THE BOOK OF NEGROES (4 page)

Fomba was the first among us to move. He grabbed the man with the odd stick, locked one arm around his neck and hit him on the head with the chicken bucket. The man stumbled. Fomba grabbed his neck with one hand and twisted it, hard, to the right. A gurgling sound escaped the man’s throat before he fell. Fomba turned and reached for me, but another man came up behind him.

“Fomba,” I cried out. “Watch out!”

But before Fomba could turn, he was clubbed in the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground. The rabbit carcass slipped off his shoulder. I hadn’t imagined that a man of his size and strength could fall so quickly. A man bound Fomba’s hands, slipped a knotted rope around his neck and picked up the rabbit. But Fomba did not stir.

Mama shouted at me to drop the fruits and run. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t leave her. She faced the men and called out like a warrior: “Curses of the dead upon you. Let us pass.”

The men spoke in a strange tongue. I thought I recognized the words
girl, young
and
not too young
—but I wasn’t sure.

Mama switched to Fulfulde. “Run, Daughter,” she whispered, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

She was holding her birthing kit, and still had the water skins balanced on her head. She was carrying too much to flee, so I stayed beside her. I could hear her breathing. I knew that she was thinking. Perhaps she would start shouting, and I would join her. Our village was not far. Someone might hear us. Two men grabbed Mama and knocked down her water skins. Another man grabbed me by the arm. I flailed and kicked and bit his hand. He pulled it free. He was angry now and breathing harder. When he lunged for me, I kicked with all my might and got him where his legs came together. He groaned and stumbled, but I knew I hadn’t hurt him enough to keep him down. I turned to run to my mother, but another man tripped me and pinned me to the ground. I spat dirt from my mouth and tried to wriggle free, but I had no strength against the one who held me.

“This is a mistake,” I said. “I am a freeborn Muslim. Let me go!” I said it in Fulfulde and I said it in Bamanankan, but my words had no effect, so I started screaming. If any villager happened to be out at night, perhaps he would hear. Someone bound my wrists behind my back and slipped a leather noose around my neck, which he tightened just to the point of cutting off my breath so I couldn’t scream and could barely breathe. Gagging, I waved wildly at the men. The noose was loosened enough to let me breathe. I was still alive.
Allaahu Akbar
, I said. I hoped that someone would hear the words in Arabic and realize the mistake. But nobody heard me. Or cared.

I craned my neck to look up from the ground. Mama broke away from one man, slapped at his face and bit his shoulder, then grabbed a thick branch and belted him in the head. He paused, stunned. Mama charged the man who held the strap around my neck. I pulled against it, straining
toward her even as it choked me. But another man intercepted her, raised high a big, thick club and brought it swinging down against the back of her head. Mama dropped. I saw her blood in the moonlight, angry and dark and spilling fast. I tried to crawl to her. I knew what to do about spilling blood. I just had to get my palm against the wound, and to press hard. But I couldn’t crawl, or wriggle, or move an inch. The captors had me firmly now, the leash tightening once more around my neck. They forced Fomba and me up, and we had no choice but to follow.

I struggled against the leash to look back over my shoulder, and saw that Mama was still on the ground, not moving. I was slapped hard in the face, spun forward and shoved in the back. Over and over and over again I was shoved, and I had to move my feet.

Other than in her sleep, I had never seen Mama motionless. This had to be a dream. I longed to wake up in my bed, and to eat a millet cake with Mama, and to admire the way she dipped her calabash in a clay jar and brought out the water without spilling a drop. Soon, for sure, I would be free from these evil spirits. Soon, I would find my Papa, and together we would run back to Mama, wake her before it was too late, carry her into the cool walls of our home.

But I was not waking.

