Nyumbani Tales

by Charles R. Saunders

  “They used me until I begged to die,” Amma continued tightly. “And they might have taken me back to their own country if they hadn’t been pursued by Sussu who were angry at the Nobas’ desertion. There was a fight ... I escaped while they killed each other for the gold the Noba had stolen along with me.

  “I walked through the waste, taking food where I could find it. When I left the Tassili, there was death all around. I took these garments from the body of a woman who no longer needed them. I thought I might find a new life in Gadou. But there is death there, too, you say.”

  Again, she looked down. Babakar took his hand from Amma’s shoulder and clenched it as if he were gripping the hilt of a sword.

  “Yes, there is death,” he said bitterly. “With this hand, I killed as many Sussu as I could see. But in the end, I have only this burnt-out field. My family is still dead, and there is no one to help me replant my crop before the rains pass.”

  They remained silent for a time, each adrift in sad reverie. Then Amma said: “There is nothing for me in Gadou, and I am weary of walking. I will stay here and help you with your crop.”

  Astonished, Babakar could only respond: “I have but one mattock.”

  Amma laughed, her smile rendering her face even more attractive than before.

  “I’ll use this,” she retorted, bending down to curl her slim fingers around a fire-blackened stake that had been part of a fence that once guarded Babakar’s field.

  Without further words, Amma began to thrust the jagged point of the stake into the soil. Fresh earth emerged as she twisted the stake in a digging motion.

  Only for a moment did Babakar watch her. Then he picked up his mattock and proceeded to work at Amma’s side. A cloud appeared, in the sudden fashion of the wet season, and a hot, misty rain soon washed down on two dark, naked backs bent to the soil.

  DAY FOLLOWED INEXORABLE day, and newly turned earth progressively supplanted the scorched remnants of Babakar’s field. The rains fell with perceptibly diminishing intensity. Working against the advent of the day they knew the rain would cease, Babakar and Amma toiled from the rising to the setting of the sun. With grim determination, they struggled to prepare the field for planting while there was still time for another crop to grow.

  Work they shared; work in plenty, along with the thatch-roofed house Babakar had erected on the side of the one the Sussu had destroyed. They shared meager meals of millet and beans bought only after tiresome haggling with the near-destitute merchants of Gadou. The people left in the town paid little heed to Babakar’s new companion; she was but one of many refugees from the desolate countryside.

  At night, they shared the sleep of the exhausted, their bodies touching only by chance on Babakar’s single sleeping-mat. For, by unspoken agreement, they did not share each other: not in the way of a man and a woman.

  On occasion, Babakar’s gaze would linger on the smooth play of muscles beneath Amma’s skin as she toiled beneath the sun. Such gazes did not last long, for the memory of the first Amma remained a shadow of sorrow in his mind. And he remembered how the Noba had ravished the second Amma ... was he, a countryman who had offered her shelter, to offer her similar abuse?

  If Amma noticed such moments of quickly suppressed passion, she showed no sign. Indeed, she seemed more determined than Babakar to succeed with their late-grown crop. She demanded nothing of him beyond the food and shelter he gave her.

  Once, at sunset, they were visited by Kuya Adowa, the local tyinbibi, or diviner. Despite her advanced years, Kuya stood proudly erect, and her eyes smouldered beneath her turban like the embers of a fire.

  The words she spoke were addressed to Babakar. But her dark, portentous gaze never left the eyes of Amma.

  “The dyongu, the spirit-cock that embodies the luck of Gadou, died yesterday,” the old woman announced ominously.

  Babakar stiffened. The death of the sacred black rooster always presaged a period of ill fortune. When the predecessor of this last dyongu had died, the invasion of the Sussu had followed. What new calamities the death of Kuya’s bird foreshadowed, Babakar did not care to contemplate. His concern was why Kuya Adowa had chosen to come to him to speak of the matter.

  “War brings destruction not only to the lands of men, but to the world of the spirits as well,” the tyinbibi said. “The kambu, the spirits of power, manifest themselves in our world, and the tyerkou shed their skins at night to wander the land and drink the blood of the unwary. Beware, Babakar iri Sounkalo. Beware.”

