Aminatta Forna - Ancestor Stones

There was more light now, a circular beam coming in through the spy hole. I followed the beam to the other side of the box where it revealed a series of markings: vertical cuts, where somebody had scored the wood with a knife. Two rows of ten, one above, one below. A carpenter’s trademark? Perhaps the box had been made using wood from something else. I ran my thumbnail across the rows, backwards and forwards, making a vibrating sound like a musical instrument.

Now I remembered. As a young girl, watching my mother. Every year, on the day we ate the first rice of the new harvest, going to her room where the great chest stood. With a sharp knife she would score the wood in the same place every year. Every year for ten years. Ten anniversaries. Ten birthdays. Asana and Alusani. Then Alusani died and stole her happiness to take with him back to the other world.

Rofathane. I had fought so hard to leave all that behind. And yet.

We had a herbalist, a carpenter, a blacksmith, a birth attendant and a boy who never grew old. Soothsayers prepared us for the unexpected. Teachers travelled to us, bringing the word from Futa Djallon. People who wanted to live in Rofathane had first to find a patron and then to ask permission to settle. There existed an order, an order in which everybody had their place. An imperfect order. An order we understood.

A lullaby came to me, one my mother used to sing:

Asana tey k’ kulo ,

I thonto, thonto ,

K’ m’ng dira .

Asana, don’t you cry,

I’ll rock you, rock you,

Until you sleep.

I hummed softly to myself, and as I did so I began to rock back and forth, growing sentimental, a wet-eyed, foolish old woman. I thought of my mother and father, sleeping safely in their graves. I thought of Osman, of Ngadie. I hoped Kadie and Ansuman were still in Guinea and that they would hear what was happening and not come back. I feared for Alpha.

Voices! Ugly, bold, challenging. They seemed to come from all directions. Voices and the sound of running feet. The feet were bare, I remember that because there was something oddly unthreatening in the way they patted the earth.

I put my eye to the spyhole, and looked left and right.

Two men and a woman came into view. Walking high on the balls of their feet. The woman and one of the men were carrying guns, resting them upright against their shoulders, fingers on the trigger. Just like they do in the cinema. The other man carried a machete and smoked a cigarette. They were looking this way and that, all around them, as they advanced.

Such strange garb, they were dressed like children who had found a dressing-up box. A pair of ladies’ sunglasses. Amilitary-style jacket with gold epaulettes. A red bra. Jeans. Camouflaged trousers. A T-shirt with the face of a dead American rapper. A necklace of bullets. Around their necks and wrists dangled charms on twisted strings. They were talking to others I couldn’t see, but their talk was unintelligible to me. I thought at first it was some strange tongue, the kind we made up as children. But every now and again a fragment of the exchange occurred in my own language. Gradually I realised that I was listening to several languages being spoken at once.

I had left the back door to my house open. This was how I could see what was going on. I expected my neighbours had bolted theirs before they fled, and sure enough a moment later I heard the sound of wood splintering, of a door being broken from its hinges.

Beneath the cooking pot in the yard the embers of the fire throbbed faintly. One of the intruders raised the lid of the cooking pot. Good, I had wanted them to find the food. I saw him dip his fingers into the sauce, he made a joke to the others.

I pulled my eye back from the spy hole. The other man was wandering dangerously close to the house. I listened to his steps as he approached the door, heard him carefully cross the threshold, the click of his weapon. My heart thudded, my breaths came short and fast. Surely he could hear me, I thought. I cowered inside the box, waiting for the lid to open. They would kill me straight away, of that I was certain. An old, crippled woman, there was not much sport to be had with me. Softly, the footsteps came closer, inches now from my head. I held my breath.

He stopped, swivelled, turned. He had spotted the jewellery on the table. The chink of metal as he turned over the pieces and began pocketing them. The sounds must have alerted the others, I heard them coming to see what he was doing. I listened in the dark as they began to squabble over my possessions.

Somewhere in the distance a voice shouted orders. The three looters snatched up the remainder of the jewellery and began to move off. I put my eye to the spyhole, watched their backs as they disappeared. I lay back and breathed out.

I slept. I woke. I slept again. A serpentine dream wove its way through my mind. Dreams of discovery. Dreams of death. I slipped in and out of consciousness and woke struggling for air. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. My body was damp, pools of sweat had gathered on the floor of the box. Something had woken me. I could hear scattered gunfire. From outside came the smell of burning straw. I peeped out of my spyhole. Against the darkness, a halo of flickering light: fire from flaming houses

In the yard a stone ricocheted. A figure appeared carrying a burning brand. It lit up his features, turning his nostrils into black holes, his eyes into dark hollows. With silent steps he crossed the yard, making for my neighbour’s house.

The hours passed. I must have lost track of time. The next I knew the three from before were back. I listened as they slit the throats of my chickens and roasted them over the fire. The contents of my cooking pots were passed around. More people came, bringing loot from the surrounding houses. Evidently they had broken into the bottle store. There was music and much rough laughter. Different smells drifted into the box: the sour smell of unwashed bodies, rum fumes and the scented smoke of marijuana.

Hamdillah, how I prayed. I don’t deny it. Not at all. To the gods of Islam and Christianity, to every god in the skies plus any others I might not have thought of. Would they set fire to my house when they had taken what they wanted? Would I die of thirst trapped in my hiding place? Somewhere my fate was already cast in stones.

Have you ever wondered what it is that makes people do terrible things? I have. Since that day, I have set my mind to it many times. All the stories of supernatural beings and yet those men and women out there were not so different from me, only that something inside them had been unleashed. So, where does it come from, the fury? A thousand indignities, a thousand wrongs, like tiny knife wounds, shredding a person’s humanity. In time only the tattered remnants are left. And in the end they ask themselves — what good is this to me? And they throw the last of it away.

At dawn, finally, they slept. I listened to the sound of their snoring. I didn’t dare let myself fall asleep again in case I snored too, or cried out in my dreams. The sun was halfway up the sky and the temperature inside the box was rising rapidly by the time they had woken up. Through my circular window I watched them rouse themselves, collect up their weapons and as much of their stolen booty as they could carry, and stumble away like sleepwalkers.

I waited two hours more, then I opened the lid of the box and climbed out. I plunged my arm into the water jar and retrieved the bundle. I allowed myself a few sips of water before I picked my way across the yard, through the banana grove and into the trees. I kept on walking. I left the path. I crossed the boundary into the sacred forest. It was a forbidden place, but what did that matter now? Things had changed, perhaps for ever. The old order had gone, those rules no longer applied. I had to find Adama, to help bring her baby into this world.