by Jenny Robson
When I was a young boy, our tutor set us to read the chronicles of some explorers and travellers. Like that of the great Ibn Battuta. And too, I read the chronicle written by my great-uncle. So I have experience of the methods to be used.
The correct manner, the natural manner, of a chronicler would be to tell exactly what words it was that the prophet Tza spoke. To complete this part of the tale. Yet Mokomba leaves this question hanging in the air of our small room.
I wonder why. I would like to ask him. But I do not wish to disturb the flow of his story. Especially when he finds it so painful.
Now I must wait until tomorrow to hear what this man said.
Because even though I was there too when Tza spoke, lined up in that long procession, I paid no attention. I was too busy with my own dark concerns.
Mokomba is correct. That night of the King’s command, I went out to the forest edges to walk alone with my thoughts.
“Perhaps now it is time I take my leave of Zimba Remabwe? Now, before this wild escapade led by the arrogant Shumba, in whom I have little faith.” So ran my mind.
I have the heart and the blood of a traveller. To see new places, to experience different ways of life – that is my goal, as it was the goal of my grandfather and my great-uncle. But my grandfather and my great-uncle set off with respect and humility. Not with arrogance.
Arrogance is a dangerous quality to carry into the unknown.
Arrogance will not invite the blessings of almighty Allah, nor any other god worshipped by man.
No, I thought there among the dark forest trees, better to continue my travels in other places. For I was not bound so strictly by the King’s command, being a foreigner and with a king of my own back in Egypt. Well, not a king but a Mamluk sultan and his council.
Yet in the dark shadows of that forest, I made my peace. I could not abandon my friend ReDombo. No, if he must take this journey, then I must share it with him.
Aah yes, and the singing and dancing and drumming there outside the cave of Mmwahhari!
I stood some distance away, of course. I was not allowed to set my feet on the holy hill. But still the music reached out to wrap itself around me.
Sometimes I believe it is the music of Zimba Remabwe that held me there all those seven years. It made me a captive with its chains of golden sound. It imprisoned me in dungeon walls built of joy. And the rhythmic beat of the drums tethered me to the ground so I could not escape.
Yes, the music!
In my home country, music is a thin and dreary affair. It does not touch the soul. For certain, we have our great learning: our astronomy and our mathematics, our libraries bursting with knowledge. And, yes, all this is food for the mind.
But the music of Zimba Remabwe, that was food for the very spirit! How could I turn my back and walk away? As I could not turn my back and walk away from my friend ReDombo.
Allahu Akbar.
4. Westward towards Dom Bashabeng
Yes, so there in the outer valley we formed the procession for our departure.
At our head was Shumba with his band of Arab sailors and navigators. Then my father and Chivhu and you, Shafiq, along with the minor praise-singer and a junior priest and also a diviner. Tshangani and I followed next, with our karosses tied and under our arms.
Then behind us were the many slaves with their burdens: pots and provisions; gifts from the Nameless One for the chiefs of the Milk people; new oars and repaired sails and fresh planking for Shumba’s boat.
Tshangani said, “I didn’t sleep last night for excitement. Imagine what sights we will see, Mokomba! Strange sights and strange people. We will remember this time when we are old men without teeth. We will tell our many grandchildren sitting around the night-fire.”
His mother stood weeping on the hill slope beside my mother, who was also weeping. With my little sister beside her, clutching a woven basket. And who knew what strange creature might be lurking inside that basket? My little sister kept our whole compound laughing with her collections of moths and earthworms and frogs, all of them with names! Even now she was busy talking to the contents of her basket rather than saying farewell to us.
Yes, my mother and my little sister were there on the hill slope. But not my twin sister Raii. Again she was absent, not even here to wish me journey blessings!
Our neighbour Vasili the Sculptor was making his jokes. He was a very round man, much given to foolish laughter.
