From out of the woods, villagers brought a goat to Alassane. He inspected it before it was held down, sliced at the jugular, bled to death, and then skinned and butchered. I had never seen men prepare animals that quickly for consumption—Alassane's men were practised butchers and cooks. Villagers brought mangoes, oranges, millet flour, onions, malaguetta peppers and iron cauldrons. The cauldrons were suspended in the most ingenious manner from square iron grates built like tables with strong legs that sat over the fire. The stew bubbled for an hour in each of the cooking pots. I saw one of Alassane's aides oversee the process of draining about one-third of a firkin of rum into a huge calabash brought forward by a head villager. Payment, I supposed, for food and for the right of passage.
About half of the men—Alassane and all of his leading group of men included—prayed, kneeling in the dust, all facing east, before they ate. Many of the porters did not pray, but remained silent during the prayers. The last time I had seen Fulbe praying as a group was in my own village of Bayo, and it made me feel ill to think that men who shared the religion of my father made their fortunes from trading in slaves. I wondered for a time how a person who considered himself a good Muslim could treat other humans in such a way, but it occurred to me that the same question could be asked of Christians and Jews.
Having nothing better to do while Alassane and his men prayed, I climbed a tree, sat on a branch and pulled out the one book I had brought along—Olaudah Equiano's account of his own life—and read for a time. Shortly before the meal, Alassane walked over to the tree. I slid down to the ground to meet him.
"Go there," he said. His men had erected a small canvas tent in the shape of a pyramid. They had spread a mat inside it for sleeping, and a mat behind it for eating. "You will eat there. And sleep there. Every night, this you will do."
I didn't like the way Alassane issued orders. It made me wonder if men would try to speak to me like that when I got home, and if all my time of living independently had made me unfit for village life in Bayo.
I ate alone that night, and for the next ten nights, each time we made camp. The men huddled in their groups of ten around their cooking pots, and I was brought a generous portion of food. That was my only meal, although village children and women brought platters of fruit on their heads to the procession, and whenever oranges or pineapples were offered, I received my due. We were in a dense forest, and I was pleased to be behind the first ten men in the procession because of all the snakes and rodents that were flushed from the trail as we walked. We climbed in the direction of the mountains, and although we passed many groups on the way, Alassane and his men rarely stopped to address them.
The first time we passed a slave coffle, I counted forty-eight captives. The men were yoked about the necks and shackled at the feet. The women and children walked free, but were burdened with loads of food and salt on their heads. Male slaves carried ivory, camwood, ebony sculptures, water skins. I rarely saw a captive not required to carry, in his arms or on her head, a heavy burden. Some captives had eyes that were downturned and dead; others looked constantly to one side or the other, still hoping to come upon some means of escape. I could not look away from them, or stop wondering about the wives and husbands and children and parents that they had lost, forever, in this steady march to the sea. Terrified as they already were, I could imagine their tension boiling over into hysteria, wordlessness and in some cases madness when they were stuffed into slave ships like fish into buckets, hauled across the seas and sold—if they survived—at auctions. As a child, I had believed that any decent adult would not let any slave coffle pass unmolested. Yet here I was, silent and unable to act. I had no words of comfort to offer the men, women and children who passed me on the way to the sea, and there was nothing to do as our shoulders brushed on the narrow footpaths.
I dared not speak a word of Fulfulde to captors or captives. I did not want Alassane to know that I understood his language. Alassane kept a deliberate, quick pace. My legs were sore and I had one or two cuts on my feet, but in the first ten days I held up well, even as we ascended the hills.
I had time to let my mind wander during the long days of walking, and found myself thinking about what I would do when I returned home. I had spent more than forty years thinking about Bayo, but not about what I would do when I got there. Now I stopped to wonder who would greet me in the village and if anybody would remember my name, or my parents. Perhaps the people of Bayo would honour me for returning home to talk about life among the toubabu. Surely I would be the first to come back with such a tale. I realized that I wasn't concerned any longer with the things I wanted to do, but rather, with the place I wanted to be. All I really wanted to do was return to the place where my life began.
Occasionally, during the days, we stopped so that the porters could rest and drink water, and so that the Muslims could pray. One day, after the rest and the prayers, Alassane signalled for me to walk with him as we continued our trek in a northeasterly direction.
"You pray to Allah?" he asked.
"No," I said. I did not want Alassane to know that I had once been a Muslim, because I feared he would judge me, and perhaps punish me, for having left the faith. In my heart, I didn't feel that I had truly left the spiritual beliefs of my father—I had simply grown accustomed to letting them sit quietly at the back of my soul.
"You do not pray at all?" he said.
"I have my own prayers."
"To whom do you pray?"
I wanted to reinforce my connection to the English at Bance Island, so I said, "I pray to the God I discovered among the toubabu."
"You have walked with men for twelve days," he said. "Are you not tired?"
"My legs are sometimes heavy," I said. "But I want to go home."
"Home. Segu on the river."
"Bayo," I said, "near Segu on the river."
"How big is Bayo?"
"It had twenty families when I was last there."
