Birth of a Dark Nation (23 page)

I was the youngest of the bunch but somehow I
was able to take charge without question. I knew this moment
wouldn't happen again anytime soon, but the glory of the position
wasn't important to me. We had lost half of our tribe when we were
taken from our homeland and now we'd lost half of that half. There
wasn't time to cry. Only time to figure out what was next.

My friends had done what I'd asked and
Ogundiya and I figured out how to work the ship. The Orishas were
with us for the next few days with calm, strong winds in our sails
and placid waters beneath us. Within days,
La Coeur
reached
land, an island we eventually learned was called Dominica. We
weren't sure what we'd see once we disembarked from the ship, but
with our weapons in our hands, we knew we'd never be enslaved
again.

The black sand beach and green mountains
lining the Dominican coast looked menacing in the first rays of the
morning sun. I leaned over edge of the ship and strained my eyes to
see through the fog.

"We should drop the anchor," I suggested to
Babarinde. He nodded.

"Drop the anchor!" I called out. My brothers
did so and the ship lurched and then steadied itself as it rocked
in the water. I continued staring off into the mountains as the
morning heat burned away the fog.

Soon, I saw people descending the mountain.
They were brown people, like us, with dark, shiny hair. About a
dozen of them carefully came down the hills and assembled on the
beach. They stood in a silent formation and waited for us. Several
had weapons.

"What do we do?" I asked.

"You, me, and Aborişade. We take the rowboat
to the shore. And we talk to them as best we can. We'll bring the
white men's weapons, but we will do them no harm as long as they
mean us no harm."

I nodded and asked Sangodare to prepare the
boat.

"Dagunro?" Babarinde beckoned to the lean
brother near him.

"Yes, Baba?" he answered.

"If anything happens to us…destroy the
scrolls."

"I will, Baba."

The boat was lowered into the water, and,
with a rope, I climbed down first with a gun across my back.
Aborişade came next, also with a gun, and Babarinde came last,
unarmed.

"No weapon?" I asked him. "Not even a
knife?"

"No," he said with finality.

We rowed the boat through the blue waters and
made it to the shore. The brown men helped us out of our boat and
pulled it to the safety of the beach. They rejoined the other men,
forming an inverted V with their leader at the apex.

Aborişade and I raised our weapons, but
Babarinde told us to stand down. We had been through too much to
let more strangers violate us, and I wasn't eager to let Babarinde
walk into a trap.

But these men were different. As I glared
into their eyes, all I saw was concern for us. Compassion. A
willingness to talk.

These men were not evil.

Babarinde approached the leader, an older man
who wore a loincloth, like the men guarding him. The morning wind
whipped around us. Babarinde had both hands extended, to show the
brown men he was approaching in peace.

"We are Razadi," Babarinde said in our native
tongue. "We come in peace."

"Razadi?" the leader repeated. Babarinde
nodded. He pointed to his heart and repeated "Razadi." He walked
back to Aborişade and me and once again repeated "Razadi." He
nodded and again put his hands out in peace.

The brown man nodded.

"Razadi," he said softly. He then made a
fist, thumped his chest and said "Kalinago."

Babarinde nodded.

"Kalinago," the man repeated, outstretching
his arms as if to include his warriors in the word.

"Kalinago," Babarinde repeated.

The man walked toward Babarinde and pointed
to his chest, rapidly speaking in his own language.

"I don't understand," Baba said in the
language of the Razadi. "Please slow down, I can learn."

The leader shook his head vigorously and
grabbed Babarinde by the shoulders. They stared at one another and
focused.

"Babarinde, show him. Show him like our
people do."

Babarinde nodded and took the leader by his
shoulders and leaned in, touching his forehead with his own. As
Babarinde transferred his memories and emotions to the leader of
this tribe, I could see them both tense their muscles with the
strain of this great emotion. From my vantage point, I could see a
single tear fall from the tribe leader's eye.

Moments later, Babarinde released the leader,
who then took several steps backward.

The ocean roared all around us. The call of
birds was thick in the air. We stood still as life around us
continued.

Finally, the leader nodded. He pointed to the
ship, then pointed to the palm of his hand and nodded.

Babarinde shook his head and pointed to his
own palm, then made a cutting movement against his neck with his
hand.

The leader nodded again and then spoke three
words.

He pointed at our ship and said "No."

He pointed to behind him and said
"Kalinago."

He pointed to the east and said "Razadi."

Babarinde smiled, nodded, and clasped hands
with the leader of the Kalinago people. The warriors broke ranks
and clasped our hands as well as Babarinde's.

After countless days and nights, and what
might as well have been millions of miles, the Razadi were back on
peaceful soil with people who meant us no harm.

~

The Kalinago were a gentle, peaceful people
who, like the Razadi, merely wanted everyone else to leave them
alone. And we did. After they had seen what we'd been through, they
gave us three simple directives: to establish our own village to
the east of theirs, deep in the forests; to stay away from their
village if at all possible; and to dismantle our ship. The Kalinago
wanted desperately to prevent their island from becoming a port,
and they somehow felt that even the presence of a ship was a beacon
of evil. After some debate, we decided to comply with their wishes.
We had no way of discerning our way back to our homeland anyway.
The maps of the white men were useless to us, as we didn't know
where we were, which way we'd come, or what they had renamed the
places they had "discovered" and stolen from natives.

The natives called this place Wai'tu kubuli,
and so did we, only calling it Dominica after we left. The terrain
was rugged, but lush and beautiful. The Kalinago had left their
previous homeland and settled here because the island was so
difficult to penetrate.

We used the timber from the ship as the
foundation for the village we built in the forest. Dominica was
full of trees, and the Kalinago showed us which ones were best for
building. They also showed us where to plant our seeds for the best
harvest. But after those tips, they left us be.

