N I N E
Yraqia,
2023
★ ★ ★
"If you think opression of the Bantu Peoples ended with slavery then you are greatly mistaken. Look at who holds the positions of power, look at the elites, the ones with access to capital and privilege. Show me where you see a black face amongst them. Just show me." - Alimayu Kofi , The History They Don't Want You To Know - The Untold Story of Kediakin's Bantu Peoples.
★ ★ ★
The year of 2023 started on a trepidatious suspense for Hadassah Sarfati and her family. Like in the days she had fasted and asked G-d for a miracle to save her people, the atmosphere in the palace had been anticipatory.
It felt as though the presence that had been looming over them had gotten closer and they could almost taste its arrival in the air that skittered past their tongues. Hadassah, Nura, Mordecai, Hegai, Memukan and their entire team of trusted spies and accomplices had mastered the art of superb acting and masked their underlying motivations beneath a perfect façade.
Queen Nura hosted her annual New Year's Eve fireworks show a few kilometres out of the desert. Hadassah spent the majority of the night swept up in her wife's arms and marvelling at the bright sparks of light that exploded into the sky.
She remembered the first time she'd attended this show a few days before Queen Nura was set to choose a wife. She'd been filled with an anxious energy, her future filled with an unknown but fruitful possibilities. Now she was filled with anxiety again, only this time, it was the kind fuelled by fear.
The future was uncertain and threatened by the impending danger and the possibility of innocent lives being lost, despite what the queen had done in all of her might to prevent such an outcome.
Hadassah had dismissed all of her servants to go and enjoy themselves and take part in the festivities. She was perfectly apt to take care of herself for a few hours.
Elaheh - as her right-hand woman was reluctant to abandon her duties as she thought it improper and it had taken Hadassah a few minutes of compelling persuasion to get her to finally let loose.
All of the Court of Advisors was there too, including Haman and his brood of ten strong sons and a little wife. Hadassah had taken a careful look at the family of the man who was plotting to kill her - his demure, obedient wife who was covered from head to toe (it didn't matter that her burqa was made of cashmere silk.) It spoke volumes that in a country where the burqa wasn't insisted upon by law, the Agagite still chose to make his wife wear such a thing in this heat.
All ten of his sons were gorgeous creatures - all with the same homely brown skin, fine strong dark hair and broadened shoulders. They definitely hadn't gotten their looks from their father. They all looked to be between the ages of twenty to forty, the oldest one in the bunch already spotting a mature beard.
She wondered if these eleven people knew how evil the man they knew as their head of house was or if they were as evil as him. She wondered how they'd fare with their father if and when he died. Mordecai strolled over to her with Malak on his arm.
"Mama, the fireworks are going to start soon!" the little girl said. She had her arms wrapped around Mordecai's neck and her eyes lit up as soon as she saw Hadassah.
"You love the fireworks?"
"Yeah, they're the best part. Uncle Mordecai's going to put me on his shoulders so I have the best view. Wassim is going to be so jealous," she said.
The girl had started to lose her milk teeth and she had a gap in the bottom row of her teeth. Hadassah adored it when she laughed or smiled really big because she forgot to be self conscious about the gap for a moment and looked so cute.
She wanted to hold on to these moments because she knew that soon they'd stop losing teeth, stop playing with toys and grew up to be teenagers who'd be too cool for her and their mother.
She hoped that she would've had her first child by now and had not Haman done what he did, they would've gone ahead with the artificial insemination process with the Belgian donor in the year of 2022.
"That sounds very exciting. Uncle Mordecai used to put me on his shoulders when I was as little as you too, Wassi is definitely missing out," she said with a smile and leaned closer to the pair to kiss Malak's forehead.
It was amazing how easily the twins had let her into their hearts and how she had assimilated into their lives as if she'd always been there.
Once, while she was helping Wassim complete his 3D 1 500 piece puzzle, he'd casually said, "you know, Mama, you always make time to play with me, how come?"
"Well, you're a fun and cool little boy. I like playing with you and your sister."
"Do you know that Daddy didn't like to play with us?"
Hadassah nodded, "your mother told me a little about that, yeah."
"I don't remember much about Daddy anymore. I was really small when he died. I think he liked me and Malak, just not a lot. He could never play with us."
"Maybe he didn't know how," Hadassah said.
The last thing she'd wanted to do was to defend any of the deceased Wassim's actions but she knew in that moment that something important was happening.
Little Wassim was trying to open up to her - it had taken him so much longer than Malak to get used to her.
"Yeah, not all big people know how to play with children, even if they're mommies and daddies. But you know how and I think you like me and Malak a little bit more than Daddy did. It's really cool because you weren't here when I was a baby, but it feels like you were."
Hadassah had waited until she was alone before she cried that day.
×
Mordecai and Malak left to go and get a better spot to see the fireworks and Hadassah stayed rooted in her spot as the last ten minutes of 2022 passed. The fireworks were five minutes away when she felt her wife's arms wrap around her.
"Hi," Nura said against her hair.
