Ama (41 page)

He knew the route well, having travelled it as a slave trader several times in his youth. He made his preparations and bided his time. While his fellow slaves and their guards slept, he worked quietly and patiently each night on his rusty shackles.

The camp from which he planned to escape lay in a clearing in the high forest, only a day's journey from the coast. He knew that if he should fail, he would not have another chance.

Waking, he raised himself on one elbow and looked around. The camp was quiet. He sat up cautiously. The moon had not yet risen and the fires had sunk low but there was enough light to make out the shadowy shapes of the guards. They all seemed to be asleep. He levered the shackles open and removed them from his feet, freeing him from the chain which bound him to his neighbour. An owl hooted and he froze. Then he prized the shackle from his left hand, leaving it hanging from his right. He worked out the course he would take. He would risk passing close to one guard whose cutlass lay beside him as he slept. The only other thing he would take would be a water bag. How he would survive in the forest he had no idea. All his thoughts were concentrated on one objective: to get away. He calculated that because they were so close to the coast his captors would not waste time attempting to pursue him.

Ibrahima closed his eyes and prayed. Then he rose slowly to his feet, gripping the shackle which was still attached to his right hand. He stood for a moment, his heart pumping, before taking the first step. Then, after what seemed an age he was on the path which led from the clearing to the latrines, cutlass in one hand and leather bag in the other. His feet were bare. He wore the same Mandinga coat and breeches of bleached Fula cloth in which he had been captured, though his suit was no longer the spotless white it had once been.

The path soon ran out. It was so dark in the forest that he had to swing the cutlass out in front of him, like a blind man's stick, to avoid walking into the trees. He had no idea where he was going, no landmarks to guide him. The forest smelt of rotting leaves, dank and sweet. He closed his ears to its strange night noises, concentrating on making his way between the trees. The canopy above him was so dense that even when the moon rose no light penetrated. He tried to keep going in the same direction, but he had no illusions: if he had misread Allah's will, he might end up back in the camp, having described a circle in the dark.

But it appeared that Allah was with him, for when dawn broke Ibrahima was free.

He drank deeply from a stream. Then he lay down and slept. When he awoke it was already afternoon. Every muscle in his body ached and he was famished. Yet before he did anything else, he washed his face and hands and, guessing which direction was east, said his formal prayers, adding thanks for his deliverance.

For the next few days he wandered in the forest, surviving off half-eaten fruit dropped by monkeys. Early one morning he lay on the bank of a stream and, exercising great patience, caught a fish in his left hand. He cleaned it with the cutlass and ate it raw. He disliked the taste, but lacking fire, he had no choice. The rusty shackle still hung from his right hand.

As he was washing after this meal, he was startled by the report of a distant gun-shot. Overcoming his immediate instinct, to flee, he waited apprehensively; but all was silence. He decided to investigate.

Some time later he came across the hunter, stretched out on his back under a tree, snoring. By his side lay a musket, a leather bag and the carcass of a small buck. Ibrahima gave thanks that there were no dogs. He took the gun first: if the hunter awoke, the man would be at his mercy. He was about to take the buck when it occurred to him that he would not be able to cook the meat. The hunter's pipe lay on his chest: somewhere he must have a firestone. Ibrahima decided to steal the man's bag, returning later for the carcass. All this time the hunter slept.
He must have been out hunting all night
, Ibrahima reflected. It was not until he was well out of earshot that he allowed himself the luxury of considering the fellow's reaction when he awoke from his sleep. Then, for the first time in many days he laughed out loud. The poor snorer would surely attribute the theft to malign and mischievous forest spirits.

The buck was heavy on his shoulders. He let it fall and sat down to rest. In the hunter's bag he found some stale corn-bread which he ate at once. But more important, there was a firestone in a little leather wallet, a sharp knife, some lead shot and a metal box half full of gunpowder.

He walked on until mid afternoon, setting a safe distance between him and the hunter and taking care to conceal his tracks. Then he put down his load, collected firewood and made a fire. He gutted and skinned the carcass, and hung the skin up to dry before setting a leg to roast on a rude spit.

