Echo of an Angry God

by Beverley Harper

  For the first time since her capture, Ferig forced herself to look fully at the ruga-ruga. They were very black. The whites of their eyes were tinged with the yellow trademark of those who lived by the great water and fell ill with the mysterious water-sickness. Tribal scars disfigured their faces and bodies. They stank as bad as a rotting carcass. Their faces and bodies were streaked with paint and blood. Long, greasy ringlets of hair had battered and dirty feathers tied into them. Necklaces of human teeth hung around their necks and rattled and clacked together each time they moved.

  She remembered Pambuka’s words: ‘They will use you against your wishes,’ and her own reply: ‘No-one will touch me as you do.’ But how could she stop them? She glanced towards Makeba, wondering if she feared the same as herself.

  Makeba read her thoughts. ‘Get some rest, sister. It will be worse when the night is full on us.’

  But the ruga-ruga were not prepared to wait until dark. They moved among the captives and fell on them like starving hyenas at a freshly killed zebra. The young girls and boys were first. Their distraught mothers could only sit helpless, crying tears of frustrated rage as their precious and dearly loved children were defiled by these monsters from hell.

  Ferig knew her turn would be soon. She prayed for night to fall so she did not have to see those who took her. But the good spirits did not heed her prayers. Their hideous features grimacing in carnal pleasure above her, Ferig was raped three times before nightfall obliterated the sight of them and left her to deal only with the stench of their foul bodies, the invading outrage of their male parts, the animal grunting of them and the pitiful cries of the children in their pain and fear.

  In the cold light of dawn, the carnage was terrible. Several children were dead. Others would clearly be unable to walk. Mlozi, who had not taken part in the savagery, examined the fallen. Those too damaged to keep up were casually speared where they lay. As he withdrew his spear from a little boy who still twitched in his death tremors, he turned to the shattered mother, spread his hand, palm up, towards the child, shrugged and smiled. It was almost as though he were saying, ‘See . . . I have lightened your burden. Am I not a good friend?’

  Yesterday Ferig had used disbelief, anger and grief to keep up her strength. As she had stumbled along in her cruel yoke a tiny flame of hope had burned in her breast. Pambuka was not really dead, he would rescue her. The white stranger would save them all. Wankonde from other villages would fall upon the ruga-ruga and destroy them and set the captives free.

  Today, after the horrors of the night, she, like all the others, felt that hope die, to be replaced with dumb, aching despair. There was not one spark of anything positive left in the entire tragic caravan of captives. Ferig had even forgotten her promise to Pambuka.

  On the third day they reached Mlozi’s stockade at Mpata, a holding place where the slaves were kept until enough of them had been caught to make the trip across the lake in dhows. The sixty or so from Chief Mbeya’s village who survived that dreadful march had, up until then, been able to take some small comfort in being in the company of each other. At the stockade, in the same frightful condition as Ferig and her companions, other Nkonde people huddled together in village groups. But, Mlozi decided that with the arrival of the latest slave caravan, he had enough captives to fill several dhows and so the miserable Wankonde, numbering nearly 600 in total, were assembled and subjected to a grading process which separated Ferig from her friends. She did not know it but, with her youth and beauty, she had been picked, along with five others, for the sultan’s harem in Zanzibar.

  Others would work on Portuguese estates, toiling in the fields or homes of the landowners, some of whom were nearly as cruel and indifferent to their suffering as the ruga-ruga. Some were destined for such faraway places as Turkish harems, Brazilian plantations, Indian courts or the pavilions of Chinese emperors. Each group was kept separate. All the males, irrespective of their age or final destination, were castrated without the benefit of any pain-killing herbs. Eunuchs fetched more money. Many died from loss of blood that night.

  Ferig and the other five women considered comely enough to please the Sultan of Zanzibar were placed in a filthy cell which carried the stench of fear, death and human faeces. The walls of the stockade consisted of some 260 cells – formed by the construction of a parallel wall two metres from the outer wall. Most of these were for Mlozi’s fighting force. Occasionally slaves selected for special reasons would be placed in one. Ferig and her companions huddled together in abject misery. Screams and moans from the men and boys kept them awake. Because they were the cream of the crop, the ruga-ruga demanded access to them and Mlozi was too afraid to refuse. However, he warned that this would be the last night. ‘From tomorrow,’ he told his ghastly soldiers, ‘they are to be saved for the Sultan.’

