Bound by Sorrow
Maurice Broaddus
Remembering our past...
“All journeys are born of death.” The eyes of the Wise One glistened as he spoke. “Let me tell you a story. Each word in its place; none forgotten. The order is sacred, exactly as I once heard it. You would do well to heed its wisdom, young warrior.”
A great drama played out behind the old man’s eyelids so plainly the warrior could almost behold it. The campfire flickered in his eyes, which no longer focused on the young warrior but were lost recalling the words to the story. The warrior took a stone that fit snugly into his palm and sharpened his blade. When matters of life and duty became too much, threatening to drag him under the sea billows of life, he kept his head down and focused on what he knew he did best.
“Deep within the jungle,” the Wise One began, “a lion stretched out, ready to die. For this once proud and dangerous beast was now old and useless. Winter had settled into his bones, and now he starved, too weak, for he had forgotten how to hunt. On occasion, the fires of desire rekindled themselves in his raging soul; the memory of who he once was drove him to reclaim his power and lost glory. But those days became fewer and fewer.
“The lion dreamt, wanting to be feared as an outcast god. To have his name ring out with terror and respect, to be remembered as strong, he planned to threaten a village. Harnessing what strength he had left, he prowled about the village. Feeding on its elderly and infirm, enough of his former glory returned for him to truly terrorize the village. They sought to appease him by providing him tribute. A woman.
“Her husband had long departed, to parts unknown, presumed never to return, leaving her behind as a widow, along with a whelp. The lion took her as his bride. The laws of nature dictated that the lion kill the whelp, for it was not his own blood. To raise another’s progeny only invited a threat to his own line. However, the lion took pity on the mewling whelp, sparing him since he was no threat.
“However, the mercy was lost on him, and the whelp grew up nursing only hate. Hate drove him. He hated his true father, cursed every drop within him that belonged to that man. But, with his own father absent, he focused his hate on the lion. Every day he dreamt of being strong enough to slay it. Little did he realize that by dreaming, he was truly fulfilling his purpose, for a dreamer was who he was. For, the way of blood was not his true path. He was born with the sign and raised to fulfill his role as Umlando. His true path was the way, the duty, of stories.
“Still, hatred still burned within his bosom.
“The lion stalked his nights and haunted his dreams. The whelp, threatening to become a man, sensed that his time had come. The final trial of the Umlando was to face the enemy within, to slay that which distracted him from the stories of the tribe. The trial began with the ceremony of purification: meditation without food, chewing on the Ibogo root until the visions came. However, he had no need of visions. He knew who he had to slay. He crept into the forest to find his foe. Armed only with a knife, he snuck up on the slumbering lion until he was inches from its mouth. Its foul exhalations warmed his face. He drew his blade and slit its throat.
“The lion reared up in its death gasp, choking on its blood before it collapsed. Its muscles began to shrivel like spoiled fruit on a rotted vine. It lost its fur and its haunches straightened, becoming arms and legs. The form shrank before him until it was that of his father. At that moment he realized that he was now a man without a tribe.”
The warrior stabbed his blade into the ground. With a frown he said, “Your tales become heavy-handed, Wise One. Why waste my time with this children’s tale?”
The campfire danced in the night, casting the Wise One in steep shadows that distorted his face.
“Because death is your birthright. Death is your gift. Only through the shedding of blood will you find peace.” The old man’s voice crackled, dry as kindling and grave as midnight. He leaned toward the young warrior. “All journeys are born of death.”
“This sounds like a curse. Am I a poet? Am I king? Am I warrior? A war wages in me between what I wish to be, what I am told to be, and what I am. And all you offer me are empty rituals of stories.” The young warrior retrieved his blade, inspected it, and wiped it clean. He sheathed it within his kaross before the flames drew his attention again. To no one in particular he whispered, “I will seek my own way. If death gets in the way, so be it.”
“Give me your hand.” The Wise One held out his hands. Wrinkles filigreed his calloused palm.
