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times, Kunta had heard about the grandfather holy man whose prayers had saved the village, and whom later Allah had taken back. But Kunta had never truly understood until now that this
man was his father’s father, that Omoro had known him as he knew Omoro, that Grandma Yaisa was Omoro’s mother as Binta was his own. Some day, he too would find a woman such as Binta to bear him a son of his own. And that son, in turn ...
    Turning over and closing his eyes, Kunta followed these deep thoughts slowly into sleep.

CHAPTER 6
    J ust before sundown for the next few days, after returning from the rice field, Binta would send Kunta to the village well for a calabash of fresh water, which she would use to boil a soup from whatever scraps she could find. Then she and Kunta would take some of the soup across the village to Grandma Yaisa. Binta moved more slowly than usual, it seemed to Kunta, and he noticed that her belly was very big and heavy.
    While Grandma Yaisa protested weakly that she would soon feel well again, Binta would clean up the hut and arrange things. And they would leave Grandma Yaisa propped up on her bed, eating a bowl of soup along with some of Binta’s hungry-season bread, made from the yellow powder that covered the dry black beans of the wild locust tree.
    Then one night, Kunta awakened to find himself being shaken roughly by his father. Binta was making low, moaning sounds on her bed, and also within the hut, moving quickly about, were Nyo Boto and Binta’s friend Jankay Touray. Omoro hurried across the village with Kunta, who, wondering what all of this was about, soon drifted back to sleep on his father’s bed.
    In the morning, Omoro again awakened Kunta and said, “You have a new brother.” Scrambling sleepily onto his knees and rubbing his eyes, Kunta thought it must be something very special to
so please his usually stern father. In the afternoon, Kunta was with his kafo mates, looking for things to eat, when Nyo Boto called him and took him to see Binta. Looking very tired, she sat on the edge of her bed gently caressing the baby in her lap. Kunta stood a moment studying the little wrinkly black thing, then he looked at the two women smiling at it, and he noticed that the familiar bigness of Binta’s stomach was suddenly gone. Going back outside without a word, Kunta stood for a long moment and then, instead of rejoining his friends, went off to sit by himself behind his father’s hut and think about what he had seen.
    Kunta continued sleeping in Omoro’s hut for the next seven nights—not that anyone seemed to notice or care, in their concern for the new baby. He was beginning to think that his mother didn’t want him any more—or his father, either—until, on the evening of the eighth day, Omoro called him before his mother’s hut, along with everyone else in Juffure who was physically able, to hear the new baby given his chosen name, which was Lamin.
    That night Kunta slept peacefully and well—back in his own bed beside his mother and his new brother. But within a few days, as soon as her strength had returned, Binta began to take the baby, after cooking and serving something for Omoro’s and Kunta’s breakfast, and spent most of each day in the hut of Grandma Yaisa. From the worried expressions that both Binta and Omoro wore, Kunta knew that Grandma Yaisa was very sick.
    Late one afternoon, a few days later, he and his kafo mates were out picking mangoes, which had finally ripened. Bruising the tough, orange-yellow skin against the nearest rock, they would bite open one plump end to squeeze and suck out the soft sweet flesh within. They were collecting basketfuls of monkey apples and wild cashew nuts when Kunta suddenly heard the howling of a familiar voice from the direction of his grandma’s hut. A chill shot through him, for it was the voice of his mother, raised in the death wail
that he had heard so often in recent weeks. Other women immediately joined in a keening cry that soon