The Argan Tree (continued):

Bringing in the harvest.

The top picture shows recent purchases I made at the slave market. As you can see they are a mixed lot comprising of both ‘Christianised’ Africans and white infidels from the West. I don’t discriminate and they weren’t chosen for the colour of their skin but for their muscular bodies and brute strength; both of which they will need in their future roles as slaves at my argan oil plantation.

We are approaching the peak season as the fruit ripens on the argan trees. Of course, my goats play an important part of this harvesting as they climb to the top of the trees, ingesting the fruit and excreting the remnants which fall to the ground and must be gathered up along with any other tree falls by slaves working in gangs for this purpose. This work is arduous and the gatherers work from dawn’s first light until the sun set in the West. They are shown no mercy or given any latitude; their only purpose in life is to perpetually bend their backs under the rhinoceros hide whips of my very impatient overseers.

Some slaves gather up the excreted or ripened fruit from the ground and load them into baskets carried on the permanently bent backs of other slaves. When these baskets are full - it should be noted that the slaves are given a set period of time for this task or face the prospect of a whipping - they are emptied into special carts for delivery to the far distant production sheds where still more slaves toil ceaselessly cracking open the kernels so that the oil can be extracted and processed.

Of course, once upon a time, donkeys or jackasses would be harnessed to these carts. However, as I own more slaves than their equine counterparts, I use slaves for this purpose as can be seen in the second picture. Quite deliberately, I ‘match’ a pair of slaves to this vital task. Harnessed under heavy wooden yokes to the carts these slaves are chosen for their brutish strength and must be robust enough to pull heavy loads over long distances of harsh country under an unrelenting sun. Needless to say, they require continual driving under the whip for this vital task.

The Argan Tree

Anwar’s New Enterprise: 

I have spoken at length but have never formally introduced myself. This is discourteous of me and I apologise. My name is Anwar! 

I started to tell you of my new enterprise; the production of argan oil for the decadent white, Western world. As a True Believer, I despise all infidels and curse their wicked souls to the everlasting torments of a fiery Jahannam. Nevertheless, I am not opposed to making money from them in the here and now. And so, I feel no guilt in using them to add to my earthly wealth.

Since the discovery of the benefits of argan oil to the West, the argan tree, which is endemic to my part of the world, is now grown in other places. However, the advantage I have is that I own countless numbers of mature trees which are in full production.

The argan tree is well adapted to cope with the harsh conditions in which it grows. This  unremarkable looking tree with its twisted, gnarled growth habit can live for 250 years. It is slow growing and can take years before it is in full production; an advantage I already have over over others seeking to cash in on is new bonanza. 

The tree itself, although mostly stunted by its environment, is most productive in producing the green, apple-sized fruit but harvesting it is difficult. Covered with thick sharp spines, it is capable of shredding flesh and so traditionally, we always waited until the fruit ripened and fell to the ground where it was gathered up by our womenfolk whose laborious task it was to produce the oil. As I said previously, it takes sixty-six kilograms of fruit and fifteen laborious hours to make just one litre of argan oil. Measure for measure, the oil is more valuable than a slave.

An exception to this method of gathering the fruit is that it, or rather its outer, fleshy covering , is highly prized by our goats as a food. 

Seemingly unbothered by the sharp spines, these goats have adapted to climbing to the tops of the trees and gorging on the ripening fruit. They digest the outer covering and then excrete the kernels which can number one to three for each fruit where it can be gathered up and processed into the delicious cooking oil and bread dip greatly favoured by us.

With great perceptiveness, I realised early on the potential of my trees and planned to capitalise on this. Harvesting the fruit was my greatest challenge as it resists any mechanical means of doing so. It  is labour intensive and as already mentioned, I quickly realised that I needed a large herd of goats to assist in “harvesting” the fruit and a large number of slaves for the soul-destroying and back-breaking labour needed to produce my high-quality oil for export to the West.

To that end, I am a  frequent visitor to the local slave-market where I seek out strong and healthy new slaves to work my argan oil processing plants.

Today, as seen in the first picture, we have a small offering of white infidel males caught up in the clandestine slave-trade and brought here for auction. Though small in number they are nonetheless impressive.They are young, robust, brawny brutes with strong muscles and show the promise of several years of much hard physical labour. These are attributes that will sustain them through the rigorous demands made of them as they labour on my lands. 

