by Jenny Robson
*
I was glad for those Arab sailors and navigators. No matter what stage of our journey, no matter how the boat wove and zigzagged across the waves, they knew always the direction of Mecca.
Together we performed our prayers, even if the space was small. And Shumba, despite his arrogance, kept silent for the time and stopped his shouting at the slaves. His respect surprised me and made me glad. I thought then: who can ever fully know the heart of another man? It is like an unexplored land.
As Mokomba has told, we travelled north along the coast of the land of the Yoruba. Where we took on-board fresh food and water. A few live chickens even. Until there was barely space to move.
And later, much later, there appeared a giant barren cliff to our right side. They towered above us, higher by far than ReDombo’s granite walls, to drop sheer down to a wild swirling of sea and spear-sharp rocks. So that we kept our distance.
“The westernmost cliffs of the Sahra,” said one of the sailors. “Yes, I believe they are.”
I gazed upward. The Sahra! That has always been a dream of mine. Even now. To travel the vast regs and ergs and wadis and oases of that great desert. To face its many dangers, natural and human.
And I will yet live out my dream. Aah, that I believe.
When Mokomba’s chronicle is done, I shall carry it back with me in Mustapha’s dhow along the sunrise sea. And after a short visit home to my mother, I shall set off with a camel train across that great sea of sand and pebble. Even if the dangers are many and the risk of death is high. Yes, I shall not allow this manuscript to leave my possession. I shall not trust it to the hands of another.
Aah yes, and I shall carry it all the way to Timbuktu, where chronicles are valued and delighted in. Where the great knowledge of all of our world is stored and added to constantly.
Perhaps with Mokomba by my side.
I am eager to hear the true story of Shumba’s missing arm.
But still, this evening I said, “Mokomba, we have worked hard these many days. Tomorrow we will rest. We will visit Mustapha. And we will walk through the streets of Sofala. Then maybe down to the shore to see the dhows anchored there. What do you think?”
Mokomba sat on his sleeping mat and looked at me with dark eyes. Dark, serious eyes that are so like the eyes of his late father, my dear late friend ReDombo. He did not answer.
Mostly he is silent when he is not dictating his chronicle.
But at least he is eating again. Mustapha found a woman in the streets selling sorghum, cooking it as it is cooked in the hinterland. As it was cooked in Zimba Remabwe.
So Mokomba had a taste of home. I was glad. We will seek out the woman again tomorrow.
And tomorrow too, I will offer him a future. Yes, as we stand there on the shore watching the dhows sway on the gentle tide.
It is always a help to look forward, when looking back is so painful.
But I am not certain if he will accept the future I can offer. It is so: all the learning in all the books in the world, yet still who can ever learn the secrets of another person’s heart?
Alhamdulillah.
7. To the shores of the land of
the Milk people
So let me tell now of Shumba’s missing arm.
These were some of the rumours and gossips believed back home in Zimba Remabwe. For one: in a deep northern jungle, a venomous snake bit Shumba’s left hand. It was a snake whose poison killed in the space of eight heartbeats. But Shumba grabbed at the knife of his closest guard-slave and severed off his own arm, right through flesh and bone. And without a sound escaping his lips.
“Such courage!” said the boys of our peer group, all uninitiated like Tshangani and me. Their eyes were alight with wishing that they too had a chance to display such bravery.
There was, too, the rumour of the dwarves. Yes, also in some deep northern forest, Shumba was captured by the dwarves who dwelt there: men no higher than the stomach of a citizen of Zimba Remabwe. These dwarves had teeth long and sharp as a leopard. And they fed on the cooked bodies of taller persons, hoping to gain height by this diet.
And these dwarves had Shumba tied to a tree with unbreakable forest vines. He watched while they built a cooking fire, while they boiled water in an iron pot, while they argued over which of his body parts each would consume. Shumba stood tall and unshaken and unafraid through it all. So that the dwarves marvelled at his strong heart.
