Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Kunta heard the marabout speak words in Arabic over him—which he couldn’t understand, except for his grandfather’s name—and he felt the holy man’s fingers touching his head as lightly as a butterfly’s wing, and then he went dashing back among those of his own age as the marabout went to meet the others in the welcoming party, conversing with them as if he were an ordinary man. The young ones in Kunta’s group began to trail away and stare at the long line of wives, children, students, and slaves who brought up the rear of the procession.

  The marabout’s wives and children quickly retired into guest huts. The students, taking seats on the ground and opening their headbundles, withdrew books and manuscripts—the property of their teacher, the holy man—and began reading aloud to those who gathered around each of them to listen. The slaves, Kunta noticed, didn’t enter the village with the others. Remaining outside the fence, the slaves squatted down near where they had tethered the cattle and penned the goats. They were the first slaves Kunta had ever seen who kept away from other people.

  The holy man could scarcely move for all the people on their knees around him. Villagers and distinguished visitors alike pressed their foreheads to the dirt and wailed for him to hear their plaints, some of the nearest presuming to touch his garment. Some begged him to visit their villages and conduct long-neglected religious services. Some asked for legal decisions, since law and religion were companions under Islam. Fathers asked to be given meaningful names for new babies. People from villages without an arafang asked if their children might be taught by one of the holy man’s students.

  These students were now busily selling small squares of cured goathide, which many hands then thrust toward the holy man for him to make his mark on. A holy-marked piece of goatskin, sewn into a treasured saphie charm such as Kunta wore around his upper arm, would insure the wearer’s constant nearness to Allah. For the two cowrie shells he had brought with him from Juffure, Kunta purchased a square of goathide and joined the jostling crowd that pressed in upon the marabout.

  It ran through Kunta’s mind that his grandfather must have been like this holy man, who had the power, through Allah, to bring the rain to save a starving village, as Kairaba Kunta Kinte had once saved Juffure. So his beloved grandmas Yaisa and Nyo Boto had told him since he was old enough to understand. But only now, for the first time, did he truly understand the greatness of his grandfather—and of Islam. Only one person, thought Kunta, was going to be told why he had decided to spend his precious two cowries and now stood holding his own small square of cured goatskin waiting his turn for a holy mark. He was going to take the blessed goatskin back home and turn it over to Nyo Boto, and ask her to keep it for him until the time came to sew it into a precious saphie chaim for the arm of his own first son.

  CHAPTER 21

  Kunta’s kafo, galled with envy of his trip, and expecting that he would return to Juffure all puffed up with himself, had decided—without any of them actually saying so—to show no interest whatever in him or his travels when he returned. And so they did, thinking nothing of how heartsick it made Kunta feel to arrive home and find his lifelong mates not only acting as if he hadn’t been away, but actually ending conversations if he came near, his dearest friend Sitafa acting even colder than the others. Kunta was so upset that he hardly even thought about his new infant brother, Suwadu, who had been born while he was away with Omoro.

  One noon, as the goats grazed, Kunta finally decided to overlook his mates’ unkindness and try to patch things up. Walking over to the other boys, who were sitting apart from him eating their lunches, he sat down among them and simply began talking. “I wish you could have been with me,” he said quietly, and without waiting for their reaction, began to tell them about the trip.

  He told how hard the days of walking had been, how his muscles had ached, about his fright in passing the lions. And he described the different villages he had passed through and the people who lived there. While he spoke, one of the boys jumped up to regroup his goats, and when he returned—without seeming to notice—sat down closer to Kunta. Soon Kunta’s words were being accompanied by grunts and exclamations from the others, and before they knew it, just at that point in his story when he reached his uncles’ new village, the time had come to drive the goats homeward.

  The next morning in the schoolyard, all of the boys had to strain not to let the arafang suspect their impatience to leave. Finally out again with their goats, they huddled around Kunta, and he began to tell them about the different tribes and languages all intermingled in his uncles’ village. He was in the middle of one of the tales of faraway places that Janneh and Saloum had told around the campfire—the boys hanging raptly on every word—when the stillness of the fields was broken by the ferocious barking of a wuolo dog and the shrill, terrified bleating of a goat.

