by Vamba Sherif
Land of My Fathers
‘What an achievement’ Moses Isegawa, The Abbysinian Chronicles
‘A work rooted in the slave narrative tradition of Alex Haley’s Roots. Not a word more, not a word less. A taut, controlled narrative’
Standard Der Letteren
‘Well written, lyrical story for the general public’
The Association of Dutch libraries
‘A roman into which you would gladly crawl’
The Groene Amsterdammer
‘Sherif creates unity between two worlds’ Johan Diepstraten, author
Land of My Fathers
VAMBA SHERIF
To
The people of Liberia, the victims and the survivors
of the war. May we remember.
Acknowledgements
In writing part one of this novel, I relied on many sources, the most helpful being From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. I am grateful to my brother Omaru Fomba Kamara for believing in me, after we had fled Kuwait and Syria and during the war in Liberia, which resulted in a trying period on a refugee camp in the Netherlands where the first pages of this novel were written. My gratitude to all my friends and family scattered across the globe. To my muse, the jasmine of the north and the fountain of inspiration. You make my dreams valid.
Book One
The Two Worlds
1
One morning, on a wet autumn day, I caught sight of the ship in the distance and hurried towards it. The salty sea air bore excited voices towards me, and it was not long before I became part of the bustle. Shouldering my luggage consisting of clothes, some valuable books and expedition materials, I climbed on board. The ship was crowded with men and women. There were no children. Among the passengers were carpenters, stonemasons, tailors, and a preacher. But the last was not the only one there who had embraced the word of the Lord. Seated or standing in groups, the men revelled in dreams of a better life in a republic with abundant land and the opportunity to establish a trade. Nowhere in the wide world was the freedom desired by black people of America fulfilled more than in the coastal republic of Liberia. As I edged my way to the berth that would be my abode for the coming weeks, I heard those dreams being exchanged with conviction and hope. Although I did participate in these conversations, my dreams differed from all the others. I cherished freedom and had longed for it all my life, but that was not why I was heading for Africa, for the land of my fathers. What made me trade America with all its promises for a distant shore was perhaps greater than freedom.
The ship set sail out of the crowded dock with the Atlantic winds guiding it. Well-wishers in their dozens waved from the pier, but I chose not to wave back. I was resolved to put America and everything about it behind me and to forge a new beginning for myself.
Yet, how could I escape from it all – the fields, the great house, Sarah, and the huge country where I had spent so much of my life.
2
I was born to a mother who raised many children who were not her own. One day, one of the children in her care fell into a well. I remember being with her when the incident occurred. We were drawing water when the child, a boy of six, tripped and fell head first down the well. Mother, who had sustained an injury to her legs that had resulted in a pronounced limp and who could not walk without a cane, used a ladder and climbed down the well to rescue the child. Such a woman was my mother.
One Christmas morning – I must have been eight or thereabouts and regarded my world with mother and stepfather as sufficient – a white man sauntered up to our cabin and shot me a look I had not seen in a face like his all my life. The man went on to ruffle my hair and called me by my full name. After sharing a few words with my mother, my actual father, our master, took leave of us to prepare for a sumptuous Christmas dinner at the great house with his daughters and in-laws.
We were all given a few days off from the fields and could visit relatives and friends at other plantations. We could attend to our little gardens, which produced things we could sell in the city; or we could come together to sing and narrate stories until dawn. And although we were not allowed to drink, we managed to forget the fields by doing chores that appealed to us.
The cooks and other domestics were busy at work preparing the best dishes of the year at the great house. Having no duties around the cabins, I walked over there, which I was allowed to do.
The house consisted of a small study, ten bedrooms, two of which were occupied by servants, drawing rooms, a lounge, a large kitchen, a pantry, and a verandah giving onto a beautiful garden bordered by cypress trees. As I approached it, I had the impression of entering a domain where everything, from the servants and others who occupied it, the rooms and gardens, contrasted in every way with our lives in the cabins. And of course this was true.
In the house, our master and one of his four daughters, Sarah, and some servants lived. Sarah was sitting on a bench on the verandah, reading aloud from the Bible, her whole attention riveted to the book. Standing not far away, I listened to her telling the story of Jesus. I found the story and the way she read it captivating, and whenever I paused to reflect on the moment I took to the Lord, I would always associate it with hearing Sarah’s voice. She was reciting the story of Lazarus’s death and the Lord proclaiming that Lazarus was but asleep and then waking him up to life. Despite my awareness of the danger associated with a person of my kind trying to acquire knowledge, which was thought to lead to recalcitrant thoughts and eventually to rebellion, I resolved to master those passages. I suppose, looking back on it all now, the Lord had held out his hand to me.
Sarah would now and then pause, perhaps to acknowledge my presence. At one point, she sat upright, closed the Bible which rested on her lap, and gazed at me. There was mischief in her eyes. She was tall, lean, with bony hands, pale cheeks and long black hair. Both of us had piercing eyes, prominent foreheads and the irritable habit of toying with our fingers. Her three older sisters had married men who owned plantations. Their mother, a woman who had controlled the affairs of the plantation with an iron fist, had died a few years back, and Sarah was the only woman left in the great house.