They decided to cut off only his left arm and devour that and allow the rest of Shumba to go free. As a reward for his immense courage.
“How heroic!” murmured the young noble maidens, who all held secret hopes that Shumba would ask for them in marriage once his days of adventure were done. “Yes, it would be better to be embraced by Shumba’s one and a half arms than by the two arms of any other man.”
Not my sister Raii, of course. No. She said Shumba was an overgrown boy, and ridiculous. And she would just as soon marry one of the cannibal dwarves! My father ordered her to hold her tongue.
Yes, and Martijen laughed.
“Hah! There was no snake! There were no flesh-eating dwarves with long teeth,” he told us there at the back of the boat. With Shumba safely away in the front bow.
“So what was it then?” demanded Tshangani.
I was glad to be listening, waiting to discover the truth. For a while I forgot about the wild waves curling up the boat as if to topple us over and fling us all into salty graves.
“It was an insect bite,” said Martijen. “Yes, it made his arm swell and fill with pus. The Arab sailor Naheen said the pus would surely fill up his whole body and kill him. So we held him down while he screamed. We poured the strongest Yoruba beer down his throat until his eyes rolled in drunkenness. And then Naheen chopped off the arm. With a well-sharpened axe and a single stroke. And applied the strongest Yoruba healing herbs. While Shumba screamed and cursed and cried for his mother.”
I asked about the missing slaves.
“That was later. On our return voyage,” explained Martijen. “We ran into a wild storm and Shumba insisted the boat was too heavy. He was in an angry state because of his pain. So the extra slaves were tossed overboard. But not me, I am glad to say.”
My friend Tshangani shook his head. He did not look happy. He said this story of the insect bite was not a satisfactory tale. It would not uplift the listeners. No, he would rather keep the story of the flesh-eating dwarves.
“Even though it is not a true story?” I asked. I was amazed by this.
“Truth is not the only important aspect of a story,” said my friend. “There are other things to consider when you are a storykeeper. Like the needs and wishes of the audience. Like the emotions you are touching in your listener’s heart. It is what my father has always taught me. That is part of the lore of the Storykeeper clan.”
So then I wondered if other stories he had told me were false. But I never asked.
And how can I give an understanding of how long this sea voyage was? Day after night after day after night after round moon after vanished moon. Yet the days repeated themselves in sameness. Either the wind blew or it did not. Either the water churned or was calm. I woke each new morning feeling as if I had woken to that same morning as the day before – and the day before that.
Except for the day of the terrible storm. That was a fearful time. The boat rocked from one side to the other so that we were sliding on the wet planks. Unable to hold on fast to anything. The waves lifted themselves high above the boat’s side, forming violent walls of foam and water. And then these walls tumbled over onto our heads.
Even Shumba was screaming, his voice like that of a frightened woman.
“You – you there!” he screamed at one unfortunate slave. “Climb up the sail mast and seek some safe shelter for us. Look for a beaching where there are no rocks.”
The slave did as he was ordered, even with the terror stretching his eyes wide and his mouth tight. But that is the way of slaves. They are ordered and th
ey obey. It is not their place or right to question or refuse.
The slave was only halfway up the mast when the boat swayed and he was hurled out into the wild waves. Too far to be rescued. But not far enough that his last moments were beyond our gaze.
I watched. Even though I longed to close my eyes. I watched as he was pulled under but then reappeared. And as I watched our eyes met.
It seemed I could hear the words he spoke: “I will never go home again. I will not see my family again in this life.”
And then he was pulled down a second time, by what terror I do not know. But I could not tear my eyes away from that space in the foam. And I knew I was crying, but I had no strength to wipe the tears off my cheeks.
“Take heart, Mokomba,” said Tshangani beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me, not shamed by my weakness. “It is only a slave. And you know well that their emotions are not as keen as ours.”
And then, within moments, the sea had calmed.