I always enjoy visiting the slave-market and wandering among the naked offerings. It is most enjoyable subjecting a slave - especially if he is a white infidel - to the most painstaking and humiliating of inspections. The slaves on offer are usually in a state of shock and disbelief. How can it be possible that they are now lowly slaves relegated to the level of mere beasts-of-burden? Most stand in mute silence as I minutely inspect their naked bodies, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and haggling over prices with the slave-dealers. This haggling over the price for any commodity is an important part of our culture and has always been so. And slaves are no different. 

The only time a new slave offers any resistance is when I force open his mouth to test the soundness of his teeth and when I physically probe his arse-hole. These two areas are important; over the years, I have found if a slave has a healthy mouth and a sound anus then his digestive system is in excellent condition and I can expect very few problems.

Finally, I have made my choices and purchased five new slaves - shown in the second picture- who will be taken immediately to my oil processing plant and put to work. Time wasted is money lost and I need to recoup my investment in buying these slaves.

I see the fear and apprehension in their faces as they face an unknown future. By now, the miserable wretches understand they are merely naked slaves animals and that they are owned by me. What they don’t know is the fate that awaits them. They don’t know of working naked and in chains for long days of unrelenting, backbreaking labour in the harshest and hottest of environments as the whips of my overseers exhort them to work harder. 

However, by day’s end, they will fully understand their new roles as my slaves whose only purpose in life is to enrich me.

The Argan tree:

As I recently said, I am a prosperous businessman although this wasn’t always so. My new found wealth happened only in recent years.

My ancestral home and considerable landholdings are located in the Southwest of Morocco and are among the most desolate and bleakest on the planet. Nevertheless, I am happy with my family’s ownership of these lands which date back over many generations. Here, under the harshest of conditions, my ancestors eked out a precarious living raising sheep, goats and camels.

Far removed from the cosmopolitan coastal cities infested by the accursed infidel tourists, our isolation has preserved our traditional values. The tempo of our traditional lifestyle continues as it has always existed. No Westerners or white infidels visit our remote area unless they are foolhardy or brought here to be sold as slaves. Yes, we do have a local slave-market where we still buy and sell slaves in the traditional manner.

Our small, centuries-old, walled community with its narrow streets doesn't allow for the automobile and so all haulage must be done by donkey-cart or on the backs of our slaves. Where do we obtain our slaves? The main source of our slaves is from those Africans who have been "Christianized" by infidel missionaries thus rendering them eligible for enslavement by the True Believer. Proportionally, these Africans comprise about sixty per cent of our slave labour; the remaining forty percent are white infidels caught up in the clandestine slave trade and brought to our local, thriving slave-market. These whites are especially prized by us as "trophy slaves" and serve in our homes as domestic or sex slaves. I personally have an impressive harem of white, male slaves who provide me and my sons with unlimited sexual pleasure.

But let me return to the source of my new-found wealth. As can be seen in the pictures my ancestral lands are bleak and arid. Rainfall here is almost non-existent and consequently, there is very little vegetation or trees other than the stunted, twisted, gnarled argan tree which is endemic to this part of the world and with which much of my land is covered.

Of course, we use the argan tree to produce oil for both culinary and medicinal purposes and have done so for centuries. However the extraction of this oil is difficult and time consuming and it is women's work. It takes sixty-six kilograms of fruit from the argan tree to produce just one litre of oil. Nevertheless, the rich, golden oil with its nutty flavour has always been a part of our traditional cooking either as a dip for our crusty khobz bread or for use in our tangines and stews.

Thus the argan tree was of little value other than for our traditional cooking. In recent years that changed as the vanity of the infidel female found new uses for argan oil in manufacturing cosmetics to pander to their innate need for eternal youthfulness and beauty. 

Consequently, recognising that I owned argan trees too numerous to count, I turned to my efforts into producing argan oil for the Western world. I produce two types of oil; the more refined culinary oil and the coarser oil used for cosmetics. Production methods differ for both oils and it requires a huge labour force to produce them. Thus, I now own a very large slave-herd to tract this oil and it is this that has ensured the future prosperity for my beloved son Abbas and his brothers.

The methods for extracting the oil from the fruit of the argan tree is a long involved one which I will expand upon at another time.

Pictures sourced from the internet; the words are mine.