“Amma,” he murmured into the tight folds of her turban. “Amma, what is wrong?”
Her head tilted upward. Never before had Babakar been so aware of the true beauty of the strange woman’s face. It was as though he were gazing at a sculpture carved from polished black pearl, streaked with tracks of diamond where the sunlight caught her tears.
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “It’s just that I was remembering the last harvest my family had ... before the Sussu came.”
“The Sussu are gone!” Babakar said fiercely, his hands tightening on Amma’s arms.
Silently, he repeated what he had said. The Sussu were gone ... as was his first Amma. Sorrow was there; it always would be. But the woman he held in his arms was no memory. She was warm. She was real. He loved her.
Babakar’s face bent toward Amma’s. Their faces came together slowly, and when their mouths met, Amma’s arms encircled Babakar’s shoulders and clung to him with gentle strength. Warm as the sun that nurtured the land with this, the first embrace of his love.
“My Amma,” Babakar whispered when their lips parted.
“Your second Amma ...”
“No,” Babakar said firmly. “I have only one Amma. And I want her to be my wife.”
“You do not ask this only out of gratitude for my help with the crop?
“How can you say that?” Babakar demanded. “It is as a woman that I want you, not labor to be bargained for. What is mine is yours – even my life.”
Exerting a soft but insistent pressure, Amma’s arms drew Babakar’s head downward, and their mouths met again. Long moments passed before their lips parted. It was Amma who spoke first.
“When the next wet season begins, will we go to the adhana to be mated at the shrine of the Mother of Earth?” she asked.
Without hesitation Babakar assented, and he pressed Amma close to him. He never realized that Amma’s gaze was cast downward, fixed with strange avidity on the wassa sprouts pushing their way through the soil ...
NIGHT HAD FALLEN SWIFTLY, as always during the waning weeks of the wet season. The glances that passed between Amma and Babakar were no longer fleeting or hastily averted. As they walked from the field to Babakar’s dwelling, Amma’s hand clasped his for the first time. The soft half-light of the stars cast a shaft of muted illumination through the house’s only window, and outlined the contours of Amma’s half-nude form as she reclined on the sleeping-mat. Her arms opened to Babakar as he moved toward her.
All the restraint he had imposed on his emotions melted swiftly in the heat of Amma’s embrace. His hands peeled the asokaba from her waist, then travelled upward to untie the turban from her head, so that he could experience the sensation of her kinky hair brushing against his palms.
But as Babakar’s fingers pulled at the knot of the turban, Amma uttered a low cry that had nothing to do with passion or pleasure. Her hands shot up to Babakar’s, and with surprising force held them away from her head. The points of her fingernails dug talon-like into his flesh.
“No!” she hissed. “You must not touch my turban.”
“Why?” Babakar asked in bewilderment.
Amma did not reply immediately. She lay silent, her body taut and rigid next to Babakar’s, her hands pinioning his wrists like clamps of steel. Then, with a shudder, she released her hold and wriggled from beneath him. Sitting up, she hooked her arms around drawn-up knees, then spoke in a flat tone.
“I did not tell you everything that happened when the deserters took me,” she said. “I fought them. They became angry, and one of them decided to teach me not to defy them. He took a brand from their cook-fire, and pushed it at my face. I turned away ... and the flame burned the top of my head. There are scars ... it is horrible. You must not see it. You must not!”
Babakar reached out and pulled Amma down to his broad chest. She yielded easily, and nestled passively against him.
“Yet another outrage that the Sussu must answer for,” he said bitterly. “Would that I’d killed as many of them for you as I did for ... my other family.”
Then his tone turned gentle.
“My feelings for you are not so shallow that I would turn from the sight of what the Noba did to you,” he said. “But if you prefer that I not see it, I will never again put my hand near your turban.”
Amma leaned forward and covered Babakar’s lips with hers. His arms tightened around her; she returned his embrace with an ardor beyond any he had experienced before. Their love was consummated in a fierce flow of passion that left Babakar spent and drowsy.
So deep was the slumber he soon fell into that he was not disturbed when Amma extricated herself from his embrace, hastily donned her asokaba and quietly slipped out of their dwelling, being especially careful not to rustle the rectangle of cloth that hung across the doorway. Nor did he waken when, only an hour before the rising of the sun, she returned.
AMMA SEEMED STRANGELY subdued as she and Babakar walked to the wassa-field in the morning. Her fingers hung lifelessly in his grasp, and her eyes were downcast. Babakar wondered if he had unknowingly done something wrong the night before. Surely, Amma had enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he ... or had she?
Possibly she now recalled the depredations of the Noba who had ravished her, which she may have forgotten during the ecstasy of the night. Babakar wanted to assure Amma that she was secure with him. But if she had
