by Vamba Sherif
‘Charlotte!’
‘I kept my end of the bargain, Edward.’
‘But you never told me!’ I said.
‘I named him after you.’
I was silent.
‘Try to love each other,’ she said.
I moved towards young Edward to hug him, but he would not allow me. Anticipating such a reaction from a son whose existence I had until that very moment not even known of, I held out my hand to him. He took it. I knew then that it would take a miracle to bridge the gap between us. At that moment, I cancelled my trip to the interior with the purpose of winning my son’s approval. As expected, it proved a formidable task. He was a different person, hardened by longing and forlorn hopes.
Though he was frequently in my company, he refused to open up to me. He accompanied me to the villages and listened when I preached to the natives. Sometimes he would withdraw into himself, his mind preoccupied and it would pain me to see him so sad. I reached out to Charlotte.
‘I don’t know what to do to make our son regard me as his father,’ I told her on one occasion, and she gazed at me for a long while.
‘He’s never had a father for so long. Give him more time,’ she said, and promised to talk to him. But even after her intervention, that time and many other times, Edward Jr remained passive.
Whatever it was that he harboured towards me, anger or perhaps rage, it seemed to consume both of us every time we were together. He would not confide in me, nor relax in my presence, and I could only conclude that perhaps the image of the father he had held on to did not correspond with the reality. Perhaps my presence pained him.
‘You are my son, and I am here now,’ I told him one day as we headed to one of the villages to talk to the natives.
‘But for how long?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You will leave soon.’
‘I will never leave you.’
‘We will see.’
With that he once again left me in the cold. He refused to debate the subject further.
A year went by like a fleeting wind, and I had not succeeded in igniting in my son the love I felt for him.
Charlotte told me, ‘Edward, I’ve talked to our son and failed. But don’t give up on him now. It’s possible he’s testing you.’
‘But I don’t seem to succeed with him.’
‘You will succeed, Edward.’
‘I feel I am alone in this, Charlotte.’
She shook her head.
‘You are not alone, but I can’t force him to love you.’
Yet the Lord, in his capacity as the Most High, the omnipotent and omniscient, came to my aid and answered my prayers in an unexpected way. The words of the Lord had touched young Edward. With that miracle, that sudden transformation, love came pouring into his heart towards me. I had sowed love with my love of the Lord, and now I was reaping it. When I informed her of the changes in Edward, Charlotte shrugged her shoulders.
‘It was meant to be,’ she said.
At fifteen, Edward had left school when he was told that he had a father who was probably alive in America. He chose to linger around the port whenever the ships docked and wait for that father. When he finally saw him, his anger at his father’s absence had consumed him.
My son went back to school and I stayed a year more in Monrovia to instruct him in his studies. Sure now that he was on the right path and I had made my peace with him, I decided to carry out my other task in this world.
It was time to leave for the interior.
9
This time, along with Patrick and Matthew, a young man named Joseph was to make the journey. Joseph was not a Congo but a product of the union between a settler and a native woman. His mother’s village lay on the way to Tenneh’s mother’s village. Over the years, the attitudes of many settlers had evolved from hardly condoning marital relationships with the natives to accepting it. Of the three accompanying me, Joseph was the boldest. He mocked the other two over their lack of knowledge about the interior. His boisterous spirit, his enthusiasm, were enough to assure me of a safe and energetic trip.
Things were different regarding my son. Having got used to calling me father, to addressing me with a slight tremor in his voice, perhaps afraid of losing me, my son found it hard to accept that I would leave him. Only after long conversations with him did he agree to let me go. Even so, when he saw me off he was bereft.
Charlotte had been calm when introducing Edward Junior, and appeared so again when bidding me farewell. Her turbulent emotions could only be detected from the throbbing of her heart while she hugged me. She wore a resigned look, which in hindsight conveyed the inner peace of a woman who had learned to accept life as it was, not as it should be. In the nearly two years of our relationship in this coastal town, she had taught me, among other things, that it was better to express love in silence.
We would sit in the shade of a tree for hours, recalling the moments spent in the embrace of my sanctuary in America. We would linger in that past and then return to the present, to the two of us seated under the tree, holding each other, holding on to each other. We talked about Edward and how we would raise him, talked about food, the meat or fish, the sauce she would prepare for us. We talked about life.
When not with Charlotte, I would sometimes dream about her walking towards me hand in hand with our son. I could not stop being amazed at how she had adapted to this climate and to this setting. She was one of the few settlers who spoke some native languages. Indeed, she had gone as far as dressing like them, wearing a tunic and wrapping about her long pieces of cloth. Only occasionally was there a hint that she had once crossed the ocean and was one of the settlers. When the men and women of Monrovia dressed in full regalia to celebrate Independence Day, my Charlotte was not with them but somewhere with the natives.
