Later, chilled to the bone and shivering, Gabrielle and several friends repaired to a nearby coffee shop. It seemed like half the protestors had had the same idea. It was not a large coffee shop and still it held them all easily. That, too, was a little annoying.
Ah, well, Gabrielle thought, maybe I can't save the world but at least I can try.
She smiled up at the waiter, a handsome, olive-skinned boy about her own age, and gave her order. "And please, might I have some cognac in the coffee?"
"Will Asbach-Uralt do, miss?" the waiter asked.
"Wonderfully," Gabi answered.
Mahmoud didn't feel any of the irritation many of his co- religionists might have felt at being asked to serve alcohol. His Islam was pretty nominal. In fact he was known to take a drink himself from time to time.
And why not? He'd come to Germany to escape from Islam.
"Surely then, miss," he answered, returning her smile. "Right away."
Gabrielle looked at the waiter, saw that his name tag read, "Mahmoud," and thought, Yum.
Chapter Two
"They [those who claim Islam is against slavery] are merely writers. They are ignorant, not scholars . . . Whoever says such things is an infidel. Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam."
— Sheik Saleh Al-Fawzan, Saudi cleric, author of the bestselling textbook, al Tawheed (Monotheism) and imam of the Prince Mataeb Mosque, Riyadh, 2003 (circa 1423 AH)
Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 4 Shawwal,
1530 AH (3 October, 2106)
"Nobody's going to bid on a crying girl," the auctioneer-cum-slave dealer said to Petra, lifting her chin with the quirt he'd carried for so long he was hardly aware of it as anything but an extension of his right hand. "Or, at least, nobody you would want to bid on you. Do you understand me, girl?"
Lips crinkling and quivering with deepest sorrow, Petra sniffed and rubbed at her face, trying to push back the tears. She nodded her head three or four times, briskly, and answered, "I'll . . . try. But I miss my famileee." The last word ended in a wail that Petra, herself, cut off abruptly. "I'll try," she said.
The auctioneer smiled at her and answered her nod with one of his own. He'd seen it so many times before. And yet slaves must come from somewhere. They don't replace themselves, generally. This child, at least, has a chance of finding a reasonably happy position. How much worse for the ones who are older, the ones over nine?
"That's a good girl," he said. "I'll tell you what; let's make a deal. If you can stop crying I'll do my best to get you into a decent family that won't make you work too hard and won't beat you. And—" the auctioneer reached into a pocket of his robe and pulled out a bar of halawa, waving it slightly under Petra's nose—"if you'll show me how well you can smile, I'll give you this."
Petra hadn't been fed since being taken from her family. Though the slaves were watered, feeding slaves who weren't expected to be here in the stables long was something of a wasted and unnecessary expense. She licked her lips at the sight of the bar of honey-sweetened, crushed sesame.
"Can you smile for me?"
Slowly, and with difficulty, Petra forced her face into something that was approximately a smile.
"There's a good girl!" the auctioneer congratulated, patting her gently on the head. He took her little hand in his own larger one and placed the sweet in it. "Here, this may help you keep that pretty smile."
"What's the reserve on this one?"
The speaker was a Moslem, Abdul Mohsem, a man, a merchant, in his late thirties, with a substantial roll of prosperity-born fat about his middle. Stealing a glance upward from where she knelt on the straw of her cell, Petra thought he looked kindly, despite the rifle slung across his back.
Few of the Nazrani in the province even had the wherewithal to buy a slave. Fewer still were interested, though some were, notably the brothel keepers. These sometimes took a chance on a pretty girl, even if she was still far too young to put to service. Abdul Mohsem knew this, and hated the idea.
True to his word, the slave dealer had sought out a decent family for the girl. Indeed, he'd sought out the most decent patriarch he knew in the community.
"Ten gold dinar," the slaver answered, then, seeing that Adbul didn't blanch, added, "plus twenty silver dirhem."
Abdul Mohsem scowled, inducing the dealer to further amend, "But for you, just ten gold dinar."
"Ten gold dinar seems fair," Abdul said, "but I wasn't scowling over the price; I was scowling over the fact."
"The fact?"
"Facts, actually. One, that we sell young girls and, two, that if I don't buy this one she'll end up in a brothel."