There was a fallen tree nearby. The hole in the canopy had let in the sunlight and dense undergrowth had soon filled the clearing. Here Ibrahima collected branches and green leaves and built a crude smoking oven. He waited until dark to reduce the risk that someone would see the smoke rising above the canopy.

With food assured for at least a week he set about constructing a shelter. The fallen tree lay in the middle of the thicket. It was suspended in space, supported at one end by a profusion of tangled roots, torn from the ground, and at the other by its own splintered branches. He tested it by making a precarious ascent on the inclined trunk. Then he cut and trimmed a number of straight saplings. The lower end of each he placed in a trench; the upper end rested at an angle against the trunk. He wove more slender saplings in and out of the first to hold them together. Then he used his bare hands to squeeze mud into the interstices of this network. He smoothed the wall, inside and out, with the broad blade of his cutlass to. Finally he pressed broad leaves into the soft surface to protect it from the rain.

A week later he added a front wall of sun-dried bricks and a rough door of woven saplings. Now he had a snug one-roomed dwelling which was invisible from the perimeter of the clearing. It would keep him dry and protect him from predators.

During the months which followed, Ibrahima consolidated his tenure of his stretch of the forest. He devised and set traps for fish and animals and fashioned simple tools and furniture. He made cooking pots of clay and improvised a kiln to fire them in.

He no longer solicited Allah's help in his prayers, but rather gave thanks for his delivery from bondage into a garden of Eden. He seldom thought of home. His wives had been little more than servants and his relationship with his children had not been close. He had lived in a world of men, ruled only by Allah and by the Fula whom Allah had sent to bring His message to the pagan infidels.

Of necessity he soon abandoned any attempt to follow a
halal
diet; he even developed a taste for bush pig. And though he continued to share his thoughts with God, he no longer found it essential to pray in the formal manner five times a day.

What he missed most was the millet porridge which was the food of his childhood. He longed to cultivate a garden but he had no seed. Apart from meat and fish, and the fruit the monkeys dropped from the canopy, the only other food he found in the forest was wild yam and palm nut.

With his base assured, he took to wandering further and further each day. He was careful not to make paths which might lead another hunter to his hide-out but he learned to recognise landmarks to guide him back from his explorations. One day, by chance, he came upon the site of the camp from which he had escaped the slave caravan. He determined to lie in wait for a party of traders and to steal from them, while they slept, a basket of corn or perhaps some useful tool. He always carried his gun with him but he had tested it only once, and that, prudently, far away from what was now his home.

He took to camping out at night in the vicinity of the caravan halt. He would go there in the late afternoon and return to his home the next morning. He had long since put his white suit away and now wore a ragged garment which he had fashioned out of animal skins. In the gloom of the forest he was practically invisible.

For several days there was no sign of human life on the road. Then one day at dusk, just as he was beginning to believe that the route had been abandoned, Ibrahima heard drums. As they came closer he heard the familiar clank of the male slaves' chains. Unobserved, he watched the procession pass into the camp site. For the first time since his escape he saw women. Suddenly he became aware of the loneliness of his life and yearned for company and affection.

By chance, a young woman with a child strapped to her back soon left the clearing and passed along the path which led to an area which the travellers used as a latrine. She was alone. He could not be sure that she was a slave; she might be the wife of one of the guards. There was no way that he could know whether they shared a common language, for the light was too poor for him make out any identifying facial incisions. He had primed and loaded his gun in case of trouble. Now he was determined to take the opportunity which presented itself. The woman raised her cloth and began to shit.

“My sister, do not be afraid,” Ibrahima said quietly in Susu, “I mean you no harm.”

The woman started at the voice and looked around but Ibrahima was well hidden and since it was already quite dark she saw nothing.

“Do you hear me? Nod your head if you do.”

She looked around again and then nodded her head.

“I was once a slave, but I escaped. Are you a slave? Nod your head if it is so.”

