The Hundred Wells of Salaga

by Ayesha Harruna Attah

  “Are you sure you loaded everything correctly?” Dramani asked. Her brother wasn’t a vicious person. His question was free of guile. Someone else—such as Wurche herself—would have asked the same question and laced it with impatience. “You didn’t open the lock.”

  That was what ignited the whole thing.

  “I forgot,” she whispered, as she popped open the lock.

  She poured gunpowder into the exposed chamber and as she was closing the lock, a loud bang and dusty plume issued from the musket, which she dropped in fright. As far away as she was, Baki whinnied.

  “Are you hurt?” asked Dramani.

  “No.”

  She picked up the musket again.

  “We can stop if it’s unsafe. These things are terrible. We should be able to take care of a nation without them. And I shouldn’t have to prove that I’m a man with it.”

  “If we had no weapons, we would be just like the people who end up in the Salaga market. It’s the way the world has always worked. You can have ideas, but you need a way to get them through. And unfortunately, the way is through force. It’s why we have jihads. Jaji said it was the same with the Christians. The prophet they call Issa. His teachings were all about peace. But the only way his message spread was through the Crusades, which were very violent. Ah, even closer. The Asante. They became so powerful because they were a military people. If we want to keep our people united, we need to have as many weapons as possible and we need to know how to use them well.”

  “But it means you think people shouldn’t have the right to choose what they want. You have to force them to bend your way.”

  “If people knew what they wanted, we royals wouldn’t exist. You wouldn’t have all the benefits of being Etuto’s son. You wouldn’t even have time to be sitting around pondering such questions. You would be sweating on a farm as unproductive as the ones around here. Now let’s try this weapon.”

  “What is Jaji’s name? You’ve always called her Jaji. Teacher. Why not Hajia? She has been to Mecca, no?”

  “Dramani, these questions give me the sense that you don’t want to shoot. If you want Etuto to take you seriously, you have to learn. You can’t give up after failing the first time.”

  She started again, this time pouring the gunpowder into the lock’s compartment before adding the rest of the ammunition. She aimed and shot at the branch. The musket ball knocked the branch off the stump, and she felt like jumping up and down in victory. She passed the musket to Dramani.

  “You have a natural skill for these things,” he said.

  “What use is it to have a skill no one appreciates?”

  “I do.”

  “Just shoot.”

  * * *

  —

  A week later, after another shooting session, Wurche and Dramani came upon Sulemana bathing in the water hole near the forest. Wurche wanted to scare him, but he saw them and waved them over.

  “I see you less on this small farm than I do in Kpembe,” she said.

  “Life is strange,” Sulemana said, treading water. “One can get lost in small spaces. And in big places, one feels not so lost. I know you don’t like being here.”

  “At least Dramani is letting me shoot his musket. Tell us what is going on. No one is farming, Etuto is not coming out of his room, something is happening, and no one is telling me anything.”

  “You know his illness,” said Sulemana.

  “When he gets better, will we go back?” asked Wurche. Sulemana shrugged, dropping his hands in the water with a loud splash. “We can’t live on this barren farm for eternity. Sulemana, please tell me something!”

  “Fine, but you didn’t hear this from me. Dramani, you too. All I can say is he’s better, but he’s been talking a lot about you, Wurche.”

  “Now you’re lying. Nothing in the last three weeks has had anything to do with me. If he’d thought about me, he’d have given me a gun, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sulemana, splashing water at both of them. “I can’t say any more.”

  A few days later, Wurche began to put the pieces together. She awoke to find the women of the farm sitting behind mounds of guinea fowl, pinching off their polka-dotted feathers to expose dark pink meat. Others were pounding groundnuts. Several women of the farm sat behind pots of tuo. Mma was talking about how nice it would be to have a baby in the household again as she tugged on the tufts of a little bird. When it was naked of its feathers, she set it on a board and hacked it to pieces. Wurche found it odd that her grandmother went from talking about a baby to hacking at a tiny creature. Mma stood up creakily, counted on her fingers, stared at the carcasses of plucked guinea fowl, whispered something to another aunt, and gleamed. Mma lived for these moments—when she could prove how well brought up she was.

  When Wurche was younger, Mma thought it would be good for her granddaughter to take part in the household chores, especially since Wurche didn’t have a mother who would naturally have included her in such tasks. Wurche had overheard Mma saying that even if Wurche’s mother had survived childbirth, she Mma, would still have had to train Wurche. Wurche had wondered what that meant. Mma spent weeks showing her how to keep a kitchen: what the different cuts of poultry were, how to buy beef and mutton and goat, how to boil rice so it came out in nice individual grains versus how to boil rice so the whole meal clumped together to make rice tuo, how to find the best cures in the bush, how to wash clothes, how to fold clothes, who could straighten clothes the best in Kpembe, how to get rid of odors in the washroom. What Wurche gleaned from all that work was that it was designed to please a husband. Those weeks were excruciating and made her despise women for putting such effort into things men probably didn’t even notice. Now, Wurche surmised that all this food preparation had to be related to a man. Her father? What could he be celebrating, given that he had spent the last weeks staring at the wall of his room? He had young children around the house—how many she couldn’t say—so another would be too much. Wurche was curious, but she knew the moment she stuck in her nose, she’d regret it; Mma would put a knife in her hand and set her to work. So she kept her distance, slid around the curve of her room and made for her father’s hut, where a small group of women moiled about, whispering and tying and retying the scarves around their heads. She’d never seen these people and because of their number, she was sure Etuto would have no time to answer her questions.

