Roots (18 page)

They were still thinking and talking of the wondrous tales the griot had told them when—six days later—word came that a famous moro would soon be visiting the camp. The moro was the highest grade of teacher in The Gambia; indeed, there were only a
few of them, and so wise were they—after many rains of study—that their job was to teach not schoolboys but other teachers, such as the arafang of Juffure.

Even the kintango showed unusual concern about this visitor, ordering the entire jujuo to be thoroughly cleaned, with the dirt raked and then brushed with leafy branches to a smoothness that would capture the honor of the fresh footprints of the moro when he arrived. Then the kintango assembled the boys in the compound and told them, “The advice and the blessings of this man who will be with us is sought not only by ordinary people but also by village chiefs and even by kings.”

When the moro arrived the next morning, five of his students were with him, each carrying headbundles that Kunta knew would contain treasured Arabic books and parchment manuscripts such as those from ancient Timbuktu. As the old man passed through the gate, Kunta and his mates joined the kintango and his assistants on their knees, with their foreheads touching the ground. When the moro had blessed them and their jujuo, they rose and seated themselves respectfully around him as he opened his books and began to read—first from the Koran, then from such unheard-of books as the Taureta La Musa, the Zabora Dawidi and the Lingeeh la Isa, which he said were known to “Christians” as The Pentateuch of Moses, The Psalms of David and The Book of Isaiah. Each time the moro would open or close a book, roll or unroll a manuscript, he would press it to his forehead and mutter “Amen!”

When he had finished reading, the old man put his books aside and spoke to them of great events and people from the Christian Koran, which was known as the Holy Bible. He spoke of Adam and Eve, of Joseph and his brethren; of Moses, David, and Solomon; of the death of Abel. And he spoke to them of great men of more recent history, such as Djoulou Kara Naini, known to
the toubob as Alexander the Great, a mighty king of gold and silver whose sun had shown over half of the world.

Before the moro finally rose to leave that night, he reviewed what they already knew of the five daily prayers to Allah, and he instructed them thoroughly in how to conduct themselves inside the sacred mosque of their village, which they would enter for their first time when they returned home as men. Then he and his students had to hurry in order to reach the next place on his busy schedule, and the boys honored him—as the kintango had instructed them—by singing one of the men’s songs they had learned from the jalli kea: “One generation passes on.... Another generation comes and goes.... But Allah abides forever.”

In his hut after the moro had gone that night, Kunta lay awake thinking how so many things—indeed, nearly everything they had learned—all tied together. The past seemed with the present, the present with the future, the dead with the living and those yet to be born; he himself with his family, his mates, his village, his tribe, his Africa; the world of man with the world of animals and growing things—they all lived with Allah. Kunta felt very small, yet very large. Perhaps, he thought, this is what it means to become a man.

T
he time had come for that which made Kunta and every other boy shudder to think of: the kasas boyo operation, which would purify a boy and prepare him to become a father of many sons. They knew it was coming, but when it came it was without warning. One day as the sun reached the noontime position, one of the kintango’s assistants gave what seemed to be only a routine order for a kafo to line up in the compound, which the boys did as quickly as usual. But Kunta felt a twinge of fear when the kintango himself came from his hut, as he rarely did at midday, and walked before them

“Hold out your fotos,” he commanded. They hesitated, not believing—or wanting to believe—what they had heard. “Now!” he shouted. Slowly and shyly, they obeyed, each keeping his eyes on the ground as he reached inside his loincloth.

Working their way from either end of the line, the kintango’s assistants wrapped around the head of each boy’s foto a short length of cloth spread with a green paste made of a pounded leaf. “Soon your fotos will have no feeling,” the kintango said, ordering them back into their huts.

Huddled inside, ashamed and afraid of what would happen next, the boys waited in silence until about midafternoon, when again they were ordered outside, where they stood watching as a
number of men from Juffure—the fathers, brothers, and uncles who had come before, and others—filed in through the gate. Omoro was among them, but this time Kunta pretended that he didn’t see his father. The men formed themselves into a line facing the boys and chanted together: “This thing to be done ... also has been done to us ... as to the forefathers before us ... so that you also will become ... all of us men together.” Then the kintango ordered the boys back into their huts once again.

