The Asante made the Bedagbam pay for losing the war. Every year, at the Asante harvest festival, the Bedagbam had to deliver to them so many pieces of cotton cloth, so many pieces of silk cloth, herds of goats and flocks of sheep, and five hundred human beings, men, women, and children. The Asante agreed that the Bedagbam would not have to enslave their own kin, so their ruler, the Ya Na, sent out raiding parties like Abdulai’s to steal whatever they could and to hunt our people.
The commander of the Asante forces had stayed behind in Yendi after the war. I learned later that he was called Nana Koranten Péte. One day he and the Ya Na came to inspect us. It was as if we were goats offered for sale in the market. The two of them took a fancy to me. I can’t think why. Water was scarce and I was filthy from my work in their shea-butter factory. The Ya Na wanted to take me for his use but Koranten Péte said no, I was already the property of the Asante king.
The next day I witnessed an execution: the two guards who had slept while Itsho and his men slipped into their camp had their heads cut off. I saw it all again that night in my sleep and woke up with a scream in my throat.
I decided to escape. I stole a cutlass and a water bottle and hid them. I must have been mad to think I could succeed. Even if I had managed to elude their horsemen, I would have had to make a journey of several days across open country, without food or water, friends or landmarks along the way.
I remember the dogs howling after me in the dark as I ran through the empty streets of the town. The path I took into the bush soon petered out. I was already exhausted from my day’s work, hungry and thirsty. Soon I was lost, swinging my cutlass without conviction in an attempt to cut a passage through the thorn bushes.
Then I recognized the rasping cough of a leopard. I climbed a tree and tied myself to the highest branch I could reach. Damba found me there the next day, fast asleep, with the marks of the leopard’s paws imprinted on the sand below. He had to stand on his horse’s saddle to lift me down.
The Ya Na sentenced me to death. I didn’t mind; I had nothing to look forward to in my life. And yet, I cannot deny it, I was scared.
Fortunately, the night out had left me with a high fever. For some reason I did not understand, they decided to let me recover before killing me. I was put in Damba’s care and his mother nursed me slowly back to health. In the end it was Koranten Péte who saved my life. He decided that he would give me as a gift to one of the Asante royals.
Zacharias
I read what I have written; I read it aloud to my mother. It is a strange experience. I speak in her voice and she listens. It is almost as if I become her and she becomes me. The first time, she lets me read the whole passage without interruption. When I come to the end, she lavishes praise on me. I explain that I have had plenty of practice; Senhor Gavin dictates his official letters to me. Sometimes I have to do a second draft. When he has signed the letter, I make a copy in our letter book.
My mother asks me to read the passage again, slowly. From time to time she stops me and asks me to cross out a word and substitute another—small corrections only, or second thoughts. I am proud to be able to serve her in this way.
My mother is a courageous woman. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now. I try to imagine her as a young woman. In Africa. A beautiful young woman in Africa.
Ama’s story
Most of us had to walk, but I was lucky—Koranten Péte selected a few of us to travel with him by canoe down the river Daka. The new sights made me forget my terrible predicament. Enormous trees lined the banks, each one different, some a mass of flowers, white, yellow, red, even blue. We saw crocodiles and hippos and, late one afternoon, while Koranteng Péte was looking for a place to camp, our way was blocked by a family of elephants. A huge bull, with torn ears and one tusk shorter than the other, stood guard on a sand bank, head and trunk raised, challenging us, while his tribe cavorted in the water behind him. One of the Asante guards raised his flintlock rifle, but Koranteng Péte slapped it down with a stern reprimand.
Then there were the birds. The trees were full of so many different kinds of birds, birds I had never seen before, singing birdsongs I had never heard. The Asante man who sat behind me knew the name of every one and had a story to tell about each of them. They called him Akwasi Anoma, the bird man. My problem with him was that he couldn’t keep his hands off me.
After some days, we arrived at a large town called Kafaba. It was situated on high ground overlooking a wide river called the Volta. After the morning mist cleared, one could see land on the other side, but it was far away. Koranteng Péte left us there to wait for those who were coming overland. He put Akwasi Anoma in charge. He was a brutal man and I suffered badly from his attentions. I thought again of escape but deep down I knew that it was only a dream. My home was far away. I had no idea how to find it and the countryside was full of danger. So I turned my thoughts to Kafaba town and the people who lived there.
Akwasi Anoma decided to find a room to rent. He made me follow him, carrying his bundle on my head. The first thing I saw as I trudged up the hill was an area fenced with cut bamboo. Horses and asses, oxen, cows, and goats roamed freely within it, searching the parched ground for a blade of grass; but there were humans there, too: slaves, hundreds of them, many of them all but naked, using scraps of cloth or bundles of leaves to hide their shame and to shelter from the burning sun. Their ribs stuck out and their skin was wrinkled. They were chained to one another in fives and sixes. The end of each chain was attached to a stake driven into the ground. There was nowhere they could go to empty their bowels, so they had to do their business where they sat, exposed to the gaze of their fellows and passersby. One woman, who had a baby on her lap, a poor creature of skin and bones, put her hands under her breasts and lifted them to show me that they were quite empty. Then she held out those same hands and moved them to her lips, begging for food; but I had nothing to offer. All I could do was shrug and show her my own open palms. After all these years I still have her picture embedded in my mind. I remember wondering then, as I looked into her eyes, whether I was seeing my own future.
