by Kola Boof
It was to this dancing image that Princess Ife Ife arrived at the central palace, her girlish fish riveted by the larger than life glorification of her vain, attention-loving mother, Ambi--presiding over the national self-worship, the national hallucination, the outlandish mythical unreality of it all. It was a place of honor, surely--to be both queen and goddess--but it was also a place that Ife Ife did not want to inherit.
She wanted no power over the lives of others or to even be noticed by others. Hers was the quiet life to dream about. And in her modest dreams of a tidy hut, giggling children and quiet walks in those mountains that touched blue sky, all she really wanted was to marry Prince Shango and reside in the comfort of his shadow.
Tell them...said a voice deep inside Ife Ife. Dont’ be afraid this time...tell the world who you are and what you want, said the voice. Tell them!
Behold...the lush naked cocoa bush.
Uhura...Tiombe...Pamoja...Walasma.
Indecently sexualized amazons like Ambi, but these ones being mere concubines, floating by Ife Ife’s face in a dance, their dark graceful strokes of flesh accompanied by the soft lilting breeze of reed flutes and muzi drums. Nasty little jungle panthers! Princess Ife Ife could see her father’s eyes and the eyes of both her suitors, Dinari Zezuru and Nkrumah, as they fastened like magnets on the swaying, fornication-welcoming movements of the blooming cocoa bush. The jutting breasts and the teasing pelvic vestibules summoning the men’s cocks, which lay hidden behind the flowing blue indigo robes of the God men, but their lecherous stares followed freely, following the plumpness of the ripe and juicy black pearls-down-the-crack of the buttocks. Somehow, Ife Ife believed that if Shango were present, his eyes...would follow only her.
Only her.
When the dance was over and the serpent of Africa adequately charmed, the radiantly smiling Queen Ambi introduced her timid daughter by raising a crab pot of wine with both hands and declaring, “With this drink...the virgin acknowledges the blood and accepts womanhood.”
The groom finalists, Dinari Zezuru and Nkrumah, stood tall and handsome, their brawny stares beholding Ife Ife as she made her way to the royal stool, draped from head to toe in eyelet spider silk, her neck and arms adorned by pink cat diamonds and flowing spools of cowrie shell that dragged behind her. A silence fell over the court as Ife Ife approached her mother, her heart raced, because she was building up the nerve to tell the court that she loved and wanted to marry Shango--but, as usual, the elegant grace that Ife Ife possessed in private, melted away in the presence of her mother. How can I ever live up to her? Ife Ife wondered for the millionth time in her life. Am I really her daughter?
And just then...Ife Ife tripped on her spider silk!
There was an audible gasp from the onlookers, and because he was closest, Dinari Zezuru quickly caught the princess by the arm and kept her from falling. He had grown up with Ife Ife all his life and was used to her nervousness when in the presence of Ambi.
So, alas, when Ife Ife regained composure and looked up at her perfect mother--Ambi’s stare was crestfallen, a palpable disappointment that shone cold as a night stone and even the pet leopards yawned and licked their lips. Ife Ife wanted to cry out, “Mother, I’m sorry for messing up the show!”...but...the show must go on, and because Ambi loved her daughter, she forced herself to smile and waved her magical hand with a flair, saying; “Come...Princess. Come and be a woman--let the children of God cheer!”
The people cheered. The leopards roared.
At her father’s feet Princess Ife Ife knelt down so that Ambi could tilt the crab pot to her young lips, Ife Ife dutifully drinking the wine--the crowds roaring and ululating!
She swallowed and raised her head. Her eyes meeting in a lock with her father’s sister, Aunt Thiaroye, who sat behind the King’s stool, her heart heavy for Ife Ife, because she knew that the only reason they were making Ife Ife a woman at fourteen--was to get her married off and divorced from her obsession with the sleeping boy from Ajowa.
“Look at his lazy ass”, King Katanga had remarked to Aunt Thiaroye and Pikine. “Sleeps all day and yet my darling little gazelle fawns over him as though he were a full blooded God.”
“But he’s in a coma, your worship.”
Katanga had waved away their defense, muttering, “Lazy ass ocean worshipper.”
And now...Ife Ife rose to her feet. Shango’s voice reaching out of dreams--demanding a kiss. What kind of people kissed, she wondered again. Would that bring him out of his sleep--a kiss?
