Me, I come from the land of Nupe. It’s there I was born beneath a sun grown black from seeking it. From my mother, gone up too soon, I inherited my smile, that celebration performed by the lips when the earth drinks the sky and the trees eat their fill.
Suddenly, the country is no longer the country. The men take flight, the day runs off. I’m dreaming. Wrapped in fiery breath. I rise into the sky to find maman again.
That time never came. I remained down here. In our land. In the hut with few doors, in the darkness inside to keep life from slipping away.
Our land is a land of earth, knows not the sea. Just the curve of the plains. The laughter of the water that flows between green banks, there where our animals graze, where our women wear down the stone until all is scrubbed clean, smells fresh, good. Under fingernails, in the folds of their loincloth, there is always a red-brown powder, the color, the scent we carry with us everywhere.
Our village is a small village. Ten hands are enough to count its people. Its chickens, too, and cows, and the hyenas that chuckle, prowl in the night outside the village walls.
Certain times, fear wells up to disturb sleep. Huts cower, bodies huddle, ears prick up at the sound of approaching savages. Death galloping into the village. Filling the night with a dirge of clashing iron.
One of those wars abducted my father and took me far from the village to a king. I, small daughter of Nupe, became a captive.
*
It is nighttime, a cool night early in the dry season. There’s a forest, dense, so dark, I feel it closing in around me. Leaves rustle, the earth rumbles. I tremble. Surely, I will die, gobbled alive by some savage beast. In among the trees, where I’m forced to march, I can hardly breathe, think I must be dreaming when the column halts and a city suddenly looms before us, enclosed by a wall protecting the palace, at its heart.
It is a hut of huts. A room big as a village. There’s a path that leads into a courtyard, a courtyard that opens onto a path, a succession of spaces that keep coming back, as if we’re going around in circles. The roundabout stops when a door gives way to reveal a dark, filthy room packed with a hundred captives. All are handsome and strong. I find a space to lie down among them, I understand that we have arrived.
The next day, only some ten of us remain, the night swallowed the others. I was sleeping when they left. The man who abducted me returns. We follow him again, wander from room to room, keep walking until we reach another hut. At first, I see only its floor because a slave never raises the eyes unless so ordered.
Forehead pressed to the ground, I prostrate myself before the All-Powerful, this king who, like the gods of my village, holds over us all rights. At his command, we will depart the earth for the heavens in an instant, our miserable lives cut short. We are his people, his things, his property. Under his orders and for his exclusive use. We are whatever he deigns to make of us. Beasts in the fields, slaves in the bedroom, bodies disgorged, quartered, buried alive, offered up in sacrifice.
On the straw pallet where we are made to sleep, I hear the song of the wind. Breach the walls, batter forests and savannahs, flee far from the palisades pointing at the sky like weapons.
Where are my sands, my flowers, my suns? My tiny country with its skies that laugh and cry? This house is too vast, it is not mine. Not the house, not me, this ripening body. Like the earth, my body gives like the earth.
I, small daughter of Nupe, I am becoming a woman.
I MUST HAVE been twelve years old when they moved me to the other side, the sleeping quarters of the queen’s personal slaves. Five years I remained there. I am sure of it. Each time my blood flowed, I kept count. I lacked for nothing there. Always ate my fill, slept in a clean bed. The queen, our mistress, was not a spiteful woman. It’s only later that she changed. We were seven in her service. All young girls, foreign, abducted one fine day, and who would never return to the village.
To avoid falling, I, daughter of Nupe, worked even harder. With a lot of work, the sun doesn’t last.
The earth opens its door.
The palace, reawakening at dawn with a clatter, is already bustling. My mistress’s grooming completed, I cross the square courtyard to enter the room of bronzes. It’s a dark room scarcely wider than a corridor where none ventures but the sure and hardened foot. There reigns a silence of muffled anguish, in which reason, casually dismissed, loses its way. After that, nothing remains but the mysteries. The masks surging from the walls, made up with ashes and dried blood. The faces in shadow that speak of the night.
Plunged in impenetrable dreams stand bronzes in each corner. Armed with slings and wearing skullcaps, the great men slumber. Awaken to the rumble of the prophetic drum. Attack! Fight to the end, until the enemy is no more. Indifferent to the fine red dust now filling the room, I polish my mistress’s treasures. So she’ll have no complaint.
The bell rings. I close the door behind me and hurry to the royal chamber.
I knock. Enter and kneel, when a man’s hand grabs me, shoves me out of the room and beats me. To death. I must have committed some offense. The man curses me. I lose consciousness.
I am lost.
