Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was born in 1701 on the Bundu plateau in eastern Senegal, the son of a scholar father. Bundu was founded by Ayuba's grandfather. His father, Süleyman Diallo, was a well-known name in the whole region, both religiously and politically. Ayuba, who became a hafiz by memorizing the Qur'an at a young age, completed his Islamic education in the Maliki school. He married early, and many children were born before he reached the age of 30.
While on a voyage around the Gambia in 1730, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was pinned down by the local slavers who surrounded him. The traders who chained Ayuba, shaved his beard and transferred him to the ship Arabella, which was used to transfer slaves to the New World, and handed him over to captain Stephen Pike. As Arabella docked in Annapolis—now the capital of the US state of Maryland—about six months later, Ayuba was among the 150 or so slaves who landed. Off the coast of Senegal's current capital, Dakar, hundreds of other slaves loaded aboard from the island of Goree died while crossing the Atlantic or in stopover island countries, their bodies either thrown into the sea or buried en masse. Ayuba was lucky, at least he was alive.
The white family that bought Ayuba in Annapolis first employed him on the tobacco plantation. Ayuba, who worked under extremely difficult conditions and at a busy pace, never missed his prayers as a devout Muslim, and constantly recited the Qur'an by heart. He would take a break from work during the day to pray and go to the nearby forest. His masters did not forgive his "slacking" and had him imprisoned. Prison would mean turning a new page for Ayuba:
At the court stage, British lawyer Thomas Bluett, who came to the region for business, noticed the extraordinary ability of Ayuba to read, write and memorize. Bluett helped Ayuba, with whom he had been chatting for a long time, to send a letter to his father in Senegal. The letter reached the office of James Edward Oglethorpe, one of the well-known entrepreneurs of the region, before his journey to Africa. When Oglethorpe, who was also an Englishman, had the letter translated, which caught his attention, he was impressed by its contents and had Ayuba bought from his masters and set him free. Moreover, he did not stop there, he entrusted him to Thomas Bluett, allowing the two of them to go to London. Ayuba and Bluett reached London in April 1733.
For the British elite, who envisioned black slaves as a thoroughly savage, uneducated "underclass", Ayuba was a striking exception. He was at the center of attention during the months he spent in London until he returned to Senegal, where he would never leave until his death in 1773. So much so that William Hoare, one of the famous painters of the period, even painted a large portrait of him. Ayuba was presenting himself with one of the Mushafs that he had memorized on the canvas, around his neck. Hoare's work would become famous under the name "Lucky Slave", and centuries later, it would be bought by Qatar at an auction price of £530,000 in 2009.
Last Wednesday, when I boarded the ferry from Dakar port to the island of Goree, what was swirling in my mind was this: Probably the most appropriate title for the situation we are in, as we now visit places where indescribable pain was experienced, now as “tourists” and take photos over and over with our smartphones in our hands. It would be "slavery tourism". In Goree, I have always watched the neat colonial architectural style houses where the white masters lived, the big red building where the slaves were put up for sale and exhibited before being stowed on the ships, the "door of no return" where they finally set out to sea, and the remains of dungeons and chains. Since people do not choose when to live, they cannot understand the mystery of slavery to them and tourism to us.
The only place I found solace in Goree was the lovely mosque built on the edge of the ocean, at one end of the island. While I was praying among the cries of the waves crashing on the stones, the story of the mosque echoed in me: The temple where we prostrated was once a Christian's house. In 1825, the man donated his house to his Muslim neighbors so that they could pray. What do you think, wouldn't a huge novel come out of just this short story?