She turned to face her two suitors. Her father’s voice announcing them and their accomplishments to the court. First, there was the one that she was actually attracted to--Nkrumah, a wood and clay potter, the reddish brown skinned son of a poor woman from the grain making village of Tibo. Nkrumah had began competing for the princess’s hand when he was just twelve, six weeks after Ife Ife was born, and had made it all this way to the King’s palace by building a thriving clay mint and pottery colony in Tibo and trading wood products to Arab Islamic travelers and nations of Songhai, all of it financing his education at the university in Timbuktu and bringing growth to an industry that helped the God tribe maintain their status as West Africa’s wealthiest people.
Nkrumah had dreamt all his life of growing up from his mother’s impoverished past and marrying Princess Ife Ife, initially because it had been his mother’s dream for him, but later, because it became his own dream. He truly believed that he loved and adored the princess, and now, as a tired old woman, his mother had come all the way to Hembadoon, limping on a cane and smiling with no teeth in her mouth, to see her son finally chosen as the husband for the princess.
On the other hand, Dinari Zezuru was the family pet. He was the son of Katanga’s chief Sankofa Priest (the person who documented the souls of cows, crocodiles and birds) and had grown up in the palace, behaving much like a much older brother to Ife Ife.
Tall, handsome and cunning, Dinari had become the nation’s leading architect, the man responsible for the stylish Gitweii huts of Songhai, Timbuktu and Zulu Kingdom, and it was he who revolutionized the mud and clay industries by discovering a plant, urine, zinc and dung recipe that could be used as a coating for bamboo and mud huts to ward off mosquitoes and stave off malaria. He was the one who had innovated the river stilt fortresses for the God army and built Katanga’s palace of stone and shell in which they stood that very night. So it came as no surprise when Katanga ordered the two men to present their genitals to the court--Nkrumah’s, by far, being the largest, his balls hanging nearly as long as his penis--but Katanga announcing Dinari Zezuru as the new prince and future son-in-law.
Nkrumah’s poor mother nearly fell off her cane! Her moaning cry belting out as solace for the clay maker’s own heartbreak and disappointment, for he did shiver once--and his mighty chest heaved heavily with objections, his entire life’s goal fleeting away like a pink mouthed, long lashed cheetah, but what could he do about it other than bristle and fume?
Dinari stepped forward, his smile phoney but unsurprised, because he had not even wanted to vie for the hand of God’s princess.
He came to stand next to Ife Ife, his jet black skin nearly as purple and shiny as Katanga’s, and then--the question of the evening arrived. Katanga, as a matter of procedure, asked Ife Ife, “Has the father pleased the daughter?”
NO!
She wanted to say it, to stand up for herself, but she had never ever heard of anyone doing so before. Generations of royal daughters had accepted their marriages, because Africans have a saying: “father knows best”. Still, Ife Ife hated herself in that moment, because was weak and lacked courage enough to demand true love, too intimidated by her parents, too afraid to unleash what was throbbing inside her. She burst into tears. Katanga, Ambi and Dinari all knew why she was in tears, but their stares demanded that she say the magic word, “...yes.”
King Katanga smiled, relieved by his daughter’s good sense, and said, “Let the moon bless this engagement!”
••
“I don’t love you”, Dinari said to Ife Ife later that night as they shared dinner on the bamboo terrace of his stilt hut overlooking Lake Ambi. “I think you know who I am, Ife Ife. I think you’ve always known.”
She said nothing, her eyes staring at him with the same silent intrigue that she had always reserved for his bouts of mysteriousness.
“Come, Ife Ife...as my sister...I want you to oil my back.”
He stood then and walked into the hut. Since childhood, the two of them had been able to confide within each other any and everything, so now Dinari pulled the flowing Indigo robe over his head and shoulders, standing fully and completely naked, and then draped his body over a giant ball of Tunisian rubber. Immediately, as Ife Ife walked up on his body, her eyes followed the crack of his large muscular buttocks, her becoming more entranced with each passing second...because as he parted his charcoal legs...all she saw was pink...his black fingers tugging his anus open so that it looked fleshy and vagina-like.
“This is love”, he said over his shoulder. “It’s how I squeeze the pleasure from it.”
“So it is true”, Princess Ife Ife mumbled in shock.