*
They gathered me up as the wind was whitening the trees. It happened at dawn. They arrived, astride their beasts. At a gallop, seething with war cries, champing on the dust that filled the air. Forty days that I hadn’t seen the sun, shut up under double-lock, left to the mercy of darkness, fear, and evil. Thirty-nine nights chasing mosquitoes, finding ways to trick death. Gulping down watery soup of beans that give colic.
I’ve eaten nothing for three days, when the door opens and someone hauls me out. Now dismounted, the men look smaller, surround me and touch me. Close up, their skin is pale, wrinkled leather. Pointed noses. Hair that curls under their scarf. They talk. Utter crude sounds that scrape the ear, grate on the throat. Then, it’s all over for me. They bind my wrists and drag me into the arid kingdom of infinity.
The sun is white. Skies slide past and I’m thirsty. My new masters trot along a few arm’s lengths ahead of me and, when they remember my presence, spare me a few drops of water. Which I absorb straightaway and immediately forget.
On the road of endless sand, I watch them live. Hunt, belch, bow down toward the East. What are they saying in their now-lilting tongue? What do their hearts hear that I cannot? Suddenly, one of them points a finger at the horizon. Look! Fires at an encampment, which we reach at nightfall.
Worn out from collecting so much wood, the Negroes finish setting up the tents. The masters savor a mechoui while a slave offers me a calabash of milk.
Then, only then, do I open my eyes.
There is no sun, nothing but sky. Limitless, crushing all human vanities. There are no longer men, only beasts that moo, bray, ruminate, tread toward death. Hunger always hovers, no matter, we have to keep walking, follow sheep, horses, camels at the risk of stumbling, not getting up again, receiving a final thrashing before the master departs. Because I’m frail and only recently attached, it is I who take the place of others. More than once they strike me, I, small daughter of Nupe, who is now worth no more than sand.
Another day and nothing has changed. The desert remains. A woman dead among us Negroes, accused of having stolen food from one of the white dromedaries. We don’t bury her, instead release her on the desert’s wings.
The dead woman brings us good luck, after the yellow comes green. Green palm, acacia, and finally an oasis where we hasten to set up the tents. Busy gathering kindling, I don’t see the man come up behind me.
Violence fills our masters’ eyes, curses fill their mouths as they burn our bellies. Afterward, they always laugh, liken us to the black monkeys that inhabit the mountains of Arabia. We’re demons, they tell us, the very demons condemned by their law, if they don’t turn their back, they’ll face the fires of Gehenna. Hell is a faraway country where it is too hot, too hot. Where the disobedient and the unbelievers, those who have not chosen the straight path, are tossed.
THE STORM has ended, the caravan starts off again, hesitates on rocky ground planted with thorns. Today, it’s the new captives’ turn to gather seeds. Preceded by two oxen bearing their loads, we head toward the East at a feverish pace, our eyes burning from the rays of the rising sun, bodies trembling in fear of running into a snake or one of those black beasts that sting. The danger grows. From the sand, declaring itself free to do as it pleases, swirling about our feet, lying in wait. From one dune to the next death prowls, tempting the fiercest among us.
Unharmed, we return to the encampment, rattled by angry turbulence since the sky is in a rage. To the clamor of the wind are added the bellows of animals, anguished, prostrate, or mad. Between xaïmas, where nothing is left, the goats bleat, the camels bellow, indifferent to what nature has given them.
First drops. Silence under the white canvas tents where men and women, their memory recovered, mutter prayers. What do they fear losing? What good is their ardor, their dogged determination to live? From what well do they draw their faith, which fades at day’s first light and awaits the sun’s peak to be practiced?
Rain, clouds, wind, hail in torrents. Canvases and tent stakes collapse. In vain, we prop the tents back up again, chase after the cattle. The sky is a furnace, the clouds are ablaze. The sand dissolves to mud, where hooves, heads, chests founder.
What a spectacle! Death, with full-throated howls, attacks at full tilt.
At the top of the hill where I’ve found shelter, where I watch the encampment sinking into the earth like a scorpion, there is a man praying, his forehead pressed to the earth. Before him who grants mercy, the Merciful One, this man of faith kneels. God of clemency, Merciful One.
Toward the East, I will walk. My only baggage, the book given by the sainted man before he disappeared. Like the clothing on my skin, he will walk with me. Offer me his arm, his tongue, his signs, which dance, alive like tiny flames. Which my mouth patiently intones.
I, small daughter of Nupe, believe.
*
I straddled rivers, wandered under chattering skies, saw the moon go down and the rain come up. I slept in savannahs, unraveled sleep in the forests with trees taller than tree shadows. I suckled mangoes, nourished my body with pomegranates, bananas, walnuts that seemed to fall from the sky into my hands. I was a Peul among Peuls, a Mossi in Mossi lands, Mande, Bambara, Yoruba. Man, woman, child.