“Aha, ReDombo! And this cloud-high cathedral that you will build? I hope it will not tumble down on top of us when the wind blows!”
Vasili was jealous, I think. Because the King had not chosen him to accompany the expedition. But I saw the anger in my father’s eyes. Such jokes should not be made to members of the Stonemason clan. Not ever!
It is our clan lore from the earliest days, when our first walls reached only head height. Even back then the warning was repeated: if just one stone should fall onto the head of just one citizen, however common or lowly, then our clan would come to ruin. And the whole of Zimba Remabwe along with it!
It is knowledge that has driven us down the generations to strive with greatest care and seriousness to ensure that our walls are strong and unbreakable. Balanced in every row.
“Foolish man!” I muttered to Tshangani. “He understands nothing.”
And at this time the prophet Tza appeared. In his wild clothes and with the lion’s claws around his chest, with his wild hair and his leopard-skin staff, he climbed onto a granite outcrop above us.
“Spirits comfort us!” said the minor praise-singer. “Why must he come to spread his words of doom and disaster?”
But Tza may say whatever he wishes. He is untouchable. Even the King dared not punish him or silence him.
Tza is the full and direct descendant of Funii, our very first prophet. It was Funii who saved our people. Back, far back in the earliest times, when our forefathers dwelt in the lowlands and the swamps. Where fevers killed the children and raging flies killed the cattle.
And all was hopelessness.
But Funii gathered the people and said, “Follow me and I will lead you to the home of our true destiny. I have seen it in a vision. I know the shape of the hills and the valleys where we will prosper and become a proud people for many hundred winters.”
And so our people followed Funii, and Funii’s vision came to pass.
Forgive me: I can only tell this story of Funii roughly. When Tshangani told it, he used such images and such rhythms that pride and joy would rise in my chest. And I would believe with certainty that our citadel would grow and prosper forever.
This is why the prophet Tza is untouchable, even all these generations later. The blood of Funii still flows through his body.
“Woe unto you foolish ones!”
That’s what Tza said from his granite outcrop. “Woe to you and to your King. His arrogance will bring the downfall of this Kingdom. He desires a building that will touch the clouds. But all that is in the heavens belongs only to Holy Mmwahhari: the moon, the stars, the lightning and yes, the clouds also. It is not for mortal man to try and reach the clouds. So, woe! The punishment to come will be great and terrible. For pride is a great and terrible evil.”
A silence fell over the procession and over those who had come to bid us farewell. Even my mother’s weeping was stopped.
I suppose I had hoped that perhaps Shumba would say, “Enough then! We will not go against the wishes of Mmwahhari. Let us go back to our homes.”
But no.
Shumba raised his one-and-one-half arms above his head so that the early sun beamed off his golden arm-bangles. In a loud voice he said, “Forward. Forward into the unknown so that it will become the known. Forward at the behest of our beloved Nameless One. Forward with brave hearts and spirits filled with courage!”
And we began to walk. And walk.
On the first night we slept at the village of Chief Gonsi, youngest brother to our King.
“My friend, my dear
est friend,” said Chief Gonsi as he embraced my father with great love.
Such a sad man, this chief. Sadness filled his eyes and bent his head even when his maidens danced to celebrate our visit. Even when the fire coals spluttered beneath a fine fat goat slaughtered for our meal.
Later, my father explained as we lay side by side within a well-thatched hut. “It is because of that terrible matter of the towers, Mokomba. We were children together, Gonsi and I. We stood watching as the towers were built, row after row, higher and higher. Poor man, he has never recovered. And perhaps I have not recovered either.”
In the morning, we took to our walking once more. We walked through the days, mostly following the salt route and then the river until it narrowed to a stream and then ran dry.
Soon even Tshangani had no breath to spare for talking or reciting stories. Our karosses were burdens until Chivhu ordered a slave to carry them for us.
By night we slept beneath the stars whilst guardian-slaves roamed with burning torches to keep us safe from leopards and other creatures and spirits of the night.
