Read The Book Of Negroes for Free Online

and didn’t care whether I lived or died.
    Eight of us were taken captive outside Bayo and neighbouring villages. In the darkness, Fomba was the only one I recognized. I stumbled forward, and didn’t notice for hours that the yoke was rubbing the skin of my neckraw. I could not stop thinking about my parents, or what had happened to them. In one moment, I could not have imagined life without them. In the next, I was still living but they were gone.
Wake now
, I told myself.
Wake now, sip from the calabash by your sleeping mat and go hug your mama. This dream is like a set of soiled clothes; step out of them and go see your mama
. But there was only an unbearable nightmare that would not end.
    While we walked through the night, others were attached to our string of captives. In the morning light, I noticed Fomba walking with his head down. And then I saw Fanta. There was no sign of the chief. Fanta too was yoked about the neck. Her eyes darted left and right, up and down, peering at the woods and evaluating our captors. I wanted to call out to her, but she had a cloth stuck in her mouth and a rope holding it in place. I tried to meet her eyes, but she would not greet my glance. My gaze fell to her naked belly. The chief’s wife was with child. I guessed that she was five moons in progress.
    We walked with the rising sun behind us, and came to a great and busy river. Finally, they unyoked and untied us and let us rest at the edge of the water. Four men stood guard over us, with firesticks and clubs.
    Perhaps this river was the same Joliba said to flow past Segu. As my father had described, it was farther across than a stone’s throw. It was full of canoes and men rowing people and goods. Our captors negotiated with the head boatman, and we were bound by the wrists and tossed into the middle of the canoes. Six oarsmen rowed my boat. Between the steady rocking of the rowers’ arms, I watched the other canoes gliding over the water. In one, I saw a horse. Regal and entirely black but for one white circle between the eyes. As the oarsmen rowed, the horse held perfectly still.
    At the other side of the river, we were untied and let out. The swampy air stank. Mosquitoes feasted on my arms and legs. They even attacked my cheeks. Our captors paid the oarsmen with cowrie shells. I felt a cowrie in the sand, under my toes, and scooped it up before they yoked my neckagain. It was white, and hard, with curled lips ridged like tiny teeth, the whole thing as small as my thumbnail. It was beautiful and perfect and, it seemed, unbreakable. I rinsed it in the water and put it on my tongue. It felt like a friend in my mouth, and comforted me. I sucked it fiercely, and wondered how many cowries I was worth.
    We were lined up in a coffle of captives, attached by the neck in groups of two or three and made to walk. A boy, perhaps just four rains older than I, walked beside us, checking captives, letting us sip from a water skin, passing us scraps of millet or maize cake, a mango or an orange. The boy kept glancing at me when the older captors were not watching. He spoke Bamanankan, but I ignored him. He was bony and seemed to be made entirely of shoulders, elbows, knees and ankles. He strode along with an awkward, uncoordinated gait. Pasted to his face was a permanent smile, for which I distrusted him utterly. There was no reason to smile. There were no friends to make. One did not smile at enemies. I told myself this, but suddenly doubted it. My father, I remembered, had told me that a wise man knows his enemies, and keeps them close. Possibly, this boy who kept looking at me, wide-eyed and innocent, was an enemy. Or he was just a stupid, smiling, curious boy who amused himself by walking alongside our coffle, with not a clue in his head about what he was witnessing. I did not appreciate his gaze when I was naked. I did not want to be noticed, seen or known by anybody, in my present state. Surely I would get free. Surely this would end. Surely