  She went for a swim to cool her chest, then settled for a nap under the closest tree. She dreamt she was a child again. Sulemana flung her in the air and caught her as her chest erupted into giggles. He hugged her, and that’s when she realized he wasn’t Sulemana at all, but Moro. Grown-up Moro. It had an instant sobering effect and woke her up. She hugged herself. The sun had warmed her skin, but it pocked, as if a cold wind had wafted by. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she saw Mma slugging towards her, she guessed it might be late.

  Mma sat down by Wurche, whispering “Ay, Allah, my knees.” Then to Wurche she said, “Your father bought you a new smock.” Perhaps Dramani had told Etuto that she’d wanted a gun too and he thought this was a more appropriate gift for her.

  “Who were those people outside Etuto’s hut?” asked Wurche.

  “You’re just meeting him,” said Mma calmly. Why wasn’t Mma answering her question? Or had she? Then it dawned on her: another suitor. They had never cooked so much food for any of her other wooers. A different kind of suitor, then.

  “You haven’t learned your lessons. This will go nowhere.”

  “You’ll like him,” Mma said, placing her palm on Wurche’s shoulder.

  Another suitor. Despite her words, Wurche wasn’t convinced it would be like the others, that it would go nowhere. Something was different.

  Wurche had learned that European kings sat on thrones. The Asante kings sat on stools. Gonja kings and chiefs sat on skins. When you were
made king, you were enskinned—given lion and leopard hides. The higher you were, the more power you had, the more sophisticated your animal skin. Said to have been sat on by Namba, Gonja’s founding father, the skins of the Kpembe king were prized. Etuto sat on leopard skins, which had now been laid out in the farmhouse’s courtyard. They were surrounded by a spread of mats woven in greens, reds, yellows and indigos, and leather poufs were plopped in every corner. The women outside Etuto’s hut were fluffing pillows, straightening mats, setting down bowls of kola. The children of the farm jumped from pouf to pouf until Mma appeared and shooed them away. The slip of Wurche’s new silk smock was so smooth, she felt as if she were wearing nothing. She missed the itch of her normal smocks and especially the worn smell of the ones she liked to wear the most.

  “You’re worse than a wall gecko,” Mma often said to her, because geckos always went back to the same place.

  Mma, noticing Wurche, rushed over to her, scooped a vial of kohl from between her breasts, and started applying it to Wurche’s eyes. She then doused her in a fragrance both holy and lucky because, its vendor said, it had come all the way from Mecca.

  “You look beautiful,” said Mma. Wurche felt naked. And strangely afraid.

  By evening, Etuto and his advisors, sons and the other men of the family had filled half the courtyard, and the women had taken over the other. Every time Wurche tried to make her way to Etuto, someone would waylay her to greet a relative she didn’t know existed. Her mother’s grandfather’s nephew. A distant aunt, who burst into tears because she said Wurche looked just like her mother. The woman had cried and pressed Wurche to her chest three times. These encounters always started with the question, “Do you know me?” Of course, she didn’t, and she wanted to tell them to stop wasting her time, but the expectant, insistent look in their eyes—you should know me—would amuse her. So instead, she’d consider the person and consider their question, and land somewhere between a nod and a shake of her head. The person would then decide for themselves that Wurche was too young, or perhaps hadn’t been born at that time, and only then would they let her go.

  As for Etuto, he was flanked between two women to whom he kept whispering. His face was lit up by the bonfire and every time he leaned in the women giggled. He didn’t look like a man who had spent the last weeks in a well with no light.

  Wurche’s mother had grown up in a hut about ten minutes away from Etuto’s farm. Mma had never told her who her mother was, but over the years, she’d stitched together bits and concluded that her mother was not a royal and probably not a wife. “Concubine” was probably the best word. Like one of the women sitting by Etuto. Then it hit her: if her mother’s people had been summoned—they had come in their numbers—whatever was happening was a foregone conclusion. This was a premarriage ceremony.

  “Wurche,” Etuto shouted, startling her, waving her over. As she drew closer, one of the women jumped off to make space. Wurche took her time to sit down. He lowered his voice. “You’re not happy, I know.”

  Wurche stared at the breasts of the woman sitting by her father; they drooped like baobab pods.

  “Are you better?” she asked.

  “Much better. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to sit with you, to explain what is going on,” Etuto said. “It’s this nasty business of who inherits the skin to become chief of Kpembe and Salaga. Our family has been left out for far too long. You’re doing me…not just me, but our entire Kanyase line, a favor. The other times you had suitors we didn’t need the alliance, so when you said no I didn’t push you. But you will like this young man.”