The warrior grasped the old man’s hands, his own seeming pale and sickly compared to them—but the Wise One only clasped his left one. He flipped the warrior’s hand to reveal the black mark on his palm.
“A mark. So?”
“I have not always walked among your people,” the Wise One said. “I was born in Nok, the land of magicians and artisans. Yet I knew my fate lay in a distant land. This is no mere mark. It is a choice. The mark of an Umlando.”
“Umlando? Then why have you never told me this until now, Wise One? Always it was a ‘birthmark,’ another sign of my weakness.”
“The Umlando. Theirs is a sacred duty, but few know this tradition or caste. We have no scrolls, only the power of our minds. You have a good mind, a fine memory, and could be of the holy ones, a keeper of tribal History and Memory. To tell these things to an outsider would be to become a traitor to your people, to fall under a High Curse. Do you understand me? My time is almost done and you wish to go... live your life your way. I have one last story that’s fitting for you to hear.”
I.
There is a grief we carry from knowing everything we love we will lose.
The skies started to churn, and lightning struck a nearby tree, blistering it where it stood. The furious river frothed before Dinga Cisse as he attempted to gather his bearings. He strapped the package to his back. He had come too far only to allow Gerard to drift down the river. His friend’s enemies had left him tied up on the raft, for the river to judge his fate.
As Dinga waded in, the package on his back shifted, threatening to slip loose in the thrashing current. Caught up in the river’s undertow, Dinga almost lost his burden. Spied through the spray around him, the waterway opened wider, drifting further away from the sight of land. Rain fell, though its fury was lost against the spew of the river.
A stain marked Dinga’s soul, weighing him down more than the roiling waters. The water couldn’t wash it away. Paddling furiously, he caught up to the raft. The waves tossed his friend Gerard’s bound frame about along the battered wooden deck.
Stirred from silent vigil, crocodiles slid into the waters.
Dinga hoisted himself onto the raft, cutting loose Gerard’s bindings. The water darkened with circling shadows.
An enormous crocodile flung itself onto the end of the raft, nearly capsizing it. Dinga almost stumbled into the crocodile’s gaping mouth. Keeping its snapping maw out of reach, he wedged his legs against its neck, pinning the crocodile to stop its progress. Its massive jaw thrashed about, smashing a section of the raft like so much kindling, sending Gerard splashing into the current. Dinga buried one of his knives into the side of the crocodile and used his last bit of solid footing on the sinking raft to launch himself onto the huge crocodile’s back. The creature widened its mouth in a terrible yawn, writhing to snap its jaws at him. Dinga plunged the other sharp blade into its eye socket.
He dove from the snarling creature. Bobbing in the water, he struggled to keep the package in place on his back. Waves washed over him. The water stripped the burden from his back like a lithe-fingered pickpocket.
Dinga cried out, stretching after the barely floating package. He c
aught sight of the still unconscious Gerard.
Dinga swam after the pack.
Like a flung spear, the wounded crocodile darted toward him. Dinga shifted just enough to avoid the initial attack, but the thickly scaled hide of its flank ground against him. The force of the impact rattled Dinga to his core, jostling all the broken pieces that formed him, each loose shard cutting him in a new way.
“Come on, defective warrior,” he thought, “be of use to someone.”
Never did he even consider asking his god for aid. He knew his pleas would fall on deaf ears. He dove lower in the water. Securing the straps of his pack in each hand, he drew its cord across the crocodile’s throat and pulled taut. He drove his knee into its back until it slumped, its movements stilled. Unconscious or dead, he didn’t care. His lungs burned, and he released the crocodile’s huge body. He swam toward the surface, each kick weaker than the last. The moonlight silvered the surface of the water above him, a bright light he gave into and drifted toward.
Entering the light, he broke the water’s surface. Gerard, sputtering for breath with each stroke, was paddling toward the shore. Dinga fastened his pack tighter. Its great weight pressed on his chest, making it hard to breathe. A dense space filled his lungs and clotted his heart—both comfortable and familiar, almost reassuring—which he held onto like he didn’t know what he would do without it. The swirling eddies tried to sweep him down the channel. Mud sucked at his feet. He staggered through the waves and collapsed on the shoreline next to Gerard.
