Read Roots for Free Online Page A

various fowls’ feet, and strange roots. Glancing about, he gestured impatiently for the hushed crowd to give him more room; and the people moved back as he began to quiver all over—clearly being attacked by Juffure’s evil spirits.
    The magic man’s body writhed, his face contorted, his eyes rolled wildly, as his trembling hands struggled to force his resisting wand into contact with the heap of mysterious objects. When the wand’s tip, with a supreme effort, finally touched, he fell over backward and lay as if struck by lightning. The people gasped. But then he slowly began to revive. The evil spirts had been driven out. As he struggled weakly to his knees, Juffure’s adults—exhausted but relieved—went running off to their huts and soon returned with gifts to press upon him. The magic man added these to his bundle, which was already large and heavy with gifts from previous villages, and soon he was on his way to answer the next call. In his mercy, Allah had seen fit to spare Juffure once again.

CHAPTER 9
    T welve moons had passed, and with the big rains ended once again, The Gambia’s season for travelers had begun. Along the network of walking paths between its villages came enough visitors—passing by or stopping off in Juffure—to keep Kunta and his playmates on the lookout almost every day. After alerting the village when a stranger appeared, they would rush back out to meet each visitor as he approached the travelers’ tree. Trooping boldly alongside him, they would chatter away inquisitively as their sharp eyes hunted for any signs of his mission or profession. If they found any, they would abruptly abandon the visitor and race back ahead to tell the grown-ups in that day’s hospitality hut. In accordance with ancient tradition, a different family in each village would be chosen every day to offer food and shelter to arriving visitors at no cost for as long as they wished to stay before continuing their journey.
    Having been entrusted with the responsibility of serving as the village lookouts, Kunta, Sitafa, and their kafo mates began to feel and act older than their rains. Now after breakfast each morning, they would gather by the arafang’s schoolyard and kneel quietly to listen as he taught the older boys—those of the second kafo, just beyond Kunta’s age, five to nine rains old—how to read their Koranic verses and to write with grass-quill pens dipped in the black
ink of bitter-orange juice mixed with powdered crust from the bottom of cooking pots.
    When the schoolboys finished their lessons and ran off—with the tails of their cotton dundikos flapping behind them—to herd the village’s goats out into the brushlands for the day’s grazing, Kunta and his mates tried to act very unconcerned, but the truth was that they envied the older boys’ long shirts as much as they did their important jobs. Though he said nothing, Kunta was not alone in feeling that he was too grown up to be treated like a child and made to go naked any longer. They avoided suckling babies like Lamin as if they were diseased, and the toddlers they regarded as even more unworthy of notice, unless it was to give them a good whack when no adults were watching. Shunning even the attentions of the old grandmothers who had taken care of them for as long as they could remember, Kunta, Sitafa, and the others began to hang around grown-ups of their parents’ age in hopes of being seen underfoot and perhaps sent off on an errand.
    It was just before the harvest came that Omoro told Kunta very casually, one night after dinner, that he wanted him up early the next day to help guard the crops. Kunta was so excited he could hardly sleep. After gulping down his breakfast in the morning, he almost burst with joy when Omoro handed him the hoe to carry when they set out for the fields. Kunta and his mates fairly flew up and down the ripe rows, yelling and waving sticks at the wild pigs and baboons that came grunting from the brush to