  Wurche thought of the times Etuto himself had told her that Gonja princesses were the luckiest women in the world: they got to choose their partners, even if the men were already married. Now, she was being denied this privilege. Her mouth grew dry. And why was everyone insisting she’d like the young man? They barely understood her, and were sure to misunderstand the kind of man she would appreciate.

  “We have to deal with hard realities, Wurche,” Etuto continued. “War is coming. I moved here so I could prepare our strategy.” Even as he said this, his face remained pleasant. Etuto seemed a happy man. Wurche couldn’t imagine him just staring at the wall when his sickness came or being at war with anyone. But her hunch was right too. Her father was not resting. “You were even the one who even gave me the idea,” he continued. “That we should focus on our friendship with Dagbon. An alliance with Dagbon is the only way we’ll make it out of this situation whole. They are well armed, and they like me because my sister married one of them. Marriage ensures that we’ll treat each other with respe—”

  Lunga beats drowned out Etuto’s voice.

  “Ah, they are here,” Etuto boomed, hoisting himself up. He was a large man with dark skin that glistened in the bonfire glow. Everyone stood. “Dagbon has some of the finest drummers in the world. Listen.”

  He signaled for his men to head to the entrance. Four boys whirled, beating their lungas in a frenzy and churning up dust as they approached the entryway. Etuto and his men parted for the players. They were followed by a group of women ululating and clapping. Then in came three men, all similarly dressed in fine navy-striped smocks, black embroidered riding boots, and white scarves draped on their shoulders. The women stopped and clapped at the one in the middle. When the drumming died down, Etuto led the new arrivals to their skins.

  The man at the center of attention also had a round face, but where Etuto was tall, he was wide. He looked soft. Wurche glanced at her suitor and decided to study her fingernails. He was nothing like Moro. He was, in many ways, his exact opposite. Even his skin color paled. It didn’t run deep and luminous like Moro’s. She had hoped for a miracle. She had brought this on herself. In the future, she had to insert herself into the advice she gave her father.

  Trays of wagashie and calabashes of millet beer were passed around. Etuto strode to the prince from Dagbon and they exchanged what must have been uproarious words, because they both burst into loud laughter. Etuto placed his left palm on the prince’s back and took him to greet the men of the household, then the women, old ladies first. Then, they stopped before Wurche.

  “May I present my daughter,” said Etuto. “Wurche, this is Prince Adnan, the chief of Dagbon’s handsome nephew.”

  Wurche shook the man’s soft hands. If this made Etuto happy, she’d do it for him. And then she could ask for what she wanted.

  Aminah

  Aminah wanted to do everything for Na and the new baby. She bathed the baby; she carried her on her back, lulling her to sleep; she learned to distinguish the good baby burps and farts from the bad ones; she stayed up with Na, keeping shifts and helping to feed the baby’s insatiable appetite. And while she was grieving Baba’s absence, it didn’t stop her from enjoying what a sponge the baby was, the way she looked about and imitated the faces she saw around her, and how sometimes her own expressions burst forth from her blood. It was uncanny how much she looked like Baba. The lazy way her eyes opened and closed. Everyone saw but no one said.

  Time passed. The baby started holding her neck up and attempting speech, little gurgles of coughs that brought some laughter to the household. She put everything in her mouth, and Hassana loved nothing more than having the baby gnaw on her nose with her toothless gums. These were the little moments that kept the family going. The baby filled the gap Baba’s absence had ripped open, even though signs of him were still everywhere: an abandoned shoe in the courtyard looking like a mouth agape; a patch he’d badly repaired above the kitchen door; the lingering smell of patchouli and leather outside his room; his donkey’s trough collecting dust and grass.

  A good man, everyone repeated, when they came to see the women. Each time Aminah tried to remember his face, the image was faded, less sharp. His reddish skin, his hesitant smile, his large eyes that took in everything and judged nothing; these details had lost luster. She hadn’t been able to go into his
workroom. None of them had, more than a year later. Aminah imagined it cobwebbed, a hill of sand over his work, a place in need of cleaning, but she didn’t have the heart to enter the space. If she went in, the solid wall she’d built over days, weeks, months, would crumble faster than an anthill in a storm. They were carrying on fine and had to keep going.

  Aminah often tidied Na’s room, but hadn’t touched the clothes Baba had left behind, still in the neat pile atop the stool he would sometimes sit on after working on his shoes. Whenever Baba had come in and sat there, Aminah used to excuse herself. Between making shoes and taking care of two wives, he surely hadn’t gotten many moments to soak in time with Na. She imagined Na starting off the conversation with, “You know what Rama-Na told me today?”; “You know where Adjaratu-Na went this morning?”; “You know how Motaaba-Na cooks her neri soup?” The woman would launch into rich, nonstop detail, while Baba just listened, lovingly absorbing the dimples that appeared and hid in Na’s cheeks as she talked. Theirs, Aminah was convinced, was a great friendship, one with no secrets. Na’s family, a group of cattle herders, had always moved around. They were passing through Botu when Baba espied a young Na milking a cow. By the time he worked up the nerve to ask for her hand in marriage, her family had moved north. Luckily, it was in the dry season, and Baba was able to find her after three days by using green patches where the cows would be sent to graze as his guides.