Safiyya
Once upon a time, long ago, there was a beautiful girl called Safiyya. She was 17. Her father was chief of the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir. She was married to the tribe’s treasurer. Things being what they were in those days, she might not have chosen her husband but she might have had some say. There was a WarLord raging through her world. He conquered her people and killed her father and brothers. Her husband was taken and tortured for the location of the tribe’s wealth. A fire was kindled on his chest and he was burnt till he was nearly dead. Then his head was cut off.
Once all the men of the tribe were dead the warlord and his men began dividing up the women. They were now slaves. Their lives would be dark indeed. They would be raped, humiliated, beaten, sold, worked to death, even outright killed. That was what captivity and slavery was and had always been.
The men bartered Safiyya and her cousins. Hearing of her beauty the WarLord decided he wanted her for himself. He exchanged seven heads for her. Safiyya and her cousin were led past the bodies of their friends and families into the presence of the warlord. Safiyya’s cousin was hysterical. Safiyya was silent with shock. The Warlord had the cousin removed. He put a cloak over Safiyya. His men thought this was very kind. He killed her people, bought her with body parts, readied to rape her, yet because he covered her nakedness with a cloak, this was a sign of his kindness.
The Warlord had her prepared for him. She washed, cleaned her body so it would be sweet for her rapist. And probably she thought: “How can I survive?” And survive as well as possible.
She was brought to the Warlord’s tent. The Warlord later called what he did “marriage.” Safiyya spent the night trying to please the monster. He was 60 and the murderer of her father and brothers and husband. She was 17. How she must have loathed the old man’s touch. But she succeeded in pleasing him. When the WarLord left in the morning she must have heard him talking through the thin walls of the tent. A close companion and minion of the Warlord had spent the night at the tent’s door, the minion armed with a sword. The man told the Warlord, “…she was a newly married woman, and you killed her father, brother, and husband, so I did not feel secure about you with her.” The Warlord laughed and said, “It all went well.”
Safiyya had spent the night weaving stories with her body and mind, much as Shahrazad in a Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Only the story she told was not about Alibaba and the Forty Thieves but to the Warlord with his thousand or ten thousand thieves.
The Warlord was clever. He had devised a way to recruit infinite numbers of men to fight for him. The first of these stratagems was pillage. Each man was allowed to keep 80% of what he stole and 80% of the human beings he enslaved. That was why Safiyya’s husband was tortured, so the thieves could find more to steal. Thus the women were enslaved. Later most were sold or ransomed, so they would bring more wealth to the thieves.
There have been other thieves. More than we can name. That is what war is about, stealing and defending against theft. That is what Alexander and Genghis Khan and Hannibal and Bush are about, about stealing from the lands they conquered, stealing the lands themselves, stealing the goods and enslaving the people. The Warlord and his band were just more of the same. And while each thief kept 80% of what he stole, the Warlord (and later his family), the needy and orphans got 20%. (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/008.qmt.html#008.041)
In addition to pillage, the Warlord had a second stratagem that made him and his band of thieves even more dangerous and deadly. When previous Warlords died, their armies generally dispersed. This Warlord built his army, not just around theft, but around religion. He devised a religion, good in a few parts and bad in many others, but which was aimed at convincing his thieves that they could be rich on earth (if they stole enough), rich in property and women, and God would approve and then they would go on and be even richer in heaven. Because of this, and the wonder of successful theft, his army went on past the Warlord’s death, went on to conquer more and more lands, to pillage and rape and enslave people, to commit the greatest genocides in history (this in India). The WarLord called himself Mohammed.
But Safiyya, in her cleverness, clutched by fear and a desire to survive, did survive. She became one of the monster’s many wives and at his death was able to accumulate some wealth and help the son of a surviving sister. A wife had some rights while if she had resisted and been merely a slave girl, she would have not helped herself or her family. She would have been passed around by the Warlord and his men like a bag of potato chips. But, like Shahrazad, Safiyya dealt with a monster and lived.
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© Alllie 2006
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