Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

  It’s a big prayer meeting this time.

  ‘The Fula says there are so many people in town for this thing. Some all the way from Kabala. It’s going to be one big wahallah!’

  ‘Will you go?’

  ‘The Fula says we should. But I said: “Bo, leave me.” Let him go. I’ve too much to do already.’ And Madam Bah exhales so that her shoulders sag. She leans forward and beckons my mother close. Like she has a secret to tell her. And she takes my mother’s hands in hers and slips some coins soundlessly across. My mother knots the coins into a corner of her lappa.

  She reaches a hand out behind her. Already moving away. Confident that I will catch it. And I do.

  ‘So that’s that.’

  ‘Until next time.’

  I wave to Bobbio.

  My Face.

  Let me tell you about My Face. That day, at Madam Bah’s shop, I didn’t know about it. Nobody teased me. Not Bobbio. Not even the other children. We had no mirrors. We didn’t look at our reflections in the streams, the way they show us in films, kneeling down to stare at our features rippling in the water. We only knew ourselves by the reactions of other people. People might turn to look at you because you were so beautiful. Or because you were disfigured.

  Madam Bah had a consignment of mirrors. Small squares of glass — some already chipped — with silvered backs. She let me hold one. In no time children crowded around, trying to see their own faces. The shopkeeper had known what she was doing — letting us play with one of the precious mirrors — because in no time the grownups came over to see what the commotion was about.

  First I was too pleased just to see my own reflection. I turned this way. My reflection turned the other. I smiled, she smiled right back at me. It wasn’t long before we were poking out our tongues and pulling faces at each other. The mirror was passed from hand to hand. Everyone took one turn and then another. This time I winked. Right eye. Left eye. Right eye. Left eye. Left eye. I wiped the smeared surface of the mirror. Left Eye. I looked again. I stared at myself for a long time, until somebody snatched the mirror away. I put my hand up to my face and touched it. Traced my features, conjuring through fingertips the image still in my mind — my eye stretching down towards my mouth, lower lid pulled open. Exposed pink. A face made of wet clay somebody had dragged their fingers through.

  At bedtime my mama rubbed her nose against my face. Nose to nose. Right eye. Left eye. The sloping eye and the straight. I was a happy child. Later I wondered what she made of it. For a long time I tried so hard to remember. What did she wish for when she spoke to the stones? When she asked them things. Did she ever ask them to make it right?

  Haidera. Haidera. Haider Spider. Haidera Kontorfili.

  Haidera Kontorfili said he could turn the sun into the moon and the moon into the sun. He could tell whether an unbroken egg would hatch a rooster or a hen. Every living creature knew his name. Whoever did not obey the rules of Annabi would one day be put to death. Unmarried women were Black Dogs. One day fire would come like rain and plague, would strike the unbeliever down.

  He told us we should not fear the Europeans or pay the potho’s taxes. And of all the things Haidera said, it was this last one that brought the trouble down upon his head.

  We are to go to the prayer meeting. The preparations take two days. Mutton roasted. Yams baked. Whole fishes fried. Ginger pulped for ginger beer. Black-eyed beans skinned, mashed, wrapped in banana leaves for oleleh. Sleeping mats, country cloths, canvas tents. A stove to boil water for coffee. The men haul sacks of rice and cut down great hands of bananas and plantains. I chase after high-stepping hens, push them into a basket, from where they protest in indignant tones.

  The town is no more than the headquarters of one of the country’s poorest provinces. And yet I fear becoming lost. Noise pounding my ears, dust dry in my throat, air too hot to breathe. Looking this way and that. We huddle together, suddenly diminished. The streets are wide as rivers. The houses have rooms built one on top of the other. I watch as people walk up outsidestaircases. They look as though they are stepping through the air. Walking on air. Why doesn’t someone build a staircase all the way up to the sky, I ask myself? To find out what is really there.

  We cross the street at the roundabout: cracked concrete covered in yellow grass gone to seed. Two men heave a handcart, one pushing, one pulling. Their naked muscles glisten and flash with sweat. A man with a monkey on a chain. It lurches forward, startling me — a tiny, wizened, old man’s face and a baby’s cry. Hawkers selling food. A man standing next to a barrel of water. A tin cup dangles on a string. My father calls him over. ‘Sssss!’ We wait while the man lugs the heavy barrel over. It takes a little time. My father drinks first and then the rest of us, one after the other.

