Ama (74 page)

“And you?”

“Me? I have broken their laws. Unlike Moses . . .” he smiled at Ama. “Unlike Moses, I don't have a magic stick. I will tell them what I did and why. Then I will accept my punishment. You only die once.”

Ama bowed her head and sobbed. He put his arm around her shoulder and comforted her. The sobbing subsided. She raised her head and wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand.

“Ama, what do you say?” Olukoya asked her.

“I will go with him,” she said.

“No,” Tomba objected.

“All that has happened is my fault,” Ama insisted. “I was careless. He had never tried anything with me before, so I had dropped my guard. If I had kept a safe distance, I could have got away from him. I shall go with Tomba. If Senhora Miranda is there, I will beg her, for my sake, to forgive Tomba.”

“And what of Kwame?”

“He will go with us. He is our son.”

CHAPTER 36

Tabitsha, my mother; Tigen, my father.

It is I, Nandzi, your daughter. I am sitting against the wall of my senzala warming myself in the rays of the early morning sun. I can feel the sun but I cannot see it, for now I have lost the sight of my left eye too. I am completely blind.

My mother and my father, I will be coming to join you soon. Prepare a place for me. The Christians say that we in this country are too far from Africa to join our ancestors when we die, but I do not believe them. When I die my spirit will fly like a bird, back over the sea, back to Africa. Prepare a place for me, I beg you.

Kwame is coming to visit me. Josef brought the message. I am expecting him today. He is a man now. Miranda taught him to read and write. Josef tells me he even knows some English. He is working as a clerk for Senhor William.

He is married and he has a child, a baby girl. He called the child Nandzi Ama. Ama is the name I was given in Kumase. That is what our people call me here. Kwame named his daughter after me. He is bringing his wife and the child to visit his old mother.

Kwame is a free man. It is many years since I have seen him. Miranda took him away to Salvador before they executed Tomba. She said it would not be good for the boy to see his father strung up. Perhaps she was right. They left Tomba's body hanging there for six days. It was only when the flesh began to rot on his bones that they let me take him down and bury him.

Miranda raised Kwame. She calls him Zacharias but to me he is Kwame Zumbi. I have had two husbands in my life. Both were good men and brave. Itsho died trying to rescue me from the Bedagbam. Tomba killed our manager, Senhor Jesus, to punish him for what he did to me. Then he gave himself up to save the slaves at this engenho. Both my husbands were heroes. We gave Kwame the name of a hero too, Tomba and I. We named him Zumbi, after the hero of Palmares. We called him Kwame because he was born on a Saturday and to please Josef. But I had a secret from Tomba, the only secret I ever kept from him. I named my son Kwame also after Kwame Panin the boy who became Osei Kwame, King of Asante and who loved me with such a terrible passion that Koranten Péte had to send me away to Elmina.

Itsho and Tomba, my two husbands. You will be waiting for me too.

My mother I still have the cloth that you gave me. I have kept it all these years. It is torn and threadbare now, but it is all I have left of Africa, all except my spirit, so I treasure it. When they bury me they will put it in my coffin.

I am going to tell Kwame the whole story of my life. Olukoya always urged me to tell him when he was young, but I put it off, thinking there would be plenty of time when he was older. And then he was taken away from me and it was too late. But today I shall tell him. I must tell him; now, before it is too late again.

I shall tell him about you, my mother and about my baby brother Nowu.

I shall tell Kwame how I was left alone when you went to bury my grandfather Sekwadzim; and how I was raped and captured. I shall tell him how Itsho tried to rescue me and got killed in the attempt. I shall tell him how I found Itsho's body and how Damba and Suba helped me to bury him. I shall tell him how Itsho has been coming to me all these years, in my dreams and when I needed him.

I shall tell him about the women who were my friends and who helped through difficult times: about Minjendo, who was with me on the journey to Kumase; about Esi, who taught me everything about Asante and who was sent with me to Elmina because she spoke for me in the court; about Augusta, who was good to me even though she traded in slaves herself; about Nana Esi on the ship The Love of Liberty, whose body was eaten by sharks; about Luiza, who was forced to let men use her body to pay back the money the slave dealer lost when her mother died; about Jacinta, who lost her hands in the mill and the old woman Esperança, who are both now dead; and about Wono and Ayodele who are still my best friends.

I shall tell him about the famous people I have met: the Ya Na and two kings of Asante. Osei Kwadwo said in my presence that if he had been younger he would have taken me as one of his wives. How lucky I was to escape that fate and the worse one of accompanying him when he died! I shall tell Kwame too about Osei Kwadwo's successor, Osei Kwame, after whom I named him; but I shan't tell him everything. There are some things that a mother cannot tell her son.

