The Year of Rice and Salt

In the mornings they sailed south and south again, and one day they passed through a long narrows into an open sea, with big waves. The rocking of the boat was like riding a camel. Bold gestured west. The men named it, but Bold didn't catch the name. 'They're all dead,' the men said.

The sunset came and they were still on the open sea. For the first time they sailed all night long, always awake when Bold woke, watching the stars without talking to each other. For three days they sailed out of the sight of any land, and Bold wondered how long it would go on. But on the fourth morning the sky to the south grew white, then brown, A haze like the one that blew out of the Gobi. Sand in the air, sand and fine dust. Land ho! Very low land. The sea and sky Both turn the same brown Before catching sight of a stone tower, Then a great stone breakwater, fronting a harbour.

One of the sailors happily names it: 'Alexandria!' Bold had heard the name, though he knew nothing about it. Neither do we; but to find out more, you can read the next chapter.

THREE

In Egypt our pilgrim is sold into slavery; In Zanj he encounters again the inescapable Chinese.

His captors sailed to a beach, anchored with a stone tied to a rock, tied Bold up securely, and left him in the boat under a blanket while they went ashore.

It was a beach for small boats, near an immense long wooden dockfront behind the seawall, which served much bigger ships. When the men came back they were drunk and arguing. Without untying anything but his legs, and with no more words to him, they pulled Bold out of the boat and marched him down the great seafront of the city, which appeared to Bold dusty and salty and worn down, stinking in the sun like a dead fish, of which there were indeed many scattered about. On the docks before a long building were bales, boxes, great clay jars, netted bolts of cloth; then a fish market, which made his mouth water at the same time that his stomach flopped.

They came to a slave market. A small square with a raised dais in its middle, somewhat like a lama's teaching platform. Three slaves were quickly sold. The women being sold garnered the most attention and comment from the crowd. They were stripped of all but the ropes or chains holding them, if such were necessary, and stood there listlessly, or cowered. Most were black, some brown. They seemed to be at the end of auction day, people selling off leftovers. Before Bold an emaciated girl of about ten years was sold to a fat black man in dirty silk robes. The transaction was completed in a kind of Arabic; she sold for some unit of currency Bold had never heard of before, the payment in little gold coins. He helped his captors get his crusted old clothes off.

'I don't need tying,' he tried to tell them in Arabic, but they ignored him and chained his ankles. He walked onto the platform feeling the baked air settle on him. Even to himself he emitted a powerful smell, and looking down he saw that his time in the empty land had left him about as fleshless as the little girl before him. But what was left was muscle, and he stood up straight, looking into the sun as the bidding went on, thinking the part of the Lapis Lazuli Sutra that went, 'The ruffian demons of unkindness roam the earth, begone! begone! The Buddha renounces slavery!'

'Does he speak Arabic?' someone asked.

One of his captors prodded him, and in Arabic he said, 'In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, I speak Arabic, also Turkic, Mongolian, Ulu, Tibetan and Chinese,' and he began to chant the first chapter of the Quran as far as he remembered it, until they pulled his chain and he took this as a sign to stop. He was very thirsty.

A short, slight Arab bought him for twenty somethings. His captors seemed pleased. They handed him his clothes as he stepped down, slapped him on the back and were off. He began to put on his greasy coat, but his new owner stopped him, handing him a length of clean cotton cloth.

'Wrap that around you. Leave the other filth here.'

Surprised, Bold looked down at the last vestiges of his previous life. Dirty rags only, but they had accompanied him this far. He pulled his amulet out of them, leaving his knife hidden in a sleeve, but his owner intervened and threw it back onto the clothes.

'Come on. I know a market in Zanj where I can sell a barbarian like you for three times what I just paid. Meanwhile you can help me get ready for the voyage there. Do you understand? Help, and it will go easier for you. I'll feed you more.'

'I understand.'

'Be sure that you do. Don't think of trying to escape. Alexandria is a very fine city. The Mamlukes keep things stricter than sharia here. They are not forgiving of slaves that try to escape. They're orphans brought here from north of the Black Sea, men whose parents were killed by barbarians like you.'

In fact Bold himself had killed quite a few of the Golden Horde, so he nodded without comment.