Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  “Nothing but skin and bones!” Grandma Yaisa would exclaim, making a loud clicking noise with her tongue every time she saw Kunta. But in fact his grandma was almost as thin as he; for every storehouse in Juffure was now completely empty. What few of the village’s cattle and goats and chickens had not been eaten or sacrificed had to be kept alive—and fed—if there was to be a next year’s crop of kids and calves and baby chicks. So the people began to eat rodents, roots, and leaves foraged from in and around the village on searchings that began when the sun rose and ended when it set.

  If the men had gone to the forests to hunt wild game, as they frequently did at other times of the year, they wouldn’t have had the strength to drag it back to the village. Tribal taboos forbade the Mandinkas to eat the abounding monkeys and baboons; nor would they touch the many hens’ eggs that lay about, or the millions of big green bullfrogs that Mandinkas regarded as poisonous. And as devout Moslems, they would rather have died than eat the flesh of the wild pigs that often came rooting in herds right through the village.

  For ages, families of cranes had nested in the topmost branches of the village’s silk-cotton tree, and when the young hatched, the big cranes shuttled back and forth bringing fish, which they had just caught in the bolong, to feed their babies. Watching for the right moment, the grandmothers and the children would rush beneath the tree, whooping and hurling small sticks and stones upward at the nest. And often, in the noise and confusion, a young crane’s gaping mouth would miss the fish, and the fish would miss the nest and come slapping down among the tall tree’s thick foliage to the ground. The children would struggle over the prize, and someone’s family would have a feast for dinner. If one of the stones thrown up by the children happened to hit a gawky, pin-feathered young crane, it would sometimes fall from the high nest along with the fish, killing or injuring itself in the crash against the ground; and that night a few families would have crane soup. But such meals were rare.

  By the late evening, each family would meet back at their hut, bringing whatever each individual had found—perhaps even a mole or a handful of large grubworms, if they were lucky—for that night’s pot of soup, heavily peppered and spiced to improve the taste. But such fare filled their bellies without bringing nourishment. And so it was that the people of Juffure began to die.

  CHAPTER 5

  More and more often now, the high-pitched howling of a woman would be heard throughout the village. The fortunate were those babies and toddlers yet too young to understand, for even Kunta was old enough to know that the howling meant a loved one had just died. In the afternoons, usually, some sick farmer who had been out cutting weeds in his field would be carried back to the village on a bullock’s hide, lying very still.

  And disease had begun to swell the legs of some adults. Yet others developed fevers with heavy perspiration and trembling chills. And among all the children, small areas on their arms or legs would puff up, rapidly grow larger and painfully sore, then the puffed areas would split, leaking a pinkish fluid that soon became a full, yellow, stinking pus that drew buzzing flies.

  The hurting of the big open sore on Kunta’s leg made him stumble while trying to run one day. Falling hard, he was picked up by his playmates, stunned and yelling, with his forehead bleeding. Since Binta and Omoro were away farming, they rushed him to the hut of Grandma Yaisa, who for a number of days now had not appeared in the nursery hut.

  She looked very weak, her black face gaunt and drawn, and she was sweating under her bullock hide on her bamboo pallet. But when she saw Kunta, she sprang up to wipe his bleeding forehead. Embracing him tightly, she ordered the other children to run and bring her some kelelalu ants. When they returned, Grandma Yaisa tightly pressed together the skin’s split edges, then pressed one struggling driver ant after another against the wound. As each ant angrily clamped its strong pincers into the flesh on each side of the cut, she deftly snapped off its body, leaving the head in place, until the wound was stitched together.

  Dismissing the other children, she told Kunta to lie down and rest alongside her on the bed. He lay and listened to her labored breathing as she remained silent for some time. Then Grandma Yaisa’s hand gestured toward a pile of books on the shelf beside her bed. Speaking slowly and softly, she told Kunta more about his grandfather, whose books she said those were.