  The ruga-ruga paid special attention to them that night. In the morning two were dead and not one of the remaining four could move without excruciating pain. At some stage during that terrible night, the seed planted in Ferig’s womb by Pambuka as she had lain in the security of his strong arms and whispered her love for him, died. For Ferig, the last link with everything she had ever known had gone. For the first time in her life, she was truly alone. In the morning, listening to the soft weeping of the other women, she knew they felt alone too. But they were all too sick with fear and pain to make any attempt to seek solace in each other.

  Around midmorning, the four women were removed from their cell and taken to a special building within the stockade where they were ordered to bathe. The feeling of water around her was like a soft protective cocoon and Ferig’s desperately cowed spirits lifted sufficiently for her to again think of her unfulfilled promise to Pambuka. As she washed away her own excreta, dried blood, dust and the horrible spent sullage of the ruga-ruga, she looked around for something, anything, she could use. The room contained nothing more than rough towels, too small and thick to make any kind of rope. She knew it was no use but, under the watchful gaze of the two Wahenga soldiers guarding her, she submerged herself completely in the bath. The Wahenga had seen it before. They allowed her thirty seconds before moving in and pulling her out of the water.

  Crying tears of frustration, Ferig barely felt the open-handed slaps of punishment. She was dried by angry hands and then bundled into another room where the other three stood, each one guarded by two men.

  Each of these women was of astounding beauty, their Egyptian ancestry giving them an aristocratic haughtiness which could not be hidden. Tunics of soft white material were lowered over their heads. None of them had worn anything but modesty aprons. They were women and they were beautiful and they were powerless to stop their lifted spirits as they cast admiring looks at each other and enjoyed the feeling of caressing silk against their skin.

  Healing ointment was rubbed onto the raw flesh on their necks, on the whip and thorn cuts and on the scratches made by the filthy fingernails of the ruga-ruga. A greasy red substance was applied to their lips and Ferig was astonished at how it changed the appearance of the others. She licked her lips. It had a pleasant enough taste. She was told not to lick it off.

  They were led into another room where Mlozi waited to inspect them, like a proud father, before providing a highly spiced meal of meats with maize meal. The food was so strange that Ferig wondered if she was being poisoned but she was too hungry to care.

  The women ate with their hands. Mlozi had lost several girls to sharp utensils in the past and these four had not yet lost their will. The bath, the clothes and the food had revived them to a point where, he could see, they would try anything to escape their fate, even death. That was good. The Sultan liked spirited women. But they still had some lessons to learn.

  After the meal, Mlozi clicked his fingers and the Wahenga bodyguards moved in, ripped the tunics off the women and half-pushed, half-dragged them back to their cell where, as a gruesome reminder, the bodies of their two dead companions still lay, rigid and real.

  That nigh
t, well after the visiting time of the ruga-ruga had passed with no incident, one of the women called timidly, ‘I am Chikanga.’

  ‘I am Ferig.’

  One by one they introduced themselves.

  One by one they voiced their fears.

  One by one they told of life in their villages, of their experiences on the way to Mlozi’s stockade, of husbands and children, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and relatives murdered or captured.

  One by one they slipped into fearful sleep, expecting the ruga-ruga at any time, each woman’s dreams filled with wild-man images and eyes which belonged in the land of evil spirits.

  They were woken at daybreak and herded into the open area of the stockade. Ferig was prevented from joining her friends but she could see the dreadful condition some of them were in. Those men and boys who had survived their savage and crude surgery were in a weakened and cowed state. Pambuka’s sister had a kurbash lash on her shoulder which had gone septic. She called softly to Ferig and told how her skin was red-hot and the flesh had swollen up to resemble a melon. She was sweating and complaining of feeling cold. ‘I do not wish to leave you, sister, but I am growing weaker.’

  ‘Leave me and go with your husband’s spirit, Makeba,’ Ferig called back. ‘I will join you all as soon as I can.’

