The Book of Negroes

  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 le
ather 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.

  "Here in the middle is safest," Fanta whispered. "This is where my husband would tell me to walk,"

  "What happened to him?" I whispered.

  "When I was carried off, he was fighting two men," she said.

  "And the village?"

  "Half of it was burning."

  Fanta pressed her lips together and turned her face away, and I knew better than to ask another question.

  We passed scores of villages. I heard the beating of tam-tam drums, saw buzzards circling lazily in the sky and caught the smell of goat meat riding in the breeze, but there was no rescue. There weren't even any objections from villagers.

  One day, as we were passing a village, a man was taken from a walled enclosure and led to our captors. He was bound at the wrists, and was followed by children who watched the villagers negotiate with the captors. Finally, in exchange for copper manillas and salt, the captors took the man and yoked him to the last person in the coffle. The children began taunting the new captive. As the clamour grew, some of the bigger boys threw stones and rotting fruit peels at us. A stick flew into my thigh, drawing blood. I gasped and swallowed the cowrie shell that I had been keeping in my mouth for company. I choked as it made its way down, and ran behind Fomba for protection. Fomba did his best to block the flying objects and shouted at the boys to stop. Stark naked, hair matted and filthy, head held angled to the side, hands waving wildly, he was quite a sight. He was hit by a few stones and mangoes before the coffle leaders chased away the boys and hustled us from the village.

  I could not understand why we had been the amusement of those village boys. True, the children of Bayo—myself included—had teased Fomba all the time. But we had never hurt him. We had never yoked him by the neck, or deprived him of food. I had never seen captives passing outside our walled village. But if we had seen men, women and children yoked and forced to march like woloso, only worse, I hoped that we would have fought for them and freed them.

  That evening, Chekura brought a calabash of water and some soap made from shea nuts, and offered to help clean the wound on my thigh.

  "I can do it," I said.

  "Let me help," he said, aiming a thin stream of water so that it ran over my cut.

  "Why do the children in the villages taunt us?" I asked.

  "They are only boys, Aminata," Chekura said.

  "And all these villagers who sell goods to the captors and stand guard over us at night? Why do they help these men?"

  "Why do I help them?" he said. "What choice have they?"

  "They were not all sold by their uncles," I said.

  "We do not know their stories," Chekura said.

  The next day, when we passed a town, I felt relieved that nobody came out to throw stones or hurl insults. A few women bearing fruits and nuts clustered around our captors, and one of them watched me carefully, followed me for a moment, and then walked beside me. She removed the platter from her head and handed me a banana and small sack of peanuts. I could not understand her words, but her voice sounded kind. She placed her dry, dusty hand on my shoulder. It was such an unexpected gesture of kindness that my eyes filled with tears. She patted my shoulder, said something in an urgent tone and was gone before I had the chance to thank her.

  I HAD MY FIRST BLEEDING during our long march. I tried to calm myself by thinking that I wouldn't live much longer, and that my humiliation wouldn't last long. Cramps shot through my belly. In my nakedness, it was impossible to hide the blood running down my legs.

  When Chekura approached me, I hissed at him, "Go away."

  "Are you ill?"

  "Go away."

  "Have some water." I sipped from his skin of water, but refused to acknowledge him.

  "Have you been cut?"

  "Are you stupid?"

  "I can help you."

  "Leave me alone." He walked beside me for some time, but I was silent. Finally, he turned to walk away. As he did, I called out, "When we stop tonight, find me a woman from a village."

  He nodded and kept going.

  We settled for the evening on the outskirts of a village. Chekura disap
peared. Later, two women walked up to my captors, pointed at me and had an animated talk. They gave the captors some palm wine and then came up to me.

  The women chattered in a language I could not understand. One woman tugged my hand. I looked toward Chekura, who nodded that I was free to go. The woman led me by the hand while the other followed. We left the captives, who were settled under trees, and wandered past a sentry and inside a walled village. I saw a well, some round storage huts and some rectangular homes with mud walls similar to those of Bayo. The women led me behind a small home. Evidently, it belonged to the woman who had taken me by the hand. They brought me a cauldron of warm water and let me wash myself. When I was done, they led me inside, where it was cool, and had me sit on a bench. I looked for signs of knives or other instruments, wondering if they meant to do something to me, now that my womanhood was emerging. Just as my terror was reaching such a peak that I looked to see if anybody was blocking the door to prevent my escape, another woman came in carrying a blue cloth. She gave it to me, and signalled for me to wrap it around myself. It was long and wide enough to reach around my belly and backside. I felt so much better, and safer, with my privates covered. Suddenly I was hungry, and I realized that the shame of nakedness had kept my appetite at bay. Now that I was decent, they invited me to sit and eat with them, chatting at me all the while. Take the food. This I heard my mother saying to me, from the spirit lands. Take the food, child. These women won't hurt you.

  They gave me some goat meat with malaguetta pepper, dripping in a hot peanut sauce. It was delicious, but rich. I could feel my stomach revolting, and could only eat a little. They pressed a pouch of peanuts into my hand, as well as dried, salty strips of goat meat. They kept chattering at me, and I assumed they were asking about my family and my name. I answered in my own language, which made them shriek with laughter. Finally, they led me back to my captors. They seemed to be negotiating, offering, cajoling, but they could make no headway with the men in the group, who shook their heads and waved the women off. The women came back to me, squeezed my hands and touched the moons on my face. They told me something over and over again that I could not understand, and turned and left. I wished that I had been allowed to stay with them. I settled again under a tree, guarded by my captors, and felt too confused to sleep. I had no idea whether the people of the next village would show brutality or kindness.