  In his native country of Mauretania, Kairaba Kunta Kinte had thirty-five rains of age when his teacher, a master marabout, gave him the blessing that made him a holy man, said Grandma Yaisa. Kunta’s grandfather had followed a family tradition of holy men that dated back many hundreds of rains into Old Mali. As a man of the fourth kafo, he had begged the old marabout to accept him as a student, and for the next fifteen rains had traveled with his party of wives, slaves, students, cattle and goats as he pilgrimaged from village to village in the service of Allah and his subjects. Over dusty foot trails and muddy creeks, under hot suns and cold rains, through green valleys and windy wastelands, said Grandma Yaisa, they had trekked southward from Mauretania.

  Upon receiving his ordination as a holy man, Kairaba Kunta Kinte had himself wandered for many moons alone, among places in Old Mali such as Keyla, Djeela, Kangaba, and Timbuktu, humbly prostrating himself before very great old holy men and imploring their blessings for his success, which they all freely gave. And Allah then guided the young holy man’s footsteps in a southerly direction, finally to The Gambia, where he stopped first in the village of Pakali N’Ding.

  In a short while, the people of this village knew, by the quick results from his prayers, that this young holy man had upon him Allah’s special favor. Talking drums spread the news, and soon other villages tried to lure him away, sending messengers with offers of prime maidens for wives, and slaves and cattle and goats. And before long he did move, this time to the village of Jiffarong, but only because Allah had called him there, for the people of Jiffarong had little to offer him but their gratitude for his prayers. It was here that he heard of the village of Juffure, where people were sick and dying for lack of a big rain. And so at last he came to Juffure, said Grandma Yaisa, where for five days, ceaselessly, he had prayed until Allah sent down the big rain that saved the village.

  Learning of Kunta’s grandfather’s great deed, the King of Barra himself, who ruled this part of The Gambia, personally presented a choice virgin for the young holy man’s first wife, and her name was Sireng. By Sireng, Kairaba Kunta Kinte begot two sons—and he named them Janneh and Saloum.

  By now, Grandma Yaisa had sat up on her bamboo pallet. “It was then,” she said with shining eyes, “that he saw Yaisa, dancing the seoruba! My age was fifteen rains!” She smiled widely, showing her toothless gums. “He needed no king to choose his next wife!” She looked at Kunta. “It was from my belly that he begot your papa Omoro.”

  That night, back in his mother’s hut, Kunta lay awake for a long time, thinking of the things Grandma Yaisa had told him. Many times, Kunta had heard about the grandfather holy man whose prayers had saved the village, and whom later Allah had taken back. But Kunta had never truly understood until now that this man was his father’s father, that Omoro had known him as he knew Omoro, that Grandma Yaisa was Omoro’s mother as Binta was his own. Some day, he too would find a woman such as Binta to bear him a son of his own. And that son, in turn ...

  Turning over and closing his eyes, Kunta followed these deep thoughts slowly into sleep.

  CHAPTER 6

  Just before sundown for the next few days, after returning from the rice field, Binta would send Kunta to the village well for a calabash of fresh water, which she would use to boil a soup from whatever scraps she could find. Then she and Kunta would take some of the soup across the village to Grandma Yaisa. Binta moved more slowly than usual, it seemed to Kunta, and he noticed that her belly was very big and heavy.

  While Grandma Yaisa protested weakly that she would soon feel well again, Binta would clean up the hut and arrange things. And they would leave Grandma Yaisa propped up on
her bed, eating a bowl of soup along with some of Binta’s hungry-season bread, made from the yellow powder that covered the dry black beans of the wild locust tree.

  Then one night, Kunta awakened to find himself being shaken roughly by his father. Binta was making low, moaning sounds on her bed, and also within the hut, moving quickly about, were Nyo Boto and Binta’s friend Jankay Touray. Omoro hurried across the village with Kunta, who, wondering what all of this was about, soon drifted back to sleep on his father’s bed.

  In the morning, Omoro again awakened Kunta and said, “You have a new brother.” Scrambling sleepily onto his knees and rubbing his eyes, Kunta thought it must be something very special to so please his usually stern father. In the afternoon, Kunta was with his kafo mates, looking for things to eat, when Nyo Boto called him and took him to see Binta. Looking very tired, she sat on the edge of her bed gently caressing the baby in her lap. Kunta stood a moment studying the little wrinkly black thing, then he looked at the two women smiling at it, and he noticed that the familiar bigness of Binta’s stomach was suddenly gone. Going back outside without a word, Kunta stood for a long moment and then, instead of rejoining his friends, went off to sit by himself behind his father’s hut and think about what he had seen.