Then, one hot morning with no clouds and no trees, Shumba announced, “Tonight we will reach the village of Dom Bashabeng. We will rest there a few days. It is a fine place, where we will be welcomed with wide arms. Its citizens are good friends of Zimba Remabwe. There is a strong pact between their chief and our King. They will feed and entertain us well.”
With such a promise, our pace quickened. Despite the burning sun and the dryness of the land. No longer did trees, nor green bushes or ground-flowers greet our passing. Just white thorns and dead grey sand.
At last Shumba called out, “There it is, just ahead.”
We squinted our eyes against the bright rays of the sunset. And yes, there was a long and low hill with its walls and its many dwellings.
But something was wrong. Something about this village of Dom Bashabeng seemed strange and disturbing.
*
I could not help myself. I had to ask.
“Why, Mokomba? Why do you leave the story of Dom Bashabeng half-told?”
Mokomba frowned in thought for a moment. Then he replied, “Because now I will know tomorrow exactly where I must begin. The beginning is always the hardest part for me each day, you understand?”
I nodded.
But I remembered my great-uncle’s chronicle that he wrote when he returned from the Lands of the Crusaders. It followed such good order, each chapter properly completed: Venice and Genoa, then the Germanic principalities of Cologne and Augsberg, then the wild valleys of Burgundy and Avignon, then lastly the wild sea crossing to the land of the Englishers.
Professors came from Cairo begging my great-uncle to place his manuscript in the grand new university library there.
But he refused. “No, there is only one place for my stories and that is in the wondrous libraries of Timbuktu.”
“It is so far away,” argued the professors.
But my great-uncle was adamant. And that was a pity.
He sent his manuscript well wrapped along with a caravan heading west across the Sahra: twenty camels, fifteen experienced and armed desert-traders. But somewhere along the pebbled regs they were ambushed by Tuareg tribesmen. Only one trader survived. And he lost the power to speak sensibly.
So my great-uncle’s chronicle lies drying somewhere beneath the desert sun. Perhaps already hidden beneath a mound of shifted sand. All that work in vain and to no purpose. It is a sad thing.
This afternoon, my friend Mustapha arrived in our small Sofala room with some sweet oranges newly landed at the port. I was glad to see that Mokomba ate a few segments. He worries me with how little he eats.
“Food sticks in my throat, Shafiq,” he explains. And his chest grows thinner.
We went up together to sit on the roof. A pleasant breeze was blowing off the sea. And Mustapha spoke to Mokomba with great kindness, discussing subjects that would not cause pain. He is a good man, Mustapha, even though he has Tuareg blood in his veins.
Already I can see that this chronicle will be a strange one. Very different from the chronicle of my great-uncle.
Mokomba shows no delight in new places, new sights. And there were many as we journeyed, even those first days.
We passed a magnificent hill made entirely of blackest granite. Smooth and impossible to climb. I stood awhile in awe, with the excitement of travel gripping me as before. Despite my concerns about Shumba and his arrogance.
We passed hills where giant boulders balanced at strange angles. As if the smallest wind would send them tumbling down onto our heads. Yet somehow those boulders held their positions.
We passed gold mines where wild men appeared suddenly from deep holes in the ground, their bodies covered with sand. And with the acceptance of death blanking their eyes. I wanted to speak with them, to understand how their lives were led. But Shumba urged us forward.
And I noted daily how the land grew drier and more desert-like. That fascinated me particularly. For it is so in my home country too: the further westward a man moves, the more the desert takes hold. I wondered if it is this way the world over or in Afrika only? In the western-most parts of Crusader territory, do they also have great thirst-lands?
Aah and yes, the mystery of the Clicking people. Fazeem, one of the Arab sailors, explained to us all. Out in the deepest desert there live strange tiny people in tiny family groups. They are born old, their skin wrinkled. Born too with deformed tongues so that their only language is made of strange clicking noises. Yet they know the secrets of all the animals and plants that survive in waterless spaces.
