The Hundred Wells of Salaga

by Ayesha Harruna Attah

  The girl coughed, her insides rumbled, and she wheezed incessantly. Wurche pressed her collar harder. Maigida came and dragged off two of the girls without acknowledging Wurche. If he knew who she was, he wasn’t letting on.

  When the last person had been sold, Wurche felt as if hours had crawled by. Moro apologized and offered to take her to the Hausa suya seller for grilled mutton. Wurche demurred, touched Moro’s thigh. He did nothing. Instead, he asked how her teaching was going.

  “I prefer racing my horse.”

  She pressed circles on his thigh, and again he didn’t respond. He sat across from her and took her hand in his.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I had such a tough time out there. Fewer people are coming up to Salaga. And it’s getting too difficult to make money there. The only way I could convince the last buyer to take those two women was by just about giving one of them away. I keep coming here because I know the landlords and the buyers well, but the buyers have stopped coming. Business is better in Kete–Krachi.”

  Something weary in Moro’s voice told her to wait for him to come around, but his next sentence almost brought her to tears.

  “I am probably going to stop coming to Salaga and only sell in Kete–Krachi until I can get out of the trade. I wanted to tell you so there’d be no deception or disappointment,” he said. “I’ll still be coming to Salaga for a few months, while I make the transition, but I don’t want you to be disappointed when I’m no longer here.”

  It was already setting in. Disappointment and a heap of desperation.

  “I won’t be disappointed,” she lied.

  “I don’t want to be unfair to you.”

  “Moro,” said Wurche, trying to sound brave, digging her fingers into his thigh again. “Everything comes to an end. If you have to go to Kete–Krachi, fine. You’re the one who is always mentioning destiny. Let’s let it do its work.”

  He relented and gave in to her caresses.

  Their relationship had morphed into glimmers of excitement and bursts of frustration. At least to Wurche. In the back room, their romance grew quiet, shadowy, full of powerful tiny movements that Wurche dreamed about for days after. Dreams she had to keep stretching because most times Maigida’s door was locked or Moro wasn’t there.

  * * *

  —

  Dramani got his wish to go back to Etuto’s farm. He came to Wurche’s room to say his goodbyes to her, clutching something wrapped in cotton.

  “I didn’t use this,” he said. “And I hope you won’t either.”

  He handed it to her. She wrapped her hand around the thin cylindrical object. Saliva filled her mouth. It was so copious that she couldn’t talk. She dashed out to spit and came back inside. For about a week, she’d been spitting nonstop.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t believe violence is the right way to lead our people. I’ve seen the damage it does. Also, I’m no good with this thing, made for the sole purpose of taking a life. I hope you use it to shoot something for dinner.”

  Wurche thanked him, unsure if her brother was really a coward, as some called him, or if he was a wise man ahead of his years. Then she grew sad; she would miss him. Dramani and Moro were the only men who spoke openly and honestly to her, and she was losing them both.

  “Wurche,” he said before he left. “If you’re ever tempted to use it on him, please think about Etuto. You don’t want to start a war with Dagbon.”

  A wise man has to live with fools.

  A stone does not walk

  But it rolls.

  —Gonja Proverb

  Wurche

  She lifted her smock and studied the calabash extending from her body. The hard knob was almost perfectly round. Another life, growing in her. She fell pregnant around the time Dramani left, four months previously, which was why she had been spitting so much. When she was a child, she asked Mma why men didn’t get pregnant. The old lady said it was because Allah created women to be stronger inside, while men were stronger outside. This answer had never satisfied her, especially when she was the one lifting heavy objects, not Dramani. Whose child was she carrying? Adnan’s with his soft, wide body, or Moro’s, cheetah-like and blue?

  Moro wasn’t in the back room. Once again, she willed herself not to be disappointed. It was an unspoken pact she’d signed with herself when she decided to continue the affair, despite all Moro’s warnings (destiny, Kete–Krachi, katcheji): to make no room for disappointment. And yet, as she thanked Maigida and walked out into the bright, blinding afternoon light, she felt a twinge of sadness. Since her belly had swelled up, she hadn’t seen Moro at all. She wondered what he’d make of it, of the possibility of the child being his.

  As she rode back into Kpembe, Mma, selecting tomatoes from a girl crouched by a basket, looked up in her direction. Wurche dismounted.

  “You must stop riding if you want to keep the baby,” said Mma. Wurche nodded as the old lady continued her admonishing: Wurche had to stop thinking of just herself. She was delicate now, what if she fell off her horse and lost the baby and couldn’t have another one after that? The tomato seller added, in a grating voice, that her elder sister had died in childbirth, but it was because of a family curse that killed all the firstborn daughters on her father’s side of the family. Wurche didn’t wait to hear the rest of the story.

  She lay supine on her bed and exposed her belly. Adnan walked in, his own belly pushing against his smock, and plopped himself on the mat next to her. Beads of sweat dotted his face.

  “My pagapulana,” he said, palming her belly. My pregnant woman. “Pregnancy looks wonderful on you.”

  “It’s too hot.” She brushed away his hand.

  “Mma is right. Etuto and I heard her from his room, and we agree. No more horse riding. No more Salaga visits.”