Zacharias
I ask my mother about the vision which she saw in the eyes of that slave woman in Africa. Can anyone see into the future? She says the child in that woman’s lap had little time to live, and the woman, too, perhaps. They had no future.
“I am lucky,” she says. “My own child survived into manhood and now he has a child of his own.”
She is talking about me.
She asks me how many sheets of paper I have left.
Ama’s story
They ferried us across the river, ten at a time, first the women, then the men. It took a whole day. Early the next morning, Koranten Péte poured libation and addressed his ancestors. Soon we set off on a long march through the bush, led by drummers and musketeers. Koranten Péte sat in a hammock, carried by four of our men. The rest followed in twelves, manacled wrist to wrist in pairs and spaced a stride apart along a heavy chain. Each of the men carried a head load. So did we women, but we were not chained.
The drummers set a steady pace and we soon got into our stride. Then something strange happened to me. I was possessed. I found myself first humming and then singing a dirge, one I had heard at funerals but never sung; but now the words were different. I felt Itsho’s presence and he seemed to be dictating to me as I am now dictating this story to you, my son. I felt that my spirit had left my body and that I was floating at a great height, looking down on our caravan. I sang to the rhythm of the drums:
“Oh, you our ancestors, our grandparents
“And their parents; and their parents and grandparents.”
And then the chorus:
“Hear our voice,
“Hear our lamentation.”
And then I addressed them again:
“Oh, you our ancestors, all those who in the dim mists of the past
“Have lived upon this earth and have gone before us into the world of the spirits:
“Advise us, help us,
“Succor us.”
And after each short verse, the chorus again.
“We, too, have died and yet we live still.
“We are as walking corpses.
“We have no drink to offer
“But we beg and beseech you:
“Hear our voice,
“Hear our lamentation.
“Our freedom has been taken from us
“Our spirits are chained to our dead bodies.
“Who will perform the rites which will free our spirits
“And send them to your world?
“Hear us, advise us, fortify us,
“Give us back life; give us back hope.
“Hear our voice,
“Hear our lamentation.”
And as I sang, the other women began to hum, and then, as they picked up the words, they joined in the chorus; first those near me and then those ahead and those behind. And when I came to the end, one of them shouted, “Again,” and we sang it again and again until everyone knew the words.
Though the singing of dirges is women’s work, even the men joined in. Koranten Péte could have given instructions to the guards to force silence upon us, or he could have ordered the drummers to rest their sticks, but he didn’t. In Africa, only a madman or a fool interrupts a conversation with the ancestors.
Then we came to a river. The drummers stopped drumming and the musketeers fired volleys into the air to frighten off the crocodiles. We waded across. The rhythm had been broken. We didn’t sing again.
Zacharias
That is a pagan song. She should have sung a prayer to God, or Jesus, or Mary. I suppose I cannot blame her, since she was as ignorant of religion as she was of guns. As Father Isaac says, God has given the Portuguese the task of bringing the blacks from the pagan darkness of Africa into the Christian light. In Africa, all they have to look forward to is the certainty of eternal hellfire. In Brazil, they have the chance of salvation.
I ask her, “My Mother, have you been saved?”
“Saved? From slavery? By whom?” she asks. “It is too late for that. Kwame, my time is short. Let us continue.”
Ama’s story
You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but in those days I must have been quite a pretty girl. The guards were forever flirting with me. One in particular—a tease called Mensa—made a point of walking alongside me. I asked him to teach me their language. That amused him. Mensa told me all sorts of stories. Most of them seemed to me far-fetched, but they passed the time. He told me that the Asante king, the Asantehene, had three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three wives. (To do that, he first had to teach me how to count in his language: baako, mienu, miensa is how they say one, two, three.) He said that the King’s wives were the finest, the most beautiful women in Asante. And he said that all the finest, most beautiful women in Asante were married to the King.
“If the King sees a beautiful woman,” he said, “he will take her, even if she is another man’s wife, or if she is a slave. If the King sees you, he might marry you; but, be warned: if you then take a lover and get found out, you must expect to be tortured and to die.”
There was no way that I could know then that I would indeed meet the Asante king one day. But that comes later in my story.
After a few days, we entered a dark forest of gigantic trees. It was only along our road that the sunlight reached the ground. Great multicolored butterflies flitted across that sunlit stretch, but on either side there was gloom. Tiny shrill-voiced birds with bright red and yellow and blue breasts and long curved beaks swept out of the darkness to suck the nectar from the wild flowers that grew in the tangled roadside jungle. The scent of rotting vegetation filled the air. We had never experienced anything like that before. We were creatures of the savannah and unused to the humidity. Our bodies and clothing were drenched in sweat.
The forest pressed in on us. From its depths came strange, discordant sounds, a chorus of screeching, howling, and wailing. Mensa said they were the voices of spirits, angry at our invasion of their private domain.