“Do you think we will encounter these people?” I asked with hope.
“Difficult to be sure,” said Fazeem. “They do not stay in one place long. And they are shy and easily frightened. They run from strangers.”
Yet Mokomba mentions none of these wonders. I suppose he does not have the blood of a traveller flowing through him. No, he comes from a clan of Stonemasons. And what is stonemasonry but an urge to build and to settle into one secure and safe and certain place? And then call that place home.
But home is not always a place of certainty. As we discovered there behind the walls of Dom Bashabeng.
Allahu Akbar.
5. To the village of the not-witches
Yes, and so we reached Dom Bashabeng’s outer wall, built there along the base of the hill.
It was only the height of a single man, their wall. Not the height of five men and more such as the walls my father built. And crude, with badly dressed stones that were too big and irregular. Their balance was poor, dangerous. Some blocks had already come loose and had tumbled to lie useless on the ground.
And the huts within the walls were placed close together. Such as the huts of the slave quarters back home. There was barely room for the many scratching chickens and foraging goats between them.
“But where are all the citizens?” exclaimed Tshangani. “This is a strange thing: empty huts and empty compounds with no people. Perhaps there is a great elephant hunt being held today?”
We have great elephant hunts back home, where we all rush into the forests with great noise and excitement and banging of metal objects. But our oldest citizens and our mothers with young babies are not expected to attend. Yet here in the village of Dom Bashabeng, even the old people and young mothers were missing. There was no single human left behind to explain.
“Or maybe they have gone off for the celebration of the first rains?” said Tshangani.
In Zimba Remabwe all of us were required to gather at the valley grave of King Zandenzi for our celebration. He was the very first king from far back when our own walls only reached the height of a single man. With the coming of the first rains each season, we must gather by his burial site, from the youngest to the oldest, in respect and thanksgiving. Even if the oldest must be carried by stretcher.
“But it doesn’t seem that any rain has fallen here,” I said. “There is not a single green shoot anywh
ere.”
And when Tshangani and I walked to the highest point of the hill to look north and south and west against the last rays of the sun, we saw no trace of moving people. No pathway marked by their footsteps through the sand.
Even Shumba was disturbed. He and the adult men huddled close together and spoke in low voices there on the hill’s summit.
“Perhaps it is the northerners from the northern forests?” So said the minor praise-singer. “They are bloodthirsty and murderous tribes. Perhaps they came some dark night to slaughter man, woman and child. Then by daylight buried the remains to hide their evil work?”
But that did not seem a good or likely explanation either.
Tribesmen came from the northern forests to Zimba Remabwe about five generations ago, so Tshangani’s stories tell.
But they came in peace and without weapons, pleading for our help. They came starving with their chest bones showing high through their skins. Saying, “The drought has been four winters long now. Our cattle are all dead. Our crops wither in the soil. Our children’s bellies swell with emptiness and our hearts fail with hopelessness.”
And they were offered succour by our forefathers. Succour and an area where they could construct huts and plant crops and also draw water from our wells. They stayed on for a generation and more, sharing in exchange their expert knowledge of iron-forging. A far better process than our forgers knew at that time.
And later the northerners moved on further south, seeking their own destiny. Though some who had married with our citizens stayed on. So says Tshangani’s tale.
But they were never bloodthirsty or murderous. The minor praise-singer spoke foolishness.
“Aah! Arab slavers!” said the junior priest then. “Who can tell? Perhaps Arab slavers have penetrated so far into our lands? Perhaps even now the unfortunate people of Dom Bashabeng are being marched off to Arab slave markets?”
It was a dreadful thought, that these citizens who were our distant cousins had been enslaved. Not all people treat their slaves well as we did in Zimba Remabwe. Our slaves were well-fed and seldom beaten and not worked past what they could endure.