Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  Their black and bay horses were smaller than Abdulai's. They had delicate ears and a short head, and were brightly caparisoned; their leather bridles and saddlery were embossed with intricate designs and their bells made a kind of music. Abdulai's stirrups were of brass, but the other warriors used iron.

  Tsetse flies had infected many of the horses with sleeping sickness, making them lethargic even when they were put out to grass. Heavily loaded as they now were, they moved slowly.

  The savannah was alive with game. They stepped around fresh elephant droppings, abuzz with green flies. On a patch of damp bare swampy ground, they saw the impress of the paws of great cats. The noisy passage of the party disturbed a herd of bush-buck and sent them leaping away through the reeds. Issaka released an arrow and shouted in triumph as one fell.

  When the sun was at its highest, they came to a dry river bed and Abdulai allowed them to rest for an hour in the shade of the light bush, while the horses grazed.

  * * *

  Abdulai made camp for the night under a great silk cotton tree.

  By the time darkness had fallen two fires were burning. The warriors sat around one and their captives around the second, close by. When the slaves had eaten, Abdulai sent Damba and Issaka to tie their hands; but Damba left Nandzi and Suba free. Guards were set to patrol the camp in shifts throughout the night. Others would keep the fires stoked. Abdulai had little fear of another attack from humans; they had not seen another living soul during the day's march. It was animals he feared. His captives, he knew, feared them too.

  “Suba,” Nandzi whispered to the boy as they piled dry grass against one of the buttresses of the mighty tree, “I am going to escape tonight. Will you come with me?”

  The boy nodded vigorously.

  “You will not be afraid of the wild beasts?”

  He frowned bravely and shook his head.

  “Then let us sleep early,” she whispered. “I will wake you when it is time to go. We'll just slip away quietly while the guards are not watching.”

  Nandzi had only just fallen asleep when she was woken by the drumming. The younger warriors were dancing in a circle around the fire, casting fantastic shadows as they dipped and spun, their smocks whirling. A drummer squeezed the strings of the hourglass drum which he carried in his armpit, beating the goat skin with a bent stick. The plaintive whine of a one-stringed gonje fiddle and the sweet tones of the hand piano echoed out into the enveloping darkness.

  Nandzi pulled her cloth over her head to try to block out the sound and the chill of the night air; but it was no good: once woken she could not fall asleep again. Confused thoughts raced through her mind. She imagined the scene of her sudden return to Tigen's compound. They would surely take her for a ghost. How Tabitsha would hug her! And Nowu! She closed her eyes and saw Itsho's mutilated body; and she shuddered. If only they had decided not to attack this morning when the ruined buildings offered some protection to the Bedagbam; if only they had followed us through the day, they might have had a better chance tonight. Perhaps the survivors of the attack party have done just that. She sat up and peered into the dark bush. In the distance, a hyena howled. By her side Suba twisted and turned in his sleep. Then he, too, was awake.

  He sat up and hugged his knees. He looked shaken.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  “I had a bad dream,” he replied.

  The dancing had stopped. The Bedagbam were talking loudly and laughing. Abdulai rose to his feet. At once his men became quiet. He walked around the fire and flicked his fly whisk this way and that. Then he began to talk in his language. He spoke in a sing-song voice, sometimes jabbing the air. It sounded to Nandzi as if he was telling them a story. From time to time they applauded. She yawned twice and then she was asleep.

  She was woken by the pre-dawn chorus of bird-song in the branches of the silk-cotton tree.

  She shivered and yawned. The surroundings were unfamiliar and for a moment she wondered where she was. Then she knew. The stress of the previous morning, the forced march, the late hour at which she had fallen asleep: all had taken their toll and she had overslept. Already the camp was stirring. Her plan to flee would have to be postponed.

  * * *

  Damba took to riding alongside them. He asked them their names and told them his own.

  “Did you understand Abdulai's history last night?” he asked Suba.

