The Moor's Account

Mustafa is a highly intelligent man with a talent for adapting to many different situations, cultures, and roles. As a boy in North Africa, he’s more interested in skipping school to go to the souq than studying the Qur’an. When he’s apprenticed to a family of merchants, he learns quickly and becomes successful. As a slave in Seville, he is quiet and obedient, but he also listens and observes. In the new world, he is an outsider to both the Castilians and the natives. His ability to quickly learn new languages enables him to act as a translator between the Castilians and the native tribes. He also uses the negotiation skills he developed as a merchant to negotiate between them. Later, he becomes a shaman who is renowned for his cures.

During his exile in the new world, Mustafa feels great longing for his family and his hometown of Azemmur. He feels enormous regret for the mistakes he’s made in life, including becoming a merchant against his father’s wishes, participating in the slave trade, ignoring his mother when she begged him not to sell himself into slavery, and stealing food and water from the natives. In addition, he regrets finding the shard of Castilian glass that leads to the enslavement of his native followers.