preparing to call her guards. Her perfectly beautiful face clouded with anger. But the smile on the ruggedly handsome boy’s face and the moonlight sparkling on the enormous diamond he held out silenced her. His dark eyes, heavily lidded, were entrancing. He had a peculiar strength of will. Sensitive and proud, the boy was possessed by violent hidden drives that shone in his black eyes, cruelty masquerading as passion. Innocent of all wickedness, Yasmin was mesmerized. By the time their lips met moments later, they were in love.
“I am a poor boy, now, and not worthy of your esteemed love,” Snay bin Wazir told her that night. “I leave at dawn on a long journey to seek my fortune, dearest Yasmin. But one night, I swear I will slip over that puny wall once more and claim you as my own.”
He made his first real fortune in Africa, in the vast blood-soaked elephant graveyards of Mozambique.
There were many poachers inhabiting the Swahili Coast when the young Snay bin Wazir arrived. It was the early eighties, before the ban on ivory trade instituted in 1989 by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Snay bin Wazir, restless, brilliant, imaginative, and despite some bizarre eccentricities, supremely practical, had heard that there were still fortunes to be made in the ivory trade. The tusk, but also the magic horn of the rhino.
Rhino horn had, for centuries, been much valued in Arab countries for two reasons. Ground into fine powder and stirred into the juice of the coconut, it made a most suitable aphrodisiac. Historically, it was also much prized as a material for the hilt of daggers. A dead rhino went for ten dollars on the open market in Mozambique. Snay bin Wazir could sell the ground-up horn in Yemen, for instance, for $7,000 U.S. per kilo.
It had always been thus. Demand for the much coveted ivory was so great in ancient Arab civilizations, that by 500 B.C., the vast elephant herds in Syria had been completely eradicated. What animals the ivory merchants didn’t kill, the Romans imported by the thousands for the merry slaughter of the Circus Maximus. When the supply in the Mediterranean was exhausted, the Arab Islamic dynasties established trade relations with people south of the Sahara and, later, along the coasts of Central and West Africa.
If there were many poachers in Mozambique when young Snay bin Wazir arrived, there were many fewer when he departed. Bin Wazir could tolerate many things, and sometimes did, but what he hated most was competition. Poachers began turning up dead shortly after his arrival. Strange fates befell them. One hanged himself by his genitals in a deserted stable and starved to death. One hurled himself into his cooking fire, another leapt into a vat of boiling pitch, and yet another impaled himself on a poison-tipped ivory tusk in the bush. Four died when their tusk truck exploded. It was all very mysterious.
There were rumors, naturally, that this spate of bizarre suicides coincided with the arrival of bin Wazir in southwest Africa, but who left among them had the balls to point a finger at him?
After he’d sufficiently discouraged the professional poachers, he went after any villagers still foolish enough to encroach upon his rapidly burgeoning monopoly. His solution was quite cheap and simple. He had instituted incentives, encouraging his agents to go from village to village and cut off the hands, and sometimes the arms, of all the males.
“Shortsleeves or longsleeves?” his men would ask, brandishing their machetes, taunting the poachers they’d run down and captured out in the bundu. The answer was always the same, because ‘longsleeves’ meant you lost your hand but got to hold on to your arm.
This method of dealing with competitors, bin Wazir assured his own growing army of poachers, would ensure fulfilling their quotas, not to mention their own life expectancies.
It was a time following a revolution in Mozambique, when the country
“I am a poor boy, now, and not worthy of your esteemed love,” Snay bin Wazir told her that night. “I leave at dawn on a long journey to seek my fortune, dearest Yasmin. But one night, I swear I will slip over that puny wall once more and claim you as my own.”
He made his first real fortune in Africa, in the vast blood-soaked elephant graveyards of Mozambique.
There were many poachers inhabiting the Swahili Coast when the young Snay bin Wazir arrived. It was the early eighties, before the ban on ivory trade instituted in 1989 by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Snay bin Wazir, restless, brilliant, imaginative, and despite some bizarre eccentricities, supremely practical, had heard that there were still fortunes to be made in the ivory trade. The tusk, but also the magic horn of the rhino.
Rhino horn had, for centuries, been much valued in Arab countries for two reasons. Ground into fine powder and stirred into the juice of the coconut, it made a most suitable aphrodisiac. Historically, it was also much prized as a material for the hilt of daggers. A dead rhino went for ten dollars on the open market in Mozambique. Snay bin Wazir could sell the ground-up horn in Yemen, for instance, for $7,000 U.S. per kilo.
It had always been thus. Demand for the much coveted ivory was so great in ancient Arab civilizations, that by 500 B.C., the vast elephant herds in Syria had been completely eradicated. What animals the ivory merchants didn’t kill, the Romans imported by the thousands for the merry slaughter of the Circus Maximus. When the supply in the Mediterranean was exhausted, the Arab Islamic dynasties established trade relations with people south of the Sahara and, later, along the coasts of Central and West Africa.
If there were many poachers in Mozambique when young Snay bin Wazir arrived, there were many fewer when he departed. Bin Wazir could tolerate many things, and sometimes did, but what he hated most was competition. Poachers began turning up dead shortly after his arrival. Strange fates befell them. One hanged himself by his genitals in a deserted stable and starved to death. One hurled himself into his cooking fire, another leapt into a vat of boiling pitch, and yet another impaled himself on a poison-tipped ivory tusk in the bush. Four died when their tusk truck exploded. It was all very mysterious.
There were rumors, naturally, that this spate of bizarre suicides coincided with the arrival of bin Wazir in southwest Africa, but who left among them had the balls to point a finger at him?
After he’d sufficiently discouraged the professional poachers, he went after any villagers still foolish enough to encroach upon his rapidly burgeoning monopoly. His solution was quite cheap and simple. He had instituted incentives, encouraging his agents to go from village to village and cut off the hands, and sometimes the arms, of all the males.
“Shortsleeves or longsleeves?” his men would ask, brandishing their machetes, taunting the poachers they’d run down and captured out in the bundu. The answer was always the same, because ‘longsleeves’ meant you lost your hand but got to hold on to your arm.
This method of dealing with competitors, bin Wazir assured his own growing army of poachers, would ensure fulfilling their quotas, not to mention their own life expectancies.
It was a time following a revolution in Mozambique, when the country
Similar Books
Montana Homecoming
Jillian Hart
Cold Fire
Dean Koontz
The Wombles to the Rescue
Elisabeth Beresford
Love's Haven
Catherine Palmer
Dream Boy
Mary Crockett, Madelyn Rosenberg
Grub
Elise Blackwell
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Missing Child
Patricia MacDonald
Hostage Taker
Stefanie Pintoff