The longest cry rose from my lungs. The men stuffed cloth in my mouth. Whenever my pace slowed, they shoved me again in the back. We walked so fast that I had trouble breathing. They removed the cloth but showed me, with angry hand signals, that they would stuff it back in my mouth if I made a sound. On and on they made me walk, further from my Mama. Smoke hung in the air. We were circling outside my village. The drums of Bayo rang out warnings of danger. I heard popping, over and over. It sounded like branches cracking from trees. The drumming stopped. Through a gap in the woods, I could see the flames. Bayo was burning.

Five more strange men joined us, leading three captives—also yoked—
toward us. From one man’s wide-legged gait in the light of the moon, I recognized my father.

“
Fa
,” I called out to him.

“Aminata,” he shouted.

“They killed
Ba
.” The man holding my strap smacked my face.

“You are less than porcupine shit,” I hissed at the captor, but he didn’t understand.

I watched my father. The other captives struggled against their ropes, but my father walked upright and tall, rubbing his wrists together until they slid free. He jabbed his fingers into a captor’s eyes, pulled the knife from his hands and sliced through the strap around his own neck. When another captor rushed forward, Papa plunged the knife deep into the man’s chest. The captor seemed to sigh, stood long enough for my father to remove the knife, and dropped dead.

I wanted my
fa
to flee and to find
Ba
on the trail leading away from Bayo. If there was still life in her, I wanted him to save her. While shouting broke out among our captors, Papa ran to me. He slashed at the man holding my yoke, cutting deeply into his arm. The man slid down and moaned in agony. Two men jumped my father, but he flung them off. He stabbed one, then the other, and was circling three injured men. Then one of the captors hoisted an unusual, long, rectangular stick. He pursed his lips and pointed the stick at my father from a distance of five paces. Papa stopped where he was and held up his palm. Fire exploded from the stick and blew Papa onto his back. He turned his head to look for me, but then his eyes went blank. The life gushed up out of Papa’s chest, flooded his ribs and ran into the waiting earth, which soaked up everything that came out of him.

There were two new male captives. I didn’t recognize them. They came from different villages, perhaps. I looked at them pleadingly. Their eyes sank. Fomba dropped his head. The male captives could do nothing for
me. They were all tied at the hands and yoked by the necks. To resist was suicide, and who but my own father and mother would fight for me now, and fight to the death?

My feet felt stuck to the ground. My thighs felt wooden. My stomach heaved up against my chest. I could barely breathe.
Fa
was the strongest man in Bayo. He could lift me with one arm, and send sparks flying like stars when he pounded red iron with his mallet. How could this be? I prayed that this was a dream, but the dream would not relent.

I wondered what my
ba
and
fa
would tell me to do.
Keep walking!
That was all I could imagine.
Don’t fall
. I thought of my Mama walking in Bayo with her soles dyed red. I tried to keep their voices in my head. I tried to think about drinking mint tea with them at night, while my mother laughed and my father told melodious stories. But I could not feed those thoughts. Each and every time, they were starved, flattened and sucked out of my mind, and replaced by visions of my mother motionless in the woods and my father, lips quivering while his chest erupted.

I walked, because I was made to do it. I walked, because it was the only thing to do. And that night as I walked, over and over again I heard my father’s final word.
Aminata. Aminata. Aminata
.

I LIVED IN TERROR THAT THE CAPTORS WOULD BEAT US, boil us and eat us, but they began with humiliation: they tore the clothes off our backs. We had no head scarves or wraps for our body, or anything to cover our private parts. We had not even sandals for our feet. We had no more clothing than goats, and nakedness marked us as captives wherever we went. But our captors were also marked by what they lacked: light in their eyes. Never have I met a person doing terrible things who would meet my own eyes peacefully. To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own. As I began my long march from home, I discovered that there were people in the world who didn’t know me, didn’t love me, and didn’t care whether I lived or died.