  Wurche’s belly churned. Her body was no longer hers alone and she was going to become its prisoner. “The women need my lessons,” she said.

  “If you were in Dagbon, my aunts would be pampering you by now. They wouldn’t let you even bathe yourself. Someone would wait on you all the time.”

  Adnan’s boasting was annoying her, and she would have bet her horse that he embellished most of the things he said about Dagbon. His pomposity irked her so much that before she could stop herself she said, “If Dagbon is so perfect, go back and let me be.”

  Adnan flinched and glared at Wurche, as if considering what he should do to her. Since the wedding, she’d carried herself with an indifference that would have come off as shyness to a person as insensitive as Adnan. This was the first time she’d been outwardly nasty to him. As he walked out, she marveled at the grace of his movements, despite his weight.

  They would have returned to Dagbon had Etuto not asked that Adnan and some of the soldiers stay to protect him. Then Wurche had fallen pregnant and insisted they stay with her family until the baby could walk. It was one of her small victories. Etuto consented, and so did Adnan.

  “It’s because she’s carrying a boy,” Mma said to Adnan, her voice wafting in from outside.

  Wurche stared at the door, nose clogging up, tears welling. More often than not, she’d felt trapped by her life, but it had always been external—her father or Mma wouldn’t let her do what she liked. Now it was within, too. She didn’t want to resent the child making her a prisoner of her own body, but if she was already thinking in those terms, she was losing. She had to fight or she’d go mad.

  The next day, she stayed in bed even after the third cock had crowed, even after the whole house could be heard fetching, clanging, chopping. Adnan, a late riser, got up and left the room. He wasn’t the kind of man who noticed if a pattern was off. Finally, it was Mma who realized something was wrong and came into the room. She slapped the back of her hand against Wurche’s forehead.

  “You’re not hot, but I was right, wasn’t I?
” she said. “Going to Salaga has made you sick.”

  “I’m not leaving this room until the baby is born. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Ay, Allah!” exclaimed Mma as she huffed out of the room. She returned with Etuto, Sulemana and Adnan, having briefed them on Wurche’s strike. Wurche watched their faces: Sulemana and Etuto looked amused; Mma and Adnan expressed a blend of worry and irritation.

  “Wurche,” Etuto spoke, “we’ve agreed that you can continue going to Jaji’s, but as soon as you’re in your sixth month, you have to stop. You’ll go with my messenger from now on. Now, please get out of this room.”

  It wasn’t ideal, but Wurche couldn’t help but crack a smile.

  “Sheitan,” Mma quipped under her breath as she left the room.

  * * *

  —

  Maigida the landlord sat in the front room, across from a hoary white man who had wrapped an indigo scarf around his neck and was crunching into a piece of kola. The white man greeted her in Hausa, studied her as if to unravel from his mind’s cobwebs where he’d met her, and went back to talking.

  “The new Kpembewura has sent several pleas for Shaibu and the other princes to come back,” said the white man. “He’s making ardent promises to leave them unscathed, but they say they won’t leave.” He leaned back, and folded his arms with the smug satisfaction of one who had told a good story.

  The landlord turned to Wurche and said, “Sorry, he hasn’t come this week. It’s been a while. Everything fine?”

  “Yes,” said Wurche. “I’ll wait to see if he shows up.”

  “The Kpembewura’s daughter,” the landlord said under his breath, when Wurche was out of sight. “She and this fellow have been coming here for a while. You may have seen him in Kete–Krachi. He’s friends with Shaibu. The way royals behave is sickening. Both men and women. A princess can choose a married man if she so desires. It makes them behave badly.”

  The white man cleared his throat.

  Maigida was right about her bad behavior. She had come to Salaga with Etuto’s messenger. At Jaji’s she’d asked him to wait while she went on foot to the market. Now, she was in Maigida’s back room with two lost-looking girls, their wrists chained together, waiting for her lover to show up. It should have bothered her that Maigida knew who she was—he could blackmail her, for instance. But she was more concerned with Moro showing up.

  Wurche settled close to the entryway, the better to hear the men’s conversation. If this white man had something she could tell Etuto, she might be treated like more than just someone’s wife for a change.

  “Maigida, the Germans are building in Kete–Krachi,” said the white man. “It’s already surpassing Salaga in the number of caravans that now go there. The only way your town will be restored is if the Germans are let in.”

  “You say this because you’re German,” said the landlord.

  “My friend, you’ve known me now for more than ten years and I’ve never hidden how I feel about my people. They are hypocrites. But I also know what good they can do. That neutral zone agreement between the Kpembewura, Britain, and Germany is hurting Salaga. Nobody is developing this town because it is neutral. Meanwhile, the British have ulterior motives.”

  “Ei, Mallam Musa! You always think the British have ulterior motives. And the Germans don’t?”

  “Mark my words.”

  So this was the Mallam Musa: a white man who had spent so much time in and out of Salaga, he’d been given a local name. She wanted to know why he thought the British had ulterior motives.

  Someone walked into Maigida’s and Wurche brushed her thoughts aside as one would a pesky mosquito in anticipation of Moro’s voice.