  In the main square a hundred families jostle for space. Men in inky-black robes stroll through the crowds or stand in pairs around the perimeter. One of them greets my father and directs us. We settle, light fires, spread mats, erect screens and awnings. The sun is high, our shadows like small pools of black wax. In the shade of the canopies we rest, we wait.

  I am sure I am too excited to sleep. I put my head in my mother’s lap, breathe. I feel her stroking my hair, her fingers rustle when she touches the rim of my ear. Dream fragments float past behind my eyes. A bird woven out of string. Crows that shift shape into blackclad men. Staircases leading from cloud to cloud. And I sink through air as heavy as water, as if weighed down by sodden wings.

  I am woken by a sound like a buffalo’s roar. All around me people are standing, getting to their feet. I scramble up, crane my neck. Nothing. I am too close to the ground.

  ‘Haidera! Haidera!’

  Now I see him. Standing high up above the crowd on a platform: a man whose robes billow around him, even more full than those of my father, but plain, entirely unadorned. He wears a white turban. Around his neck an amulet swings on a leather cord.

  ‘Allahu Akbar!’

  ‘Akbar Allahu!’

  People bow down, snatch handfuls of sand from the ground, rubbing their hands one over the other as though in water. Ahead I see my father wipe his hands across his face. He bows, kneels. My mother next to me, she does the same. I keep my eyes fixed upon my father as we pray under Haidera’s command: standing, bending, kneeling, stretching our necks like herons to touch our foreheads to the ground. The movements, the pattern, the rhythm, they are just like a dance.

  Now we stop praying and listen to Haidera, whose voice is as thin and high as a bird’s, and like a bird’s it floats across the air so that even the people at the back can hear. He doesn’t speak the way we do, but with an accent from somewhere else.

  ‘I Am the Man Sent to All Worshippers in the Name of God to Tell You the Prophecies of Muhammad. My Song is Alla, Alla.’

  Haidera talks. The sun arcs across the sky. It is hard to sit still so long. People cheer when he warns of false Mohammedans who come to trick us and take our money. They cheer again when he promises to stop them and to kill any who refuse to leave. The black-clad Shekunas carry sticks and short swords. I don’t doubt what he says is true. He tells us the terrible things that await those who do not follow Annabi. For them the rivers will drain into the soil, the rice harvest fail. His bird’s voice rises to a shriek, like the call of a peacock.

  ‘Those Who Will Be Saved Are Only the True Muslims.’

  I touch my mama’s sleeve. She is wearing her best gown and she is beautiful. I pull her finger. I ask her if we are to Be Saved. Yes, she tells me and slides her hand out from beneath mine, strokes the back of my hand lightly.

  I turn my head this way and that to look at the people listening to the preacher. People who come to Be Saved. People who have come to Be Healed, because that is what they say Haidera can do. There are families like ours, men with their wives and children. Here and there a lame leg stiffly extended; a gaunt figure propped up by the shoulders; a child’s inert frame wrapped in blankets; eyes that are opaque and unblinking. At the back are the be
ggars. Some have limbs that are missing. Others have limbs that are too big or too small. Some have limbs that are falling off. And there are poor people, who sit on the dry earth with none of the comforts we have brought with us: lined faces, scant clothing, lean and scarred bodies.

  A way off: four people. Different from everyone else. Legs straight, hands clasped behind their backs. Standing when everyone else is sitting. And when the time comes to pray they alone do not kneel. Short-sleeved shirts and short trousers. Red round caps. Court Messengers who work for the pothos. There is one who comes to our village sometimes. The people greet him, but rarely invite him to eat. Sometimes my father calls for my mother to serve him a meal and I help her carry it out to where he sits on a stool outside the meeting house. He talks to my father and leaves again soon after. The Black White Man, they call him.

