Ama

by Manu Herbstein

  Ama settled down with her back against a rock and made herself comfortable. She decided to read the story of Abraham and Lot and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which she remembered from the English bible. Perhaps in the Portuguese she would find a clue as to why God had destroyed the two cities. She struggled with unfamiliar words and read and reread the passages aloud to try to make sense of them.

  She came again to the verse which says: “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.” She shut her eyes, the good one and the blind one, to rest them for a moment. The sun was pleasantly warm; a gentle breeze blew up from the valley below; and Ama dozed.

  She dreamed and in her dream she saw the Owner of the Earth speaking to her father, Tigen, at the Earth Shrine. The Owner of the Earth had cut the throats of a young female goat and a young cow. He raised his bloody hands and said, “Your descendants will become strangers in a land far away and will serve the people of that land; and those people will persecute them for four hundred years.”

  She was awoken by a gentle shaking of her shoulder.

  “Sister Ama, what are you doing here? It will be dark soon. This is no place to spend the night all on your own.”

  It was Olukoya, Josef’s Yoruba malungo, slave driver by day and babalorisá, so it was said, by night.

  “And what’s this you have here?”

  He picked up the Bible; the paper and pencil fell out from between the pages. He looked at her with astonishment. Then he sat down next to her.

  “Read,” he ordered her.

  Ama looked back at him wondering what all this could mean. She rubbed her good eye.

  “In the beginning,” she read, “God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

  “Now write something on the paper.”

  “What shall I write?”

  “Write what you have just read.”

  She started to do so, struggling with the blunt pencil and the special Portuguese letters which she still found difficult to form. Olukoya watched her in silence. He was trying to impose some discipline on the thoughts which raced through his mind.

  “Are you a Christian?” he asked her.

  She detected a note of suspicion in his voice. She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I have been baptised but I am not a Christian.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. He seemed to be testing her; yet she felt no resentment: Bra Olukoya was no threat to her. She felt comfortable with him and could tell him the truth.

  “Christianity is the religion of the white man; it is the religion of slavery. If I were to accept it, I would be acquiescing in my own enslavement. I will never do that. Not until the day I die.”

  “Well said, my sister,” he replied. “But if you are not a Christian, what are you then?”

  Ama was puzzled. This was a question she had never considered.

  “What am I?” she asked slowly, groping for an answer. “Well. If you had asked me that question when I was young, I might have said only, 'I am a human being, a female human being, a girl, daughter of my father Tigen and my mother Tabitsha.'“

  She was carried back to the long discussions she had had with Itsho; but this was not something they had talked about.

  “What am I?' she mused. “Sometimes I saw other people in the market, Hausa, Mossi, Yoruba; but it was not until I was captured by Dagomba marauders that I became conscious that my people, we call ourselves Bekpokpam, were different from others.

  “I was taken to Kumase, you know, the Asante capital. The queen mother changed my name. She it was who gave me my Asante name, Ama. I had been torn from my family. Part of me longed to go home to my mother; but part of me became Asante. Sometimes I still speak to my ancestors in my own language; but mostly now I think in Asante.”

  “So you are Asante now?”

  “No. I cannot be Asante. To be Asante you must be born into an Asante family; you must have an Asante mother. I had no family there. And it was the Asante who sent me to be sold to the Dutch. Yet I don’t hate them. I was their slave, but they treated me like a human being.”

  She paused to think. Koranten Péte bore me no malice. He sent me away because he saw me as a danger, a threat to the Asante state; because of his boy king’s mad love for me, because Osei Kwame wanted to make me his first wife.

  “I will tell you something that nobody else here knows, not even Josef.”

  Again she paused, collecting her thoughts.

  “In Elmina Castle, the Director-General, a Dutchman, took me from the dungeon to use me for his pleasure. By chance, as they write in this book, I found favour in his eyes. He taught me the language of the English and to read and write. He taught me that the world is like an orange floating in space; that there are six continents and that one of them is Africa. Have you ever seen a map, Bra Olukoya? Do you know what Africa is like? Let me draw it for you. This is Africa. This is the sea, all around it. And here is Elmina.”

  Olukoya looked at her crude map and nodded. He suppressed the question which was on his lips and let her go on without interruption.

  “You ask me what I am. It is a difficult question. When they put me on the ship, there were already many slaves in the holds. They spoke a language I had never heard. To this day I don’t know the name of their country. We called them Tomba’s people, because that was the name of their leader. But they were black, like us. Then I realised that Africa is the continent of black people; and I understood for the first time that we black people are all Africans.

  “So I think that the answer to your question is that I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.”

  “Well spoken, Ama. You are wise beyond your years. Why have we never talked before? And why have you kept this gift a secret?” he asked, pointing to the Bible and the paper on which she had written the opening words of Genesis.

  “What use would it be? Our people would think me a witch.”

  “Some, maybe, but not me. That is the greatest gift that their God gave to the whites, greater than their ships, greater than their guns. Until we learn to read and write, we will never be able to defeat them and regain our freedom. But tell me, where did you get the book?”