“Are you ever going to speak of what brings you to stray so far from your people?” Dinga wheezed out as nonchalantly as he could, arms outstretched on the sand.
“Fortune favors you.” Gerard rolled onto his side, not quite ready to chance drawing up on his knees. The gold hue of the sand only made his ruddy complexion all the more pale. Already his neck and face reddened with impending sunburn. His flat, broad-brimmed petasos hung along his back with the desperation of a sailor clinging to his sinking ship. His purple chlamys, more like a wet black curtain around him. “You head out on a journey and a capable, stout companion stumbles across you. You should be thanking your god—or is it gods, I can never tell with you people—not asking silly questions.”
“Nyame no more favors me than he does his actual followers. Where we journey in remembrance of Lalyani, gods fear to cast their eyes.” At the thought of his god and his journey, Dinga grew still. He had set out to prove himself once he reached fifteen summers, years of dedicated service, and for what? Suffering and isolating silence. “Besides, your people won’t miss such a stout, capable companion?”
“The fact that my people have missed me so far is entirely the point,” Gerard said in a hollow, almost defeated, voice. He wrung out his chlamys. “Thus I accompany you on your errand. Will there will still be great peril?”
“Yes.”
“And your enemies expect your demise?”
“Yes.” Dinga turned away from him.
“Good. I need the relaxation.” Gerard grinned, craning about waiting for his friend to join his merriment, but his self-amusement proved far from contagious. “Why press the matter of my motivations? Surely two are better than one, no matter the journey.”
At the thought of how much of the journey lay ahead of them, the pack seemed too much to bear. But the weight reassured him. He’d forgotten what that, what anything, felt like.
The meat roasted on a makeshift spit above the flames, away from Gerard’s chlamys drying near the fire. The smell of it caused Dinga’s stomach to grumble. Tired and stiff-necked, worn down by unattended sorrows and the rage that came with it, a deep ache filled his sinews. The heat of the campfire failed to thaw the chill in his bones. He didn’t realize how cold he was until the flame’s warmth settled around him.
Hypervigilant, Dinga returned his gaze to the perimeter of shadows, his warrior’s senses slowly attuning themselves to the unfamiliar country. The thorn bushes and nettles had little consequence except to slow the approach of intruders. The golden grasslands stretched out before them like another world entirely. Dinga was too used to the dense groves of tree cover and thick foliage he had called home for so long. Their new path, to the place he knew they must find, veered upward along a craggy hillside and the waning copses of trees that oversaw the valley, toward the mountain. At least that was what his heart told him, if Lalyani’s stories were to be believed; though he didn’t know how much to trust it. All he had to go on was faith.
“We’re lost.” Gerard must have tired of the long silence which settled between them.
“We’re not.”
“Just admit that we’re lost.”
“We’re not.” Dinga jammed a stick into the flames to stir them. “We are where we are supposed to be.”
“Now you sound like the philosophers littering my home.”
“That’s how Lalyani described the Path to me.”
“Is ‘the Path’ the route or the destination? You sound confused on the matter.”
“All I understand is that she wanted me to make this journey. Needed me to make it. In service to her... gods.”
“What of your own god? Won’t he be jealous?” Gerard spat before returning his attentions to the cooking meat. “It is a ‘he’, right? I’m never certain of gender assignments of deities.”
“I... want to believe.” Dinga grew quiet while he considered the accidental truth of what he said. His whole life, he considered himself little more than a leaf on the current of the Niger River, tossed and carried by forces more powerful than him, clinging to the certainty that he was destined for something. His voice, little more than a whisper lost in the crackle of the flames. “I seek the face of my Father. I no longer know who I am.”
Gerard gazed at the flames, allowing Dinga a measure of privacy. “I could carry the pack for a while.”