  Kunta continued sleeping in Omoro’s hut for the next seven nights—not that anyone seemed to notice or care, in their concern for the new baby. He was beginning to think that his mother didn’t want him any more—or his father, either—until, on the evening of the eighth day, Omoro called him before his mother’s hut, along with everyone else in Juffure who was physically able, to hear the new baby given his chosen name, which was Lamin.

  That night Kunta slept peacefully and well—back in his own bed beside his mother and his new brother. But within a few days, as soon as her strength had returned, Binta began to take the baby, after cooking and serving something for Omoro’s and Kunta’s breakfast, and spent most of each day in the hut of Grandma Yaisa. From the worried expressions that both Binta and Omoro wore, Kunta knew that Grandma Yaisa was very sick.

  Late one afternoon, a few days later, he and his kafo mates were out picking mangoes, which had finally ripened. Bruising the tough, orange-yellow skin against the nearest rock, they would bite open one plump end to squeeze and suck out the soft sweet flesh within. They were collecting basketfuls of monkey apples and wild cashew nuts when Kunta suddenly heard the howling of a familiar voice from the direction of his grandma’s hut. A chill shot through him, for it was the voice of his mother, raised in the death wail that he had heard so often in recent weeks. Other women immediately joined in a keening cry that soon spread all the way across the village. Kunta ran blindly toward his grandmother’s hut.

  Amid the milling confusion, Kunta saw an anguished Omoro and a bitterly weeping old Nyo Boto. Within moments, the tobalo drum was being beaten and the jaliba was loudly crying out the good deeds of Grandma Yaisa’s long life in Juffure. Numb with shock, Kunta stood watching blankly as the young unmarried women of the village beat up dust from the ground with wide fans of plaited grass, as was the custom on the occasion of a death. No one seemed to notice Kunta.

  As Binta and Nyo Boto and two other shrieking women entered the hut, the crowd outside fell to their knees and bowed their heads. Kunta burst suddenly into tears, as much in fear as in grief. Soon men came with a large, freshly split log and set it down in front of the hut. Kunta watched as the women brought out and laid on the log’s flat surface the body of his grandmother, enclosed from her neck to her feet in a white cotton winding cloth.

  Through his tears, Kunta saw the mourners walk seven circles around Yaisa, praying and chanting as the alimamo wailed that she was journeying to spend eternity with Allah and her ancestors. To give her strength for that journey, young unmarried men tenderly placed cattle horns filled with fresh ashes all around her body.

  After most of the mourners had filed away, Nyo Boto and other old women took up posts nearby, huddling and weeping and squeezing their heads with their hands. Soon, young women brought the biggest ciboa leaves that could be found, to protect the old women’s heads from rain through their vigil. And as the old women sat, the village drums talked about Grandma Yaisa far into the night.

  In the misty morning, according to the custom of the forefathers, only the men of Juffure—those who were able to walk—joined the procession to the burying place, not far past the village, where otherwise none would go, out of the Mandinkas’ fearful respect for the spirits of their ancestors. Behind the men who bore Grandma Yaisa on the log came Omoro, carrying the infant Lamin and holding the hand of little Kunta, who was too frightened to cry. And behind them came the other men of the village. The stiff, white-wrapped body was lowered into the freshly dug hole, and over her went a thick woven cane mat. Next were thorn bushes, to keep out the digging hyenas, and the rest of the hole was packed tight with stones and a mound of fresh earth.

  Afterward, for many days, Kunta hardly ate or slept, and he would not go anywhere with his kafo mates. So grieved was he that Omoro, one evening, took him to his own hut, and there beside his bed, speaking to his son more softly and gently than he ever had before, told him something that helped to ease his grief.

  He said that three groups of people lived in every village. First were those you could see—walking around, eating, sleeping, and working. Second were the ancestors, whom Grandma Yaisa had now joined.