  “Alexandre.”

  “It was his? He gave it to you?”

  “Not exactly. He stole it from the priest.”

  Olukoya laughed.

  “That boy, he is incorrigible. One day, when he grows up, he will be invaluable to us. But now you should not put too much trust in him. He is only a boy. And the Senhor is his father. He could easily talk out of turn.”

  He looked up at the sky.

  “It looks like rain. And it will soon be dark,” he said. “We should be going. We can talk some more on the way.”

  “If I were to give you a message,” he asked her as they clambered down the rocks, “could you write it down on paper?”

  “In Portuguese?” she asked.

  “It would have to be,” he replied.

  “I could try. Who is the message for?”

  “You must swear that you will tell this to no one else. It could be dangerous. It could even cost us our lives.”

  “I swear.”

  He looked back to make sure that there was no one following them.

  “We keep in touch with our brothers at the other engenhos, in the towns and in Salvador itself. We send them news and they send us news. Josef is one of our couriers. Since none of us knows how to read or write, all our messages are sent by word of mouth. But in Salvador, some of the Crioulos are with us and some of them can read and write. If we could send and receive written messages . . . do you understand?”r />
  * * *

  The Senhora needed a new maid.

  This time she was determined not to recruit another candidate for the bed of her ageing and ailing husband, who had so often in the past been the agent of her shame.

  “Bring me,” she instructed Vasconcellos, “the six ugliest wenches you have.”

  Of course the news got round: there were few secrets at the Engenho de Cima. When Ama learned that her name was on the short list of the ugly, she felt crushed. She ran to her cabin, buried her head under her blanket and cried until she could cry no more.

  Jacinta tried to console her.

  “Look at me,” she said, holding up her stumps.

  But that only set Ama off on a fresh fit of sobbing.

  Then Benedito took up his Christian duty and came to visit her, misquoting Ecclesiastes on vanity. She bit her tongue. You really are a stupid illiterate old man, she thought, with your scraps of ill-digested quotations from the Bible. Immediately regretting her harsh thoughts, she thanked him with the humility and respect due to his years and sent him on his way.

  It was Wono, Josef’s wife, who at last brought her to her senses.

  “Don't be stupid, sister Ama,” she told her. “After all, who cares about what Vasconcellos or the other whites think? In a way you are lucky - at least Senhor Jesus may keep his hands off you if that is what he thinks. And if the Senhora selects you, just think. You will be better fed and better clothed and you won’t have to work so hard. What is more, you will keep us informed about what is going on up there.”

  * * *

  The house slaves gathered in the kitchen yard.

  Father Isaac read a passage from the Bible and delivered a brief homily. Ama was to discover that he found in the Holy Book a seemingly inexhaustible stock of verses relevant to their condition and behaviour.

  “Let him that stole, steal no more: but rather let him labour,” he advised them and then, skipping over a few verses, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you.”

  “The Epistle to the Ephesians,” he told them.

  Ama made a mental note to look for the passage in her stolen Bible.

  Alexandre was there of course. For the Senhora he had once been just one more dark-skinned reminder of her shame; but he had long since won her heart. It was Alexandre, Ama was to learn later, who had been instrumental in swinging the Senhora in her favour. The Senhora was easily led and Ama was the only candidate who had such an influential advocate.

  The Senhor was there too, unshaven, bleary eyed, in a dressing gown.

  At the end of the short service, a young mulatto boy stepped forward.

  “Senhor,” he said, “I beseech your blessing in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

  “Jesus Christ bless you forever,” the Senhor mumbled.

  CHAPTER 32

  When Ama returned from the cane fields the following Saturday it was already dark.

  She strapped their rolled up sleeping mats onto Jacinta’s back. Esperança helped her to raise her basket to her head.

  “We will be back tomorrow evening,” Jacinta told the old woman.

  The others were waiting at the edge of the forest, shadowy shapes in the dark, murmuring quietly. Josef was going from group to group, peering into faces, making sure that they had no uninvited guests. Ama heard the bleating of a sheep. Soon they moved off into the trees, following the path up the hill, past the allotments.

  “Keep close behind me,” Jacinta told her.

  When they were over the brow, out of sight of the engenho, they paused while torches were lit. Then they pushed on through the light undergrowth. There were no paths here. Each followed the one before, trusting Olukoya, at their head, to lead them to the place. The torches cast grotesque shadows on the canopy above. The smell and feel of decaying leaves brought back memories of other journeys.

  This is so like the African forest, Ama thought. Yet why is it, she pondered, that the trees and the wild animals are all different from ours?

  * * *

  Ama was near the back of the file. When she entered the clearing, torches had been tied to the trunks of young trees and the men were lighting a fire. The women gathered on one side, spreading their mats and arranging their bundles and baskets. Ama unloaded Jacinta.

  Every one talked in subdued tones; this forest, like all others, was full of spirits.