  Out in front my father nods. There are sins Haidera has seen here with his own eyes. Big eyes, with lines above and beneath. ‘Promiscuousness.’ Drawing the word out, turning it into four words. Prom. Isc. Uous. Ness! His mouth snaps shut on the end of the word, the tongue disappears with a flick like a tail into a hole. My father bobs his head. ‘Slander.’ Bob, goes my father’s head again. ‘Blasphemy.’ Bob. ‘Greed.’ Bob. ‘Envy.’ Bob, bob. And my father looks around him now. His chin lifted slightly. ‘Gambling, cheating.’ My father nods firmly. ‘Usury.’ This time he doesn’t nod. ‘Excessive polygamy.’ The preacher’s voice whistles, sibilant, trembling. Something shifts in the air.

  Ya Namina, of course; Ya Isatta Numokho; Sakie, my own mother; Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay Kamara, Tenkamu, whose family name I never knew. Memso and Saffie, who are still young and under the tutelage of Ya Namina. My father’s wives are gathered around him with the exception of two who are new mothers. They have returned to their families and are not expected back until the children are weaned, two years from now. We are all here. My father sits at the head of us.

  But I don’t have time to think any more about that. A ripple runs through the mass of people near the platform. The crowd splits apart. A man stumbles forward like a shipwrecked sailor thrown up on the sand. In his hands he holds a carved wooden statue. Other people follow. Each holding a figure, sometimes more than one. They lay them down in front of the platform. A mound rises. Some people turn and bow to Haidera. One man prostrates himself, the whole length of his person pressed to the ground, and stays there until two of the Shekunas heave him up by the arms. The crowd roars as each new supplicant comes forward.

  Up on tiptoe I can see Haidera pacing back and forth. Now his disciples are taking carvings from people and throwing them on the pile. I can barely hear what he is saying. He gesticulates, points up at the sky with his left hand, his voice rises and falls. A few words carry above the noise of the crowd. He is talking about Blasphemy and Native Idols. The preacher bites into his lip, emphasises the word Native, the way he did when he talked about Promiscuousness. As though it were something Rancid.

  From behind, a shout. I swivel round. A man dashes out of one of the houses around the square. In one hand he is holding a small soapstone figure, the ones the farmers bury in the fields when they plant the first seed. In the other hand he clutches a string of beads. He is wheeling around like a kite in the sky, like a crazy man. Now two more are rapping on the door of another house. No answer. They push at the door, which opens easily. In and out. More men join in. Not Shekunas. Those ones watch but do nothing. Ordinary men. Forcing their way into shops and homes, whooping every time they find an old god to confiscate.

  Whose houses they are I cannot tell you, because nobody dares to utter a challenge. The mob tears around the square and down an empty side street, out of view. There are sounds: the rush of feet, splintering wood, the echo of voices.

  The fire blazes into the night. Nobody goes near it. You might think it was a stinking cesspool instead of a warm fire on a cool, bright night. A night when the stars have come out to watch the earth. Nobody warms their hands. Nobody borrows a brand for their cooking fire. Nobody pushes a yam into the embers. Instead men with long sticks poke around in the ashes. And where they find a statue or a figure that has survived the heat, they set about smashing it into powder.

  Some pieces went missing. I don’t know.

  I know it was after Haidera. But how long after, this I cannot tell you — a day, a month, a year; these measures of time change constantly when you are a child. Sometimes a day is longer than a year. Sometimes a month is shorter than an hour. I wish I could remember.

  Mama stopped making snuff.

  My sisters and I tried to make the snuff instead. We searched for the pestle and mortar and ground the tobacco, lubi, cloves. Mama lay on the bed, a distracted presence. Did not watch us or answer our questions. She had lain there many days. Only sometimes she rose, went to her box and pulled out her possessions, sat on the floor surrounded by strewn clothing. Other times she slept. We took over her duties, cooking and carrying the food down to the plantation workers. We told nobody, except Pa Foday. We said she suffered from the fever, though it was not the time of year. Between us no mention was made of it; we dared not look at each other. Instead we shared out the tasks, uncomplaining. For once, no bickering.

  But the snuff gave us away. We did not have our mother’s special knowledge of the precise amounts, the balance between the ingredients. I carried it to Madam Bah, who coughed for a long time, then stepped out from behind her counter and followed me to our room. We, my mother’s daughters, waited outside. After a short while Madam Bah went to Ya Namina’s house next to the mosque, and together they returned and went into mama’s room.