  Springing upright, they saw over the edge of the tall grass a great, tawny panther dropping a goat from his jaws and lunging at two of their wuolo dogs. The boys were still standing there, too shocked and scared to move, when one of the dogs was flung aside by the panther’s sweeping paw—as the other dog leaped wildly back and forth, the panther crouched to spring, their horrible snarlings drowning out the frantic barking of the other dogs and the cries of the other goats, which were bounding off in all directions.

  Then the boys fanned out, shouting and running, most trying to head off the goats. But Kunta bolted blindly toward his father’s fallen goat. “Stop, Kunta! No!” screamed Sitafa as he tried to stop him from running between the dogs and the panther. He couldn’t catch him, but when the panther saw the two yelling boys rushing at him, he backed off a few feet, then turned and raced back toward the forest with the enraged dogs at his heels.

  The panther stink and the mangled nanny goat made Kunta sick—blood was running darkly down her twisted neck, her tongue lolled out; her eyes were rolled back up in her head and— most horribly—her belly was ripped wide open and Kunta could see her unborn kid inside, still slowly pulsing. Nearby was the first wuolo dog, whining in pain from its gashed side and trying to crawl toward Kunta. Vomiting where he stood, Kunta turned, ashen, and looked at Sitafa’s anguished face.

  Dimly, through his tears, Kunta sensed some of the other boys around him, staring at the hurt dog and the dead goat. Then slowly they all drew back—all but Sitafa, who put his arms around Kunta. None of them spoke, but the question hung in the air: How is he going to tell his father? Somehow Kunta found his voice. “Can you care for my goats?” he asked Sitafa. “I must take this hide to my father.”

  Sitafa went over and talked with the other boys, and two of them quickly picked up and carried off the whimpering dog. Kunta then motioned Sitafa to go away with the others. Kneeling by the dead nanny goat with his knife, Kunta cut and pulled, and cut again, as he had seen his father do it, until finally he rose with the wet hide in his hands. Pulling weeds, he covered over the nanny’s carcass and the unborn kid, and started back toward the village. Once before he had forgotten his goats while herding, and he had vowed never to let it happen again. But it had happened again, and this time a nanny goat had been killed.

  Desperately, he hoped it was a nightmare and that he’d awaken now, but the wet hide was in his hands. He wished death upon himself, but he knew his disgrace would be taken among the ancestors. Allah must be punishing him for boasting, Kunta thought with shame. He stopped to kneel toward the way the sun rose and prayed for forgiveness.

  Rising, he saw that his kafo had all the goats herded back together and were getting ready to leave the grazing area, lifting their headloads of firewood. One boy was carrying the injured dog, and two of the other dogs were limping badly. Sitafa, seeing Kunta looking toward them, put his headload down and started toward Kunta, but quickly Kunta waved him away again to go on with the rest.

  Each footstep along the worn goat trail seemed to take Kunta closer to the end—the end of everything. Guilt and terror and numbness washed over him in waves. He would be sent away. He would miss Binta
, Lamin, and old Nyo Boto. He would even miss the arafang’s class. He thought of his late Grandma Yaisa, of his holy man grandfather whose name he bore, now disgraced, of his famous traveling uncles, who had built a village. He remembered that he had no headload of firewood. He thought of the nanny goat, whom he remembered well, always skittish and given to trotting off from the rest. And he thought of the kid not yet born. And while he thought of all these things, he could think of nothing but what he most feared to think of: his father.

  His mind lurched, and he stopped, rooted, not breathing, staring ahead of him down the path. It was Omoro, running toward him. No boy would have dared tell him; how had he known?

  “Are you all right?” his father asked.

  Kunta’s tongue seemed cleaved to the roof of his mouth. “Yes, Fa,” he said finally. But by then Omoro’s hand was exploring Kunta’s belly, discovering that the blood soaking his dundiko wasn’t Kunta’s.