  Only after the second “beware” did Kuya shift her gaze from Amma’s eyes to Babakar’s.

  “What do you mean by that, Kuya Adowa?” Babakar demanded. “Are Amma and I in danger of some kind?”

  The old woman wrinkled her nose in disdain.

  “I leave that interpretation to you,” she said. “I must go and seek the black hatchling that is to be the new dyongu.”

  With that, she turned her bare, bony back on them and stalked down the dusty road to Gadou.

  Troubled, Babakar turned to Amma – and was taken aback by the hatred in her eyes as she glared at the dwindling figure of the departing tyinbibi ...

  THE MORNING CAME WHEN the first seedlings of wassa poked boldly through the soil. Overnight, the seeds had sprouted several inches, in the typical manner of the first growth-spurt of this type of bean plant.

  A smile of satisfaction crept quietly across the face of Babakar. It was the first such smile his features had worn since the coming of the Sussu.

  Then he looked at Amma ... and his smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of utter bewilderment.

  In an attitude approaching reverence, Amma knelt near a cluster of seedlings. One finger stroked the fragile green stems with the delicate touch of a priestess conveying a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility. Her head inclined so far forward that her face hovered only a hairsbreadth from the tops of the plants.

  Tentatively, Babakar touched the shoulder of the kneeling woman. The effect of the brush of his fingers against her skin was at once instantaneous and disconcerting as Amma sprang into the air like a frightened animal. Yet for all the suddenness of her leap, she landed lightly on her feet, facing Babakar in a tense, quivering half-crouch. Her eyes, fixed glassily at something beyond Babakar’s head, bulged wide in fright.

  A tremor shook her slight frame. Then the glaze faded from her eyes and she suddenly pitched forward.

  Quickly Babakar reached out and broke Amma’s fall, saving her from a bruising impact. For a moment she lay limp in his arms. Babakar became conscious of her sleek body pressing closely to his, and this time his thoughts did not stray to the Amma he had lost, or the outrage committed by the Noba deserters.

  “Amma,” he murmured into the tight folds of her turban. “Amma, what is wrong?”

  Her head tilted upward. Never before had Babakar been so aware of the true beauty of the strange woman’s face. It was as though he were gazing at a sculpture carved from polished black pearl, streaked with tracks of diamond where the sunlight caught her tears.

  “I am sorry,” she said softly. “It’s just that I was remembering the last harvest my family had ... before the Sussu came.”

  “The Sussu are gone!” Babakar said fiercely, his hands tightening on Amma’s arms.

  Silently, he repeated what he had said. The Sussu were gone ... as was his first Amma. Sorrow was there; it always would be. But the woman he held in his arms was no memory. She was warm. She was real. He loved her.

  Babakar’s face bent toward Amma’s. Their faces came together slowly, and when their mouths met, Amma’s arms encircled Babakar’s shoulders and clung to him with gentle strength. Warm as the sun that nurtured the land with this, the first embrace of his love.

  “My Amma,” Babakar whispered when their lips parted.

  “Your second Amma ...”

  “No,” Babakar said firmly. “I have only one Amma. And I want her to be my wife.”

  “You do not ask this only out of gratitude fo
r my help with the crop?

  “How can you say that?” Babakar demanded. “It is as a woman that I want you, not labor to be bargained for. What is mine is yours – even my life.”

  Exerting a soft but insistent pressure, Amma’s arms drew Babakar’s head downward, and their mouths met again. Long moments passed before their lips parted. It was Amma who spoke first.

  “When the next wet season begins, will we go to the adhana to be mated at the shrine of the Mother of Earth?” she asked.

  Without hesitation Babakar assented, and he pressed Amma close to him. He never realized that Amma’s gaze was cast downward, fixed with strange avidity on the wassa sprouts pushing their way through the soil ...