  From that day we ate our meals in Ya Namina’s house.

  Mama was sick. Nobody could heal her. So she went in search of a cure of her own. The door to her room left standing open. Dressed only in an old gown. Hair uncovered and loose, standing out at every angle, like the dolls we made with sticks and goats’ hair. She rose from her bed and walked out of the village.

  When a person dies our people cry and sing. The drums sound. The house is home to many visitors. When my mother went away there was silence. My father’s house was still. The silence slid down the mud walls. Great drops stretching slowly from the eaves, smothering the thoughts that hung in the air. It clotted every crevice. It rose in the back of my throat when I tried to ask about my mother, and threatened to make me retch. It filled the house until we could no longer open our mouths for fear of drowning in it.

  My father, in order to avoid being drowned, went away on business with his sixth wife.

  And this same time was when the dancing stopped. The steps followed mama when she walked out of the village. She went, leaving behind everything, even her name. So I wrapped it in longing and kept it for her.

  Clouds spread over the sky. Overripe fruit drops from the trees at night and morning brings the smell of wet earth and the sweet stink of rotting flesh. The river is dammed. The water rises. After dark, house-children — black-eyed geckoes — feast on swarms of mosquitoes.

  I was sharing a plate of rice with my sisters at the back of Ya Namina’s house when mama’s ghost walked back into the village. Three people saw her with their own eyes. Salia Bangura and his woman had argued and he was late that morning. She walked past them both without a word of greeting. The alpha was shaving with a piece of broken mirror on the steps of the mosque. Over his shoulder he saw the figure of a woman, dripping with dew. Afterwards he pointed at the shattered glass, dropped in fright. Old man Bangura, spoiling for a fight he could win, began an argument over whether a ghost would possess a reflection. Nobody could agree. What they did agree on was this: spirit or mortal man, it walked straight up the main road towards our father’s house.

  We heard them shout and dropped our plate. We ran with greasy mouths and fingers. But by the time we reached the place where the three of them stood with open mouths, she had vanished.

  The next time I see her for myself.

  Up the river mangroves crowd the bank
s. There we like to dive into the muddy waters and pull oysters from the tangled roots. Below, the river spreads out, glistening green, weed streaming just below the surface like a witch’s hair. Here boulders are scattered across the sand, black pearls at a Tuareg woman’s throat. It is morning, raining. Drops of rain splash on to the water, as though on to a scalding pan. Steam rises from the bottomless below. Insects race along the surface of the water, escaping on pinpoint feet. It was once my favourite place. I used to come here and dig fish out of the mud, fish with no fins and bulging eyes.

  At first I don’t notice her, standing half hidden in the shadows on the sharp line where the trees meet the river, in front of the abandoned fishing hut. Her hair is scattered about her shoulders in tangled ropes. Her dress is tattered, torn at the neck so it hangs down like a flap of skin. One breast is naked, tilted up, pointing at the sky. She is watching me.

  I climb down from the rock, slowly. Afraid of startling her. She is so very still.

  ‘Mama,’ I cry. I start to run. She jerks slightly. Takes a step towards me, extending clasped hands, like she is begging me for something, imploring me. ‘Mama,’ I run faster, I catch my foot on a rock. She steps into the sunlight.

  That day some boys from the village on the opposite bank had crossed to set some traps on our side. Now they see her.

  ‘Hai! Hai!’ One of them bends to pick up a stone.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ But I’m too late. Like a hounded stray my mother cowers, starts to back off. She is gone before the stone hits the branch of a nearby tree. A shower of splintering bark and leaves. I race to the boy nearest me and push him in the chest. Hard with the heels of my hands.

  ‘She’s a crazy woman,’ he touches his temple and laughs loudly, ‘Craz-y. Let her go from here.’

  I run after her. I run behind the fisherman’s hut. She is nowhere. Inside the hut a tree grows through the middle, out through the roofless roof. The mud is crumbling away from the walls, leaving wooden poles exposed like ribs. Inside there is a place on the floor, like the warm spot underfoot where a chicken has roosted for a while.