Once when we were together, somewhere on the outskirts of Monrovia, seated in the shade of a tree, our silence disturbed only by the sound of insects and the songs of birds, she told me she was so taken by the beauty of the coast that she had gone on a mission to persuade people to work together with the settlers, just as I planned to do. Well aware that she was bound to encounter difficulties on both sides, she had nevertheless carried on. It was her idea, not her husband’s, to move outside Monrovia to be closer to the natives and learn their ways.
That morning, with utter composure, Charlotte bade me farewell. She joined my son, the Barclay family, including Tenneh and Reverend Barclay, who had briefly returned to Monrovia, in the dining room, and we prayed for a safe journey. We hugged, and I left the house to join my three companions who waited outside, their impatience obvious.
Just when I was about to join them, Charlotte’s voice rent the air with my name. There was panic in the call. She came rushing forward and flung her arms around me. Her body shook in my arms and her tears wet my chest. Confused, overwhelmed, I held on to her. Her silence, our silence regarding our hearts’ song was broken. I learned then that silence was not enough, that sometimes we needed words to formulate our thoughts and feelings. And Charlotte decided to voice her feelings.
I led her to the verandah. Charlotte told me that she was the favourite of her father whose mother was an Indian. During her childhood she would dream of joining her grandmother’s people. Many a time, an old man would appear in her dreams, and he would hold out his hand to her. It was her ancestor, an Indian leader of his people, calling her to join them. As she approached adulthood, the old man disappeared from her dream. No matter how hard she tried, he failed to appear again.
She had survived slavery by hoping for the return of her ancestor. After years of waiting, he appeared to her. He conveyed his displeasure at her condition, a slave in the homes of others with the remote chance of ever joining her people. Then he disappeared again. She did not see him again until the day she stepped on the coast of this continent. The old man wore a smile that lacked warmth.
She knew something was amiss. Years drifted by withou
t any sign of him. And she had learned to forget him. On the day I returned, she told me, the old man had appeared to her and talked to her. Her people had forgiven her for abandoning them, he had said, and that she should pursue freedom whenever and wherever in the world. A happiness the like of which she had never experienced before had filled her. Afraid that by telling me the dream she might lose the full significance of the feeling, that it might wear off or lose its magic, she had kept silent.
‘I wanted to tell you this story before you left, Edward,’ she said. ‘You brought back my ancestor. Thank you.’
Charlotte stood up and let go of me, wresting herself from my hold. I managed to walk away from her. She waved me on.
10
My companions and I headed northwards as bright tropical sunlight bathed Monrovia, blowing life into the luscious green of its vegetation. With all the uncertainties accompanying this enterprise, I was not sure I would ever see the town again. So I turned to gaze at it. Monrovia was proof of man’s inherent right to freedom, of his irrefutable desire to make his own way in life. It was the answer to the dreams of freedmen, but at the root of its founding lay questions whose answers were as important as the freedom it now gave. How could Monrovia forge a way forward without fully addressing the question of its indigenous people? How could it marry its Christian values with those of a large population whose way of life contrasted and in some ways opposed those values?
I raised my hand to wave at Monrovia. Perhaps the gesture was meant for the bluish sky, for the verdant forest stretching out to the horizon, and for the town rising from sleep to get ready for another day’s challenges. Or maybe it was for Charlotte, who’d had the strength to survive without me, or for my son Edward who had waited for me to cross the sea. It might have been for them all that I waved.
My companions looked on in silence. We headed on. It was not long before we were confronted with the grandeur of the interior. Trees gazed at us in eternal repose and plants brushed against us and clung to our clothes. We journeyed for miles without seeing a single soul. On the crest of a mountain strewn with low brush, we paused to drink in the view of the forest spreading out like a closely knitted canopy of a density such as I had never seen before, not even in dreams. ‘The forest could be a friend or a terrible foe,’ Joseph said, and I believed him.
We descended the mountain. Now and then we would hear voices coming to us from places Joseph told me were villages. Just before dusk, we arrived at such a place. The mud huts were dark grey, and it was quiet at that hour of the day, the only noise the sound of pestles hitting mortars as women cleaned rice. On our way to meet the chief, we saw a very old man lying in a hammock, swinging it slowly, his eyes closed.
We met the chief dining in front of his house surrounded by a group of elders. He made us wait until he had finished eating before granting us an audience.
‘Chief, we are in need of a place to pass the night,’ I said, and Joseph interpreted for me.
The chief replied in a stammering voice and with wild gestures that we were not welcome in his village. Then he had some of his men move towards us to chase us out of the village.
‘Men with your attire are harbingers of war,’ he said.
I protested: ‘We came to persuade you to work together with us, to build peace between us.’
What did he mean by men of our attire? Did he mean the Liberians on the coast or the white men? Harbingers of war? What kind of war? I found his behaviour unacceptable. I had not come to fight but to share what I had learned with the people of the interior and to learn from them.
We made our way out of the village escorted by his men. Joseph told me that past experience had made some rulers apprehensive of settlers.
‘That chief was once a notorious slave trader,’ Joseph added.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I had heard of such people before, but I never thought that I would come into contact with them. I was trembling with anger.
‘You say that man traded in slaves?’ I said.
