The word was whispered and hurled at Thawra Youssef in school when she was 5 years old. Even back then, she sensed it was an insult.
Abd. Slave.
"The way they said it, smiling and shouting, I knew they used it to make fun of me," said Youssef, recounting the childhood story from her living room couch.
"I used to get upset and ask, 'Why do you call me abd? I don't serve you,' " Youssef said.
Unlike most Iraqis, whose faces come in shades from olive to a pale winter white, Youssef has skin the color of dark chocolate. She has African features and short, tightly curled hair that she straightens and wears in a soft bouffant. Growing up in Basra, the port city 260 miles southeast of Baghdad, she lived with her aunt while her mother worked as a cook and maid in the homes of one of the city's wealthiest light-skinned families.
In the United States, Youssef's dark skin would classify her as black or African American. In Iraq, where distinctions are based on family and tribe rather than race, she is simply an Iraqi.
The number of dark-skinned people like Youssef in Iraq today is unknown. Their origins, however, are better understood, if little-discussed: They are the legacy of slavery throughout the Middle East.
Historians say the slave trade began in the 9th century and lasted a millennium. Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa to Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East.
| With help from special correspondent Omar Fekeiki, Theola Labbé''s Washington Post article "A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight" casts her eyes upon turf previously (and eloquently) surveyed by Jelani Cobb for Africana.com in last month's "Past Imperfect: Black Iraq"
posted in articles on January 11, 2004 6:08 AM | t (0)
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This is a great article. I always hear a lot of black Americans say "But the Middle East IS Africa ..." and that Iraqi's are "black too" ... But that comes from our "one drop" brainwashing ...
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