  The boy hung his head and made a non-committal noise.

  “What does he say?” Nandzi asked him.

  Suba explained, “Last night their leader, the one they call Abdulai, told them a long story, about how they, the Bedagbam, came to be living in this place. He is asking me whether I understood the story.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “More or less,” Suba replied, “but I don't know if it would be wise to admit that to him.”

  “What was the story?”

  “He said their ancestors came on horses from a far place on the edge of the great desert, where they had lived before. Their leader was called the Red Hunter. The son of this Red Hunter married the daughter of the priest, the Tindan Na. During the annual festival, while the Tindan Na was in his tent, putting on his robes, his daughter's husband crept up behind the old man and brought a great club crashing down on his skull. Then he donned the dead man's priestly robes and declared himself the new Tindan Na. So it was, he told them, that the Bedagbam became the owners of the land.”

  CHAPTER 4

  At noon on the fourth day after Nandzi's capture, they saw Yendi in the distance.

  The warriors halted to put on their armour and smarten up their horses’ trappings. Abdulai took the lead on his white charger. The horsemen formed up in two files with the ragged slaves on foot between them. The drummers set up a triumphant rhythm and the party entered the town.

  The houses, like those in Tigen's hamlet, were roughly circular in plan, with conical thatched roofs and grouped in family compounds. The white walls shone in the sun and the thatch on the roofs was fresh and neat. Everything looked new.

  As they passed the first compound children appeared as if from nowhere and fell into place, skipping and dancing after the cavalcade. A small boy called out, “Papa, papa!” to a hero on horseback, but his father passed by without hearing or recognising him. Women abandoned their domestic chores and ran to join their neighbours, merging into groups, pointing out the warriors and the slaves to one another and falling into animated conversation. Men with white beards, who had been squatting on their haunches in the shade of a mango tree to chew kola and discuss the weighty matters of the day, rose and stretched, adjusted their baggy cotton trousers and their batakaris, slipped into their sandals and made their own more leisurely and dignified way to the market square.

  A woman ran up ahead of the party and halting, looked back to scan the warriors’ faces. When they had all passed her, she gathered up her cloth and pursued Abdulai.

  Coming abreast of him for the second time, she caught her breath and screamed, “Captain Abdulai, where is my son Ali? What have you done with Ali?”

  Abdulai waved a greeting to Ali's mother.

  “Later,” he cried back, “Later. I will come to see you.”

  Ali had been struck by a poisoned arrow. He lay buried in a grave his mother would never see. Abdulai did not relish the prospect of having to break the news of the death of three of his troop to their families. Especially to the women. The men were usually understanding in such circumstances, even proud of a son who had died in battle; but the women were troublesome. “Why my son?” this woman would demand. What answer could one give to such a question? She would make him feel personally responsible for Ali's death: and that was manifestly unfair.

  Nandzi had observed this incident. Now, as she passed, the woman collapsed into a heap of flesh and crumpled cloth by the road-side, knowing that her son was surely dead. Looking back, Nandzi felt for her, all alone with her grief in the small cloud of dust thrown up by the horses and the excited
crowd. She wondered whether it was one of Itsho’s arrows which had killed the woman’s son.

  “We must be the first party to return,” said Damba to Suba, who was walking alongside his horse, one hand on the bridle. The boy had become quite attached to him and was diligently striving to expand his vocabulary.

  The traders had dispersed and there was little activity in the market square. A horse was tethered to an iron hook which had been driven into a tree trunk. Small donkeys, their front legs hobbled, browsed in a patch of dry grass. Goats scavenged amongst the unswept debris. In one corner, in the shade of a tree, a class of boys droned a recitation of passages from the Holy Book under the watchful eye of a malam.

  Abdulai drew fiercely on his mount's bit, forcing the white beast to rear. The small boys whistled their applause. He turned the horse to face his men.