“No. I have to carry it alone.”
“No, you don’t.” The steel of urgency stopped short of pleading. “We can share its burden.”
“Then I don’t know how.”
“Tell me the story of the pack.”
“Some stories are too hard to tell.”
Exhausted, Gerard settled into his bedding. “Then tell me a story of your village.”
Dinga fit a sharpening stone into the palm of his hand and began to whet the blade of his panga. The words came to him like a recalled memory.
“Just outside the kraals stood great earthen mounds. No one knows who built them; only that they were considered sacred. Some claimed they were the burial plots of fallen orisha. As such, the villagers attended them with great reverence, guarding them the villagers’ duty. Every evening at sunset, the villagers left the mounds as they went about the business of dinner preparation. A young boy always found his way to the foot of the furthest mound, sheltered by forest overgrowth in his private alcove where he could play uninterrupted.
“One day a young girl approached him. Her sun-touched hair, a frizzled mess. Dirt smudged her face. Her feet tougher than leather, she wore no shoes. Stopping short as if not wanting to interrupt, she waited off to the side. The boy froze his play, like a zebra aware of being under the scrutiny of a lion. When the boy glanced up, he recognized something achingly familiar in her face that he could not place.
“‘Hello,’ she said.
“‘Hello.’ His hands furrowed the mud.
“‘Do you know who I am?’
“‘Don’t you know?’ He angled his head sideways, confused by her.
“‘Boy!’ From a clearing, his father watched them. His face blanched as if in fear, anger morphing his expression darkening like an approaching storm cloud.
“At the sound of his voice, the girl scrambled into the foliage, no longer lion but rabbit.
“The boy sat there, mud up to his elbows, still confused.
“His father searched the trees like a hunter and approached slowly. ‘You are to never see or speak to that girl again.’
“‘Did I do someth
ing wrong?’
“‘Did you hear me?’ His father’s voice, a terrible thunder.
“‘Yes, father.’ The boy lowered his gaze, thoroughly scolded.
“‘Good, then the matter is settled.’ For his father was also the mansa of the village, his word respected as law.
“Ever since the first appearance of the girl, things changed within the boy’s house. His mother withdrew; became more distant, like a ghost wandering the village. Barely eating or speaking. Having heard the griot’s stories of the ogbanje, the boy knew it had to be the girl’s fault. The elders often spoke of ogbanje—“children who come and go”—evil spirits that would haunt a family, bringing misfortune. Some said the ogbanje would deliberately die and come back again, simply to cause a family more grief. Concerned, the boy screwed up the courage to approach his father.
“‘Father.’ He knelt before him. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you.’
“‘What troubles you?’
“‘The girl. I believe her to be ogbanje. I know the tales but not what I should do, and I did not know who else to tell.’
“‘You were wise to bring your concern to me.’ His father patted the seat next to him for the boy to join him. ‘I have dealt with the... ogbanje. Banished it to another village. In time, its curse shall be lifted. One day you will be a mansa of your people. You must be an example to them. Let nothing or no one tarnish your reputation, for your honor is all you have.’”
Dinga’s words faded into darkness, which suffused the camp. Gerard had fallen asleep. Dinga kept watch, comforted by his friend’s gentle snores. A discomfiting emptiness gnawed at him, one he’d arranged his entire life to avoid. Running from the hollowness of guilt, avoidance had become a way of life. He needed to reconnect with his forgotten lineage.
And keep a promise.
II.
There is a grief we carry from losing someone (or something) we love.
Gerard’s distant voice below warned that these cliffs were too sheer to be climbed, but Dinga continued his ascent. The bundle shifted on his back as he drew himself up, its uneven weight nearly dislodging his precarious grip. Each hand grappled for purchase. Each foothold insecure, and he pressed himself to find another before it gave way. Exhaustion took its toll on them, but a sense of mission fueled them. His muscles burned but if he kept moving, if he kept busy, he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain.
Maurice Broaddus - [BCS300 S03] Page 1