‘Yes, and he was not the only one,’ Joseph said.
I pushed past the men who were leading us out of the village and went to confront the chief, my rage boiling over. So it was true, I thought, so there were men who sold their own kin. I had moved so quickly that I was sitting on the mat facing the chief before his men could stop me.
Not a muscle in his face twitched.
‘Tell me, did you trade in human beings?’
I had thrown all caution to the wind and realized I was addressing him in English. I turned to Joseph, who was now yelling at me to leave.
‘You don’t know these people,’ he said. ‘They can be dangerous. Mr Richards, please, let’s leave. We are not safe here.’
I did not budge. I was ready to get into a fight with the chief, and I was amazed at my own courage, my anger egging me on.
‘Tell him exactly what I said.’
‘What are you saying?’ the chief asked after Joseph had delivered my words to him. He stood up, his face furrowed with anger, and I jumped to my feet too, prepared to face him head on, to throw myself at him if need be.
‘Did you sell your people?’ I asked.
‘My people?’
‘Yes, your people.’
‘They were my enemies. And I was being merciful to them.’
‘Merciful? You call selling people merciful?’
‘I did not kill them, for that’s what we do with enemies, stranger, kill them. Be careful now or you will become my enemy.’
A hoarse laugh escaped me. ‘So you are not denying that you sold people to be slaves?’
‘What is wrong with this stranger? Has he lost his mind? Tell him we are not afraid of his kind, however armed they may be.’
His armed men, who numbered in the dozens, surrounded me.
‘Let’s see now, stranger, whether you have a tongue to speak.’
He was so close to me that I could smell his breath, which was harsh and pungent, but I did not budge. By now, my three travelling companions were begging me, pleading to me to back down.
‘They could kill us here, Mr Richards,’ Joseph said.
I ignored him.
‘Do you know what happened to those you sold into slavery? Have you ever wondered,’ I said, and when Joseph translated the chief laughed.
‘Get them out of my sight,’ he said, and gestured to his men to lead us away out of his village.
‘You are lucky I slept well last night, stranger,’ he said.
‘Mr Richards, if you go on like this, we will not survive the interior,’ Patrick said when the village was far behind us.
But I was so upset that I did not respond. If such men had not collaborated with slavers, I thought, we could not have been uprooted from our homes, our lands and continent. I loathed his sort with all my heart.
Meanwhile night had fallen, and we were yet to find a place to sleep. The night was alive. All kinds of beasts seemed to have awoken and were intent on gobbling us up. Their calls resounded through the darkness. The young men told me of frequent cases of leopard and lion attacks in the forest. We held on to each other, moving one pace at a time, stopping when we bumped into trees or tree trunks that lay across the path. The wind would howl, carrying the cry of a tortured animal. We waded through streams and negotiated bridges that were in fact ropes tied from a tree on one riverbank across to another on the other side.
We arrived at the second village just before dawn and met its chief preparing to receive horsemen from the savannah. The chief was a bulky man who struggled to breathe, and was drenched in sweat on that cold morning. He listened to our story.
‘You are most welcome,’ he said, and referring to our encounter with the old chief who traded in slaves, he said: ‘Some rulers survived and still go on selling human beings. I don’t tolerate it, and there are many like me.’
I caught myself beaming at the chief.
He shifted on the mat and sat upright.
‘Your bath will be ready s
oon,’ he said, and asked his wives to prepare one for us. As we waited, he told us about the horsemen.
‘They are emissaries of the emperor Samori Touré. Samori’s built the largest empire in this part of the world, and his men are on their way to Monrovia to meet the Liberian government to discuss the possibilities of supplying Samori with arms in his fight against the encroaching French and English,’ he said.
Samori Touré must be one of those African heroes who populated my mother’s stories, I thought, the ones who spoke in voices of thunder, and I couldn’t wait to know more about him. But by then one of the chief’s wives announced that our bath was ready. Later, after a refreshing soak, we joined the chief, who was sitting in the shade of a tree with the Samorian emissaries.
‘Tell me about Samori,’ I asked the men.
One of the emissaries spoke: ‘His capital is Bissandougou, a journey two or three weeks away from here. It’s a walled city, the most fortified in all the lands of the black-skinned people. Besides Sundiata Keita and Mansa Musa, Samori is the greatest ruler the world has ever known.’
The men went on to tell me about his birth and ascendancy to power.
Their detailed description of their leader intrigued me. It was evident that Samori was an extraordinary man. I promised to keep my eyes open regarding the man and his ambitions. When the emissaries left, I presented the chief with a bottle of perfume, some drinks, and a knife.
‘Thank you for these gifts,’ he said. ‘You are one with whom we can trade. You are one to be trusted.’
‘I am a trader in the word of God, chief,’ I said. ‘I purchase the consent of men with the promise of the Kingdom of God.’
The chief listened without interrupting me until I had finished.
‘You sound like Muslims, some of whom have married my daughters. I understand what you say, but I’ve chosen to remain worshipping the gods of my ancestors,’ he said.