She smiled now as I went on to the kitchen. We did not speak that day.
The kitchen was a beehive of activity. The head cook and domestic, Benjamin Johnson, called out to me when I entered. ‘Come over here, Edward,’ he said, and I approached him. The aroma of fried chicken and diverse sauces pervaded the air.
Benjamin Johnson was hashing onion, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and boiled eggs to prepare salad. He was of amicable disposition, which he had cultivated and which, he told me later, was necessary for his survival on the plantation. Occasionally he visited our cabin, bringing some leftovers with him. Old now, but as healthy as a horse, he wore an expression that seemed to plead and deride at the same time. Benjamin smiled when least expected and during inappropriate times, throwing one into confusion as to how to respond to him. With seasoned hands, he now prepared the food, while at the same time issuing orders to other servants. He seemed at home in that world and yet, on more than one occasion, he had told my parents of his desire to escape. He was an important figure on the plantation and our master appeared to rely on his counsel regarding us. He would boast of his successes. Other servants consulted him on everything pertaining to culinary issues and to the house. Through the years, he had climbed the ladder of plantation life from a young man who tilled the fields to being head of the domestics and a cook bent on mastering an art form in which he took the greatest pride.
He offered me a drumstick.
‘This will do you good, I know it, Edward,’ he said, and I looked for an empty corner, eased myself down and bit into it. Benjamin Johnson was right
. The food did indeed do me a lot of good.
Later, I left the kitchen. Sarah was no longer on the verandah. In those days I was wont not to head straight for the cabins but to stroll along paths that ran through the bushes, pausing to listen to nature, to the songs of birds or the cries of animals. During one of my wanderings I found a place in the bush, covered with dusty sand, a place so tranquil that it became my sanctuary, where I would retreat to take stock of my life as a child on the plantation, my head brimming with questions regarding my fate. I often wondered, in the light of the stories my mother told us about Africa, what had happened that resulted in us being cast away forever from our land. Why had we become the property of other human beings? Nothing I could think of could justify our circumstances and why they were being perpetuated for so long and by so many.
I avoided my sanctuary that day and took a different path, uncertain as to where it would lead. It was a sunny day, the sky the bluish colour of Sarah’s eyes, and the air pregnant with the odour of the bushes. Now and then I would pause to gaze at the trees, as if they could communicate with me and answer the myriad questions that swirled in my head. Beyond a cluster of bushes I thought I heard hurried whispers, and on taking a closer look saw a gathering of men and women. I knew all of them. My stepfather was among them. What was unfolding intrigued me. My stepfather was teaching the slaves a language I had never heard before. It did not sound American, not even remotely. He seemed to have plucked it out of the void, and now, in a calm voice to which the men and women clung like children to a fairy tale, he recited a word or a sentence, which the group repeated. He brought such a solemnity to bear on the moment that I felt I was witnessing an ancient ritual brought over from the African world. But afraid of incurring his wrath, I stole away from the bush and headed for the cabin.
Mother was sprawled on a chair before the kitchen, a tiny wooden affair which stood beside the cabin, and was littered with sooty pots and pans. She was surrounded by a gaggle of her children, and at the hour of the day, in the fading light of the sun, some of the children were whining and demanding her attention as she prepared the last meal of the day. Her hair was braided in two rows, and she wore a long brown dress which seemed to merge with the color of her skin and which she wore for days on end. She was heavily built, perhaps once a beautiful woman, dark and tall like a tree, her strength depleting with the years. What remained of that strength she could harness in her eyes, which had the most effect on us, making us laugh or sob to the power of her stories.
I did not know how she and my stepfather met, for it seemed as if the two had been together all their lives. He could be a hard man, my stepfather, and that was why I had not interrupted him in the bush. He could not tolerate the rise of a voice in the cabin besides his own. His love for us, which he expressed in deeds only, was sometimes doled out as if it was a punishment, harsh and unforgiving. A bulky man, his height and build reminded me of what our ancestors might have looked like in those distant lands. He had a coarse voice that would disturb the atmosphere of the cabin on his return from the fields. And he was often hard on us, never forgiving an error. We feared him so much and held him in such esteem that we thought he was made of stone and never broke until my mother went down with a terrible fever one time and I saw him in tears and I knew then that he was just like us, a man susceptible to emotions. Nevertheless, on other days, he applied the rigid laws of the plantation on us. He never resigned to his fate but believed that slavery was doomed to fail, instilling in us the conviction that freedom was just around the corner and that one day we would all return to Africa, to our origins. He brought us news of activities of abolitionists, of acts and resolutions taken on our behalf, of every whisper connected to us.