“It is well,” the diviner pronounced. “The spirits of the sea have been satisfied. It must be that these spirits hunger for human sacrifice.”
And then, from our right some days later, the land disappeared!
We woke up one morning and it was gone from our sight. To every side of us now there were only hills and valleys of water. Stretching to the very edges of the sky.
Even my father ReDombo was disturbed. “And now, Shumba? Now how will we find our way? Even the sun has moved and arcs curiously in the sky.”
And Chivhu said, “We are moving in circles, Shumba. Tell your sailors. For sure we will stay lost on this ocean until old age takes us. And our bones will lie white and unburied beneath these sails.”
But Shumba silenced them. He stood tall at the ship’s bow with his missing arm and his gold arm-bangles. He seemed brave and confident and without fear. As if the story of the dwarves might yet be true.
He said, “We have the stars as our guides. There is no reason to be afraid.”
And at night, he and his Arab navigators looked up into the heavens. Pointing and discussing and consulting until I fell asleep.
Shumba was right. It took some few round moons. By then our fresh water was almost at an end. But early one morning we woke to a cry.
“Land! Yes, praise be to Allah! There is land ahead!”
And at last the boat glided onto solid ground.
The beach was a strange one, built not from sand but from small round pebbles that scraped at the hull. And such thick mist hung around us. Thicker than the smoke of an iron-forger’s anthill. So thick we could not know if the local inhabitants watched our landing. And what if they did? Milk people with their white bodies, staring at us with their strange blue-coloured eyes – what if they planned to appear without warning and harm us?
And such coldness! Colder than the deepest winter daybreak back in Zimba Remabwe! Tshangani and I wrapped the King’s karosses around us. And thus we stepped out of the boat and onto the pebbled shore.
And staggered!
Staggered like Vasili the Sculptor back home when he has drunk too much of his secret beer. We fell to our knees on the ground while Martijen laughed.
“I warned you,” he said. “But take heart. It will pass.”
There was a high and broad hill just ahead of us. With the slaves bearing our goods and provisions, we struggled upward. The leaves on the trees were a strange dull green. I heard birdcalls I had never heard before. The cold was like eagle talons tearing into my cheeks.
And still I wondered if the Milk people hid and watched us.
“Is this truly the land of the Milk people?” demanded Chivhu. “It does not seem possible. What clan would be content to live in such a place? What tribe could possibly survive?”
Halfway up the hill we left the slaves to set up camp. To start a fire. To build shelters for the night. A small stream ran close by. So we drank the sweet chill water.
Then we climbed to the hill’s summit.
From there we gazed down onto an endless inland valley. With fields and fields of thick crops in straight rows. And between them, areas of short grass where cattle grazed. Such fat cattle as I had never seen before! I wondered how their legs were strong enough to hold them upright. Beyond the cattle lay a narrow forest, from which a pathway appeared. The pathway led further onward to a large village in the distance. With huts that were shaped strangely, set close together, arranged in rows as straight as the crop fields.
The mist had cleared, but the whole valley was lit by a ghostly grey light. As if the sun never penetrated through the thick clouds overhead.
You called out then, Shafiq. You said, “There! Can you see it behind the homes? That is a cathedral, I think. Surely it must be? Truly Allah has blessed us. I thought we would journey many days through this land to find one!”
The diviner said, “No, but Shafiq, it is our ancestors who have travelled with us to make our way easy.”
My father stared into the distance, shaking his head in wonder. “Truly, Shafiq, it reaches up to the very clouds. How did their stonemasons achieve this? Twenty, perhaps twenty-three men high! Yet it has not toppled down onto the heads of the Milk people. Is that by skill or by magic? Some powerful magic?”
My father ReDombo wanted to set off at once to investigate. But Shumba stayed him.
“Tomorrow is time enough. Let us rest and eat well. We will sleep tonight with the guard-slaves watching over us.”
