SHE is one of the newest members of Britain’s House of Lords and a human rights commissioner.
Her cousin is one of Britain’s most daring and successful artists.
Now it has been revealed that both Meral Hussein-Ece and Tracey Emin are descended from a black Sudanese slave.
The Liberal Democrat peer surprised the Lords in her maiden speech last week when she disclosed that her great-grandfather had been kidnapped from his home and sold into slavery.
What Baroness Hussein-Ece did not mention was that her cousin, Emin, was descended from the same slave.
Slavery was still part of life in Sudan in the 1860s when Abdullah, 13, went fishing by a river with his sister, 12. Their father was a wealthy landowner and the children believed they were safe on his estate. But slave traders dragged them into their boats.
“The father and his people gave chase on horseback. The horses collapsed, they were riding so hard. It was too far. It was the north of Sudan. They took them to a port in Cyprus, probably Larnaca, and sold them at auction,” said Baroness Hussein-Ece.
Although Abdullah took care of his younger sister on the ship, they were separated at the slave auction and lost touch.
Abdullah, who was a tall and striking lad, was purchased for a high price by a wealthy Greek-Cypriot trader who soon entrusted his slave with taking camel trains and horses around the island trading goods. But the trader was a Christian and was adamant that his new slave should convert from Islam. He tried to force him to give up his faith, hanging him upside down in the heat from a tree all day, but he failed to convert him.
The slave was later sold to a Turkish trader who accepted his faith and treated him well.
After years of service, the slave was granted his freedom. He set up as a merchant himself. He remained near Larnaca and became so successful that he built his village’s first mosque and married the local midwife.
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