  She did not hear it.

  He didn’t show up.

  * * *

  —

  After what had felt like months apart, Moro met her in the back room. His hooked index finger grazed her neck and then his fingers ran down her torso. He grew wide-eyed when his hands bumped over the hard, round protrusion. He flipped up the smock, stared, covered it.

  “What is going on?” he said, recoiling and retreating. Wurche couldn’t see the light in his eyes. He’d become a solid lump in the darkness. She heard a thwomp as he sat on a sack of millet.

  “Don’t think about it,” she said.

  He was quiet then asked, “Am I going to be a father?”

  The answer was that it was possible. There was no way to be sure. The answer was that it could be his or it could be Adnan’s. He seemed to understand that, so didn’t push when she didn’t answer.

  “Now that you’re going to be a mother, this is too risky. Even if I am the baby’s father, for your honor and your child’s sake, let’s say it’s your husband’s child. Now, you have to focus on your husband and child. Wurche, let’s end this.” She couldn’t see his eyes clearly. His tone seemed more regretful than spiteful.

  Wurche’s throat tightened with swallowed tears. She kneeled before him, and surprised herself by saying, “I can live without him. You, I can’t. I need you.” She patted the tears on her face. “Please.”

  He stood up and brusquely tightened the cord of his riding trousers, as if that was his way of cutting himself off, of choking off their relationship. “We both knew this would go nowhere, that it would come to an end. You’re married. I’m a nobody. You’re in Salaga–Kpembe. I’m in Kete–Krachi.”

  “You’re not a nobody.” She reached up to bring him down. She felt as if her heart were being prodded.

  “You’re a beautiful, powerful woman,” he said. “I should never have let things go this far. I’m sorry.”

  Wurche clutched Moro’s shirt and buried her face in his chest. “Please, let’s not end this. Moro, I can’t breathe without you.”

  “Once you have that child, you’ll forget I even exist,” he said, rubbing her back.

  Wurche sobbed and hated herself for it. If she’d prepared, she would have appeared steely. She wished she could erase her pleas and coolly agree to the end of the tryst, but her heart throbbed and won out over her desire to appear unperturbed. She felt stripped naked and exposed to all like a slave in the Salaga market. The ache in her heart wanted to push out, extend through her arms, her hands, and inflict pain on Moro, but he clung to her even as she began to squirm out of his grasp. Would the pain go away if she knocked him unconscious? If he ceased to be, would she not feel at all? His very presence seemed to be the reason why she hurt, so why not eliminate it?

  * * *

  —

  Adnan was snoring by her side when she felt the first jabs. At first, they felt like pinches. Then like kicks. They went away. They came back. Stronger. She felt as if she was being twisted from the inside; she thought her hip bones would break through her skin. The yell that poured from her was so loud, so raw, so bloodcurdling, she couldn’t believe she was the one screaming. Adnan scrambled awake and ran out after seeing Wurche clutching her belly. The pain subsided and Wurche stood up. She walked to the door, saw that the darkness of night still clung to the trees and huts. She was beside herself with misery and pain. Mma and three older women came to the door, trailed by Adnan.

  Wurche was led back to her bed, which someone had covered with white linen. Mma lifted her gown and rubbed shea butter on the hard protrusion that was her belly. One old woman pressed a compress to Wurche’s head, and another mashed together dried tree bark, an assortment of roots and a handful of leaves with the long, blade-like look of sorghum. The third boiled a pot of water.

  A wave of pain returned, this time surging from her belly to her extremities. Wurche wanted to crawl out of her body. Mma led a calabash of the warm, mashed leaf-bark-root mixture to her lips and said it would strengthen her.

  The pain came in pulses and, after what felt like days, Wurche pushed out a giant of a baby. One of the old ladies left the room to share the good news. The wome
n were startled when they heard three gunshots, so close they could have been in the room. They wrapped their arms around each other and waited, hoping their happy day was not going to be marred by the start of another war.

  Ululations tore through the fear that had woven its way into the room. In burst all the women of Kpembe, it seemed. Wurche smiled faintly at her admirers, but silently willed them to leave so she could put her head down.

  “What were those gunshots?” Mma asked Sulemana, who stood outside the hut. Men were barred for the first eight days.

  “Dagbon custom. Three shots for a baby boy.”

  When the well-wishers left, Wurche held the baby. This strange, beautiful creature had been formed in and come out of her body.

  After eight days, Adnan named him Wumpini. God’s gift.

  Aminah

  When the dry, dusty winds blew in from north of Botu, they sapped the earth of moisture, cracked lips, wrung the skin of sweat, and left behind a cold that chilled the bones. The dry winds had arrived in Wofa Sarpong’s land, but here they met the wet heaviness of the forest and fought a strange battle in which neither won. It was the girls who suffered. Especially Aminah. This was the second dry season since Wofa Sarpong had brought her to his farm, which meant she had lived there for almost two years. This time, the wind was the kind that Eeyah used to warn about, wind that could cause illness or deform, wind that carried voices with it. Aminah heard Na’s voice and Issa’s, Eeyah’s pipe-ruined voice and the baby’s cries.