THE BOOK OF NEGROES Read Online Free PDF Page B

men joined us, leading three captives—also yoked—toward us. From one man’s wide-legged gait in the light of the moon, I recognized my father.
    “
Fa
,” I called out to him.
    “Aminata,” he shouted.
    “They killed
Ba
.” The man holding my strap smacked my face.
    “You are less than porcupine shit,” I hissed at the captor, but he didn’t understand.
    I watched my father. The other captives struggled against their ropes, but my father walked upright and tall, rubbing his wrists together until they slid free. He jabbed his fingers into a captor’s eyes, pulled the knife from his hands and sliced through the strap around his own neck. When another captor rushed forward, Papa plunged the knife deep into the man’s chest. The captor seemed to sigh, stood long enough for my father to remove the knife, and dropped dead.
    I wanted my
fa
to flee and to find
Ba
on the trail leading away from Bayo. If there was still life in her, I wanted him to save her. While shouting broke out among our captors, Papa ran to me. He slashed at the man holding my yoke, cutting deeply into his arm. The man slid down and moaned in agony. Two men jumped my father, but he flung them off. He stabbed one, then the other, and was circling three injured men. Then one of the captors hoisted an unusual, long, rectangular stick. He pursed his lips and pointed the stick at my father from a distance of five paces. Papa stopped where he was and held up his palm. Fire exploded from the stick and blew Papa onto his back. He turned his head to look for me, but then his eyes went blank. The life gushed up out of Papa’s chest, flooded his ribs and ran into the waiting earth, which soaked up everything that came out of him.
    There were two new male captives. I didn’t recognize them. They came from different villages, perhaps. I looked at them pleadingly. Their eyes sank. Fomba dropped his head. The male captives could do nothing forme. They were all tied at the hands and yoked by the necks. To resist was suicide, and who but my own father and mother would fight for me now, and fight to the death?
    My feet felt stuck to the ground. My thighs felt wooden. My stomach heaved up against my chest. I could barely breathe.
Fa
was the strongest man in Bayo. He could lift me with one arm, and send sparks flying like stars when he pounded red iron with his mallet. How could this be? I prayed that this was a dream, but the dream would not relent.
    I wondered what my
ba
and
fa
would tell me to do.
Keep walking!
That was all I could imagine.
Don’t fall
. I thought of my Mama walking in Bayo with her soles dyed red. I tried to keep their voices in my head. I tried to think about drinking mint tea with them at night, while my mother laughed and my father told melodious stories. But I could not feed those thoughts. Each and every time, they were starved, flattened and sucked out of my mind, and replaced by visions of my mother motionless in the woods and my father, lips quivering while his chest erupted.
    I walked, because I was made to do it. I walked, because it was the only thing to do. And that night as I walked, over and over again I heard my father’s final word.
Aminata. Aminata. Aminata
.

Three revolutions of the moon
    I LIVED IN TERROR THAT THE CAPTORS WOULD BEAT US, boil us and eat us, but they began with humiliation: they tore the clothes off our backs. We had no head scarves or wraps for our body, or anything to cover our private parts. We had not even sandals for our feet. We had no more clothing than goats, and nakedness marked us as captives wherever we went. But our captors were also marked by what they lacked: light in their eyes. Never have I met a person doing terrible things who would meet my own eyes peacefully. To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own. As I began my long march from home, I discovered that there were people in the world who didn’t know me, didn’t love me,