Night was falling when they heard many drums suddenly begin to pound just outside the jujuo. Ordered out of their huts, they saw bursting through the gate about a dozen leaping, shouting kankurang dancers. In leafy branch costumes and bark masks, they sprang about brandishing their spears among the terrified boys, and then—just as abruptly as they had appeared—were gone. Almost numb with fear, the boys now heard and followed dumbly the kintango’s order to seat themselves close together with their backs against the jujuo’s bamboo fence.

The fathers, uncles, and older brothers stood nearby, this time chanting, “You soon will return to home ... and to your farms ... and in time you will marry ... and life everlasting will spring from your loins.” One of the kintango’s assistants called out one boy’s name. As he got up, the assistant motioned him behind a long screen of woven bamboo. Kunta couldn’t see or hear what happened after that, but a few moments later, the boy reappeared—with a bloodstained cloth between his legs. Staggering slightly, he was half carried by the other assistant back to his place along the bamboo fence. Another boy’s name was called, then another, and another, and finally:

“Kunta Kinte!”

Kunta was petrified. But he made himself get up and walk behind the screen. Inside were four men, one of whom ordered him to lie down on his back. He did so, his shaking legs wouldn’t
have supported him any longer anyway. The men then leaned down, grasped him firmly, and lifted his thighs upward. Just before closing his eyes, Kunta saw the kintango bending over him with something in his hands. Then he felt the cutting pain. It was even worse than he thought it would be, though not as bad as it would have been without the numbing paste. In a moment he was bandaged tightly, and an assistant helped him back outside, where he sat, weak and dazed, alongside the others who had already been behind the screen. They didn’t dare to look at one another. But the thing they had feared above all else had now been done.

As the fotos of the kafo began healing, a general air of jubilation rose within the jujuo, for gone forever was the indignity of being mere boys in body as well as in mind. Now they were very nearly men—and they were boundless in their gratitude and reverence for the kintango. And he, in turn, began to see Kunta’s kafo with different eyes. The old, wrinkled, gray-haired elder whom they had slowly come to love was sometimes seen even to smile now. And very casually, when talking to the kafo, he or his assistants would say, “You men—” and to Kunta and his mates, it seemed as unbelievable as it was beautiful to hear.

Soon afterward the fourth new moon arrived, and two or three members of Kunta’s kafo, at the kintango’s personal order, began to leave the jujuo each night and trot all the way to the sleeping village of Juffure, where they would slip like shadows into their own mothers’ storehouses, steal as much couscous, dried meats, and millet as they could carry, and then race back with it to the jujuo, where it was gleefully cooked the next day—“to prove yourselves smarter than all women, even your mother,” the kintango had told them. But that next day, of course, those boys’ mothers would boast to their friends how they had heard their sons prowling and had lain awake listening with pride.

There was a new feeling now in the evenings at the jujuo. Nearly always, Kunta’s kafo would squat in a semicircle around the kintango. Most of the time he remained as stern in manner as before, but now he talked to them not as bumbling little boys but as young men of his own village. Sometimes he spoke to them about the qualities of manhood—chief among which, after fearlessness, was total honesty in all things. And sometimes he spoke to them about the forefathers. Worshipful regard was a duty owed by the living to those who dwelled with Allah, he told them. He asked each boy to name the ancestor he remembered best; Kunta named his Grandma Yaisa, and the kintango said that each of the ancestors the boys had named—as was the way of ancestors—was petitioning Allah in the best interests of the living.

Another evening, the kintango told them how in one’s village, every person who lived there was equally important to that village; from the newest baby to the oldest elder. As new men, they must therefore learn to treat everyone with the same respect, and—as the foremost of their manhood duties—to protect the welfare of every man, woman, and child in Juffure as they would their own.