  Screams from other parts of the enclosure warned her of a new terror. It soon became clear what it was. Each of the slaves had to be branded with the mark by which they had been graded. Women trembled and wailed in fear as the stench of burnt flesh filled the stockade. As the wailing spread through the groups it took on a rhythm of its own. The slaves took comfort in familiar words and harmony. They sang of their homeland, plundered and burning, of mountains and skies they would never see again, of loved ones gone to the spirit world. The shame of central Africa pulsated from hundreds of fear-stricken throats and rose in abject misery to speak of despair and suffering and cruelty. But their spirits had been broken and they could not bring themselves to sing for long and soon the stockade was filled with heartbroken sobs.

  Ferig was branded on the breast. Other women endured the searing pain on the shoulder or buttock. While they were still moaning with pain from this new horror, Mlozi examined each woman methodically. He scrutinised their faces and, with the help of the ruga-ruga, forced each woman to stand erect so he could examine their posture. Next, he wrenched open their mouths in order to examine their teeth. Their arms and legs were pulled and pushed and, finally, they had to lie on the ground with their legs apart while he examined their genitals for any sign of venereal disease. Those found wanting in any way were quickly eliminated by the ruga-ruga.

  Now that they had been branded Mlozi allowed them to mingle with each other. They were placed in neck-irons and linked in chains of forty. All of them – men, women and children – carried enormous elephant tusks on their heads. Although slaves fetched Mlozi as much as five English pounds each, the trade in ivory was nearly as lucrative. Not one to waste an opportunity, Mlozi saw this final march to the lake as an ideal occasion to use free transport for the tusks, some of which weighed as much as one hundred pounds. Already weakened by hunger, fear, unspeakable acts of cruelty by the ruga-ruga and deeply in mourning for the loss of loved ones, and with the ruga-ruga again beating time on their tom-toms, the slaves made the half-day journey to the lake. There, they were herded into stockades like cattle and left, still fettered, to await loading into dhows for a three-day journey down the lake to Losefa, where they would be joined by other slaves coming up from Makanjira and Mponda. After that, an 800-kilometre march to the coastal port of Kilwa.

  In the morning, with the weather looking favourable, Mlozi was anxious to load the dhows. First, the slaves were used to load the heavy ivory. There were so many tusks they filled one entire dhow.

  Mlozi watched the loading process carefully and made a mark in his ledger for each tusk as it was carried through the shallow water and passed to a crew member on board. He consulted constantly with the Arab captain who stood with him on the beach. Once the ivory was loaded the captain gave him a receipt on which he had written the number of tusks, their estimated collective weight, the date, Mlozi’s name as the owner and his own name as the carrier. He would have the slaves carry the tusks to the coast, sell them to traders and bring the payment, less his commission, to Mlozi. The two men regularly did business together and had developed an unlikely but necessary trust in each other.

  The slaves were loaded next, packed in like sardines. Those first on board had to lie on the deck, alternately head to foot. They were jammed so tightly together they could not move their arms or legs. Then, amazingly, their captors managed to squeeze a child between each adult. Once the deck had been carpeted with human bodies, a bamboo platform was placed over them, leaving less than two centimetres of headroom, and this new level was loaded with more slaves. The tiers rose high off the main deck until the captain considered the dhow could take no more. Mlozi watched this process as carefully as he had watched the ivory being loaded. Four dhows were filled with slaves. He and the captain compared tallies. ‘There is no room for food or water,’ the captain warned. ‘There will be deaths.’

  Mlozi shrugged. There were always deaths. They were of no consequence. There were plenty more slaves where they came from.

  Ferig lay under three tiers of others. She could barely breathe but she wondered how those below her must feel. A man above her defecated. ‘I am sorry, sister,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Do not apologise,’ she replied as softly. ‘There is no need.’

  Someone above her panicked and thrashed about. ‘I can’t move, I can’t move,’ the woman cried. The Arab crew simply moved in and nailed one of her feet into the platform. Her shrieks, and subsequent sobs drowned out the swishing of the water as the dhow found wind and sped south-east towards the centre of the lake.

