Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

  Some of the most valuable lessons they learned weren’t even planned. One day, during a rest period, when a boy was testing his bow and one careless arrow happened to strike a nest of kurburungo bees high in a tree, a cloud of angry bees swarmed down—and once again all the boys suffered for the mistake of one. Not even the fastest runner among them escaped the painful stings.

  “The simbon never shoots an arrow without knowing what it will hit,” the kintango told them later. Ordering the boys to rub one another’s puffed and hurting places with shea tree butter, he said, “Tonight, you will deal with those bees in the proper manner.” By nightfall, the boys had piled dry moss beneath the tree that held the nest. After one of the kintango’s assistants set it afire, the other one threw into the flames a quantity of leaves from a certain bush. Thick, choking smoke rose into the tree’s upper limbs, and soon dead bees were dropping around the boys by the thousands, as harmlessly as rain. In the morning, Kunta and his kafo were shown how to melt down the honeycombs—skimming off the rest of the dead bees—so that they could eat their fill of honey. Kunta could almost feel himself tingle with that extra strength it was said honey would give to great hunters when they were in need of quick nourishment deep in the forest.

  But no matter what they went through, no matter how much they added to their knowledge and abilities, the old kintango was never satisfied. His demands and his discipline remained so strict that the boys were torn between fear and anger most of the time—when they weren’t too weary to feel either. Any command to one boy that wasn’t instantly and perfectly performed still brought a beating to the entire kafo. And when they weren’t being beaten, it seemed to Kunta, they were being wakened roughly in the middle of the night for a long march—always as a punishment for some boy’s wrongdoing. The only thing that kept Kunta and the others from giving that boy a beating of their own was the certain knowledge that they would be beaten for fighting, among the first lessons they had learned in life—long before coming to the jujuo—having been that Mandinkas must never fight among themselves. Finally the boys began to understand that the welfare of the group depended on each of them—just as the welfare of their tribe would depend on each of them one day. Violations of the rule’s slowly dwindled to an occasional lapse, and with the decline in beatings, the fear they felt for the kintango was slowly replaced by a respect they had felt before only for their fathers.

  But still hardly a day would pass without something new to make Kunta and his mates feel awkward and ignorant all over again. It amazed them to learn, for example, that a rag folded and hung in certain ways near a man’s hut would inform other Mandinka men when he planned to return, or that sandals crossed in certain ways outside a hut told many things that only other men would understand. But the secret Kunta found the most remarkable of all was sira kango, a kind of men’s talk in which sounds of Mandinka words were changed in such a way that no women or children or non-Mandinkas were permitted to learn. Kunta remembered times when he had heard his father say something very rapidly to another man that Kunta had not understood nor dared to ask explained. Now that he had learned it himself, he and his mates soon spoke nearly everything they said in the secret talk of men.

  In every hut as each moon went by, the boys added a new rock to a bowl to mark how long they had been gone from Juffure. Within days after the third rock was dropped in the bowl, the boys were wrestling in the compound one afternoon when suddenly they looked toward the gate of the jujuo, and there stood a group of twenty-five or thirty men. A loud gasp rose from the boys as they recognized their fathers, uncles, and older brothers. Kunta sprang up, unable to believe his eyes, as a bolt of joy shot through him at the first sight of Omoro for three moons. But it was as if some unseen hand held him back and stifled a cry of gladness—even before he saw in his father’s face no sign that he recognized his son.

  Only one boy rushed forward, calling out his father’s name, and without a word that father reached for the stick of the nearest kintango’s assistant and beat his son with it, shouting at him harshly for betraying his emotions, for showing that he was still a boy. He added, unnecessarily, as he gave him the last licks, that his son should expect no favors from his father. Then the kintango himself barked a command for the entire kafo to lie on their bellies in a row, and all of the visiting men walked along the row and flailed the upturned backsides with their walking sticks. Kunta’s emotions were in a turmoil; the blows he didn’t mind at all, knowing them to be merely another of the rigors of manhood training, but it pained him not to be able to hug his father or even hear his voice, and it shamed him to know that it wasn’t manly even to wish for such indulgences.