Eight of us were taken captive outside Bayo and neighbouring villages. In the darkness, Fomba was the only one I recognized. I stumbled forward, and didn’t notice for hours that the yoke was rubbing the skin of my neck
raw. I could not stop thinking about my parents, or what had happened to them. In one moment, I could not have imagined life without them. In the next, I was still living but they were gone.
Wake now
, I told myself.
Wake now, sip from the calabash by your sleeping mat and go hug your mama. This dream is like a set of soiled clothes; step out of them and go see your mama
. But there was only an unbearable nightmare that would not end.

While we walked through the night, others were attached to our string of captives. In the morning light, I noticed Fomba walking with his head down. And then I saw Fanta. There was no sign of the chief. Fanta too was yoked about the neck. Her eyes darted left and right, up and down, peering at the woods and evaluating our captors. I wanted to call out to her, but she had a cloth stuck in her mouth and a rope holding it in place. I tried to meet her eyes, but she would not greet my glance. My gaze fell to her naked belly. The chief’s wife was with child. I guessed that she was five moons in progress.

We walked with the rising sun behind us, and came to a great and busy river. Finally, they unyoked and untied us and let us rest at the edge of the water. Four men stood guard over us, with firesticks and clubs.

Perhaps this river was the same Joliba said to flow past Segu. As my father had described, it was farther across than a stone’s throw. It was full of canoes and men rowing people and goods. Our captors negotiated with the head boatman, and we were bound by the wrists and tossed into the middle of the canoes. Six oarsmen rowed my boat. Between the steady rocking of the rowers’ arms, I watched the other canoes gliding over the water. In one, I saw a horse. Regal and entirely black but for one white circle between the eyes. As the oarsmen rowed, the horse held perfectly still.

At the other side of the river, we were untied and let out. The swampy air stank. Mosquitoes feasted on my arms and legs. They even attacked my cheeks. Our captors paid the oarsmen with cowrie shells. I felt a cowrie in the sand, under my toes, and scooped it up before they yoked my neck
again. It was white, and hard, with curled lips ridged like tiny teeth, the whole thing as small as my thumbnail. It was beautiful and perfect and, it seemed, unbreakable. I rinsed it in the water and put it on my tongue. It felt like a friend in my mouth, and comforted me. I sucked it fiercely, and wondered how many cowries I was worth.

We were lined up in a coffle of captives, attached by the neck in groups of two or three and made to walk. A boy, perhaps just four rains older than I, walked beside us, checking captives, letting us sip from a water skin, passing us scraps of millet or maize cake, a mango or an orange. The boy kept glancing at me when the older captors were not watching. He spoke Bamanankan, but I ignored him. He was bony and seemed to be made entirely of shoulders, elbows, knees and ankles. He strode along with an awkward, uncoordinated gait. Pasted to his face was a permanent smile, for which I distrusted him utterly. There was no reason to smile. There were no friends to make. One did not smile at enemies. I told myself this, but suddenly doubted it. My father, I remembered, had told me that a wise man knows his enemies, and keeps them close. Possibly, this boy who kept looking at me, wide-eyed and innocent, was an enemy. Or he was just a stupid, smiling, curious boy who amused himself by walking alongside our coffle, with not a clue in his head about what he was witnessing. I did not appreciate his gaze when I was naked. I did not want to be noticed, seen or known by anybody, in my present state. Surely I would get free. Surely this would end. Surely I would find a way to flee into the woods and to make my way home. But at such a moment, without a scrap of clothing on my back, I couldn’t possibly run to any person who knew me. I was too old to be seen like this. My breasts were not far from budding. My mother had said that I would soon become a woman. This was no way to be seen. I nearly made myself crazy, wondering how to escape my own nakedness. To where could a naked person run?

We now had ten or so captors, all with spears, clubs and firesticks.
They seemed to speak a language vaguely like Bamanankan. I knew they were not Muslims, because they never stopped to pray. At night, we were herded under a baobab tree. Our captors paid five men from a nearby village to stand guard over us. Still attached neck to neck, we were made to help gather wood, build a fire and boil yams in water, with nary a pepper to give the meal bite. The gruel was watery and tasteless, and I couldn’t eat it. The boy who kept his eye on me brought me a banana. I took it and ate it, but still refused to speak with him.

