THE BOOK OF NEGROES Read Online Free PDF

pass.”
    The men spoke in a strange tongue. I thought I recognized the words
girl, young
and
not too young
—but I wasn’t sure.
    Mama switched to Fulfulde. “Run, Daughter,” she whispered, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
    She was holding her birthing kit, and still had the water skins balanced on her head. She was carrying too much to flee, so I stayed beside her. I could hear her breathing. I knew that she was thinking. Perhaps she would start shouting, and I would join her. Our village was not far. Someone might hear us. Two men grabbed Mama and knocked down her water skins. Another man grabbed me by the arm. I flailed and kicked and bit his hand. He pulled it free. He was angry now and breathing harder. When he lunged for me, I kicked with all my might and got him where his legs came together. He groaned and stumbled, but I knew I hadn’t hurt him enough to keep him down. I turned to run to my mother, but another man tripped me and pinned me to the ground. I spat dirt from my mouth and tried to wriggle free, but I had no strength against the one who held me.
    “This is a mistake,” I said. “I am a freeborn Muslim. Let me go!” I said it in Fulfulde and I said it in Bamanankan, but my words had no effect, so I started screaming. If any villager happened to be out at night, perhaps he would hear. Someone bound my wrists behind my back and slipped a leather noose around my neck, which he tightened just to the point of cutting off my breath so I couldn’t scream and could barely breathe. Gagging, I waved wildly at the men. The noose was loosened enough to let me breathe. I was still alive.
Allaahu Akbar
, I said. I hoped that someone would hear the words in Arabic and realize the mistake. But nobody heard me. Or cared.
    I craned my neck to look up from the ground. Mama broke away from one man, slapped at his face and bit his shoulder, then grabbed a thick branch and belted him in the head. He paused, stunned. Mama charged the man who held the strap around my neck. I pulled against it, strainingtoward her even as it choked me. But another man intercepted her, raised high a big, thick club and brought it swinging down against the back of her head. Mama dropped. I saw her blood in the moonlight, angry and dark and spilling fast. I tried to crawl to her. I knew what to do about spilling blood. I just had to get my palm against the wound, and to press hard. But I couldn’t crawl, or wriggle, or move an inch. The captors had me firmly now, the leash tightening once more around my neck. They forced Fomba and me up, and we had no choice but to follow.
    I struggled against the leash to look back over my shoulder, and saw that Mama was still on the ground, not moving. I was slapped hard in the face, spun forward and shoved in the back. Over and over and over again I was shoved, and I had to move my feet.
    Other than in her sleep, I had never seen Mama motionless. This had to be a dream. I longed to wake up in my bed, and to eat a millet cake with Mama, and to admire the way she dipped her calabash in a clay jar and brought out the water without spilling a drop. Soon, for sure, I would be free from these evil spirits. Soon, I would find my Papa, and together we would run back to Mama, wake her before it was too late, carry her into the cool walls of our home.
    But I was not waking.
    The longest cry rose from my lungs. The men stuffed cloth in my mouth. Whenever my pace slowed, they shoved me again in the back. We walked so fast that I had trouble breathing. They removed the cloth but showed me, with angry hand signals, that they would stuff it back in my mouth if I made a sound. On and on they made me walk, further from my Mama. Smoke hung in the air. We were circling outside my village. The drums of Bayo rang out warnings of danger. I heard popping, over and over. It sounded like branches cracking from trees. The drumming stopped. Through a gap in the woods, I could see the flames. Bayo was burning.
    Five more strange