  The beating over, the kintango ordered the boys to race, to jump, to dance, to wrestle, to pray as they had been taught, and the fathers, uncles, and older brothers watched it all silently, and then departed with warm compliments to the kintango and his assistants, but not so much as a backward look at the boys, who stood with downcast faces. Within the hour, they got another beating for sulking about the preparation of their evening meal. It hurt all the more because the kintango and his assistants acted as if the visitors had never even been there. But early that night, while the boys were wrestling before bedtime—only halfheartedly now—one of the kintango’s assistants passed by Kunta and said brusquely to him, under his breath, “You have a new brother, and he is named Madi.”

  Four of us now, thought Kunta, lying awake later that night. Four brothers—four sons for his mother and father. He thought how that would sound in the Kinte family history when it was told by griots for hundreds of rains in the future. After Omoro, thought Kunta, he would be the first man of the family when he returned to Juffure. Not only was he learning to be a man, but he was also learning many, many things he would be able to teach Lamin, as already he had taught him so many of the things of boyhood. At least he would teach him that which was permissible for boys to know, and then Lamin would teach Suwadu, and Suwadu would teach this new one whom Kunta had not even seen, whose name was Madi. And some day, Kunta thought as he drifted off to sleep, when he was as old as Omoro, he would have sons of his own, and it would all begin again.

  CHAPTER 24

  “You are ceasing to be children.You are experiencing rebirth as men,” the kintango said one morning to the assembled kafo. This was the first time the kintango had used the word “men” except to tell them what they weren’t. After moons of learning together, working together, being beaten together, he told them, each of them was finally beginning to discover that he had two selves—one within him, and the other, larger self in all those whose blood and lives he shared. Not until they learned that lesson could they undertake the next phase of manhood training: how to be warriors. “You know already that Mandinkas fight only if others are warlike,” said the kintango. “But we are the finest warriors if driven to fight.”

  For the next half moon, Kunta and his mates learned how to make war. Famous Mandinka battle strategies were drawn in the dust by the kintango or his assistants, and then the boys were told to re-enact the strategies in mock battles. “Never completely encircle your enemy,” counseled the kintango. “Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.” The boys learned also that battles should start in late afternoon, so that any enemy, seeing defeat, could save face by retreating in the darkness. And they were taught that during any wars, neither enemy should ever do harm to any traveling marabouts, griots, or blacksmiths, for an angered marabout could bring down the displeasure of Allah; an angered griot could use his eloquent tongue to stir the enemy army to greater savagery; and an angered blacksmith could make or repair weapons for the enemy.

  Under the direction of the kintango’s assistants, Kunta and the others carved out barbed spears and made barbed arrows of the kind used only in battle, and practiced with them on smaller and smaller targets. When a boy could hit a bamboo cane twenty-five steps away, he was cheered and praised. Tramping into the woods, the boys found some koona
shrub, whose leaves they picked to be boiled back at the jujuo. Into the resulting thick, black juice they would dip a cotton thread, and they were shown how that thread, wound around an arrow’s barbs, would seep a deadly poison into whatever wound the arrow made.

  At the end of the war-training period, the kintango told them more than they had ever known before—and told them more excitingly than they had ever heard it—about that greatest of all Mandinka wars and warriors—the time when the army of the fabled ex-slave general Sundiata, son of Sogolon, the Buffalo Woman, conquered the forces of the Boure country’s King Soumaoro, a king so cruel that he wore human-skin robes and adorned his palace walls with enemy’s bleached skulls.