One of the children in particular was demanding all her attention, a child of about three with a snotty nose, whose weeping voice rose above all the others. My mother’s face had taken on that frowning aspect which indicated the depth of her exasperation. Any moment now, she would slap the child. ‘Mother, let me,’ I intervened, and she heaved a weary sigh. ‘Edward, I can’t concentrate on anything with this child around,’ she said. I took the boy away and used the rags on him to wipe his nose and then helped calm him down. ‘Now you all behave or you would go hungry to bed,’ she said. The children lapsed in silence. Later, I sat outside with a group of them around a large bowl of beans, while my mother shared another bowl with the rest.
Later, my stepfather joined us. His mood was amicable. He sat in front of the cabin with a strange light shining in his eyes, as if his face showed that he was privy to a secret.
Soon, some men, women and children from other cabins came to a tree behind our cabin to listen to my mother’s stories.
‘In Africa where we came from,’ she began, ‘there lived a people who went a whole year without salt. Salt was as precious as gold, and they could not thrive without it. So they dispatched a group to the land of salt. It was a long and treacherous journey which few had undertaken before, for traders from the savannah always brought them salt which they exchanged for kola nuts and other precious goods. But that year, there were no traders. A year passed and those sent out to look for salt did not return. The people decided to dispatch another group in search of the first, but those never made it back either. The third and fourth batches were never heard of again. So it came about that whenever someone died children were told that the deceased had gone to buy salt, for those who went to buy salt never returned.’ Mother stopped.
She seemed for a while like a great matriarch who had offered a modicum of her wisdom to her children and now paused to let it sink in. In the deep silence that fell on the gathering, her voice rose, solemn as a verdict, without a trace of emotion. ‘You, you, and you,’ she said, pointing at each one of us. ‘My son, my husband and me, we are all of us descendants of the people who went to buy salt. We never returned.’
Of all the stories mother ever told us before and thereafter, none moved me like the one that night.
Later, after the story had taken deep root in us, we danced and sang, and I slept huddled in a corner on a plank with the story of the people who went to purchase salt on my mind and pervading my dreams.
Once Christmas was over, we returned to the fields. I went on running errands around the plantation or joining the men and women to till the fields. For a while, I forgot all about Sarah. But one day, I saw her elegantly dressed and with a parasol, strolling along a path close to the fields.
‘Edward, come over here,’ she called out to me.
My stepfather, seeing me about to respond to her, grunted his disapproval, but at her insistence I joined her.
We sat in the shade of a tree. For the first time I was introduced to the world of words. In a short time I managed to grasp the alphabet and was hungry for more. Sarah turned out to be a competent teacher.
The more I spent time with her, the more it upset my stepfather until one night he returned from the fields and took me in front of the cabin with a number of mother’s children.
The man flogged me with a cruelty that shocked me, leaving welts on my back. It was the first time he had laid hands on me. Mother was stunned. In a burst of temper, he tried to explain his action.
‘The key to our survival here is to know our place,’ he said. ‘The child does not know his place. He’s putting all our plans in jeopardy.’
My mother was silent all night, which hurt him to the quick.
I could not sleep for the pain in my body. To escape the biting silence of the cabin, my stepfather headed for the fields at the crack of dawn, and he returned and sat beside me, trying to apologize but failing to do so, for the plantation was not a place for such sentiments.
One night he woke me up after everyone had retired to bed and the world was quiet. ‘I will be the one to teach you,’ he said.
My stepfather told me about a language he had learned from someone he had met at another plantation. ‘There’s a country called Liberia, where the people who were once s
laves here in America live in freedom. Some of the natives of that country speak this language. It’s called Vai. They say an Indian taught them to write their language down, but what we know for certain is that one of their people had a dream in which he was taught the language. It will be our language, Edward, the one we will speak when we return to Africa. While teaching you the language, we will prepare for our escape. We need to keep our heads low. The closer you come to the likes of Sarah, the greater the risk of our plans being exposed. So avoid her as much as you can. Don’t trust her.’
Though I was touched by his dreams and wanted to learn the Vai language as much as others who believed in him, I wondered how I would react were Sarah to offer to teach me again.
Our master, bent on making our plantation one of the best, drove us to work harder and longer that year. As he had no overseer – for ours was not a large plantation – he saw to everything himself. We left the cabin at the crack of dawn and returned late at night. Some of us would collapse in the heat of the scorching sun, but we were not given a moment’s respite.
One day, while we were ploughing the fields, I saw my mother edging her way to our master, leaning on her cane, and with that burning look on her face that had on more than one occasion compelled me to confess my misdemeanours. She drew up to him, and said, ‘The work is driving everyone to an early death. It’s enough. Enough.’
Our end had surely come, I thought. My mother who had never defied the master was about to unleash a revolution. The silence that reigned lasted so long that I thought our master would end up slapping her. I had seen him flog people until they had passed out. There was a story of a woman who had succumbed to his whip. It was mother’s turn, I was certain of this. But our master left the fields in silence.