"And you say this was your home, and where you once lived?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you not know where it is?"
I did not want to speak to him about once having been a captive, so I said nothing.
"It is not correct for an old woman to walk this far. Where is your husband? Where are your children? Where are your grandchildren?"
I imagined it would be inconceivable for him to think that I did not have a family. "They are waiting for me," I said, "in Bayo."
He laughed. That made me worry. He did not believe me, after all.
"Go back now," he said.
I dropped into position, stuck behind the men who guarded his back but ahead of his porters. I wished there were another woman on the trip, in the same way I had wished for children on my journey to the coast long ago.
Fifteen days into the trip north, my bones began to ache and my skin felt cold. As I struggled to keep up, I thought I saw my father ahead on the trail, his arms stretched out in greeting. I believed I could see Fomba skinning rabbits and goats for all the people of Bayo. I knew they were not there, but still I kept seeing them.
On the sixteenth day, I could barely walk. We had ascended the mountains and come down the other side, and we were now entering much less densely wooded forests, with more grasses, fewer trees, and more open spaces. This looked more like the land from which I had come, but I remembered that as a child I had walked endlessly through these lands before reaching the mountains. Two hours into the morning's walk, I dropped. I heard shouting, and the commotion of feet all around me. Someone carried me under a tree and tried to pour water into my open mouth, which made me choke. Next, I was carried into a tent. As I was laid down, I could make out Alassane's angry voice in a heated discussion. I gave a man chinchona bark to boil into an infusion of tea.
By the next day, I was able to walk again. It felt as if half the strength had drained from my legs, and I was grateful that I had no load to bear on my head. I saw Alassane watching me for signs of faltering, but my legs gradually
regained their strength as my stomach and bowels settled. I remembered feeling confusion as a child when older people just couldn't keep up with the coffle. I had thought back then that they would avoid all sorts of trouble simply by speeding up. But now, walking with just a fraction of the strength that I had once had, I looked back with admiration at all the vulnerable people—pregnant women, old women and old men—who had survived the long walk to the coast. Most people I had met in the Colonies—any people at all, who had not themselves been stolen from Africa—imagined that captives had been scooped up on the coast. It made me think once more of the men who had drawn elephants and lions on their maps of Africa. They had no idea who we were, how we lived, or how strong we had been just to make it to the Colonies.
When we were twenty-one days into the journey, I asked Alassane how much progress we had made toward Segu.
"It is very far" was all he would say.
After another ten days of walking, I awoke in the night to the sound of men talking and arguing. Alassane and his advisers were sitting at a fire nearby; I remained perfectly still in my tent.
"She sleeps," one man said in Temne.
"Use Fulfulde, to be safe," Alassane said.
"She was as stupid as a mule to make this trip with us, and she slows us down," one man complained.
"She is not stupid, but she is a woman." That was Alassane speaking. "Quiet now."
I heard Alassane say that in two days, we would be arriving at the village of Kassam, a place where slaves were sold. A route south from there led to the coast, far east of Bance Island.
"When we get there," Alassane said, "I will sell the woman."
"What will you sell her for?"
"It doesn't matter. We shall see. Five bolts of cloth, perhaps. She is old. But she speaks many languages. The toubabu at Bance say that she catches babies with great facility. We must sell her now, while she is still healthy. It will soon be hot, and she will soon be ill. And then nobody will buy her."
For a moment, I could not believe the words. Surely Alassane would honour his promises to me. Surely he would not forget that he had already accepted my three barrels of rum.
The men in the tent laughed; I heard Alassane join in. It was almost inconceivable. Goosebumps rose all over my arms. I could not go on living if all my years of longing for liberty and homeland were to lead me back to the neck yokes and ankle chains of my childhood abduction.
I put my palm over my mouth, to calm myself with the warmth of my own breath, but also to stifle any cry that might escape my lips.
The man-stealers planned to sell me after all.
I knew in that moment that I would never make it back home, and I began to plan my escape.
All of the next day, as we walked northeast, I sucked at a chunk of salt and drank as frequently as I could. Every cluster of homes that we walked past, every village that I saw off in the distance, I tried to burn into my memory. Every group of people we passed on the trail—and we were constantly passing villagers, hunters, slavers with their coffles—I studied, and listened as hard as I could. I checked to see if I could understand their language, or determine if they were friendly, or figure out if they lived nearby.
I felt shivers and shakes in my bones again. The fever was returning. I slid once into the woods, on a water break, and felt that half of my body flooded out of me as I crouched and emptied my bowels. But I focused on what I had to do, struggled to show no sign of discomfort, and prayed and prayed for the late afternoon. As always, two hours before the sun set, Alassane's procession stopped and set up camp, and I ate because I did not know when I might eat again. What I could not eat, I buried in a hole that I dug behind my tent, so that no person could report to Alassane that I had not finished my meal.
As soon as night fell and the men were sleeping, I gathered my belongings— the pouch for the water, which I had filled before dark, and the dried bark for the fever, and my leather pouch of scarves and coins—and I slipped directly into the woods behind my tent.