Hadassah revelled in the soft skin of her arms, she'd shaved that morning and her skin still smelled of the sweet, mango scent of her cosmetic lotion.
"Hello," she replied and sank into her. Everything seemed to disappear and all she could focus on was Nura.
"There's five minutes until the fireworks go off."
"I know."
"I'm so proud of you," Nura said.
"Thank you."
"I know this past year and a half hasn't been easy and the worst is still to come, but I am so proud of your strength. You're amazing, you inspire me everyday."
"Only because I have you by my side and Yahweh pleading for my case with the cosmos. I couldn't have done anything without you."
"I love you so much, my love."
"I love you more," Hadassah replied and she felt her soul lighten when their lips met.
They kissed through the fireworks.
Hadassah had told herself that she wouldn't cry but it was becoming increasingly harder to.
The cabin was silent, with only the whir of the engine underneath their seats thrumming as the jet propelled forwards, taking her further and further away from Nura and Mordecai.
The twins were fast asleep in the seats in front of her, dozing with their legs spread out in front of them because their chairs could be turned into beds. A security guard and flight attendant sat across from her and she was staring unseeingly at the TV screen in front of her.
She only had to wait for two months and then it would all be over. She and the twins could return home and everyone would be alive, happy and safe. It was a mantra she'd repeated to herself for the past four hours that she'd been on the jet as a desperate attempt to keep calm.
It was the 20th of January 2023 and Hadassah, Malak and Wassim were on their way to a safe house in France. Everyone had decided that it was the best and safest option for Nura's family to be as far away from Kediakin as possible in the tumultuous times that lay ahead.
Hadassah had been thrown in for a loop when she discovered in the eleventh hour that Mordecai would not be coming with them and had decided to stay behind with everyone.
She'd been horrified that he had the audacity to put his life on the line when he didn't need to. He had merely escaped deaths from the Agagites the first time and now he was placing himself in that danger once more.
Tired of being tortured by her thoughts, Hadassah reached into the pocket of the seat and pulled out the paperback copy she'd shoved there when the jet had first taken off.
Mordecai had pressed it into her hands when she'd demanded an answer to his decision.
"Read this, Cousin, and you will understand."
She'd taken the book and thrown it down with contempt. Mordecai had picked it up and dusted it off and pressed it more urgently into her hands.
"I'm begging you. Maybe once you read it you will be less cross with me."
Hadassah had eventually taken the book albeit a begrudgingly.
The book was titled The History They Don't Want You To Know - The Untold Story of Kediakin's Bantu Peoples. It was written by an American historian named Alimayu Kofi, who was a first generation immigrant whose family had lived in Kediakin for three generations.
Hadassah fingered the pages of the book, he is one of us, her mind whispered. The paperback was four hundred and thirty pages in total and it was the first volume of a collection of five. She opened the first page and even the dedication made her heart catch.
For the Black Child they thought they had silenced, I hear your cry.
I believe you.
And it was on page fifty-eight that Alimayu recounted what he considered to be the greatest atrocity their people had ever faced.
" After our peoples had been ripped from their homeland and had been taken to this new and strange place where their lives were more lowlier than the common hog, they found a way to survive. Through grit, tears and blood, they found a way to keep going. Faith brought them together and it consolidated their hope and grew their resilience.
Make no mistake, I am not romanticising their hardships but I am merely acknowledging that they found the will to adapt and assimilate in conditions that should've killed them. And thus, although they did not come, because they were captured and although they did not see, because they worked the land and they certainly did not conquer but they survived. We are a people of infallible strength."
What remains a rut of deep pain for our peoples are the events of 1822. We are still reeling from the ordeal. It remains a topic one should never bring up in the presence of Bantus because no matter how much time has passed, our hearts still bleed for that which we have lost.
It was this event that drove my great grandfather away from Yahweh and before then, our family had worshipped Yahweh since the beginning of time. We are too broken, too angry to find our way back to His path.
Here is some backstory, one that you will never hear about from Them because they don't want you to ever know the full truth: by 1822 the Bantus who had served common men had been given their freedom and no longer had to work their lands. They then subsequently found a place they could settle down and call their own.
They settled down in Sinamu and started the very first Bantu-dominated town. At that time a record of 3 500 Bantu peoples were 'free' yet another 4 700 were still servants of noblemen and the royal family. Those who were still indebted to the elite would serve their entire lives working for them and their children and children's children had an identical fate, (freedom was a pipe dream).
And so, King Mansa al-Hashim, The Prince of Wickedness, The Child of Darkness hosted a pageant that he ironically named "Aihifalat" or 'Celebrations.'
For a week he invited all noblemen and his extended family to take part in a festival of debauchery, fornication and murder.
The history books will tell you that it was merely a fun sport the Arab men had wanted to take in because that was what the rich did with their copious amounts of money they did not need.
And maybe that would seem to be the case when you're looking at it from a bourgeois perspective - but for my peoples who still served these men during this time saw their misery expand to something wider than the oceans.
They were worked to death during these festivals, beaten to pulps and the Bantu women were raped in numbers. The rapes and beatings were so brutal that some of them did not survive the ordeals.