Zacharias
It is Sunday. My mother says it is a day of rest. I tell her I would like to go to Mass. By this time Iphigenia will be sitting with Carlota outside our church in Salvador. We slaves are allowed to attend this church but we have to stand at the back. They don’t allow small children because they sometimes cry and disturb the whites. Iphigenia usually sits outside in the shade of a tree with the other mothers while I go inside.
My mother says there will be no Mass here today. The priest only visits the Engenho two or three times a year.
It turns out that the only ones who will get some real rest today are my quill and ink and paper. We are at my mother’s allotment and there is work to be done.
In spite of her stiff joints, my mother gets down on her hands and knees and moves along the rows, gently feeling the heads of the carrots, loosening the soil around them with her fingers and pulling up the weeds. I am surprised at her energy but concerned that the work is too much for her.
“My Mother, let me do it,” I insist.
“You are a town boy,” she says. “Life in Miranda’s big house in Salvador has made you soft.”
“Not so,” I reply. “Behind our quarters, Senhora Miranda has a vegetable garden and she has made me her head gardener. She says she is a farm girl at heart, and sometimes she is homesick when she thinks of the Engenho.”
“The hypocrite,” my mother says. “When she was growing up here, she hardly ever set foot outside the casa grande. She showed no interest at all in the workings of her father’s engenho, let alone our allotments.”
She sits back on her haunches.
“When I still had some sight,” she says, “I used to weed with a hoe. Now I have to use my fingers to distinguish the useful plants from weeds.”
In spite of her protestations, she soon tires. I help her to her seat on a rock and she lets me do the work. Today we talk about gardening, about compost and insect pests. At last we have found an interest that we share. While I work, she asks me questions about my life in Salvador, about Senhor Gavin and Senhora Miranda, about Iphigenia and Carlota and Iphigenia’s parents, about how it is to be a slave in town, about the books which Senhor Gavin has given me to read. She asks searching questions, some of which I find it difficult to answer. To look at this old woman with her shrunken body, the grey stubble on her shaven skull, and her staring, sightless eyes, you would hardly guess the depth of her wisdom and experience.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ama’s story
If you had brought more paper, I would have told you stories of the time I spent living in the palace of Nana Osei Kwadwo, the fourth king of Asante. I would have told you of the gold ornaments he wore on state occasions, of his golden crown, of his gold breast-plate, of his necklaces, bracelets, anklets, finger rings, all solid gold and of such a weight that he could not walk without assistance; I would have told you of the ivory horns and fontomfrom drums and those who played them, celebrating Nana’s great valor, and of the enormous multicolored umbrella which shaded him from the sun; I would have told you of his three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three wives whose faces only eunuchs were permitted to see; and of how one day he chucked me under the chin, looked me in the eye, asked my name, and said I was a pretty girl and that if he had been a few years younger, he might have married me. I would have told you of the orgy of bloodletting which followed his death. A person of the Asantehene’s status must not arrive unaccompanied at the village of his ancestors. Slaves and subjects must be killed to join his retinue of spirits. Osei Kwadwo’s cohort included all his favorite wives. It was my singular good fortune that, by the time he discovered my existence, he had already outlived his desire.<
br />
If you had brought more paper, I would have told you also of the Golden Stool, which the priest Okomfo Anokye conjured out of the heavens as a home for the soul of the Asante nation, and how that soul passes from the care of one Asantehene to that of his successor.
And, talking of successors, I might (only might) have told you of Osei Kwame, who succeeded Osei Kwadwo as the custodian of the Golden Stool—Osei Kwame, who came to power when he was still a lad, as a consequence of an assassination carried out in public, before my very eyes (which could then see as well as yours can now) by a giant Chief Executioner called Konkonti.
But these rich and powerful kings have their own historians whose fulltime work it is to remember and proclaim in fitting perorations their great victories; and to drown their defeats in the swamp of lost memories. The poor and humble, slaves like me and pawns like my friend Esi, have no historians and, like the kings’ defeats, our lives are quickly forgotten. So I will use our small stock of paper to tell you our stories, rather than theirs.
Soon after we arrived in Kumase, the Asante capital, Koranten Péte, whom you have already met, gave me as a gift to the Queen Mother, Asantehemaa Konadu Yaadom. It was Konadu Yaadom who found my name Nandzi difficult to pronounce and named me, instead, Ama, in the casual way the Portuguese name their dogs; and it was in Konadu Yaadom’s household that I got to know her son, who was destined first to succeed Osei Kwadwo as Asantehene and then to select me, almost by chance, as his first lover; and, if he had had his way, his first wife.
When Konadu Yaadom and Koranten Péte got to know of the young king’s infatuation with me, they decided that I was a danger to the Asante state, I a humble slave girl of obscure origin, at least to them. Someone hid a bag of gold dust in my rolled-up sleeping mat. Then Konadu Yaadom arranged for it to be found, identified it as her property, and accused me of theft. I was taken to the Asantehene’s court, found guilty, and sentenced to be banished and sold to the white men at the coast.
Brave Music of a Distant Drum Page 3