  Straightening, Omoro took the hide and laid it on the grass. “Sit down!” he ordered, and Kunta did, trembling as Omoro sat across from him.

  “There is something you need to know,” said Omoro. “All men make mistakes. I lost a goat to a lion when I was of your rains.”

  Pulling at his tunic, Omoro bared his left hip. The pale, deeply scarred place there shocked Kunta. “I learned, and you must learn. Never run toward any dangerous animal.” His eyes searched Kunta’s face. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Fa.”

  Omoro got up, took the goat’s hide, and flung it far off into the brush. “Then that is all that needs to be said.”

  Kunta’s head reeled as he walked back to the village behind Omoro. Greater even than his guilt, and his relief, was the love he felt for his father at this moment.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kunta had reached his tenth rain, and the second-kafo boys his age were about to complete the schooling they had received twice daily since they were five rains old. When the day of graduation came, the parents of Kunta and his mates seated themselves in the arafang’s schoolyard beaming with pride in the very front rows, even ahead of the village elders. While Kunta and the others squatted before the arafang, the village alimamo prayed. Then the arafang stood and began looking around at his pupils as they waved their hands to be asked a question. Kunta was the first boy he chose.

  “What was the profession of your forefathers, Kunta Kinte?” he asked.

  “Hundreds of rains ago in the land of Mali,” Kunta confidently replied, “the Kinte men were blacksmiths, and their women were makers of pots and weavers of cloth.” With each pupil’s correct answer, all those assembled made loud sounds of pleasure.

  Then the arafang asked a mathematical question: “If a baboon has seven wives, each wife has seven children, and each child eats seven groundnuts for seven days, how many nuts did the baboon steal from some man’s farm?” After much frantic figuring with grass-quill pens on their cottonwood slates, the first to yelp out the right answer was Sitafa Silla, and the crowd’s shouting of praise drowned out the groans of the other boys.

  Next the boys wrote their names in Arabic, as they had been taught. And one by one, the arafang held up the slates for all the parents and other spectators to see for themselves what education had achieved. Like the other boys, Kunta had found the marks that talk even harder to read than they were to write. Many mornings and evenings, with the arafang rapping their knuckles, they had all wished that writing was as easy to understand as the talking drum, which even those of Lamin’s age could read as if someone standing beyond sight were calling out the words.

  One by one now, the arafang asked each graduate to stand. Finally came Kunta’s turn. “Kunta Kinte!” With all eyes upon him, Kunta felt the great pride of his family in the front row, even of his ancestors in the burying ground beyond the village—most especially of his beloved Grandma Yaisa. Standing up, he read aloud a verse from the Koran’s last page; finishing, he pressed it to his forehead and said, “Amen!” When the readings were done, the teacher shook each boy’s hand and announced loudly that as their education was complete, these boys were now of the third kafo, and everyone broke out into a loud cheering. Binta and the other mothers quickly removed the covers from the bowls and calabashes they had brought, heaped with delicious foods, and the graduation ceremony ended in a feast that soon emptied both.

  Omoro was waiting the next morning when Kunta came to take the family’s goats out for the day’s grazing. Pointing to a fine young male and female, Omoro said, “These two are your school-finishing present.” Almost before Kunta could stammer out his thanks, Omoro walked away without another word—as if he gave away a pair of goats every day—and Kunta tried very hard not to seem excited. But the moment his father was out of sight, Kunta whooped so loud that his new charges jumped and started running—with all the others in hot pursuit. By the time he caught up with them and herded them out to the fields, the rest of his mates were already there—showing off their own new goats. Treating them like sacred animals, the boys steered their charges to only the most tender grasses, already picturing the strong young kids they would soon produce, and the kids would have soon after, until each boy had a herd as large and valuable as his father’s.

