“I cannot write my life,” Omar ibn Said protests in the opening of his 1831 autobiography, the only known slave narrative written in Arabic in North America. Unlike most other works of this literary genre, Omar’s piece was written while he was still enslaved, greatly impacting the context of its interpretation(s). In their book, “I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar ibn Said’s America,” Professors Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst unpack the collection of Omar’s writings within the framework of his life and person, in an attempt to “correct the narrative about Omar … and restore his original voice.” (In accordance with how he is discussed in the book, Omar is referred to in this article by his first name, as ibn Said isn’t a family name).

On Friday, Feb. 16 at 4:30 p.m. Lo, who is an associate professor of the practice of Asian and Middle Eastern studies and international comparative studies at Duke University, presented a lecture and conversation on his book as part of the Middle Eastern Studies’ Jay R. Schochet Cultural Event Series. The event was organized in collaboration with Comparative Literary Studies, and the departments of Africana Studies, History and Religion. 

Lo began his lecture with an overview of Omar ibn Said’s life, who was born in 1770 in modern day Senegal, and spent many years of his education in the Futa Toro region (today located in northern Senegal), as well as the former West African state of Bundu. Raised a Muslim, Omar was educated as an Islamic scholar for over 25 years, specifically within Sufism, a mystic Islamic practice which was predominant in West Africa at the time. In addition to his religion, Omar’s education and upbringing were also importantly defined by the cultures he grew up in and around, including not only his own Fulbe community, but also others such as the Mandinka and the Wolof, as outlined in Lo and Ernst’s book. 

Omar was sold into slavery in 1807, at age 37, after the outbreak of war. Initially sold in Charleston, South Carolina’s slave market, he fled and was jailed in 1810 in Fayetteville, North Carolina where he was eventually sold to a very wealthy plantation owner, James Owen, whom he stayed with until his death in 1863, just a few months after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Throughout his lecture and in his book, Lo drew attention to what he labeled “problematic elements” of Omar’s autobiography, as well as his other works, the most notable being that Omar was enslaved while writing these documents. His writings were also often used as “proof” of Omar’s conversion to Christianity, part of a broader narrative praising the “benevolence” of slavery, and the moral righteousness of the Christian religion.

“We really never heard Omar’s voice. He was never allowed to be read, or to be heard, because he was a slave,” explained Lo. “Booker T. Washington told us a slave cannot write, not because he cannot physically write, but because the free person cannot access the content of the written document [authored] by enslaved people.”

Lo outlined Omar’s obvious reluctance to author an autobiography as another issue. Omar opens his work under protest, which is immediately followed by many blank pages, before he resumes, again protesting, “I cannot write my life.” As Omar himself noted, he had forgotten much of his native language, as well as Arabic; in addition to this, his works have been subject to systemic misinterpretation, which has been elaborated on to craft a false narrative of who he was.

“This elite of enslavers, missionary groups, American scholars, they showed interest in his writing, so they encouraged him to write. But at the same time, they were not interested in the content of his writing. They [had] already decided that whatever he wrote would be used to glorify the institution of slavery, and to claim that he was a good Christian, a former Muslim [who] convert[ed] to Christianity. So this tension between the desire to objectify Omar and the inability to read amongst writing created this fictional Omar,” Lo said. 

While researching and writing the book, Lo was struck by the depth and severity of the misinformation surrounding Omar’s life and work. He noted the way false narratives can build upon each other, creating what seems to be a well-supported conclusion, that isn’t actually based in fact. 

“You can just see these holes in this discourse in the narrative, systematic fictional creation of what becomes the truth, understanding and when you go through it weaves through these layers of stories you found, empty at the bottom, purely fictional lies. That was really my personal take away from the whole thing,” Lo said. 

Lo and Ernst identify Omar’s pieces as belonging to a body of work they term “impossible documents.” In addition to being enslaved, Omar was also at the end of his life while writing his autobiography, and noted his worsening health. All of these reasons contribute to the immense difficulty of interpreting and understanding Omar’s works, especially for a broader audience, which is part of what Lo and Ernst worked to tackle in their book.

“We are the intermediaries here to make the document archives legible to the general public. And that was our objective from day one, from the beginning of the journey. It also was a daunting challenge, because Omar was a deeply knowledgeable person and trained in West African cultural ritual backgrounds as well as in Islamic Sufi tradition. So this also creates some challenge to a Westerner to understand and appreciate this culture,” Lo said.  

In his lecture, Lo outlined the careful way he and Ernst worked to approach these impossible documents and the “techniques that we use[d] to liberate us from our ignorance of inability to understand this impossible text.”

As part of their attempt to restore Omar’s voice and narrative Lo and Ernst delved into aspects of Omar’s culture and community previously overlooked as essential context for understanding his life and his writings. 

“We go into the orality, the oral based wisdom of West African culture as a way to segue into understanding Omar the Muslim scholar. So, we look at orality among many different groups. For example, writing in this culture is not the only way of knowing, as Omar’s clansman, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, would say. Writing is something but knowledge is something else. Writing is the ship of knowledge, but it is not knowledge itself,” Lo said. 

Lo pointed out that in Omar’s culture “to be silent is superior to speaking… the more you know the more you can expect to be silent,” which is essential context for reports of Omar’s quiet demeanor, and even his own reluctance to write. 

Despite his work to recover Omar’s voice, Lo made sure to emphasize the importance of not empowering Omar with agency he didn’t possess.

“We should always remember that he was an enslaved person… In that particular institution of slavery were slaves and masters. We have to recognize that or we won’t appreciate the certain tendencies of oppressive regimes, as well as the extent to which people were victimized. We can only do that if we avoid this equalizing notion of agency to each group.”

Part of the work of Lo and Ernst’s book is to extrapolate the knowledge obtained from Omar’s life and writings into how we understand American history, which remains intimately connected with the present day. Omar’s work is especially important in informing modern notions of race and racism, as well as movements promoting racial equality.

“All these religious traditions, they came to America with free people, oppressive people, enslaved people, immigrants, and so on. And there is nothing more original [to America] when we apply historical framing than Arabic or Islam, because most enslaved Africans came from what we call the West Africa Senegambia region, which was generally Muslim-dominated. We have a lot of evidence that a huge percentage of those enslaved were Muslim. Arabic also came with them…So in that context, Arabic is as original in this country as any other language. And it is also a carrier of American cultural tradition. That is the argument we’re trying to make here, to open the door for ways in which we can [re]imagine belonging and longing within this country,” Lo said, adding, “All these racial justice movements really are rooted in these historical junctures. So we’re hoping all these things will make our intellectual debate more interesting, more informative. And hopefully, it will also guide our social policy discourse for the betterment of society.” 

As a professor, Lo carries these takeaways with him into the classroom, not only in teaching the facts of Omar’s life, but using the example of how his works have been interpreted and misinterpreted as a lesson in the meanings and goals of scholarship and the production of knowledge. 

“It’s extremely important as we educate students, more than [teaching that] education is a process of not only knowing, but we also give priority to the ethical foundation of knowledge itself, which was really lacking with the great explosion of research in the Enlightenment. It’s very important for us to think about ways of knowledge and what it is, and what are the foundations to avoid repeating this type of narrative that has no foundation at all,” Lo said.