The Characters
The story begins with Fetim, a black Saharawi who was taken from her mother as a toddler by Deido, a ‘white-Arab’ woman. Thirty years later Fetim is reunited with her mother through a UN family reunion program.The reunion sparks a revolution amongst the black Saharawis who speak out against being slaves. Black children are taken away from their parents, people are beaten by ‘white-Arab’ masters, women are the sexual property of the master, they have their names changed, require liberation papers to be free and can’t marry without the master’s permission.
Leil – “It’s better not to have children. Because if you have children, they will take them away.”
Fetim – “Here we don’t have rights! Here, we don’t have any rights.”
Matala – “I want the black people of the Sahara to be free. To be able to hold our heads up, to demand freedom, to demand to be our own masters.”
Tizlam – “What we want is for slavery not to exist. It should be from the past, not the present or the future.”
Salem – “If you see your parents being beaten. You can’t do anything. If you get involved you’re in trouble. No one will know what happened to you. Others tried to speak out before. They were arrested and tortured.”
Mohammadoune – “Slavery man to man is the saddest thing in the world and it exists here!”
Saltana – “Because I’m black and different to them, they told me I’m not worth the dirt on their shoes, that I was only born to be a slave to them.”
Jueda – “When a man wants a black woman, he doesn’t marry her. No! When he wants her, he fucks her.”