“You,” Fanta called out. “Bayo child. Daughter of Mamadu, the jeweller. Give me that banana. Throw it, here.”

I finished the banana, dropped the peel and said, “I only had the one.”

“Speak to that boy who gave it to you. I see him watching you.”

“He has no more food.”

“Insolent children are beaten. I always told Mamadu Diallo that he was too free with you.”

I felt my anger spiralling. I wanted desperately to escape her taunts. “Leave me alone,” I said.

“And your Bamana mother,” she sneered.

“I said leave me alone.”

“Taking you with her to see all those babies being born. Ridiculous.”

“I didn’t just see them. I caught them. And who do you think will catch yours?”

Fanta’s mouth fell open. There. We were even. But then I felt ashamed at what I had said. My father had told me to hide my disrespect. And my mother never would have used a woman’s pregnancy against her. Fanta grew silent. I imagined her shame at having to push out her baby while our captors watched.

We were roped above the ankles, in pairs, and our neck yokes were removed so that we could lie down under the baobab tree. I was attached to Fomba, who allowed me to settle down next to Fanta. I touched her
belly. She glared at me, but softened as she felt my hand calm and still over her navel.

“Come near, child,” she said. “I can feel you shivering. I spoke harshly because I am hungry and tired, but I won’t really beat you.”

I huddled against her and fell asleep.

Someone was rubbing my shoulder. At first, I dreamed it was Fanta, ordering me again to fetch her a banana. But my eyes opened and I was no longer dreaming, and there was Fomba, come to tell me that I had been crying aloud in my sleep.

My moans were spooking the guards, Fomba said, and they were threatening to beat me if I didn’t give them peace. Besides, he said, my legs were twitching madly. He lay next to me, patted my arm, and said he would not let them hurt me but that I must sleep correctly.

The men who had captured me had taken Fomba’s hare, skinned and gutted it and roasted it over a fire. None of the rabbit meat-or that of the chickens soon slaughtered and cooked-came to my mouth. I lay on my back and stared up at the stars. In happier times, I had loved to watch them with my parents. There was the Drinking Gourd in the sky, with its brilliant handle. I wondered if anyone in Bayo was watching it, at that moment.

Fomba had fallen back to sleep. Doing my best not to tug at his feet, I stood to pray. I had nothing to cover my hair, but proceeded anyway. With my head down, I put my thumbs behind my ears.
Allaahu Akbar
, I said. I placed my right hand over left and began to say
Subhaana ala huuma wa bihamdika
, but I got no further. A captor came and struck me with his stick and ordered me back onto the ground. Eventually, I fell asleep.

The next morning, between first light and sunrise, I tried again to pray, but another captor struck me with the rod. The next night, after another thrashing, I gave up the prayers. I had lost my mother. My father. And my
community. I had lost my chance to learn all the Qur’anic prayers. I had lost my secret opportunities to learn to read. When I tried to mumble the prayers in my head—
Allaahu Akbar. Subhaana ala huuma wa bihamdika. A’uudhu billaahi minash shaitaan ar-Rajeem
—it wasn’t the same. Praying inside the head was no good. I was worse than a captive. I was becoming an unbeliever. I could not praise Allah properly, without prayer.

WE WALKED FOR MANY SUNS, growing slowly in numbers, lumbering forward until we were an entire town of kidnapped peoples. We passed village after village, and town after town. Each time, people swarmed out to stare at us. Initially, I believed that the villagers were coming to save us. Surely they would oppose this outrage. But they only watched and sometimes brought our captors roasted meat in exchange for cowrie shells and chunks of salt.

