“Ya-ngani.”
The griot begins his tale.
MATTOCK RESTING ON one broad shoulder, Babakar iri Sounkalo stood shaking his head in the midst of his charred beanfield. For the thousandth time, he cursed the Sussu, whose raiders had swept down from the north to despoil isolated border towns like Gadou, the one closest to Babakar’s ruined farm.
The Sussu had, as always, been driven back to their barren mountains by the soldiers of Sanghai. Babakar himself had taken up lance and shield to join the forces of Kassa iri Ba, the invincible general from Gau, and the blood of more than a few Sussu had washed his blade.
But now, as he surveyed the burnt acres of the field that had been in his family since the first stone was laid in Gadou, the taste of triumph had faded for Babakar. His wassa-beans had been reduced to a mere blackish stubble, and though he knew the next crop would grow even faster in the ash-enriched soil, alone he could never replant his beans before the wet season ended.
Alone ... again, the bitter memory seared across his mind: the memory of his wife and two daughters butchered by the swords of the Sussu, who had nearly destroyed Gadou in their treacherous attack. Sussu lives had paid for the loss of his family. Kassa iri Ba himself had praised Babakar’s ferocity in battle.
Now, though, Babakar faced only a grim choice as his reward. He could re-till his field in the hope that the wet season would last long enough for a new crop to rise, saving him from starvation. Or he could join the many others already in flight southward to the provinces untouched by the border war. The idea of abandoning the land still nurtured by the spirits of his ancestors remained unthinkable to Babakar.
“You’ll accomplish nothing standing here in self-debate,” Babakar chided himself.
With a gusting sigh, he raised his mattock from his shoulder and swung it down into the soil. It was then that he saw her, walking gracefully down the road that separated his field from that of a neighbor slain by the Sussu.
The mattock nearly fell from Babakar’s hands. For it was from the west that she came, and Babakar knew that only the semi-arid wasteland called the Tassili lay west of Gadou. The woman couldn’t have come from there ... she must have run off in that direction to escape the marauders, and was now making he way back to more habitable terrain.
As the woman came closer, Babakar saw that she was, though disheveled, beautiful to behold. Although she was not tall, a willowy slenderness lent her an illusion of greater height. The tattered condition of her asokaba contrasted with the neatly folded turban that clung closely to her head. Between the two garments, a pleasant expanse of bare black flesh was filmed with a thin layer of road dust, reminiscent of the coating of ashes young girls smeared on their bodies before their puberty dances.
A look at the way her conical breasts jounced with each step convinced Babakar that the stranger had passed beyond that age, though from the tautness of her skin she could not be much older than twenty rains. Her face, withdrawn and pensive, would not have been out of place at the Court of the Hundred Wives of the Keita, the Emperor of Sanghai, who took only the most beautiful women of the Sahan to his golden love-chamber.
Of possessions besides her clothing, the young woman had none save a few neck and arm ornaments. Babakar was just asking himself if he should call out to the stranger when she caught his glance, smiled and came toward him.
That smile stirred something in Babakar that had remained sullen and dormant since the day – over a month past now – when he had returned from his field to discover the Sussu-violated corpses of his wife, Amma, and daughters in the smoldering ruins of their home.
“Does this road lead to Gadou?” the stranger asked.
Her very voice reminded Babakar of the beloved tones of another, long stilled by the slash of a Sussu sword.
“What’s left of it, yes,” he replied. Then, on impulse: “Where do you come from? Only lizards and gazelles dwell in the Tassili.”
The woman dropped her gaze.
“I was taken by some deserters from the main body of raiders,” she said. “They weren’t even Sussu, but renegade Nobas who had joined the Sussu for the plunder. There were five of them. They swept me onto one of their horses and took me away to the west, and they found a patch of bush, and they ... they ...”
She choked, unable to continue.
This time, Babakar’s mattock did drop to the ground as he crossed quickly to the woman’s side and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“War makes victims,” he said. “Loss is the lot of us all. My wife, Amma, and my two daughters were slain by the Sussu. You, at least, still live.”
The stranger’s head came up sharply. Her eyes met Babakar’s.
“Amma?” she said. “I, too, am called Amma.”
Babakar’s hand tightened on smooth skin. The pressure was gentle, though, and she did not flinch as she well might have at the touch of a strong man’s grip.
“They used me until I begged to die,” Amma continued tightly. “And they might have taken me back to their own country if they hadn’t been pursued by Sussu who were angry at the Nobas’ desertion. There was a fight ... I escaped while they killed each other for the gold the Noba had stolen along with me.
“I walked through the waste, taking food where I could find it. When I left the Tassili, there was death all around. I took these garments from the body of a woman who no longer needed them. I thought I might find a new life in Gadou. But there is death there, too, you say.”
Again, she looked down. Babakar took his hand from Amma’s shoulder and clenched it as if he were gripping the
