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Turning round, I saw an elderly Ambossan holding a pottery lamp reeking of kerosene. His head was as bald, hard and uneven as a gourd, and a band of antelope teeth was draped over it. His welcoming lopsided grin reassured me that he was not out to ensnare me.
    “Greetings, Omorenomwara, from your friends at the Resistance. I am your Conductor. We are glad you made it.”
    Omorenomwara was the slave name PIG gave me when I was first enslaved. It meant “This child will not suffer.”
     
     
    I PAUSED.
    I could finally give my real name to an Ambossan. It was like reclaiming my identity. I trembled, stuttering.
    “Please, call me Doris. I am Doris. My name is Doris.”
    He grinned and tried to repeat my real appellation, slowly, looking embarrassed, breaking it down into three elongated syllables, his tongue stumbling over the strange phonetics. He looked so pleased when he managed to pronounce it.
    Honestly, it was truly endearing.
    “Dooo-raaa-sha,” he said.
    Bless.
    I smiled encouragingly nonetheless. At least he’d tried.
    “We must make haste,” he added. “I will lead you to the Bakalo Line, where your train awaits you.”

THE GOSPEL TRAIN

I t was silent down there except for the scurrying of rodents and lizards and the muted echo of our footsteps. The floor gave way in places, and it took an age to descend the escalator as I eased my way down, gripping the rubber banister, my fingernails scraping up mushy dirt. Who knew when I’d be able to wash again? I was a fastidious person and liked a hearty wash-down at least once every two weeks.
    When we reached the bottom, my anonymous guide turned right into a corridor reeking of must and so clotted with dust that I gagged. But my guide didn’t turn around. I was supposed to be a brave escapee, not a wimp. I was a mature woman, not a child. Yet something was stirring deep inside of me. When had I last been in such a dark, enclosed, claustrophobic space?
    Cobwebs stretched before us like veins of forest foliage. He brushed them away with his swaying lantern, step by step. I could sense the surge of all those Ambossans who for years had filled those brightly lit tunnels during what they called the Rushing Hour. All those scurrying feet and harried minds. All those sugar-loving, coffee-drinking, baccy-smoking, rum-sipping commuters, most of whom hadn’t a thought about who provided their little pleasures, their little dependencies.
    Like the caves deep in the hills of my homeland that the sun could never penetrate, these were catacombs running underneath a landmass that weighed down upon it, and it was chilled to its abandoned bone. In time the soil of the land and underground rivers would complete nature’s reclamation.
    My guide shuffled ahead, his lantern creating spooky patterns of light and shadow, which looked like ghouls looming toward us.
    He carefully stepped over little craters in the ground and piles of powdery plaster from the caved-in ceilings, glancing behind to check that I did the same. He needn’t have worried; I was at his mercy. The Tube was strange territory and I had no bearings. When I looked behind, the tunnel had closed in on us.
    When something wet, hairy and slithery crawled onto my foot, I merely bit my lip and managed to kick it off. There were probably more small beasts in that subterranean jungle than I could bear to contemplate, families of tarantulas and scorpions for whom my ankles would be a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy. What had happened to the farm girl I used to be? The girl who could wring a chicken’s neck, gut a rabbit, deliver a calf, who had kept a dog as a pet.
    The Ambossans regarded the keeping of animals as domestic pets as downright primitive. The very idea of sleeping with a flea-ridden, molting cat or dog in the same bed, or kissing a canine or feline mouth that licked its own anus, was disgusting.
    I turned my attention to my guide. He wore a bleached-orange wrappa and nothing else. He was short for an Ambossan,