Months passed, and we were comfortably
entrenched in our new lifestyle. We hunted wild boar for their
blood. Nothing would ever taste as rich as human blood, but we knew
our neighbors could never become our meal. They had been too good
to us.

Aside from the boar's blood, we were
vegetarians, successfully growing things we'd brought with us from
Africa as well as plants and fruits native to the island. I've
never eaten as clean as I did on Dominica.

Babarinde found a way to work through his
grief and properly emerge as our leader. He was often quiet and
withdrawn, but every now and then, a glimpse of the old Babarinde
would shine through, whether it was a joke or a song.

We hid our scrolls and other valuables in a
cave deep in the forest. There was little use for jewels and gold
coins on an island like ours, so we hid them and mostly forgot
about them. Our surviving scrolls were of the utmost importance to
us, though. When we worshipped together, our scrolls were never far
away. It devastated us that one of scrolls was lost to the ocean
and the powerful mercenaries back in Africa had stolen another, but
we knew they'd be of no use to anyone without the whole story and
the oral traditions.

As the months went by, I took up a trade or
two. I became adept at fishing, and even though we didn't typically
eat the blood of the fish, we were committed to making goodwill
offerings to our neighbors. They would smile politely, take the
offering, and then close the gates of their village, leaving us to
walk back to our own village.

We had a lot of time to work, to think, and
to pray. We already knew each other well as family, but during this
period, many of us became friends. And when the nights were long
and lonely, some of us became more than friends. Others remained
celibate.

When I wasn't fishing, I also worked as a
carpenter alongside a brother of ours named Ariori. He towered over
me by about seven inches. His hair had grown wild and wooly over
the past few months. He refused to wear it in braids or dreadlocks
as many of us had done. His shoulders were broad and his arms and
back were muscular. His legs were lean.

After our carpentry was done for the day,
Ariori and I would go down to the beach where we first landed, to
swim and to walk and play in the black sand. It was one of our
favorite places. Our home village was days and days away from the
coast, so enjoying the beach was still a novelty for us, even
though years later we would enjoy the golden and white sand beaches
of many other countries.

Ariori and I would disrobe and leave our
garments on the rocks near the shoreline. He would follow me out to
the water and we'd swim. We had to learn how to swim in what you
might call "the old fashioned way." Most of us hadn't learned how
back in the old country because the rivers were shallow, and those
that weren't were teeming with crocodiles. The waters of Dominica
were safe. Babarinde threw us into the water again and again until
we learned how to float and how to swim. Some days, we could see
the Kalinago watching us from the mountains and laughing.

Ariori had no carnal interest in me. He was
one of the brethren who opted to be celibate. As for me, I hadn't
yet figured out what I was or who I was interested in. As the
youngest of the group and the son of Mama Abeo, the brothers had a
kind of respect for me that meant I remained untouched until I
decided who I wanted—not the other way around.

We played around in the water for a bit. We
took turns diving beneath the surface of the water and exploring
the marine life below. We were naturally stronger and more durable
than humans, so it was easy for us to hold our breath for six,
seven, even eight minutes at a time.

When we came above water, we were startled to
see a young white woman walking toward us. We had never seen a
white woman before, and hadn't seen a woman at all since we left
our village. What was interesting about her was that she was wholly
unafraid of us. Making eye contact only piqued the interest in her
deep brown eyes.

We were startled into silence. The last time
we encountered anyone of her complexion, we were shackled and
thrown in the belly of a boat. But she was a woman, and she was
alone. She couldn't possibly be dangerous to us, could she?

Ariori and I looked at each other while we
floated in the water, then we looked at her.

"
Je m'appelle Dominique
," she said
from the shore. "
Je n'ai aucune mauvaise intention
."

We swam to the shore and walked to our
clothing on the rocks. The woman stared at us until we arose nude
from the water. She then lowered her head and averted her eyes to
provide us some privacy.

When we were clothed, we approached her and
quizzed her in our own language. Who are you? Where are you from?
What do you want? Why are you here? Of course, she didn't
understand us and we didn't understand her. We did discover that
her name was Dominique Bellanger.

Our first meeting with Dominique was brief.
We ran off and prayed she didn't see which way we went. She didn't
follow us at first, though we would see her every few days. She
remained friendly and harmless. The more time we spent around her,
the more I could tell that she and Ariori had an attraction for one
another. Ariori showed a quiet, respectful restraint around her,
and though she never made overt advances, I could tell by her
posture and her avoidance of his gaze that she was intrigued by
him.

Wherever she came from, with her long brown
tresses and her dirty white gown, she was not interested in
returning. Each day we spent with her seemed longer and longer;
each evening she was more and more reluctant to leave us.

One day, she finally refused to leave. We
tried to send her back to the west, away from our home and away
from the Kalinago, but she wouldn't go. She had nothing with her
besides the clothes she wore. When we tried to leave her at the
beach, she followed. Ariori screamed at her to go, but she just
screamed back in her own language, just as feisty and as rebellious
as she wanted to be.

Dominique was strong, as we could tell by her
ability to climb the craggy mountains behind us. She walked briskly
with us through the thick forest. Something was terribly wrong
where she came from and we knew it was better for her to come with
us than to go back to wherever her home was. Besides, I knew that
Ariori was falling for her, and even if I didn't agree with her
joining us, I would have been out voted.

Babarinde was furious with us for bringing
her to our encampment, and he tried to banish her, but Ariori was
rebellious and told us all that he would disappear with her forever
into the woods if she were banished. Although Baba hated being
manipulated in this way, we knew it would probably be best for her
safety and ours if she stayed, at least until she learned our
language and could tell us what she was running from.