  “Damba, Issaka,” he called out, “Muster the prisoners under the tree over there. Check that their hands are well tied. Then let the rest of the troop fall out. The two of you remain on guard until I send you a relief.”

  * * *

  A first-time visitor to Yendi would have been at pains to pick out Na Saa Ziblim’s palace. It was no more than a group of seven compounds, some larger, some smaller, disposed, seemingly at random, about an unwalled open space adjacent to the market. One of the main roads of the town passed right through the palace grounds.

  The largest compound housed the private quarters of the Na. The bleached shoulder blades of a foal guarded the great entrance doorway against the passage of evil spirits. Most visitors passed no further than the first room, an imposing reception hall with a conical thatched roof. Here the King gave audience during the day and the favourite royal horses were stabled at night.

  The Na reclined on cushions arranged on a lion's skin. This in turn was spread upon an ornate Moroccan carpet. He was dressed in voluminous cotton trousers and a heavy long-sleeved batakari intricately embroidered in the Muslim style. He wore silver rings on his fingers; leather amulets containing fragments of parchment inscribed with short passages from the Holy Book hung from a silver chain around his neck. Around him sat numerous chiefs, elders and officials, several of his wives and his eldest son. The Tolon-Na, Commander-in-Chief of the King's army, was there. So too were the Kumbong-Na, Commander of the Royal Archers, and the Galidima, Chief of the Eunuchs. The Owner of the Land was also present. At the periphery stood the head barber, the head butcher and the head blacksmith. The principal court musician stood ready to give the signal to his drummers. Sundry slaves and lackeys hovered in attendance, waving fans, offering tepid water in silver goblets and kola nuts on trays. This was the court of the Ya Na, King of Dagbon.

  Bowing low, the Chief of the Horses led Abdulai into the royal presence.

  When Abdulai had completed an elaborate obeisance, Na Saa indicated with his fly-whisk that he should rise. Saa Ziblim was not yet forty, handsome, as befitted a king, sharp of eye, in his own estimation a progressive reformer, a man who, though he relished power, used it wisely.

  “Let us hear your man's report,” he said to the Chief of Horses.

  The Chief of the Horses launched into a long, obsequious recitation of the virtues of the Na and his ancestors.

  Na Saa cut him short.

  “Are you the Chief of Horses or the Chief of the Royal Praise Singers?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at that very person.

  Those entitled by rank to be amused at the discomfiture of the Chief of the Horses expressed their appreciation of the Na's humour in a proper manner.

  “Curtail the poetry and proceed with your report,” ordered the King.

  The Chief of the Horses was a man of the old school. He had served the previous king, Na Gariba, and had somehow survived his late master’s undoing. Judging him incapable of modernising the army, Na Saa was actively seeking an opportunity to sack him.

  The Chief of the Horses suppressed his anger. He had served the great Na Gariba for many years. What right had this young upstart to treat him with such disrespect? He knew what custom demanded. It was the duty of elders such as he to act as custodians of the history and culture of the people. Traditional protocol could not be so lightly dismissed. Ignoring the Na, he proceeded with his formal litany of praise.

  Na Saa interrupted him for the second time. He spoke abruptly.

  “Sit down, old man,” he ordered.

  “Commander,” he addressed Abdulai, “What is your name?”

  He knew very well who Abdulai was. He judged him a man of unquestionable loyalty, brave, a good leader, but brutal and, worse, obtuse. An unsuitable candidate for succession to the skin of the Chief of the Horses, he reflected.

  Abdulai’s peroration went on and on. He dealt with every unimportant detail of the expedition at great length. As he heard the blend of romance, boasting and equivocation issue from his own lips, his confidence grew. He contrived to tell his story without any mention of his losses.

  “Have you finished?” asked the Na at length. “You say that you captured twenty slaves, a woman, a boy and eighteen grown men. Is that correct?”

  Abdulai concurred. It was clear that the Na appreciated his achievements. Perhaps he would reward him with the gift of a new horse, he thought.