Some nights, when they had us lie down in fields, our captors paid village women to cook for us—yams, millet cakes, corn cakes, sometimes with a bubbling, peppered sauce. We ate in small groups, crouching around a big calabash, spooning out the hot food with the curved fingers of our right hands. While we ate, our captors negotiated with local chiefs. Every chief demanded payment for passage through his land. Every night, our captors bartered and bickered well into the evening. I tried to understand, in the hope of learning something about where we were going, and why.

The boy who worked for our captors came back many times to offer me water and food. I watched and listened as he tried to convince the head captors that children should be freed from the coffle and allowed to walk alongside the bound adults. After a few days the leather strap was taken off my neck. I nodded to the boy in thanks.

There was a little girl who walked beside her yoked father, holding his hand for most of the day. She was very young, perhaps only four or five
rains. Sometimes, when she pleaded with him, he carried her. One time, the girl tried to catch my attention, and to play peekaboo with her hands and eyes. I turned away from her. I couldn’t bear to watch them together, and did my best not to listen to them talking. Everything about them reminded me of home.

The boy who travelled with the coffle often fell into step beside me. His name was Chekura. He was as thin as a blade of grass, and as ungainly as a goat on three legs. He had a star etched high on each cheek.

“Your moons are beautiful,” he said.

“You are from the village of Kinta,” I said.

“How did you know?”

I pointed at his cheek. “I’ve seen those marks before.”

“You’ve been to Kinta?” he asked.

“Yes. How old are you?”

“Fourteen rains.”

“I bet my mother caught you,” I said.

“Caught me doing what?”

“Being born, silly. She is a midwife. I always help her.”

“You lie.” He persisted in his disbelief until I named some of the women from Kinta who had recently had babies.

“Yes,” I said, “my mother surely caught you. What’s your mother’s name?”

“My mother is dead,” he said, flatly.

We walked silently for a while, but he remained next to me.

“How could you do this to us?” I finally whispered. He said nothing, so I continued. “My mother and I came to your village. I know it by the two round huts, the high mud walls, and the funny looking donkey with one ear torn and the other streaked with yellow.”

“That was my uncle’s donkey,” he said.

“So have you no honour?”

After his parents died, he told me, Chekura had been sold by his uncle. For three rains now, the abductors had used him to help march captives to the big water. So that meant that we were heading toward big water too. I could think of only three reasons: to drink, to fish or to cross. It had to be the third reason. I wanted to ask Chekura about it, but he kept talking about himself. He said they told him that they might let him go one day soon, but they also warned that if he didn’t mind his orders, he would be sent away with the other captives. Chekura wore a forced smile on his face. He smiled so much that I thought the corners of his mouth would form lasting creases. He smiled even as he told me that his uncle had never liked him, and that he had beaten Chekura often before finally selling him to man-stealers. Part of me wanted to hate Chekura, and to keep my hatred simple and focused. Another part of me liked the boy and craved his company—any conversation with another child was welcome.

Fanta was often in a vile mood, and disapproved of me speaking to Chekura. She tried to order me to walk beside her, but I usually refused to do so.

“He’s not from our village,” she said.

“His village isn’t far from ours, and he’s just a boy,” I said.

“He works with the captors,” Fanta said. “Don’t tell him anything. Don’t talk to him.”

“And the food he brings, that I sometimes share with you?” I said.

“Take the food,” she said, “but don’t talk to him. He is not your friend. Remember that.”

The next day, while I was chatting with Chekura, Fanta flung a pebble at me.

“That woman holds her head high,” Chekura said.

“Her neck is chafing,” I said. “Tell your leaders to release Fanta and the other women from the yoke. They will not run.”

“I will speak to the others,” he said.

A day later, Fanta was let loose of her neck yoke, but her ankle was roped to that of another woman. Fanta and I began to walk side by side, but never at the front of the coffle, so we wouldn’t be the ones meeting snakes or scorpions, nor at the back, for fear of being whipped if we slowed the pace.