She nodded her head again.

“I have built a house in the forest. I am a free man now but I live all by myself. I have food and shelter but I am lonely. If you will come with me, you will live as my wife. If you refuse, tomorrow you will reach the coast and there you will be sold to a white man and sent away over the great water, never to return. Will you come?”

She had finished shitting and was wiping herself with leaves. Her baby woke and began to whimper. At any time a guard might come down the path.

“Let me see your face, first,” she said quietly.

Her eyes opened wide as Ibrahima stepped forward. Clad in his animal skins, with his ragged beard and long hair, his gun at the ready, he was indeed a strange sight.

“Decide,” he said.

“I will come,” she replied.

“I promise that you will not regret your decision. Now return to the camp. Wait until all the guards are sleeping. Then come back along this path. I shall be waiting for you.”

* * *

The woman was a Baga but she spoke fluent Susu. Her child was a boy, whose father had named him Tomba after his own grandfather, a revered Baga chief who had fought the slave trade until he himself had been captured and sold across the sea.

As Tomba learned to speak, Ibrahima taught him to call him ‘Papa.' When he was four, Tomba's mother died in childbirth. Ibrahima was stricken with grief and blamed himself, but there was nothing to do but to dig a grave and bury the woman. Tomba cried for days, but Ibrahima soon became both mother and father to him.

So they lived together, Ibrahima and Tomba. Ibrahima taught his son all he had learned of forest lore. As Tomba grew up he quickly surpassed his step-father. He could imitate the sound of every animal and bird. He was an expert trapper and fisherman. There was no stretch of his territory which he had not explored.

One thing, strangely, Ibrahima did not teach Tomba, and that was the knowledge of Allah. He himself continued to pray from time to time, but living outside the community of men, a hermit, he found that he had no need for religious sanctions on his behaviour; the forms of Islamic observance became less and less important to him.

Years passed. As Tomba began to change from a boy into a man he became restless. He would go off and not return for days at a time. He would hide in the bush on the outskirts of some small coastal village, observing the inhabitants but too shy and fearful to present himself. At night he would walk along the sea-shore picking up shells in the moonlight and wondering at the never ending pounding of the waves. He had learned to swim in a creek near their home but he was scared to enter the sea alone and there was no one to encourage him. Sometimes he would creep into a dark village and steal what he could find: a discarded fishing net, a broody hen, mangoes, a hoe; or some other useful tool.

Then, when he was already a young man, he returned from one such expedition to find that Ibrahima had died in his absence. Dimly recalling that Ibrahima had buried his dead mother, he dug a shallow grave and laid his father in it. Now he was on his own.

* * *

It was not until he woke the next day that Tomba realised the depth of his dependence upon Ibrahima.

Though they had never spoken much there had been a close bond between the man and the boy. It had never occurred to Tomba that Ibrahima was not his natural father. He felt guilty that the old man had died all alone while he, Tomba, had been gallivanting around the countryside.

He had no difficulty maintaining himself. The supply of fish and game in the forest was inexhaustible. He knew where to find wild yams and cocoyams; and when the rains came he would feast on snails.

He suffered from loneliness: there had always been Ibrahima to come home to; now there was no one. Lacking experience, he did not understand what it was that afflicted him. He took to spending longer and longer periods away from the little house in the forest which was all he had ever known as home. He would haunt the coastal villages and the slave caravans which continued, year in, year out, to make their dreary way down to the sea.

Ibrahima had tried to explain to him the nature of slavery. Reflecting on his past, the old man had developed a deep hatred for the institution. But Tomba had grown up in complete freedom and he could not imagine any other state; Ibrahima's explanations had meant little to him. There were many mysteries in life but it was not in his youthful nature to waste time on contemplating them. The slave caravans came and went. He would watch them pass. Sometimes he would steal from them while the guards slept. He looked at the chained slaves with curiosity; but he lacked the capacity to recognise their predicament. He was free but he was in no way devoted to freedom: he knew nothing else.