  Kunta and his mates held their breaths, hearing how both armies suffered thousands of wounded or dead. But the archers of the Mandinkas closed in on Soumaoro’s forces like a giant trap, raining down arrows from both sides and moving in steadily until Soumaoro’s terrified army finally fled in rout. For days and nights, said the kintango—and it was the first time the boys ever had seen him smile—the talking drums of every village followed the marching progress of the victorious Mandinka forces, laden with enemy booty and driving thousands of captives before them. In every village, happy crowds jeered and kicked the prisoners, whose shaved heads were bowed and whose hands were tied behind their backs. Finally General Sundiata called a huge meeting of the people, and he brought before them the chiefs of all the villages he had defeated and gave them back their spears of chiefhood’s rank, and then he established among those chiefs the bonds of peace, which would last among them for the next one hundred rains. Kunta and his mates went dreamily to their beds, never prouder to be Mandinkas.

  As the next moon of training began, drumtalk reached the jujuo telling of new visitors to be expected within the next two days. The excitement with which the news of any visitors would have been received, after so long since the fathers and brothers had come to see them, was doubled when the boys learned that the sender of the message was the drummer of Juffure’s champion wrestling team, which was coming to conduct special lessons for the trainees.

  Late in the afternoon of the next day, the drums announced their arrival even earlier than expected. But the boys’ pleasure at seeing all the familiar faces again was forgotten when, without a word, the wrestlers grabbed them and began to flip them onto the ground harder than they had ever been thrown in their lives. And every boy was bruised and hurting when the wrestlers divided them into smaller groups to grapple one another, as the champions supervised. Kunta had never imagined there were so many wrestling holds, nor how effectively they could work, if used correctly. And the champions kept drumming into the boys’ ears that it was knowledge and expertness and not strength that made the difference between being an ordinary wrestler and a champion. Still, as they demonstrated the holds for their pupils, the boys couldn’t help admiring their bulging muscles as much as their skill in using them. Around the fire that night, the drummer from Juffure chanted the names and the feats of great Mandinka wrestling champions of even a hundred rains in the past, and when it was the boys’ time for bed, the wrestlers left the jujuo to return to Juffure.

  Two days later came news of another visitor. This time the message was brought by a runner from Juffure—a young man of the fourth kafo whom Kunta and his mates knew well, though in his own new manhood, he acted as if he never had seen these third-kafo children. Without so much as a glance at them, he ran up to the kintango and announced, between deep breaths, that Kujali N’jai, a griot well known throughout The Gambia, would soon spend one full day at the jujuo.

  In three days he arrived, accompanied by several young men of his family. He was much older than any of the griots Kunta had seen before—so old, in fact, that he made the kintango seem young. After gesturing for the boys to squat in a semicircle about him, the old man began to talk of how he became what he was. He told them how, over years of study from young manhood, every griot had buried deep in his mind the records of the ancestors. “How else could you know of the great deeds of the ancient kings, holy men, hunters, and warriors who came hundreds of rains before us? Have you met them?” asked the old man. “No! The history of our people is carried to the future in here.” And he tapped his gray head.

  The question in the mind of every boy was answered by the old griot: Only the sons of griots could become griots. Indeed, it was their solemn duty to become griots. Upon finishing their manhood training, these boys—like those grandsons of his own who sat beside him here today—would begin studying and traveling with selected elders, hearing over and again the historical names and stories as they had been passed down. And in due time, each young man would know that special part of the forefathers’ history in the finest and fullest detail, just as it had been told to his father and his father’s father. And the day would come when that boy would become a man and have sons to whom he would tell those stories, so that the events of the distant past would forever live.

  When the awed boys had wolfed down their evening meal and rushed back to gather again around the old griot, he thrilled them until late into the night with stories his own father had passed down to him—about the great black empires that had ruled Africa hundreds of rains before.

