Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

But it’s not enough to know the toubob, said Omoro. “Many of our own people work for him. They are slatee traitors. But without knowing them, there is no way to recognize them. In the bush, therefore, trust no one you don’t know.”

Kunta and Lamin sat frozen with fear. “You cannot be told these things strongly enough,” said their father. “You must know what your uncles and I saw happening to those who had been stolen. It is the difference between slaves among ourselves and those whom toubob takes away to be slaves for him.” He said that they saw stolen people chained inside long, stout, heavily guarded bamboo pens along the shore of the river. When small canoes brought important-acting toubob from the big canoes, the stolen people were dragged outside their pens onto the sand.

“Their heads had been shaved, and they had been greased until they shined all over. First they were made to squat and jump up and down,” said Omoro. “And then, when the toubob had seen enough of that, they ordered the stolen people’s mouths forced open for their teeth and their throats to be looked at.”

Swiftly, Omoro’s finger touched Kunta’s crotch, and as Kunta jumped, Omoro said, “Then the men’s foto was pulled and looked at. Even the women’s private parts were inspected.” And the toubob finally made the people squat again and stuck burning hot irons against their backs and shoulders. Then, screaming and struggling, the people were shipped toward the water, where small canoes waited to take them out to the big canoes.

“My brothers and I watched many fall onto their bellies, clawing and eating the sand, as if to get one last hold and bite of their own home,” said Omoro. “But they were dragged and beaten on.” Even in the small canoes out in the water, he told Kunta and Lamin, some kept fighting against the whips and the clubs until they jumped into the water among terrible long fish with gray backs and white bellies and curved mouths full of thrashing teeth that reddened the water with their blood.

Kunta and Lamin had huddled close to each other, each gripping the other’s hands. “It’s better that you know these things than that your mother and I kill the white cock one day for you.” Omoro looked at his sons. “Do you know what that means?”

Kunta managed to nod, arid found his voice. “When someone is missing, Fa?” He had seen families frantically chanting to Allah as they squatted around a white cock bleeding and flapping with its throat slit.

“Yes,” said Omoro. “If the white cock dies on its breast, hope remains. But when a white cock flaps to death on its back, then no hope remains, and the whole village joins the family in crying to Allah.”

“Fa—” Lamin’s voice, squeaky with fear, startled Kunta, “where do the big canoes take the stolen people?”

“The elders say to Jong Sang Doo,” said Omoro, “a land where slaves are sold to huge cannibals called toubabo koomi, who eat us. No man knows any more about it.”

So frightened was Lamin by his father’s talk of slave-taking and white cannibals that he awakened Kunta several times that night with his bad dreams. And the next day, when Kunta returned from goatherding, he decided to turn his little brother’s mind—and his own—from such thoughts by telling him about their distinguished uncles.

“Our father’s brothers are also the sons of Kairaba Kunta Kinte, for whom I am named,” said Kunta proudly. “But our uncles Janneh and Saloum were born of Sireng,” he said. Lamin looked puzzled, but Kunta kept on explaining. “Sireng was our grandfather’s first wife, who died before he married our Grandma Yaisa.” Kunta arranged twigs on the ground to show the Kinte family’s different individuals. But he could see that Lamin still didn’t understand. With a sigh, he began to talk instead of their uncles’ adventures, which Kunta himself had thrilled to so often when his father had told of them.

“Our uncles have never taken wives for themselves because their love of traveling is so great,” said Kunta. “For moons on end, they travel under the sun and sleep under the stars. Our father says they have been where the sun burns upon endless sand, a land where there is never any rain.” In another place their uncles had visited, said Kunta, the trees were so thick that the forests were dark as night even in the daytime. The people of this place were no taller than Lamin, and like Lamin, always went naked—even after they grew up. And they killed huge elephants with tiny, poisoned darts. In still another place, a land of giants, Janneh and Saloum had seen warriors who could throw their hunting spears twice as far as the mightiest Mandinka, and dancers who could leap higher than their own heads, which were six hands higher than the tallest man in Juffure.

Before bedtime, as Lamin watched with wide eyes, Kunta acted out his favorite of all the stories—springing suddenly about with an imaginary sword slashing up and down, as if Lamin were one of the bandits whom their uncles and others had fought off every day on a journey of many moons, heavily laden with elephants’ teeth, precious stones, and gold, to the great black city of Zimbabwe.

Lamin begged for more stories, but Kunta told him to go to sleep. Whenever Kunta had been made to go to bed after his father told him such tales, he would lie on his mat—as his little brother now would—with his mind making the uncles’ stories into pictures. And sometimes Kunta would even dream that he was traveling with his uncles to all the strange places, that he was talking with the people who looked and acted and lived so differently from the Mandinkas. He had only to hear the names of his uncles and his heart would quicken.

A few days later, it happened that their names reached Juffure in a manner so exciting that Kunta could hardly contain himself. It was a hot, quiet afternoon, and just about everyone in the village was sitting outside his hut’s doorway or in the shade of the baobab—when suddenly there came a sharp burst of drumtalk from the next village. Like the grown-ups, Kunta and Lamin cocked their heads intently to read what the drum was saying. Lamin gasped aloud when he heard his own father’s name. He wasn’t old enough to understand the rest, so Kunta whispered the news it brought: Five days of walking in the way the sun rose, Janneh and Saloum Kinte were building a new village. And their brother Omoro was expected for the ceremonial blessing of the village on the second next new moon.

The drumtalk stopped; Lamin was full of questions. “Those are our uncles? Where is that place? Will our fa go there?” Kunta didn’t reply. Indeed, as Kunta dashed off across the village toward the hut of the jaliba, he barely heard his brother. Other people were already gathering there—and then came Omoro, with the big-bellied Binta behind him. Everyone watched as Omoro and the jaliba spoke briefly, and Omoro gave him a gift. The talking drum lay near a small fire, where its goatskin head was heating to extreme tautness. Soon the crowd looked on as the jaliba’s hands pounded out Omoro’s reply that, Allah willing, he would be in his brothers’ new village before the second next new moon. Omoro went nowhere during the next days without other villagers pressing upon him their congratulations and their blessings for the new village, which history would record as founded by the Kinte clan.

It wasn’t many days before Omoro was to depart when an idea that was almost too big to think about seized upon Kunta. Was it remotely possible that his papa might let him share the journey? Kunta could think of nothing else. Noticing his unusual quietness, Kunta’s fellow goatherds, even Sitafa, left him alone. And toward his adoring little brother, he became so short-tempered that even Lamin drew away, hurt and puzzled. Kunta knew how he was acting and felt badly, but he couldn’t help himself.