  “And the third people—who are they?” asked Kunta.

  “The third people,” said Omoro, “are those waiting to be born.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The rains had ended, and between the bright blue sky and the damp earth, the air was heavy with the fragrance of lush wild blooms and fruits. The early mornings echoed with the sound of the women’s mortars pounding millet and couscous and groundnuts—not from the main harvest, but from those early-growing seeds that the past year’s harvest had left living in the soil. The men hunted, bringing back fine, plump antelope, and after passing out the meat, they scraped and cured the hides. And the women busily collected the ripened reddish mangkano berries, shaking the bushes over cloths spread beneath, then drying the berries in the sun before pounding them to separate the delicious futo flour from the seeds. Nothing was wasted. Soaked and boiled with pounded millet, the seeds were cooked into a sweetish breakfast gruel that Kunta and everyone else welcomed as a seasonal change of diet from their usual morning meal of couscous porridge.

  As food became more plentiful each day, new life flowed into Juffure in ways that could be seen and heard. The men began to walk more briskly to and from their farms, pridefully inspecting their bountiful crops, which would soon be ready for harvesting. With the flooded river now subsiding rapidly, the women were rowing daily to the faro and pulling out the last of the weeds from among the tall, green rows of rice.

  And the village rang again with the yelling and laughing of the children back at play after the long hungry season. Bellies now filled with nourishing food, sores dried into scabs and falling away, they dashed and frolicked about as if possessed. One day they would capture some big scarab dung beetles, line them up for a race, and cheer the fastest to run outside a circle drawn in the dirt with a stick. Another day, Kunta and Sitafa Silla, his special friend, who lived in the hut next to Binta’s, would raid a tall earth mound to dig up the blind, wingless termites that lived inside, and watch them pour out by the thousands and scurry frantically to get away.

  Sometimes the boys would rout out little ground squirrels and chase them into the bush. And they loved nothing better than to hurl stones and shouts at passing schools of small, brown, long-tailed monkeys, some of which would throw a stone back before swinging up to join their screeching brothers in the topmost branches of a tree. And every day the boys would wrestle, grabbing each other, sprawling down, grunting, scrambling and springing up to start all over again, each one dreaming of the day when he might become one of Juffure’s champion wrestlers and be chosen to wage mighty battles with the
champions of other villages during the harvest festivals.

  Adults passing anywhere near the children would solemnly pretend not to see nor hear as Sitafa, Kunta, and the rest of their kafo growled and roared like lions, trumpeted like elephants, and grunted like wild pigs, or as the girls—cooking and tending their dolls and beating their couscous—played mothers and wives among themselves. But however hard they were playing, the children never failed to pay every adult the respect their mothers had taught them to show always toward their elders. Politely looking the adults in the eyes, the children would ask, “Kerabe?” (Do you have peace?) And the adults would reply, “Kera dorong.” (Peace only.) And if an adult offered his hand, each child in turn would clasp it with both hands, then stand with palms folded over his chest until that adult passed by.

  Kunta’s home-training had been so strict that, it seemed to him, his every move drew Binta’s irritated finger—snapping—if, indeed, he wasn’t grabbed and soundly whipped. When he was eating, he would get a cuff on the head if Binta caught his eyes on anything except his own food. And unless he washed off every bit of dirt when he came into the hut from a hard day’s play, Binta would snatch up her scratchy sponge of dried plant stems and her bar of homemade soap and make Kunta think she was going to scrape off his very hide.

  For him ever to stare at her, or at his father, or at any other adult, would earn him a slap as quickly as when he committed the equally serious offense of interrupting the conversation of any grown-up. And for him ever to speak anything but truth would have been unthinkable. Since there never seemed any reason for him to lie, he never did.

  Though Binta didn’t seem to think so, Kunta tried his best to be a good boy, and soon began to practice his home-training lessons with the other children. When disagreements occurred among them, as they often did—sometime fanning into exchanges of harsh words and finger-snapping—Kunta would always turn and walk away, thus displaying the dignity and self-command that his mother had taught him were the proudest traits of the Mandinka tribe.