As if this tale could not get any sicker, Mansa the Evil One wanted the last day to be a hunt for live game because he'd gotten a shipment of brand new weapons from the lands of Mongolia and Russia that he'd wanted to try with this companions.
They were out in the desert and there were no hogs that could be spared, no birds that were in sight and no camels available for disposal. And so, he had said,
"Bring out the Bantu abeeds!"
King Mansa had 1 000 Bantu servants alone. Six hundred of them were brought out into the open field in which Mansa and his Bandits of Murder waited.
They were ordered to get enough wood to erect a pen and then they were forced into it. They were rounded up like common chattel and shot at.
Of the six hundred, twenty survived with major injuries. Of the twenty, only three didn't die in the subsequent days.
I care little for what the history books tell you in this regard, The Ahifalat was a genocide.
Nura resented that Haman the Agagite had underestimated her. He may have thought her to be an easy opponent, one that he could out-wit and out-strength but he had forgotten that Nura al-Hashim bint Hakim came from a family of the most cunning kings.
She came from a bloodline that had plotted, conspired and had manipulated others out of authority and themselves into power.
The al-Hashims had a legacy of blood, power and strength. It was those elements that ran in her blood and that had fuelled her these past few months.
Her first motion of action had been a meeting with the president of their most loyal companions, The Islamic Republic of Iran. History always seemed to rewrite itself and once again, The Kingdom of Kediakin and Persia strengthened their alliances.
She had their word that they would lay down their lives for her people, as the people of her fathers from long before had sacrificed themselves for Persia.
The first Aihifalat had taken place on 12 March 1822. The first century anniversary of this event had gone uncelebrated. The trustee team of spies Queen Nura had employed had let her know that Haman the Agagite planned the day of his attack for 12 March 2022.
Of the 144 Provinces of Kediakin, only three had a dense population of the descendants of the Bantu slaves: Cenin, Daktola and Sinamu - this included residential areas and synagogues. An estimated number of three hundred and sixty thousand people were the target objects.
But Nura was one step ahead from Haman the Agagite because on 11 March 2022, she declared a civil war against his organisation.
Haman's Agagites had an army of 3 000 and Nura's army was just a little over 9 000. majority of the soldiers were Persians. The law Nura had implemented to set everything into motion was one that barred all international interference.
Iranians were the only people on the planet who could be legal citizens without vying for a Kediakinian citizenship and therefore were the only ones who could help. Iran had sworn its loyalty to the royal family.
Because there was a legal declaration of war, no fighting could take place in citizen locations and by law, The Agagites could no longer carry out their terrorist attacks on the civilian cities.
They also couldn't deliberately kill a civilian and would have to fight with the soldiers. Batches and batches of backup security had been sent to Cenin, Daktola and Sinamu to offer extra protection. Nura had also mobilised emergency transport and all of the Bantu citizens of those cities were being taken out by train and bus to safety.
Hadassah heard the news from her wife first. Nura had taken the first flight to the safe house in Cannes, France at her soonest convenience.
Hadassah had stayed up all night in anticipation for her, praying for her safe arrival and for good news. It was 03:00 when she saw the bright headlights of the security car her wife was in from her bedroom door.
The children were fast asleep, blissfully unaware that a war had broken out at home and that their mother had been in its midst.
Nura had aged five years when Hadassah saw her in the flesh but nonetheless, she held her close and kissed her as if the world was coming to an end which, in a way it was.
Hadassah kept Nura's head in her lap while she spoke. She hadn't even taken off her suit and bullet-proof vest yet.
"It lasted for a maximum of ten hours. They surrendered as soon as Haman was killed."
The official report would reach the world in forty-eight hours. The world had been reeling from the lack of information as Nura's edict had barred any live reports from national and international sources for seventy-two hours.
The Kingdom of Kediakin had fought their battles in total isolation. The rest of the world had been left in the dark, just as they'd planned all those months ago.
"Really? Wow," Hadassah replied. The idea that the big bad men who'd taken everything for her had turned out to be so weak startled her.
"As a sign of victory, we had him and his ten sons impaled."
"Did any soldiers die?"
"Many of Haman's men died, we lost twenty."
"I'm so sorry," Hadassah said and she meant it. She leaned down and kissed her wife's cheek.
"Were any innocent lives lost?"
"I thank Allah, no. But there was an accident. One of the buses transporting people was attacked by the Agagite and three civilians have minor injuries."
"I thank Yahweh."
"Everyone else is alright, Me, Memukan, Hegai, Mordecai. They don't have a single scratch on them. Haman and them were outnumbered, they stood no chance."
"Thank you for keeping your promise," Hadassah said, "thank you for staying with me, you and Mordecai."
Nura sat up and straddled her wife's thighs before she kissed her again.
"So it's all over, huh?"
Nura nodded, "forever. You are safe now."
A U T H O R N O T E
this is very unedited and i'm sure it kind of sucks but i had to get it out to you all. i haven't had a single free moment to sit down and write in what feels like forever so i'll edit this and republish this asap but for now enjoy.
epilogue is the next chapter ❤️