  Ama looked around and counted. There were about thirty in the party, mostly adults, but one or two infants too. Ignacio Gomes, the cabra leather worker, a free man, half Tupi, half Kongo, was there. The rest were slaves and all of them were Africans; no other free men, no Crioulos, no mulattos, only blacks. Some boçal, mostly ladino, but all black.

  Josef and Bernardo emerged from the enveloping darkness, bearing drums. Olukoya clapped his hands for silence.

  “My brothers and sisters,” he said, “we have all had a long, hard day. We need to sleep so that we can awake refreshed in the morning. But before we retire for the night, let us first go and announce our arrival.”

  There were calls of assent. They fell in at once behind the torch bearers and the three drummers. The shrine was close by, in another clearing. A stream wound its way past both. The sound of water tumbling over the stones would accompany their oblations.

  An enormous tree, buttressed by its spreading roots, stood near the centre, dominating the cleared space. They arranged themselves in a half circle around it.

  “In our country,” Jacinta whispered to her, “our god Tempu lives in the tree we call nsanda. There are no nsanda trees in this place, so those who came before us made a home for Tempu in this one which is its brother. They call it gameleira branca,. The white flag is the way we dress nsanda. The ribbon around the trunk is for the Yorubas.”

  The batá drums called for silence. Olukoya stood before the tree, barefooted and bare from the waist up. Gazing up into the dark canopy and then down into the space behind the roots he spoke a few sentences in Yoruba.. Then, to Ama’s surprise, Jacinta stepped forward, and raising her two stumps, addressed Tempu briefly in Ki-Kongo. Next to speak was Josef and this time Ama understood.

  “Onyankopon Kwame, creator of all things, lord of the universe; Asase Yaa, spirit of the earth,” he intoned. “Your children greet you. We have come to tell you that we are here. Before dawn tomorrow we shall return to praise your name and to honour the spirits of our ancestors. Tonight we beg you to protect us as we sleep. Protect us from sasabonsam and all malevolent spirits which may live in this forest. Now we beg your permission to take leave of you. We shall go and come again tomorrow.”

  * * *

  It was still dark when Josef gently shook Ama awake.

  “Ama, come, we need your help. Sister Jacinta, it is time.”

  As they walked towards the shrine, he explained, “We have only one sheep and two cockerels. That is not enough to allow all of us to make a sacrifice to our own gods. So each nation has selected one person to follow its own custom. Olukoya wants you to represent your people, even though you are only one.”

  “What will I have to do?”

  “If you like, say a prayer to your own gods and ancestors. Otherwise just watch and listen.”

  In the flickering torch light Ama saw several objects which she had not noticed the night before. One was a solid clay cone, about waist high, with a small flattened top on which lay two pieces of iron. Another was the familiar Asante Onyame-dua, God’s tree, supporting a basin in its arms. Around the base of the gameleira, under its roots, was an array of pots and calabashes, some upright, some inverted.

  The last object was a crude ladder-like framework of trimmed branches. A goatskin had been stretched across it to make a table top. On the skin lay cow horns, shells, a seed rosary, the red spurs and comb of a cockerel, an earthen dish full of clay with feathers and teeth protruding from it, stones, and cracked fragments of glazed pottery and mirror glass.

  “That is Tempu’s altar
,” Jacinta whispered. “Ama, pluck some leaves from this bush and lay them on it for me.”

  Seven iron stakes had been driven into the earth around the altar.

  “Mind the lances,” Jacinta warned.

  There were six in their party.

  Olukoya was their acknowledged leader. He had earned this status by virtue of his personal qualities; but there was more to it than that. As a young man he had been a novice in a shrine devoted to the performance of sacred rites in the service of Shangó, deified fourth king of Oyo. While he was in Oyo, Abiodun, the Alafin, had decided it was time to reassert the dwindling authority of his office by crushing the forces of his own military commander. Olukoya had become an innocent victim of the resulting civil war, ending up a slave upon a Portuguese ship.

  There were only a few Yorubas at the engenho and even those were recent arrivals on the Bahian scene. But the power of their gods (four hundred and one in all, Olukoya said) was known far and wide. And Olukoya knew how to invoke that power. It was this knowledge which gave him such authority.

  He lifted one of the pots and poured water from it onto the ground as he spoke.

  “Eshù,

  “gate-keeper of the gods, intercessor for mankind,

  “we come to you in peace, to greet you at this cross-roads,

  “where the spirits of Africa meet those of this country, this Brazil,

  “and the fierce god of the white man, Jesus-Mary-Joseph.

  “We cool your brows with this fresh water from the river.”

  Unseen drummers accompanied him, quietly, so as not to drown out his words.

  “Take our humble messages, we beseech you,

  “to almighty Olodumare, supreme amongst the gods,

  “who gives the breath of life to man

  “and seals our destiny;

  “to Obatálá, creator, god of the overarching skies,

  “whose purity of spirit, goodness and kindness know no bounds;