As the boats sailed into the peninsular, Abram realised the gossip had been more than just hype. He quickly ran to shore to warn the elders, but the boats beat him to the beach. They were much faster; his scrawny physique struggled to fight the waves which the ship’s stern thrust in his direction. As he climbed onto the beach, his arms were pulled back. He looked behind him; two soldiers grabbed him and threw him onto the ground. He felt his hands being forced into a cross behind him and the thrust of rope eating into the flesh of his wrists, which burned as it tightened. They rolled him over and shoved a stone ball into his mouth; he could taste the burning stone fester into his tongue having been left in the African heat to cook on the journey over.
He was lifted up and marched at gunpoint across a wobbly plank and onto the ship. The wooden vessel weighed nearly five hundred tonnes. He was taken down into the cabin and tied vertically to a wooden shaft.
Outside, Abram could hear the screams of the villagers. The recognisable screech of his mother’s yells haunted him for the rest of his life as she begged her captors for mercy. The distant whoosh of a whip carved into the flesh of his sister, before she and the rest of his family and neighbours were marched down into the cabin and tied up beside him. Abram’s personal space diminished as more of the villagers boarded.
He wasn’t sure how long he had spent on that boat but it felt like weeks. The transition between day and night could only be determined through a small crack of sunlight in the ceiling and he soon lost count. His stomach ached from hunger but he became increasingly grateful for the lack of food. Eating led to defecating and he’d already had enough of that. He retched as he breathed in the odour of faeces, urine and death as a warm sticky current slushed around his bare feet.
The whimpers of his fellow passengers ended after several days. They were either dead or they’d given up their pleas and instead looked forward to the sweet relief of death. When the boat eventually stopped, they were carted off the ship and onto a beach. A chain was wrapped around his neck and strung up to the individuals to either side of him as they marched through the sand. His head was covered with a sack, blocking his view of his location. At first he thought he’d found his way back home as he felt the grain of sand trickle through his toes, but the drop in temperature said otherwise; he felt a chill in the air. The captors spoke in a language which he did not recognise and he stood in wonder at what his fate had planned for him.
A pull on his chains and the sound of scurrying forced him over. A gunshot sent a shiver down their spines, followed by a thud of the escapee, collapsing onto the floor, bringing all who were chained to the girl down with her. Abram didn’t have long to mourn his neighbour before he was pulled up. The sack was removed from his head. The sunlight hurt his eyes and he squinted to view his surroundings. Before him, a red-bricked house with windows stood proudly on the beach; he hadn’t seen this type of architecture before, it was quite impressive.
Hundreds of half-naked Africans, covered in blood, scars and vomit, surrounded him. They were lined up and inspected by white men in beige suits and hats. He was poked and prodded, before salt water was poured into his wounds, which stung as it oozed into the gash. He yelped in pain. The doctor inspecting him slapped him and shouted, ‘Be quiet!’
Abram looked around for his mother. In the distance, he could just make her out. She too peered round looking for her family. She looked ill, shrunken and pale. Her smile was broken; it was rare not to see those white teeth shine brightly in the African sun. But the African sun had now gone and so had her smile. A once proud woman now appeared withered before these powerful white men. This fragile creature had been stripped of all her clothes and her dignity. After prodding her, the doctor shook his head. She was marched five feet away from her neighbours and shot in the head. The sound of the bullet echoed across the beach.
He screamed as he watched his darling mother meet her Maker. The doctor slapped him again but this time he did not cooperate. Abram fell to the floor and wailed, tasting the sand as he laid his head on the ground. The back of his hair was yanked and he was pulled up, gagged and blindfolded before being marched away from the people he’d known all his life. ‘Is this the end? Please let it be over,’ he prayed and listened out for gunfire.
But there was no gunshot. Instead he heard the clinking sound of silver. Abram was handed over to another man, who forced him into the back of a cart and carried away from the beach. When the vehicle stopped ten hours later, he was dragged out, his sack was removed from his head and he was marched into a field which he later discovered was in a place called Oklahoma. Miles of cotton plants surrounded him and in the distance he could see the most beautiful house he’d ever seen. A two-storey detached mansion with white wooden cladding stretched across the meadow. A white woman sat on the porch in a rocking chair, watching over the workers in the field.
The workmen were like Abram: African. They didn’t look up at the