“Yes. I am from the wishing well of those ancient ancestors that our Spirit Rulers called ‘gatekeepers’--I have a husband of my own.”
Ife Ife looked down upon him with both ignorant pity and misplaced joy. Dinari was saying, “I told King Katanga that my soul is opened up by men, but he and my father being like brothers, they scheme in faith that I can be both a gatekeeper and a royal husband in one lifetime. The King believes that marriage will make me a better man. He expects me to make children with you, and if I don’t, he has mentioned that I will probably be beheaded. I suppose you’re expecting me take your virginity?”
“No”, came Ife Ife’s quivering voice, her imagination racing as she savored her thoughts. “We must never touch one another, Dinari. Don’t you see how perfect...it all is? I can be in secret with Shango Ogun now.”
“But what about my husband?” Dinari asked her. “I stand to lose him, because he won’t tolerate this marriage!”
“Who are you speaking of?”
“Sumboo”, he answered solemnly from a very deep place, tears flowing from his heart. “You know Sumboo the Great...all of Africa knows him.”
“Sumboo!?” Ife Ife said in shock. “The leader of the throat eaters of Yitembo? He’s the most feared warrior in the history of the Gods.”
“And it’s for him that I suffer such agony and ecstasy, Ife Ife. It’s gone on for years now. Our passion is like a sky bird enflamed by sepia heavens, our souls like mountains facing a secret, silent sea. But now there’s someone else ready to stand in and take my place with him. One of his best lion wrestlers, Mobi, and I can’t bear it, Ife Ife. I would rather die than lose Sumboo.”
“But look at what he does to your body! Doesn’t that hurt your pride?”
“I don’t care what he does to me!” Dinari shouted as though she were crazy. “Haven’t you ever loved a man before? No, but of course not. You’re just a baby. You’ve never known the emptiness that comes with having ones heart so full. My passion is one you can’t understand up close, because it’s too much like your own. This thing called love. This thing that makes us crazy. I don’t care what he does to me--I only want to help him do it.”
And this was the night, that just by peering into the depths of Dinari’s crucified soul, Ife Ie had felt her own innocence dying.
“We will summon Sumboo to the palace, we will make this marriage work”, she whispered, as she knelt beside Dinari Zezuru and gently caressed his troubled brow. “You’ll have your man...and I’ll have mines. We shall sit upon the stool of Hembadoon, our hands enjoined like the seal of the ancestors, our crown risen over the land of the Gods. In secret defiance. In secret love. In darkness and in light--our royal duties in steed.”
“My sweet wife”, sang Dinari, gently touching her lips with a single, erect finger.
“Yes, beloved husband”, Ife Ife replied softly, the ribbons of her manipulation already naked and floating like beads of lonely sickle fire. “From this marriage of deceit...we shall prick out a drumbeat of pure, sweet truth.
4
•
And when Prince Shango Ogun opened his eyes--it was as if the Sky and the Sea were a beam of light, their azure and teal blueness rolling to the ends of the earth in a silvery ribbon, the sound and the fury breaking atoms inside moments--before there was any such thing as time.
It was one of those dreams where Shango could fly!
He came down like a great Hawk, his arms spanned out like wings and his eyes capturing the graceful leap of the goddess Ajowa...her constant baptism, in and out of blue Sea...like the penetration of a man’s great tree into a woman’s dark soil.
“Kiss me...” said the mouth shaped like caterpillars. The contours, soft and dusky, Ife Ife’s black velvety face, her dolphin’s tail whip-lashing the magic waters from which she sprang, her lyrical ribbons of voice saying, “...let’s create the earth again, let’s make it rain again, let’s make love out of first love again...like we did before there were children or butterflies or destiny or sin or anything but us. Forever and ever...like the Sun, my love.”
Kiss me, Sky. Enter me, God. Enter me and own me, Night Divine.
Ife Ife stared down into his face, the nipples of her bare breasts hardened and hot like a wet thumb pulled from a nursing infant’s sweet mouth. She wrung water from a sponge and then continued to lift and bathe the sleeping man’s heavy arms. Her mind and life devoted to wishing and waiting.
One day, she thought, you’ll wake up. And then she remembered that her nipples had been hard like this before--that night in the cavern when he’d wanted to kiss her.
Kiss her.