I shall tell him about the white men I have known; about Mijn Heer, who loved me and might have married me if he hadn't caught the yellow jack at Axim and died; about Jensen who raped Esi, who called him the pig-god; about Van Schalkwyk who gave me English lessons and failed to make a Christian of me; about the Fanti Christian priest, Philip Quaque, who couldn't decide whether he was African or English; about Richard Brew who died on the night of the terrible storm at Anomabu; about Captain Williams whose ship was called The Love of Liberty; about Butcher the surgeon who said he hated the slave trade and George Hatcher, whose bad luck it was to be Tomba's victim; about Knaggs who tried to rape me and who felt the power of my knee in a tender part of his anatomy; about the Senhor, Miranda's father and about Miranda herself and her husband who is also called Williams; and about Jesus Vasconcellos whom Tomba killed.

I shall tell him about the friends who have been my constant support in Bahia; about Josef, Wono's husband and about Olukoya, who speaks to the gods of Africa and looks into the future.

And last but not least I shall tell him the story of his own father, Tomba, who grew up in the African forest and fought many wars against the slave trade; a loving father; a proud man; a man he should be proud to remember.

I shall tell my son Kwame that he should never forget that both his father and mother were Africans; and that he should hold his head up high and be proud of who he is.

After Tomba was executed, Miranda took Kwame away to Salvador. She raised him, she and her husband Senhor William. Then my only contact with my son was through Josef who took messages from me to him and brought me news of how he was doing.

Senhor William often received newspapers from England. As he read them he used to mark the parts he found interesting, mainly the parts about Africa and Brazil and to do with the slave trade. Sometimes Miranda would throw away the old papers. Josef would retrieve them and bring them to me. I would read them, especially the parts which had been marked and I would translate those parts for Olukoya. If there was something important, Josef would take the news back to the brothers in Salvador. The most important news in those times was the war in Haiti. We were all excited. Olukoya thought the time had come for us to follow in the steps of Toussaint L'Ouverture, but nothing came of it. Later Toussaint died a miserable death in a French prison and we mourned him as our brother. By that time I was going blind and I found it more and more difficult to read.. Now we have to rely on others for news of what is going on in the world. Sometimes Miranda tells Kwame something interesting and he passes it on. On his last trip Josef brought the news that the English have stopped the slave trade. And there have been disturbances in the city. But now I am too old to help with such things and since I am blind I can only listen to what they tell me.

The sun has made me sleepy. Sometimes I don't sleep well at night and so I doze during the day. I wonder how long it will be before they arrive. I think I will just take a small nap while I am waiting.

Do you know what is going on in my mind, my mother?

I am hearing the words The Love of Liberty repeated again and again and again.

The Love of Liberty, The Love of Liberty, The Love of Liberty, The Love of Liberty.

The love of liberty . . . love of liberty . . . of liberty . . . liberty . . .liberty. . .

EPILOGUE

In 1807 slaves from Salvador and from the
engenhos
in the
Recôncavo
laid a plot. They planned to meet on the outskirts of the city, to attack the whites, capture ships and return to Africa. They were betrayed and their leaders were executed.

There were further abortive insurrections in 1808, 1810, 1813 and 1816.

In 1826 another attempt was made, this time under the leadership of a woman, Zeferina. This too failed; but the slaves were not discouraged: they tried again in 1827 and yet again in 1830.

The most famous rising took place in Salvador in 1835. Again one of the leaders was a woman, Luiza Mahin. This time there was greater unity. Slaves and free blacks, Muslims and non-Muslims, Hausa and Yoruba, Ewe and Nupe all came together under a leadership which was both literate and sophisticated. Only bad fortune denied them victory.

The slave trade was formally abolished in Brazil in 1850, but those who were responsible for implementing the law came from the class of slave owners. It was not until 1888, after widespread disturbances and mass defections by slaves who had lost their patience and were prepared to wait no longer, that the institution of slavery itself was finally outlawed.

In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the abolition of history: he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books.

But the clamour of voices from the past drowns out the fiats of forgotten bureaucrats and demands to be heard.

At the end of the twentieth century, the population of Brazil stands at some 165 million. The more than one hundred million Brazilians who are of African descent remain overwhelmingly poor. Political power still rests firmly in the hands of the descendants of the
senhores de engenho.

Ama
is a story of the Slave Trade, a story of Africans who were carried across the Atlantic against their will.

The end of this story has yet to be written.