Tshangani and I lay in our shelter, wrapped up in our karosses. Yet still I felt as if the cold had penetrated to my very bones and I would never be properly warm again.
This did not seem to trouble Tshangani.
“Imagine, Mokomba! Tomorrow we will see these people of the Milk tribes. Face to face! How will I be able to sleep tonight?”
*
Yesterday then, we did not work on this chronicle. Instead I took Mokomba out to walk the streets of Sofala. We found the woman vendor. She was selling millet and pounded meat, also a traditional meal of Zimba Remabwe that his mother often cooked. I watched gladly while Mokomba ate his fill.
Then we stood at the shoreline on the soft white sands. Around us the many dhows bobbed on small waves.
I said, “Mokomba, when I first came to Zimba Remabwe it was your father who took me in like a full brother. And now that ReDombo is late, you are a son to me.”
I told him that when the monsoon winds blew, we could sail in Mustapha’s dhow all up the east coast of Afrika to my homeland in Egypt. My mother would welcome him there and treat him as one of her grandsons.
I said, “And you will not feel lonely or out of place. There are other Jenz who live close to our village with bodies the same shade as yours. Just a few, but enough. So will you accompany me?”
He did not answer. Instead he turned his face away from the sea and stood staring towards the hinterland.
Yes, and so Shumba brought us finally to the land of the Crusaders. I remember as I stepped out of the boat, how my heart was split in two.
The right side of my heart was filled with excitement. I was here at last! Here in this strange place, where my great-uncle had enjoyed such adventure and exploration! I too might see the wonders of which he told me: busy markets selling goods from all the world, great castles set on mountaintops, cathedrals touching the clouds, the white rain that was called snow.
But the left side of my heart was choked with terror. Yes, from all the horror-filled tales my great-uncle had also told me.
I could still hear his voice echoing, “Such cruel and heartless people, young Shafiq! It is beyond belief. Even to their own kind! Even in these times, they remain a barely civilised population.”
And how would these people treat us? Foreigners fetching up uninvited on their shores?
It strikes me now suddenly, as I write these words in our small Sofala room: it is my great-uncle’s tales of horror that have stayed freshest in my mind. Far fresher than the tales of wonder. Why is that?
It is true what I say: the human heart and the human mind are stranger than any foreign territory or alien tribe!
Perhaps one day when I am too old for travel I will sit home and begin to explore this strange inner world of thought and of emotion. What a journey that would be – if it is even possible. Is it possible?
Yes, and with my grandfather’s tales of the east, of China and India, it is the same.
He told me many wonders: how the Chinese force caterpillars to spin strands of silk stronger than iron; how the Chinese mix together powders that explode with great power and brightest light and sound as loud as thunder; how these people of the east offer pieces of paper when buying and selling instead of coins; how the emperor grows his fingernails longer than a beard so that they curl and loop.
“But why, Grandfather? Why does he grow his nails so long?” I remember asking in fascination.
“They say it is to show he need do no work with his hands. All is done for him because he is the emperor.”
And yet – aah, yet – it is my grandfather’s tales of gore that light up my memory most. The tales he told whilst my mother was away at market or visiting the wise woman. And I confess: these were the tales I listened to most keenly.
“The emperor of China puts his enemies in vats of oil, young Shafiq. Yes, I witnessed this. And a fire is stoked beneath so that slowly the oil heats and begins to boil. While the unfortunate is fried alive, screaming all the while. And in India there is the matter of Sutti that I witnessed also.”
I listened, barely breathing, as my grandfather explained this Sutti ritual: how an Indian prince had died and his body was laid out on the funeral pyre ready for burning.
“They burn the bodies of the deceased, my boy. That is their custom and tradition.”
But then out from the palace were brought the five wives of this Indian prince, each one younger and prettier than the last. And they were placed on chairs, there atop the funeral pyre, and tied down so they could not escape. And then the pyre was set alight.