"For whatever they eat, I eat"—The Counter-narrative of Omar ibn Said

When I first read the 1831 text, The Life of Omar Ibn Said, Written by Himself, I read it in translation, because this autobiographical “slave narrative” was inscribed in Arabic. I put “slave narrative” in quotation marks because Omar’s story is nothing like one of (if not the) most famous American slave narratives—The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. That 1845 story is told in English. It lays out the narrative of a former slave who learned to read, escaped to the north, and became a free man.

That’s not Omar’s story. Nor is his narrative well-framed from beginning to end, from birth to freedom, as Douglass’s is. Omar begins with a long, mysterious musing about God’s mercy and power, then addresses his audience, a man named Hunter: “Do not be hard upon me, Brother. … You asked me to write my life. I am not able to do this because I have much forgotten my own, as well as the Arabic language.” Then Omar begins a more proper narrative: “My name is Omar ibn Said. My birthplace for [Futo Turo, now in Senegal]. … I sought knowledge …” He fast-forwards through a battle, his capture, his arrival in Charleston, S.C., and his sale to a “a small, weak, and wicked man, called Johnson.” Omar ran away but was caught in or near Fayetteville, N.C., where he had entered a church to pray. When his captors saw that he wrote Arabic script on the jail walls, he was sold again, this time to owners who treated him well, found for him for a copy of the Qur’an, but sought to convert him to Christianity. Omar says, “When I was a Mohammadan, I prayed [one way] … But now I pray ‘Our Father.’” His Christian owners treat him well, he says, praising them as “good” and God-fearing and “lov[ing] to do good. … I have known no want.”

Omar’s textual narrative ends there. I’m reminded of Michael Bamberg’s thoughts on identity and narrative, particularly his example from the movie, Anger Management, when the character Dave is asked to talk about himself, to tell everyone who he is. Dave list hobbies, jobs, a few character traits. The therapist pushes, till Dave replies, “I don’t know what the hell you want me to say” (99). Bamberg says that Dave’s replies are “contextually embedded,” that is, part of the familiar script of responding to a therapist’s questions but, more importantly, evidence of story-telling as human practice (though Dave’s replies do not constitute a story, Bamberg emphasizes). Bamberg uses this example to open a discussion about narrative as a way to establish an “enduring sense of self” (100). As a sort of narrative therapist, Bamberg presents a six-step process that includes identity narrative as being “told for a purpose” and revealing claimsabout the identity of the narrator. So, who is Omar ibn Said in 1831?

Horn notes that in the years before and after Omar wrote his own story, “[c]ontemporary commentators were effusive about [his] ‘conversion,’ and many referred to it as a ‘blessing’ that validated the practice of slavery as a means evangelism” (49). Was Omar aware of this refashioning of his identity into a pro-slave narrative? It is telling that he wrote his autobiography in Arabic, when neither his owners or any of their more learned acquaintances could read the script. Why would he do that? Omar’s original, 15-page text disappeared for decades from public view, until “found in a trunk in a Virginia attic in 1995” (Kahera 126). Its rediscovery made it the “only surviving Arabic autobiography written by a slave from the United States” (Kahera 126). In a way, the text’s journey through time creates a story about a story—a metanarrative that is itself revealing in terms of American identity. That aside, subsequent and in-depth analysis of the text itself reveals a narrative distinctly at odds with traditional (i.e. hegemonic) slave narratives.

Kahera points out, as other scholars have, that Omar’s “autobiography” is a hybrid of slave, spiritual, and “quasi-conversion” (126). Kahera looks beyond the autobiography itself, examining Omar’s paratextual story (i.e., his life, as scholars have pieced it together, not as Omar tells it, for he gives few specifics). For example, Kahera argues that the African’s jailhouse writings on the wall were actually petitions for freedom. At one level, Kahera explains, by writing Arabic on the walls and then in the life story he was asked to tell, Omar goes beyond a strategy for getting attention: He demonstrates the “power of authorship and literacy as vital to human existence, as stated in the Qu’ran: ‘Proclaim! And the Lord is Most Bountiful—He Who taught [the use of] the Pen’” (128). That is, Omar’s literacy gains him attention and some relief (though not his freedom). He is released from jail into the custody of a new slaveowner. Omar’s literate act, however, demonstrates his attempt to maintain his African identity through his spirituality and past education.