Queen here, dog there, when fearful villagers shut themselves up in their huts, gathered rocks and chunks of wood to stone me.
I, small daughter of Nupe.
The night is mild. The moon is full, breastfeeding the earth. I sit naked, both hands resting on the book. Heart at peace, body drained at the end of this long walk. It matters not where I am, West, East, near, far . . . I am here, alone for a few hours more, before setting out again on the trail of irons.
I was in the land of Borgu when they captured me. A few leagues from home, from the hill from which, in times past, I used to study our hut with its dark inside. I was sleeping, yes, when they came back.
*
Again, the trail. Travel to the ends of the country. Where there will be nothing more ahead, nothing after, but death.
The woods recede. The living being hesitates. In vain, I watch for hoofprints of the most recent warthogs. The only sound is the song of our chains. The ground rustles, strewn with white and ginger shells. Holding them to the ear teaches. A violent wind blows in there, like the one that is now whipping my skin. Under a sun whose bristling rays shatter the oppressive landscape. A flat country bordered by a lagoon, where manly limbs on thick, leafy trees shake with insolent heft. Teems with plants, as if escaped from hell, with thorns that intimidate. Clouds of insects swarm in buzzing columns of black smoke.
Stepping carefully here is essential. One captive learns at his own expense when, soaking his feet in the water of the swamps, he loses balance. Help! The man flails. To no end. Two monsters battle over him already, their tails thrashing him before their jaws close around what’s left of the wretch. Horrified, we probe the depths, thinking, in every ripple among the mangrove leaves, we see the crocodile’s shadow.
We arrive in the village. The northern section of the village where some ten big huts seem to await us. Each barracoon, for that’s what my new masters call these sheds, houses forty captives. They sit clumped together, like a single man, gaping eyes locked on those who have come from so far.
The door opens, I’m shoved inside.
Bismi Hah Rahman Rahim.
One more night before the sun enters fully.
ON THE COAST, at the edge of the village, men and women never touch. Sometimes sense one another’s presence through the iron grills which allow some light to filter into each barracoon, unveiling glimpses of other life, other skins. Our masters are neither good men nor devils. Exercise their task with attention. As ready to punish as they are to care for us. Their intentions escape me, the tongue they use is a mystery, as is their face, no emotion shows, ever.
I pay the rumors no heed, no one can know, we are all afraid. We all tremble when, in early mornings, a master inspects us with gestures, in his language, points at some of us with his forefinger.
“The tall one with red skin! The other one, in the back! That one over there!” Plus her plus her then me.
“Yes, you over there!”
“Me?”
I, daughter of Nupe, I have been sold. For coral, pipes, swords, and three copper bowls.
*
Not knowing. Still waiting. Sleeping here, in this hut where the sea seeps in. Walks in at night, with muffled step. The night that slips into our dreams. I awaken. The room is quivering. The ear strains. It’s coming from nearby, from afar, from everywhere. Who can tell with this sea, whose end no one has ever seen? The more you go forward, the farther you have to go. That’s what they say. And they say the ocean swells. That a time comes when your legs are too short and can no longer hold you up.
The wind goes still and the heat is intolerable.
As the days go by, I learn the faces. The women talk, make friends based on languages and smiles. My new friend is my size. Same weight, same price, same heart. Never sleeps at night.
Everything I own is hers, and the little she has, she shares with me. Water, broth, her loincloth, which she unwraps, where we hide like two children joined by a formidable secret. Busied all day with different tasks, we rush to evening roll call, hearts pounding, moved to be together again. She and I.
I, small daughter of Nupe, I love.
It is not permitted by the Law, but He is merciful. He knows. He will understand.
That night, my beloved wakes me. Tells me, trembling, what she saw. She saw them, those flames that cut bodies to pieces, the fire that was chasing her and catches her in the end.
“You have to know,” she murmurs. “It’s because I can read what is after that I refuse sleep.”
“Don’t worry, I’m here. I won’t let the dream take you. Never!”
They have moved her elsewhere, to a cell at the back of the land. It seems they take these measures when there are too many slaves and not enough space.
I’ve kept her loincloth, it helps me find sleep, bring tomorrow sooner, when I will catch sight of her, maybe.
MY EYES CLOSE. My beloved died tonight. The fire, in the end, she went to sleep. My mouth is dry. I, small daughter of Nupe, I cry.
In the night, I am cold. I no longer recite text.
In the night, I scream.
I detest Him, I hate Him.