“When you return home,” said the kintango, “you will begin to serve Juffure as its eyes and ears. You will be expected to stand guard over the village—beyond the gates as lookouts for toubob and other savages, and in the fields as sentries to keep the crops safe from scavengers. You will also be charged with the responsibility of inspecting the women’s cooking pots—including those of your own mothers—to make sure they are kept clean, and you will be expected to reprimand them most severely if any dirt or insects are found inside.” The boys could hardly wait to begin their duties.

Though all but the oldest of them were still too young to dream of the responsibilities they would assume when they reached the fourth kafo, they knew that some day, as men of fifteen to nineteen rains, they would be appointed to the important
job of carrying messages—like the young man who had brought them word of the moro’s visit—between Juffure and other villages. It would have been hard for Kunta’s kafo to imagine such a thing, but those old enough to be messengers longed for nothing more than to
stop
being messengers, when they reached the fifth kafo at twenty rains, they would graduate to
really
important work—assisting the village elders as emissaries and negotiators in all dealings with other villages. Men of Omoro’s age—over thirty—rose gradually in rank and responsibility with each passing rain until they themselves acquired the honored status of elders. Kunta had often proudly watched Omoro sitting on the edges of the Council of Elders, and looked forward to the day when his father would enter the inner circle of those who would inherit the mantle of office from such revered leaders as the kintango when they were called to Allah.

It was no longer easy for Kunta and the others to pay attention as they should to everything the kintango said. It seemed impossible to them that so much could have happened in the past four moons and that they were really about to become
men
. The past few days seemed to last longer than the moons that preceded them, but finally—with the fourth moon high and full in the heavens—the kintango’s assistants ordered the kafo to line up shortly after the evening meal.

Was this the moment for which they had waited? Kunta looked around for their fathers and brothers, who would surely be there for the ceremony. They were nowhere to be seen. And where was the kintango? His eyes searched the compound and found him—standing at the gate of the jujuo—just as he swung it open wide, turned to them, and called out: “Men of Juffure, return to your village!”

For a moment they stood rooted, then they rushed up whooping and grabbed and hugged their kintango and his assistants, who
pretended to be offended by such impertinence. Four moons before, as the hood was being lifted from his head in this very compound, Kunta would have found it difficult to believe that he would be sorry to leave this place, or that he would come to love the stern old man who stood before them on that day, but he felt both emotions now. Then his thoughts turned homeward and he was racing and shouting with the others out the gate and down the path to Juffure. They hadn’t gone very far before, as if upon some unspoken signal, their voices were stilled and their pace slowed by the thoughts they all shared, each in his own way—of what they were leaving behind, and of what lay ahead of them. This time they didn’t need the stars to find their way.

“A
iee! Aiee!” The women’s happy shrieks rang out, and the people were rushing from their huts, laughing, dancing, and clapping their hands as Kunta’s kafo—and those who had turned fifteen and become fourth kafo while they were away at the jujuo—strode in through the village gate at the break of dawn. The new men walked slowly, with what they hoped was dignity, and they didn’t speak or smile—at first. When he saw his mother running toward him, Kunta felt like dashing to meet her, and he couldn’t stop his face from lighting up, but he made himself continue walking at the same measured pace. Then Binta was upon him—arms around his neck, hands carressing his cheeks, tears welling in her eyes, murmuring his name. Kunta permitted this only briefly before he drew away, being now a man; but he made it seem as if he did so only to get a better look at the yowling bundle cradled snugly in the sling across her back. Reaching inside, he lifted the baby out with both hands.

“So this is my brother Madi!” he shouted happily, holding him high in the air.

Binta beamed at his side as he walked toward her hut with the baby in his arms—making faces and cooing and squeezing the plump little cheeks. But Kunta wasn’t so taken with his little brother that he failed to notice the herd of naked children that followed
close behind them with eyes as wide as their mouths. Two or three were at his knees, and others darted in and out among Binta and the other women, who were all exclaiming over how strong and healthy Kunta looked, how manly he’d become. He pretended not to hear, but it was music to his ears.