by Kola Boof
Shane let the blanket fall to the ground and saw that his own body had become the color of charcoal and steel. His hair...and her hair, something crispier than wool. African hair. Thick and jungle-ly enough to hold up the ocean.
RooAmber looked up at him, her new dark celestial eyes noticing the bloody bullet holes in his brow. Ever gently, she touched his brow, saying, “It was while we were kissing. I thought I heard it...wedding bells.”
And there they stood.
Washington, D.C. suddenly nowhere in sight.
Pungent jungle gardenia and sea anemones filling the African sky.
The two of them suddenly standing in the midst of a dreamy, magic lake. A herd of fat, lazy flower-necked crocodiles strewn about their feet. The pink waters of the lake twinkling beneath the brilliance of the twin moons.
Lit by the beauty of death, RooAmber asked, “How many times have you made me a woman?”
“As many times as you’ve given birth to me.”
His eyes bore down inside her soul as though he were lifting her into the stars and setting her free. In the words of his ancestors, the tribes of West Africa, he vowed, “I carry you into the world...I carry you out.”
And in the memory of the Queens, she promised, “If my father dies...I will give birth to him again.”
Shane Roberts held out his hand...and RooAmber Sojourner Childress placed hers within its palm.
Hand in hand, the charcoal man and the charcoal woman...the genesis of vision itself, dove into the lake.
Like fleeting light and the womb’s sweet justice, they became a part of forever.
And these were the two...when RAIN was new.
.
Afterword
by Kola Boof
As an African person who comes not from West Africa, but from the Sudan in North Africa, my Arab friends, such as Said Musa, found it really odd back in 1995 to find me strewn across the floor of my Cairo penthouse typing a love story that was all about the people of “West” Africa and their forced journey to the Americas through slavery.
Although my friends were well aware that I had been adopted and raised by a Black American family in Washington, D.C.--they had no understanding of the alienation and loneliness I experienced in trying to connect with Black Americans as fellow Africans (which is what they are) and in trying to understand, as a child and a teenager, what I perceived in them to be a rejection of all things black, and especially a hatred...a literal hatred...for the wombs of dark skinned black women...which is a hatred for Africa itself. Not only can there be no authentic Africa without the dark skinned black woman, but to hate her is to hate all black people (of every shade and stock) at the same time. She being the genetic root of the entire black tree--representing all of us in one prestigious body. And, of course, being a black Sudanese girl raised in America...this was heavily on my mind in the 1990’s. Said Musa said to me back then: “Kola, you are obsessed with the Black Americans.”
I admit it now...he was right!
When I started “Flesh and the Devil”, I was wondering what I could do as an artist to make an impression--an argument--against the way Black Americans I had grown up with viewed both Africa and themselves, and obviously this frustration created enough anger and passion for me to write a story, but the actual idea of how to write it and what to say did not come until I was walking one afternoon in Nasr City (Arba’a-wi-noss), a poor slum area of Cairo. I came upon a Shilluk wedding (the Shilluk people are one of the oldest living tribes of the Nile River, mostly concentrated in Sudan, and are extremely black skinned with African hair and Nilotic features). I stood entranced by their oneness and came to tears as this young couple, who would truly be considered “taboo” in American society (a charcoal colored groom and a charcoal colored bride) sang first in their own language and then in English, one of their ancient love songs. He sang--”I’ve been in love with you...since rain was new.”
And that’s when it struck me that I should write about something that is hardly ever mentioned anywhere in the world--the great enchanted love that once existed between authentic black men and black women and how that first love gave birth to all mankind.
Of course, I knew a great deal about slavery, because my own birth parents had been murdered by Arab Muslim fundamentalists for speaking out against the slave trade that exists today in modern Sudan, and along with Dr. John Garang, escaped slave turned hero Francis Bok, journalist-humanitarian Charles Jacobs, and my own personal superhero, Joe Madison (the former head of the NAACP who went to Sudan and freed several hundred slaves in person), I myself was to become an anti-slavery activist and member of Sudan’s SPLA. But in conveying a West African world of the 1600’s and depicting the Atlantic slave trade, I decided to take the histories and cultures of ten different tribes (ie. Yorubans, Ashantis, Hasaus) and integrate them into two. This is how I, a Sudanese Northerner, created West Africa’s Gods and Ajowans.
I then borrowed real life people, such as Papa Katanga, the brave Congolese warrior bandit who fought to the death against slavery, and the legendary fire witch and bee keeper, Ambi of Ghana, another fierce fighter against slavery, and I created fictional versions of them, in this case marrying them to one another. The Serahuli city of Banjul, which is the home of another anti-slavery warhead, Queen TinkaTekur II, became Kofi Hoodi’s fictional “Banjula City”...and of course, I cannot tell you how many readers of “Flesh and the Devil” are shocked to discover that the magical “Lake Ambi” (Pink Lake) really does exist in Senegal and can even be looked up on the internet.
In fact, the most letters I’ve ever received concerning this book were from European readers thanking me for turning them on to Senegal’s truly supernatural Pink Lake as an idyllic vacation spot, and I myself must testify that once you’ve seen Pink Lake--you know there is a God.
It was a quick, painful experience--writing this book.
I finished it in three weeks, and although I didn’t like it at first (because it’s essentially a romance novel and I hate romance novels), it was published in Morocco that same year under the name Naima Kitar and then followed in 1998 by “Pure Nigger Evil”, my depiction of slavery in North Africa and the historical breeding out of black blood that Egyptian families, such as my father’s, carried out and continue to carry out in the interest of what I call “a veiled Arab White supremacy”. Arabs being classified as “White” in North Africa.
I am so incredibly grateful to God that a brilliant, brave African American businessman--Cornel Chesney--believed that it was important for a book like “Flesh and the Devil” to be translated into English so that it could finally reach the people that it was originally written for...the Black Americans.
I pray that they know how much I love them and that they don’t forget to write me an email telling me what they think of the book. Send it to: [email protected]
tima usrah (through fire comes the family)
Kola Boof
U.S.A. 2004
________________________
*The jazz songs by Blinky Hampton...were written by Kola Boof.
**Portions of this 1995 novel have been updated or rewritten by Kola Boof.
***Dutch and West African dialect scenes were translated by Kola Boof.
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•
ALSO BY KOLA BOOF:
“Virgins In the Beehive”
“Diary of a Lost Girl (Autobiography)”
.
“Nile River Woman” (Poems)
.
“Long Train to the Redeeming Sin”
.
“Kola Boof Unplugged & Uncut: Anthology of Essays”
.
“The Authentic Black Man (Essays)”
.
“God’s Hair” (Poems)
.
Coming Soon: “The Sexy Part of the Bible”