*
We never forget. The memory remains. We need only wait.
I waited. I, small daughter of Nupe, I waited for the past to return.
It happened on the eve of our departure, a rain of fire set the roofs of the barracoons trembling. All around, the waters began to swell, the leaves of the trees galloped about, pursued by a headless gale. Beneath the water-filled sky, we saw not a drop, barely able to make out the bottomless, endless, limitless sea through the mist that had swallowed it all.
My eyes stared at the harassed trees, envying the palm leaves leaping to freedom. Would we soon feel this same thrill?
The storm didn’t last. Before nightfall, the sky burst into laughter, a tawny sun broke through, and all was forgotten. Taking advantage of this lull, we crept cautiously to the sacred tree. Here would take place the pact of the twelve.
Right after roll call, we heard a voice rise. A woman, someone new, declaring herself one of ours, with us, ready to fight. Busy filling the skull with blood, I paid her no mind. Not until we made a circle did I recognize her. Queen, my queen to whom I had devoted so much time in the past. Each morning pounded her loincloths. Braided, put in beads. And at night, there was more. At night, I am the shadow that watches over her sleep. Chases away flies. Tracks down drafts. Too hot, too cold. Would kill myself before seeing her harmed. I, daughter of Nupe. Daughter of nothing. Her thing. Does she even know who I am? She. Has she ever even seen my face?
While swearing to reveal nothing, I promise to avenge myself. What good is freedom, when the past is heavier than chains? Burns more than the iron of men?
That night, I can’t sleep. Her again. Always.
UP BEFORE the dawn reaches us, I study the vast blue field on the other side of the grill. My tears recovered, I cry. Like never before. Like a woman watching her man die. Damaged by the storm, the big storehouse is close to collapse. Maybe I’ll be able to see the hole if it caves in? See the shadow of my dead beloved, black as soot, crawl across the sand, greet me? Take care of yourself, my beloved, bon voyage!
Why did He call her to Him? For weeks I’ve been asking Him.
In tight rows, shackled together, we push forward along the shore. I’m cold. It’s the heart remembering. Then, the wind rushes. The sails swell. Then, I’m off, I, small daughter of Nupe, who knows not the sea.
*
It is a country where nights are black, where the air is fetid, the grass is burnt. No one sleeps there. Pain overwhelms slumber. Fear obliterates dreams. It is a cursed, rotten land, one where, absent light, the mind’s eye butts up against madness and brutality. The people from here are not people. Whine, cry, brawl. Don’t talk. Have long been deaf to the world’s song. Forbidden to think, each dissects and speculates, shakes out yesterday to turn up errors. What did I do, we ask, desperately searching for a reason.
Day breaks, my eyes seek out the Queen. She’s there, scarcely fifteen feet from me. I smile. She is my reason for living.
IT’S TIME. We jump. Together, shriek our war cry. Sea yawns. The sea is river. Like long ago, I slide in. It feels so good, cool. What pleasure! Land seems so near, over there!
Far behind, near the bow of the ship, Queen is doing battle with the waves. “Help!” she screams. “Help me!”
I’m on my way.
In an instant I am there. Just as in the past. Just a body.
Before my rage wanes, I strike her with all my strength. “Help!” she shrieks.
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.
*
When the sea spit us back up on the deck, I realized our error. We had been wrong to think our act would alter destiny. Before life which, despite us, continued, before these sailors, sometimes distracted, who seemed to have forgotten already, I measured our minuteness. What were our prayers in the face of His will?
And as hope died in the holds, I tamed my fears and resolved to serve only Him.
All is now clear and right. The clattering rain. The flowing sea. Our skins screaming in the night. No matter the ordeal, this is nothing, what happens to people is not truth. With uniforms, muskets, power, we’d be more formidable than our masters. The same. Whites, Mixed, Negroes. Men of action, yearning for idols, forgetting God.
The earth turns and all comes back to me. The signs that dance the fire-dance. The old man’s words of faith.
Praise God, Lord of the worlds: He who gives mercy, the Merciful.
In the room at the far end of the ship, there where they pack women and children, I recite verses, my forehead pressed to the floor.
Lead us on the straight path, the path of those whom you have filled with blessings . . .
As a soft shiver runs through me.
Up top, different prayers are intoned. On the deck, morning-night, the chaplain gathers us. “Glory be to God, the one and only, the only one to love,” chants our master-in-faith with passion. Does he not know that the one true leader is Allah?
When I point that out this morning, the man flies into a dark fury. Curse the Negroes, idolaters, animists, Mahommedans and the rest, incapable of opening their heart to the Supreme Being. “God must be earned!” he splutters in conclusion, daunted by the weighty mission with which he has been charged: evangelizing the uncivilized beings of Africa.
