rich with gold, diamonds, ivory, good farming land, animal skins, women and aromatic oil among other goods. Their main mission was to bring home the highly lucrative cargo of black slaves.

The voyage had taken years to organize and prepare with the full backing, blessing and support of the Arab authorities. Besides capturing the black people, they were to penetrate deep into the mainland and explore possibilities of setting up empires in the mainland with a mission of conquering new territories and consequently spread the Arab faith.

The voyage was led by Salim bin Saudi, an ex‑Arabian desert robber, who had converted into a sea pirate. He was the most ruthless and brutal robber and sea pirate that ever was. He was highly regarded and revered in the government circles because he brought in the country and shared with authorities rich stolen merchandise.

After several days out in the great deep ocean, the fleet was struck and scattered by fierce storms. The voyage turned into the “survival of the fittest” endurance. The ocean became so wildly violent that those who survived the storms lost direction and drifted aimlessly in the violent ocean.

Salim and his crew were blown away by the monsoon winds and tossed against the notorious coral reefs lining the coast of the Black World where his vessel crashed and broke into pieces.

The lurking sharks had a field day devouring the drowning Arabs. Salim and a bunch of his crew survived the fierce storms and the hungry sharks by swimming for several days in the salty waters, clinging on to pieces of timber from their shipwreck.

They crawled to the sandy beach that was lined with thick mangrove forests. They were so severely emaciated and dehydrated that they lay lifeless on the beach. Some black native sentries with frightening painted faces peered at the strangers through the camouflage of the thick mangrove trees. They ran back to the village and reported the sighting of some strange looking people. Young warriors armed themselves and crept under cover of the dark night and pounced on the unresisting strangers. They bound their hands and legs and carried them shoulder high on stretchers singing war songs back to the village.

The weary and worn out Arabs gasped for breath as they were dropped heavily to the ground like logs. They were surrounded by a large multitude of dancing, singing, clapping and screaming n***d black, bright‑eyed children and women brandishing daggers.

The Arabs were chocked and blinded by the dust raised by the frenzied feet of the dancing mob that panted and salivated like a pack of hungry hyenas.

In the morning the prisoners were fed with some smelly liquid and foul‑smelling food. They were grateful because they were still alive. As they were carried to a hut, the captives noticed women excitedly whetting what looked like some crude daggers. The village was in merry making.

With their hands and legs securely bound, they were bundled in a dark hut. They rapidly regained strength as they were fed with some more foul smelling foods and liquids.

As they deeply slept recovering from exhaustion and fatigue, stealthy figures crept in the dark and dragged one of them out of the hut. The sleeping Arabs were startled by the commotion and the screams of their colleague. He cried out loudly that he was being killed. His sharp shrills suddenly died out as the natives cheered and sang. The rest of the night was eerie, strangely quiet and still. Towards morning, Salim and his colleagues smelt some strange odor of burning flesh.

Throughout the second day they were lavishly fed with some more smelly, salty substances and roast meat. They had fully recovered their strength and eyesight.

They whispered among themselves thanking their Allah, for keeping them alive but still wondered what befell their colleague at night. They trusted he was still alive and well, maybe held in another hut.

At the dead of the second night and when the whole village had gone to sleep the prisoners also dozed off.

Some shadowy figures stealthily crept into the pitch dark hut and grabbed one of the captives by the throat and swiftly whisked him out of the hut where other savages were waiting. The other captives woke up in panick and confusion and were just on time to hear their colleague screaming and wailing in pain. After a sharp deathly shriek, their colleague fell silent. The rest of the night was eerily silent as if nothing had happened. The captives slumbered into some uneasy sleep till morning.