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN SWIFTLY, as always during the waning weeks of the wet season. The glances that passed between Amma and Babakar were no longer fleeting or hastily averted. As they walked from the field to Babakar’s dwelling, Amma’s hand clasped his for the first time. The soft half-light of the stars cast a shaft of muted illumination through the house’s only window, and outlined the contours of Amma’s half-nude form as she reclined on the sleeping-mat. Her arms opened to Babakar as he moved toward her.

  All the restraint he had imposed on his emotions melted swiftly in the heat of Amma’s embrace. His hands peeled the asokaba from her waist, then travelled upward to untie the turban from her head, so that he could experience the sensation of her kinky hair brushing against his palms.

  But as Babakar’s fingers pulled at the knot of the turban, Amma uttered a low cry that had nothing to do with passion or pleasure. Her hands shot up to Babakar’s, and with surprising force held them away from her head. The points of her fingernails dug talon-like into his flesh.

  “No!” she hissed. “You must not touch my turban.”

  “Why?” Babakar asked in bewilderment.

  Amma did not reply immediately. She lay silent, her body taut and rigid next to Babakar’s, her hands pinioning his wrists like clamps of steel. Then, with a shudder, she released her hold and wriggled from beneath him. Sitting up, she hooked her arms around drawn-up knees, then spoke in a flat tone.

  “I did not tell you everything that happened when the deserters took me,” she said. “I fought them. They became angry, and one of them decided to teach me not to defy them. He took a brand from their cook-fire, and pushed it at my face. I turned away ... and the flame burned the top of my head. There are scars ... it is horrible. You must not see it. You must not!”

  Babakar reached out and pulled Amma down to his broad chest. She yielded easily, and nestled passively against him.

  “Yet another outrage that the Sussu must answer for,” he said bitterly. “Would that I’d killed as many of them for you as I did for ... my other family.”

  Then his tone turned gentle.

  “My feelings for you are not so shallow that I would turn from the sight of what the Noba did to you,” he said. “But if you prefer that I not see it, I will never again put my hand near your turban.”

  Amma leaned forward and covered Babakar’s lips with hers. His arms tightened around her; she returned his embrace with an ardor beyond any he had experienced before. Their love was consummated in a fierce flow of passion that left Babakar spent and drowsy.

  So deep was the slumber he soon fell into that he was not disturbed when Amma extricated herself from his embrace, hastily donned her asokaba and quietly slipped out of their dwelling, being especially careful not to rustle the rectangle of cloth that hung across the doorway. Nor did he waken when, only an hour before the rising of the sun, she returned.

  AMMA SEEMED STRANGELY subdued as she and Babakar walked to the wassa-field in the morning. Her fingers hung lifelessly in his grasp, and her eyes were downcast. Babakar wondered if he had unknowingly done something wrong the night before. Surely, Amma had enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he ... or had she?

  Possibly she now recalled the depredations of the Noba who had ravished her, which she may have forgotten during the ecstasy of the night. Babakar wanted to assure Amma that she was secure with him. But if she had indeed begun to forget the horrors of the past, it would be foolish for Babakar to bring them once again to the forefront of her mind.

  Suddenly, he recalled the strange warning of Kuya Adowa ...

  Then the sight that met his eyes when they reached the field swept aside all the conflicting thoughts that roiled through Babakar’s mind.

  The field was ruined. All the burgeoning wassa-sprouts were gone, bitten off to jagged, pitiful stumps that barely protruded above the line of the soil. Amid the destruction lay the mocking signatures of its perpetrators: scores of small, cloven hoofprints scattered among the rows of ravaged plants.

  Goats? thought Babakar. No, that could not be. There were no goat herds this far south of the Gwaridi-Milima Mountains.

  When he knelt to look more closely at the damage, he realized that the prints had come in a long, disorderly line from the west, then departed in the direction of neighboring fields after they had eaten their fill of his wassa. There were other, fresher tracks that told him that the animals had later returned the way they had come. That way led them to the Tassili. Babakar knew there were no wild goats in the Tassili. There was not enough forage in the wasteland to support their voracious appetites.

  But there were ... gazelles.

  The mystery deepened. Babakar’s brow furrowed in confusion. Never before had the elusive, graceful antelopes of the desert ventured this far from their wasteland environs. Never, at least, in the generations of time the griots could recall, and those seemed to stretch back forever.