What kind of people did such things? Why the very thought of it seemed like cannibalism, because it was well known that only the offspring of formal cannibal tribes engaged in kissing. They did it, because they missed eating other humans.
Just then...Aunt Thiaroye and Pikine appeared in the doorway.
Ife Ife looked up to see the grim faces. Their eyes sharp with worry as they stared at the sleeping Shango.
“What is it?”, asked Ife Ife.
“His wife is here.”
“His wife!”, Ife Ife leaped up standing, her mouth hanging open. “But he’s not married. He told me he’s not married!”
“Princess Namibia of Ajowa has arrived with the boy’s mother and grandmother. They’ve been searching for the Prince. Their eyes are heavy with weeping.”
“But no!” Ife Ife demanded, her own eyes bursting with tears. “Noooo!”
“King Katanga is requesting your presence at once, child. As the drum is greatly troubled by this.”
And then they left her standing there--her whole world ripped to shreds.
She turned around and went to Shango.
Hands trembling, the whole galaxy of her stare imprinting itself across his brow like some meteor shower of silent infatuation, her heart pounding like an erotic blood dance beneath the flesh of her breasts.”
Gripped by insanity, sorrow and fear, trembling and crying--Ife Ife bowed her head to his face, her delicate royal lips pressing upon his--she closed her eyes and...kissed him.
She kissed him.
Her mouth seemingly unable to part with his sweet lips, she kissed him...and kissed him...until she knew in her soul that once is not enough.
She heard the gentle sound of suddenly falling rain and opened her eyes...and when she opened them...his were open, too.
“Shango!” she screamed.
“My one”, he called as though he had just dropped in from the sky. He ignored her shock and pulled her face back into his, his tongue snaking into her innocent mouth like fog creeping into a hollowed log. He caressed her bare back to calm her nervous tremble, and then he let her go, his hands caressing h
er tears, and his gaze intent upon her silvery charcoal skin, only appreciating it then for the first time--for in it--he could see the whole world being made.
Not only the earth, but rain and time, too.
Shango Ogun remembered now that he had known her in dreams from a long, long time ago. And that she was the one who had turned twilight into butterflies and the earth into paradise. It was upon her African breasts that the earth’s first children had cried, nursed and yawned themselves to sleep with fat little tummies. She was the dolphin and the Sea.
Shango stared at Ife Ife, realizing that he wasn’t lonely any longer. He called her once more, “My one.”
5
•
Imagine how shocked the Gods were when they saw Shango Ogun stroll into the King’s court as though he’d been awake all along! Katanga and Ambi, who had just gone through an elaborate story in which they claimed to have heard gossip about the Prince passing through Hembadoon, but weren’t quite sure whether he’d gone east, south or wherever, were especially annoyed, because now they’d have to make up more lies to cover the ones they’d already told.
Rain Iyanla, Shango’s mother, squealed with delight upon seeing him, and of course, he ran straight into the arms of his grandmother--Mother Iyanla--her face streaming with tears of joyful relief, her embrace energizing him, as it always had, with love, and her laughter tumbling over his shoulder like a song from his childhood. And over his shoulder as well, she caught sight of the studious Ife Ife, and instantly, a chill went through he old woman.
Mother Iyanla stared at the young girl, and even as Shango parted from her embrace and fell into the arms of his mother, the stare lasted between the Princess and Mother Iyanla until Ife Ife politely looked away, her eyes drifting to Shango’s wife, Namibia, and beholding with shock, the halo of lush nappy hair that foamed out of the girl’s head. No princess she had ever seen was allowed to wear loose hair, thought Ife Ife. Queen Ambi wore intricate braids, thick with jewels, and some other sophisticates wore either red clay braids, mud and stick twists or giant hotep wigs imported from Luxor where it was common for everyone, male and female, to keep their heads shaven, the Egyptians utilizing wigs so that their scalps could remain smooth and oiled in honor of African fertility, femininity and chastity, but none amongst the Gods other than jungle women, grain beaters, fisher women and working class hut wives dared enjoy the nappy freedom of the men. And this intrigued Ife Ife as she noticed, too, the lack of refinement in Namibia’s gait and demeanor. It awed and beguiled her to know that Shango had taken a poor monkey-faced girl, probably a cassava picker, and turned her into a princess.