Suspected of heresy, I provoke the priest’s hatred who, from then on, never stops tormenting me. Ordered to recite psalms and verses, I set myself to the task, to make the Catholic happy.
His passion wanes in the coming days, when a strange illness attacks a dozen captives. Examined by the surgeon, those who are sick claim it’s a witch devouring their heart. Because of her, they have lost their desire to eat or drink. Two days pass with no remedy for the patients. Eyes yellow and bodies gaunt, they are now delirious, claim to be visited nightly by the demon. In consideration of our backwardness, our chaplain hastily summons me, naturally. “This Mahommedan must be responsible for this somehow!” he proclaims, when they have lashed me to a cannon. I’m preparing to be whipped until I bleed, when the surgeon, confused, interrupts the party. “The sick ones are recovering, they are up and around” he brays, and I, on my way back to the hold, hurl an Allah Akbar at the ecclesiastic’s red face.
Calm returns, the ship stays its course, and I have no further contact with the chaplain.
*
On the island, the lady who teaches us catechism is called Martha. Sister Martha. Hard to tell her age. We know her to have no vice. She is a good woman, beautiful when she tells stories of the great acts of Christ. Blue when she is one with her gaze and I dive into it as into a river. For those eyes, it’s tempting to believe her. Many do. I, no, I continue to serve Allah more than ever.
To hear Martha tell it, praying to Allah is a sin, and the Muslim is a barbarian to be educated. I endeavor to change her opinions, but these White sisters are hardheaded! No matter, it’s for Him to unseal hearts.
IN TRUTH, there is no land more impious than this, and observing the residents confirms it. Everywhere, hypocrisy is law, the miscreant reigns, much less prompt to face the divine than to manage his estate and grow his fortune. If by chance, this one goes to church, you can believe he closes his ears to the commandments of God: he treats his animals with more deference than his own black brothers. Why would that be surprising on an island where none have a horizon, where none have a choice other than being rich or being Negro?
A similar fecklessness has taken root in the slaves. Coming, for the most part, from lands where the sky has several gods, many combine. Marry Christ to myriad spirits. That is a sin. Useless to insist; how to grow the idea of one powerful god, when all feel they need more gods for protection?
Even I am sometimes unsure.
So I pray.
Chance (though it doesn’t exist) has it that I live near a Mandingo family. Allah is their master, and the Qur’an is the book where they draw their strength and faith.
By the tallow’s flame, we wait until nightfall to leave our huts and creep to our den. Mohammed’s woods, so have we baptized the place where, hidden from all eyes, we kneel to pray. Foreheads pressed to the ground, shadows to the east, we recite the Word . . .
Bismi Hah
Rahman
Rahim
. . . which rises and bursts through the roof. Cradles us, brings a sweet shiver.
It is You we adore, it is You we beg for help.
Lead us down the straight path: the path of those You have blessed with your generosity; not the path of those who have incurred Your wrath or those who have strayed.
Back in our huts, we are happy, so happy when we lie down on our mats. Later, dream of the promise. The garden of milk and honey where men find delight.
It is not their bells that wake us at dawn. Nor their dogs, nor their whips, no! Nor the fear that grips all at once, rather . . . what is the word? Joy! For joy, we cry in the name of God. I swear on my mother’s head, I cry, at the call to prayer. At the memory of the first muezzin.
TODAY IS a bad day. They demolished our mosque. Dismantled it stone by stone until there was nothing left but a pebble when we arrived in the little wood. In the butchered earth, they planted their cross. A man there who was dying, sobbed. His scythe-shaped beard fluttered in the wind.
I don’t know what made me slash his face. “Take that, that, that!” I howled before Aminata-Sultane tore the weapon from my hands. In a daze, I glared at her, then lowered my head, feeling ugly and ashamed.
“Something haunts me,” I said later on. “In the Book, aren’t we told to take up arms to defend Islam?” The Mandingo woman sat down, smiled, saying it was not against God that we must wage war, but against His enemies.
*
I was already an old woman when I left. My back worn out. Body as brittle as a branch. My memory limped but I knew the Book. To a degree . . . that no one can imagine! To the degree of reciting it by heart, down to the last comma. The Mandingo woman had offered me hers. That’s how I learned she’d been reading the Bible. Yes, the Bible! All her life, for all those years, she had been rewriting the Book, transforming psalms into suras. Rewriting the language of this place into the language of the sands! Over time, the two texts had formed one. The very one I asked Sister Martha to read on the day I departed, I, small daughter of Nupe. Heart calm. Like the day risen.