  “Long before toubob ever put his foot in Africa,” the old griot said, there was the Empire of Benin, ruled by an all-powerful king called the Oba, whose every wish was obeyed instantly. But the actual governing of Benin was done by trusted counselors of the Oba, whose full time was needed just for making the necessary sacrifices to appease the forces of evil and for his proper attentions to a harem of more than a hundred wives. But even before Benin was a yet richer kingdom called Songhai, said the griot. Songhai’s capital city was Gao, filled with fine houses for black princes and rich merchants who lavishly entertained traveling tradesmen who brought much gold to buy goods.

  “Nor was that the richest kingdom,” said the old man. And he told the boys of ancestral Ghana, in which an entire town was populated with only the king’s court. And King Kanissaai had a thousand horses, each of which had three servants and its own urinal made of copper. Kunta could hardly believe his ears. “And each evening,” said the griot, “when King Kanissaai would emerge from his palace, a thousand fires would be lit, lighting up all between the heavens and the earth. And the servants of the great King would bring forth food enough to serve the ten thousand people who gathered there each evening.”

  Here he paused, and exclamations of wonder could not be restrained by the boys, who knew well that no sound should be made as a griot talked, but neither he nor even the kintango himself seemed to notice their rudeness. Putting into his mouth half of a kola nut and offering the other half to the kintango, who accepted it with pleasure, the griot drew the skirt of his robe closer about his legs against the chill of the early night and resumed his stories.

  “But even Ghana was not the richest black kingdom!” he exclaimed. “The very richest, the very oldest of them all was the kingdom of ancient Mali!” Like the other empires, Mali had its cities, its farmers, its artisans, its blacksmiths, tanners, dyers, and weavers, said the old griot. But Mali’s enormous wealth came from its far-flung trade routes in salt and gold and copper. “Altogether Mali was four months of travel long and four months of travel wide,” said the griot, “and the greatest of all its cities was the fabled Timbuktu!” The major center of learning in all Africa, it was populated by thousands of scholars, made even more numerous by a steady parade of visiting wise men seeking to increase their knowledge—so many that some of the biggest merchants sold nothing but parchments and books. “There is not a marabout, not a teacher in the smallest village, whose knowledge has not come at least in part from Timbuktu,” said the griot.

  When finally the kintango stood up and thanked the griot for the generosity with which he had shared with them the treasures of his mind, Kunta and the others—for the first time since they came to the jujuo—actually dared to voice their displeasure, for the time
had come for them to go to bed. The kintango chose to ignore this impertinence, at least for the time being, and sternly commanded them to their huts—but not before they had a chance to beg him to urge the griot to come back and visit them again.

  They were still thinking and talking of the wondrous tales the griot had told them when—six days later—word came that a famous moro would soon be visiting the camp. The moro was the highest grade of teacher in The Gambia; indeed, there were only a few of them, and so wise were they—after many rains of study—that their job was to teach not schoolboys but other teachers, such as the arafang of Juffure.

  Even the kintango showed unusual concern about this visitor, ordering the entire jujuo to be thoroughly cleaned, with the dirt raked and then brushed with leafy branches to a smoothness that would capture the honor of the fresh footprints of the moro when he arrived. Then the kintango assembled the boys in the compound and told them, “The advice and the blessings of this man who will be with us is sought not only by ordinary people but also by village chiefs and even by kings.”

  When the moro arrived the next morning, five of his students were with him, each carrying headbundles that Kunta knew would contain treasured Arabic books and parchment manuscripts such as those from ancient Timbuktu. As the old man passed through the gate, Kunta and his mates joined the kintango and his assistants on their knees, with their foreheads touching the ground. When the moro had blessed them and their jujuo, they rose and seated themselves respectfully around him as he opened his books and began to read—first from the Koran, then from such unheard-of books as the Taureta La Musa, the Zabora Dawidi and the Lingeeh la Isa, which he said were known to “Christians” as The Pentateuch of Moses, The Psalms of David and The Book of Isaiah. Each time the moro would open or close a book, roll or unroll a manuscript, he would press it to his forehead and mutter “Amen!”