  All five dhows made good time during the first day and night. The captain of the fleet, who preferred to sail with the dhow carrying the ivory, blessed his good fortune. Once the slaves were loaded they were stuck until offloading at Losefa. Despite sailing up to fifty metres apart, the stench of excrement, death and illness always accompanied the dhows. A good wind carried the smell away but on one previous occasion he had been becalmed for two days. On the third day, with no sign of wind, he had been unable to stand the smell any longer and had set the slave-carrying dhows alight. The odour of burning flesh was infinitely preferable.

  Late in the afternoon of the second day, after another day of excellent weather, he noticed a fringe of light coloured cloud just below a mass of storm clouds off to the north. The sight of it filled him with unease. The mountains far to the west and east formed natural funnels and he knew that winds could whip up to storm ferocity in very little time. Top-heavy as the dhows were, the sight of thunderclouds could mean trouble.

  There was nothing much he could do. When thunderstorms collapsed in the cooler air above the lake, it happened so quickly that evasive action was a waste of time.

  The rolling motion of the dhows, as the wind picked up, added to the misery of the slaves. Many were seasick and, being unable to move, some even drowned in their own vomit.

  Ferig prayed to the good spirits to take her away with them. ‘I want to die,’ she told them. ‘I want to be with my Pambuka.’ The dhow lurched heavily to one side. The wind was whipping up the waves and water was sloshing over those on the lower tiers. Terrified screams, choking and coughing came from below her. ‘Please take me away,’ she prayed.

  The thunderstorm broke directly overhead just after nightfall. In a flash of lightning the Arab captain saw one of the dhows capsize. He spared a moment’s irritation as he mentally calculated the worth of the slaves who went rapidly to a watery grave. But then he forgot about his financial loss. With incredible speed, and faster than the crew could lower the sails, the full force of the wind pushed the waves to three-metre rollers. Ferig’s dhow, with only two sails down, went broadside to the on
coming wall of water. The heavily overloaded vessel stood no chance at all.

  Ferig’s prayers were answered. She felt no fear, just an overwhelming sense of peace. As the cool waters of the lake closed over her head she was smiling.

  THREE

  LONDON – FEBRUARY 1983

  John Devereaux resisted the urge to look at his watch. He was irritated beyond belief. Bloody London cabbies! If the man had taken my advice and gone down Gloucester Place we’d never be stuck in this snarl. Traffic is hell in London at this hour but it’s worse in Oxford Circus than most places. Surely he knew that. He looked moodily through the window. It’s pissing down with freezing rain and we’re seven blocks from York Gate. The urge to check the time was almost overwhelming. John steeled himself not to. Damn the man! I’m going to be late.

  Through the steamy window he stared out at a sea of black taxis. All around him were square black shapes with meters running. John Devereaux tried to mentally calculate the worth of the collective hire charges but his normally analytical mind was diverted by one bright red car with a young man behind the wheel, the sole occupant. The traffic jam did not worry him. He was singing lustily to something on his radio, oblivious of the stares from bored commuters and the scowls from down-to-earth taxi drivers.

  ‘Bloody’ell,’ his driver muttered, more to himself than his passenger. ‘I’m off duty in ten minutes.’

  ‘Hard luck,’ John thought callously, blaming the man. But he said, ‘It should clear once we’re into Regent Street.’ No point in getting the driver’s back up and reminding him this was his own fault. He looked back to the young man in the red car. Whatever he was singing, it was giving him a great deal of enjoyment. His left hand was curled around an imaginary microphone while his right tapped out the rhythm on the steering wheel.

  The traffic moved half a car length. An oncoming taxi and his own driver vied for the same space, neither man prepared to give in until the last moment. By the time they stopped, the two vehicles were a cat’s whisker apart. The drivers turned their heads slowly to stare at each other. Both men had the same craggy Cockney face, full of character and hard-bitten humour, with tough and uncompromising eyes, unless you knew where to look. John had seen those eyes dissolve into compassion, laughter, love and kindness on more than one occasion. Not this time though. Two sets of brown orbs were fairly crackling with indignation. His driver had dark blond hair, the other’s hair was black but the styles were identical. Unkempt, badly cut and over-long, with strands straying inside the collars of imitation leather jackets. Two peas in a pod. The drivers didn’t think so.