  Yet what tradition said could never happen, had. The evidence lay grazed to the ground at his feet.

  Shaking his head in despair, Babakar stood up and turned to Amma. She stared downward with a wooden, unseeing expression.

  Gods, thought Babakar. She’s even more affected by this than I am ...

  Recalling her frightened reaction of the previous morning, he gingerly placed his arm around her shoulders.

  “Amma,” he began haltingly. “I don’t understand how this happened, but somehow we must overcome it. The land is useless to us now; there is not time to plant another crop. We can go to Gau, or some other city, and hire our services to some Merchant Lord. It’s only a step above slavery, but it’s better than starving ...”

  “So, Babakar, they got you, too,” a voice behind them interrupted.

  Babakar turned to face two of his fellow farmers – Mwiya iri Fenuka and Atuye iri Sisi, whose fields lay closer to Gadou than his.

  “The gazelles destroyed your crops, too?” Babakar returned. “Did they get everybody’s?”

  “Mine, not his,” Atuye said sourly.

  Like Babakar, Atuye was an ex-soldier, hard-muscled and battle-scarred. Mwiya, a stocky man of middle age, seemed even more agitated than Atuye, even though it was Mwiya’s crop that had been spared.

  “It’s like that throughout this whole area,” Mwiya said. “The creatures struck haphazardly. You know Atuye, here, and I are neighbors, our fields side-by-side. Yet mine still stands as it did yesterday, and Atuye’s looks like yours.”

  “We thought you might have seen something, since yours is the last field in the direction the gazelles came from,” Atuye said.

  Babakar shook his head.

  “I slept through it all, curse the luck,” he said.

  “What about you?” Atuye growled, turning to Amma.

  Amma started, her shoulders tensing beneath Babakar’s arm.

  “Nothing,” she replied quickly. “I know nothing.”

  “Are you certain?” pressed Atuye.

  “What in Motoni’s name is wrong with you, man?” Babakar exploded, taking a step forward. “Amma couldn’t have seen anything. She was with me all night.”

  Atuye stood his ground, though he couldn’t fail to notice the clenching of Babakar’s fist, or his willingness to use it.

  “All I know is that when we went to old Kuya Adowa this mo
rning to ask if she could help us, she told us to seek the answers to our questions from your new woman,” Atuye said.

  Something close to fear held Babakar in a cold grasp as he again recalled the tynbibi’s visit, and her warning ... angrily, he shook the feeling off.

  “You would take the word of a half-mad old woman over mine?” he challenged.

  Atuye and Mwiya stood in silence. They knew, of course, what had happened to Babakar’s family during the war, and Atuye had witnessed the man’s ferocity in battle. It was unlikely to the point of absurdity that the Babakar iri Sounkalo he and Mwiya knew could be involved in the mysterious destruction of the fields.

  But the woman ... was her obvious nervousness due to fear ... or guilt?

  The tension between Babakar and Atuye was threatening to erupt at any moment into physical conflict. Wisely, Mwiya averted it.

  “Calm down, Babakar,” he said. “Of course we believe you. But you and Atuye are not the only ones to have suffered because of these marauding gazelles. We’ve got serious questions here, and somehow we must find the answers to them.”

  “You can depend on that,” Atuye added.

  “We fought side-by-side against the Sussu, Atuye,” Babakar said quietly. “But anyone who seeks to harm Amma is as much my enemy as they were.”

  Atuye’s heated reply was quickly cut off by Mwiya.

  “I understand, Babakar,” he said. “We must talk of this later, though. Tonight, the Council of Elders meets in Gadou. Will you come?”

  “To Motoni with the Elders!” Babakar snarled. “Will they save us from the gazelles the way they saved us from the Sussu?”

  “I am sorry you take that attitude,” said Mwiya. “You may well regret it before this matter’s done.”

  When Babakar did not respond, the visitors returned to the road that led to Gadou. Babakar turned to Amma, who had said nothing since her reply to Atuye.

  “We will leave tonight,” he told her. “There is nothing for us here now.”