  Before the next new moon appeared, Omoro and Binta were among the parents who gave away a third goat—this one to the arafang as an expression of gratitude for their son’s education. If they had been more prosperous, they would have been glad to give even a cow, but they knew he understood that this was beyond their means, as it was beyond the means of everyone in Juffure, which was a humble village. Indeed, some parents—new slaves with nothing saved—had little to offer but their own backs, and their grateful gift of a moon’s farm work for the arafang was graciously accepted.

  The passing moons soon flowed into seasons until yet another rain had passed and Kunta’s kafo had taught Lamin’s kafo how to be goatherds. A time long awaited now drew steadily nearer. Not a day passed that Kunta and his mates didn’t feel both anxiety and joy at the approach of the next harvest festival, which would end with the taking away of the third kafo—those boys between ten and fifteen rains in age—to a place far away from Juffure, to which they would return, after four moons, as men.

  Kunta and the others tried to act as if none of them were really giving the matter any particular thought or concern. But they thought of little else, and they watched and listened for the slightest sign or word from a grown-up that had anything at all to do with manhood training. And early in the dry season, after several of their fathers quietly left Juffure for two or three days and just as quietly returned, the boys whispered tensely among themselves, especially after Kalilu Conteh overheard his uncle say that much-needed repairs had been made on the jujuo, the manhood-training village that had gone unused and exposed to weather and animals for almost five rains since the last training had been completed there. Even more excited whispering followed talk among their fathers about which elder might be selected by the Council of Elders to be the kintango, the man in charge of manhood training. Kunta and all of his mates had many times heard their fathers, uncles, and older brothers speaking reverently of the kintangos who had supervised their own manhood training many rains before.

  It was just before the harvest season when all of the third-kafo boys reported to one another in a fever of excitement how their mothers had silently measured each of them with a sewing tape around his head and down to his shoulders. Kunta did his best to hide the vivid memory of that morning five rains before when, as brand-new little goatherds, he and his mates had been scared nearly out of their wits as they watched screaming boys under white hoods being kicked and jeered from the village by a band of terrifyingly masked, shrieking, spear-carrying kankurang dancers.

  The tobalo soon boomed out the beginning of the new harvest, and Kunta joined the rest of the villagers in the fields. He welcomed the long days of hard work, for they kept him too busy and too tired to give much thought to what lay ahead. But when the harvesting was done
and the festival began, he found himself unable to enjoy the music and the dancing and the feasting as the others did—as he himself had done for as long as he could remember. The louder the merriment, in fact, the unhappier he became until finally he spent most of the last two days of the festival sitting by himself on the banks of the bolong skipping stones across the water.

  On the night before the last day of the festival, Kunta was in Binta’s hut silently finishing his evening meal of groundnut stew with rice when Omoro walked in behind him. From the corner of his eye, Kunta glimpsed his father raising something white, and before he had a chance to turn around, Omoro had pulled a long hood down firmly over his head. The terror that shot through Kunta all but numbed him. He felt his father’s hand gripping his upper arm and urging him to stand up, then to move backward until he was pushed down onto a low stool. Kunta was grateful to sit, for his legs felt like water and his head felt light. He listened to himself breathing in short gasps, knowing that if he tried to move, he would fall off the stool. So he sat very still, trying to accustom himself to the darkness. Terrified as he was, it seemed almost a double darkness. As his upper lip felt the moist warmth of his breath inside the hood, it flashed through Kunta’s mind that surely once such a hood had been thrust in the same way over his father’s head. Could Omoro have been so frightened? Kunta couldn’t even imagine that, and he felt ashamed to be such a disgrace to the Kinte clan.

  It was very quiet in the hut. Wrestling the fear that knotted the pit of his stomach, Kunta closed his eyes and focused his very pores on trying to hear something, anything at all. He thought he heard Binta moving about, but he couldn’t be sure. He wondered where Lamin was, and Suwadu, who surely would be making noise. He knew only one thing for sure: Neither Binta nor anyone else was going to speak to him, let alone lift that hood off his head. And then Kunta thought how awful it would be if his hood did get lifted, for everyone would see how scared he really was, and perhaps therefore a boy unworthy of joining his kafo mates in manhood training.