Making a similar point about Omar’sinterior narrative, Horn quotes James Olney, who explains autobiographies as “definitions of the self at a moment and in a place … at the time of writing” (48). Who is Omar at the time of the 1831 narrative? As Omar makes clear, in ways subtle and not subtle, he is a slave. Whether talking of faith or noting what happens to him in America, he repeats words of control, power, and domination without ever using the word “slave.” Case in point: Omar’s long prologue is actually a “meditation on the Qur’anic chapter Al-Mulk” (Kahera 127). Why include such a passage? 

As Ala Alryyes notes in a recent translation, when Omar writes in the opening passage, “Blessed be He in whose hand is the mulk and who has power over all things,” he does not identify the passage as Qur’anic. Alryyes explains, “The noun al-mulk … [means] both to own and to have dominion. ... the perfect allusion to slavery: absolute power through ownership” (51). Kahera, Horn, and Alryyes all note that Omar’s every reference to Christianity emphasizes not mercy but domination and control. In short, Omar repeatedly questions the true faith and mercy of his owners. In this light, Omar’s praise of his new owners seems suspect:

O, people of North Carolina; O, people of South Carolina; O, people of America, all of you: are there among you men as good as [my owner] Jim Owen and John Owen? They are good men for whatever they eat, I eat; and whatever they wear they give me to wear.Jim and his brother read from the Bible … [I] open my heart to the right path, to the path of Jesus Christ, to a great light.

Alryyes point out that, in the section that follows this supposed praise of his owners and acknowledgement of conversion to Christianity, Omar does not “use the past construction” in Arabic when he talks about his beliefs. He does, however, refer to past acts, such as giving alms, joining the jihad, and walking to Mecca. Hidden in plain sight is his counter-narrative: If his owners, if any slave owners, were truly Christian, they would not enslave him or anyone.

FOR MORE:

Bamberg, Michael. “Narrative Practice and Identity Navigation.” Varieties of Narrative Analysis, edited by J. A. Holstein, & J. F. Gubrium. London: Sage Publications.

2011, pp. 99-124.

Horn, Patrick E. "Coercions, Conversions, Subversions: The Nineteenth-Century Slave Narratives of Omar ibn Said, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Nicholas Said."a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 2012, pp. 45-66.

Hunwick, John. "'I Wish to be Seen in our Land Called Āfrikā': Umar B. Sayyid's Appeal to be Released from Slavery (1819)."Journal of Arabic & Islamic Studies, vol. 5, 2003-2004, pp. 62-77.

Kahera, Akel. “God’s Dominion: Omar ibn Said’s Use of Arabic Literacy as Opposition to Slavery.”The South Carolina Review, vol. 46, no. 2, 2014, pp. 126- 34.

Osman, Ghada and Camille F. Forbes. "Representing the West in the Arabic Language: The Slave Narrative of Omar Ibn Said."Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, 2004, pp. 331-343.

Parramore, Thomas C. "Muslim Slave Aristocrats in North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 77, no. 2, 2000, pp. 127-150.

Said, Omar Ibn, 1770?-1863, Theodore Dwight, and Omar Ibn Said Collection. Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, slave in North Carolina. [Washington, D.C.?: The American Historical Review, 1925] Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2018662630

Said, Omar Ibn. A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said, edited by Ala Alryyes, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/texaswu/detail.action?docID=3445166.

Tamplin, William Costel. "Who Was ‛Umar ibn Sayyid? A Critical Reevaluation of the Translations and Interpretations of the Life."Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 16, 2016, pp.125-147.