  “What were your casualties, men and horses?” Na Sa asked him quietly.

  He knew the answer. Damba had already reported to him, in private.

  Abdulai felt his world collapse about him.

  “Two men killed; and two horses,” he replied.

  “Think carefully, Commander Abdulai,” said the King. “I ask you again. What were your casualties, men and horses? Tell me the truth, now. I shall not ask you a third time.”

  “Three men killed; and three horses,” replied Abdulai.

  He had made a mistake in underestimating the Na. The King must have powerful medicine at his disposal. It was uncanny how his question had addressed precisely the facts which Abdulai had resolved to conceal.

  “Why did you fail to state this in your report? Why did you lie to me?”

  Abdulai hung his head. He knew that an attempt to answer could only exacerbate his predicament.

  “The Council of Eunuchs will sit on this matter, examine all witnesses and report to me,” ordered the King. “Galidima, understood?”

  The Chief of the Eunuchs nodded gravely. Na Saa looked around to gauge reaction. He had not been on the skin long and still needed to consolidate his position. Every decision he made had a political dimension to it. Support had to be earned. He would not fall into the trap of complacency which had been Gariba's downfall.

  “Now send a message to Nana Koranten Péte. Tell the Asante Consul that the Ya Na invites him to join an inspection of the first consignment of slaves to arrive this season.”

  * * *

  The slaves were allocated a large compound.

  In the course of time it would become overcrowded, but the first twenty captives had plenty of space. Their bonds were untied and they were free to move at will within the prison walls.

  Nandzi had the small room set aside for female slaves all to herself. As the only woman she was expected to do the cooking. If the men had had their way, she would also have gathered the firewood and washed their ragged garments. They found it hard enough to come to terms with the psychic effects of capture and enslavement; that they should be further humiliated by being forced to do women’s work was inconceivable. Fortunately for them their captors’ views on what was proper work for men and women were little different from their own.

  Suba was a great help. He was happier in Nandzi’s company than in that of the grown men. It was he who every morning dumped the pots of excrement on the outskirts of the town. It was Suba who brought the calabashes of rationed water from the well near the market. And at night he slept in the open doorway of her room.

  * * *

  Na Saa Ziblim and Koranten Péte walked hand in hand, deep in conversation.

  They communicated with one another, after a
fashion, in a mixture of Hausa and Asante which caused them both much amusement. It was Koranten Péte, commander of the central division, who had led the victorious Asante forces in the recent war. The Asante King had rewarded him with title to one third of the tribute which the Dagomba were now obliged to pay each year. He needed little further inducement to spend the months of the trading season watching over Asante interests in Yendi.

  The King and the Consul were followed by a long procession of dignitaries and officials.

  The Galidima, Chief of the Eunuchs, was responsible both for policing the city and for the administration of justice. The fines imposed by the Council of the Eunuchs, in cattle and cowries, formed a substantial portion of the royal revenues. Beardless and effeminate the Galidima was also the guardian of the King's wives.

  The eunuchs, too, had wives. These women, their unions sanctioned by the King himself, were prostitutes in all but name. They bore the added misfortune of seeing their male children castrated in order that they might one day succeed their mothers’ husbands.

  Demonkum, already Chief of Those-who-sit-before-the-Na and shortly to be enstooled in the Asante manner with the new title of Chief of the Guns, followed the King. He was dressed in the style of the Kambonse, wearing a richly embroidered cloth, rather than the customary smock. Kambonse was the Dagbon name for the Asante; and Kambonse was the name that Demonkum had chosen for the musketeers whom he was training. Three years at the Asante court had convinced him of the superiority of their military technology and strategy and he was determined to reform the Dagbon army along similar lines. But there was opposition. He smiled wryly as he recalled the recent humiliation of the leader of the reactionary party, the Chief of the Horses, conspicuously absent from this day's inspection.