I walked for a mile or two southwest, back by the trail we had taken that day, but when I came to the creek I had seen that afternoon, I slipped into it and walked barefoot on the bed, over the stones, for as long as I could endure. Now I was travelling northwest, but the men would try to overtake me by turning back and going southwest. They would look for my footprints and scour the forests near the trail. They would be better at tracking me than I would be at hiding. I could not beat them in the game they knew best, and could only avoid them by outwitting them entirely.
I walked as far as I could in the night, stopping frequently to empty my bowels. Each time, I drank water, sucked a chunk of salt and then walked on. Finally, around daybreak, I came across a cave and climbed far into it, feeling at that moment that I would sooner confront any beast than a man. I slept all day. When I woke, night was falling and I headed out again. For three nights, I struggled forward, hiding during the day until I was weak with illness and lack of food. I had cut my foot too, on a sharp branch, and the redness was worsening around the source of the cut, though I bathed it as frequently as possible in river streams.
Late one afternoon, I saw a man tending goats on a hill. He stood motionless, watching as I struggled uphill toward him. Halfway up the rise to him, I slipped and fell, and exhaustion sank over me as surely as the sun sets. I could not get up. He came to me tentatively, beating the grasses as he walked. I tried Bamanankan. He said something that I could not understand. I tried to get up, but he motioned for me to stay there and brought me a leather skin of water. I drank of it freely, and vomited. I tried Temne. No answer. I tried Fulfulde, and he understood my words: "Help me. Hide me. Take me to your women, please."
He was young and he was wiry, but he was strong enough to carry me easily. He took me to the shade of a tree, gave me his water pouch and told me to wait. He returned with three men, four women and a cot made of saplings and rope. It looked like something for carrying injured warriors. On I was loaded, as the women fussed and asked me questions—who was I and where was I from?—and we walked, it seemed, for hours. Every time we hit a bump, my bones shouted with pain. Fever crawled through them all: my neck, back, knees and ankles. We came to a village of mud homes and thatched roofs. I was relieved it was so small; no slavers would look there. I was carried into the shade of one home. I slept and drank water for days before I could stir from the bed.
As I entered into consciousness, I noticed a small form drifting in and out of my room. I blinked. The face of a mule was peering at me. Then a bright little voice criticized it, and a young girl with a wooden stick entered, and smacked the animal with her switch, and it retreated. She brought me water. She was perhaps eight years old.
"What is your name?" I asked in Fulfulde.
"Aminata," she said.
"I too am Aminata," I said, pointing at my chest and repeating my name.
Her face lit up in a smile as wide as the day.
"Aminata," she said, pointing to herself and to me, and saying the name again.
"Food," I said.
"Later," she said.
She looked at me for a time, and then asked, "Are you a toubab?"
"Do I look like one?" I asked.
"I have not seen a toubab."
"Toubabu are the colour of pink and white, or the colour of a certain pale calabash," I said.
"Toubabu eat people like we eat goats," she said.
"Not the ones I know," I said.
"You have seen them?"
"I have lived among them. In their land."
"You lie," she said. With that, she giggled and danced out of the hut.
I slept again, drank more, sucked at some salt and ate a mango. As I licked and sucked at the stringy pit, not knowing when I might eat again, I understood what I had to do. If I managed to escape Alassane and his men, I would do whatever I could so that nobody else fell into his hands—or those of any other slave-trader.
Most of my lifetime had passed since I had last see
n Bayo, and I was not even sure I would recognize it. Would it still have a mud wall bordering the houses? Would the chief still have four small round houses, one for each wife? Would I hear the pounding of millet and shea nuts as I entered the village? Perhaps there would be no village at all, or perhaps it had survived and expanded to ten times its original size. If Bayo was still there, I could not be sure that one person would recognize my face.
From the day I was stolen, thoughts of home had made it impossible for me to feel I belonged anywhere I lived. Perhaps if I had been able to keep my husband and to live for years with him and our children, I would have learned to feel settled in a new place. But my family never settled in its nest. We never had any nest at all. But after I heard Alassane's words, I felt no more longing for Bayo—only a determination to stay free. And now, as I waited for my strength to return in a hut belonging to people I didn't even know, I let go of my greatest desire. I would never go back home.
Falconbridge had called my bargain with the slavers "a deal with the devil." He was right, but he was wrong to say that it was better than no deal at all. I had entrusted my life to a man who sold people in the same way that he sold goats. He would sell me as he had bought and sold so many others. And I had helped him in his work. I had offered myself to him and paid him for the privilege. Who knew how many people my three barrels of rum might purchase? I would sooner swallow poison than live twenty more years as the property of another man—African or toubab. Bayo, I could live without. But for freedom, I would die.
A FEW DAYS AFTER I BEGAN EATING AGAIN, the villagers brought me to a meeting area, and introduced a headman from another village.
"Is it true, that you have crossed the ocean in a toubabu canoe, and that you have lived among them?" The man seemed to speak for them all.
"Yes."
"Can you prove it?"
"How would I do such a thing?" I asked.