Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [114]
The next day I saw a black heron flying overhead. And then a praying mantis, weighed down by sodden wings, clinging to the railing. I put her in an empty cup until her wings dried out again. I saw the flags of a line of herring boats on the horizon. We were close to land.
All morning it took for the ship to dock, my stomach flipping like a beached fish every moment. Despite the tea, my lips were parched and flaking. The salt glistened on my skin like powdered diamonds. My clothes, which had been soaked and dried several times, were now stiff as paper. Still, my discomfort was soon forgotten as I followed Madam Turay through the streets of the city.
Lagos! It smelled quite like our city, and it looked and sounded a bit like it, too. But, oh, in every other way the difference between them was immense. Our city was a simple melody, whistled by a solitary man. Lagos was one hundred pipes, horns and drummers. There was so much to see, I can’t tell you. What I can tell you is the thing I remember most. The women! So tall and proud (and frequently hard faced), who wore their headdresses as high as the roofs of the houses.
Madam Turay worked fast and I followed at her heels, my ears, eyes and brain absorbing everything. Shop owners pulled out bolt after bolt of fabric at the wave of her hand: Dutch Wax, batiks, prints. And other fabrics, delicate to the touch: cambric, georgette, crêpe de Chine, organza, brocade. Still others I had never heard of: shantung, duchesse, bombazine. The shopkeepers who were sometimes Indians and sometimes Syrians indicated which cloths were currently in fashion among the women of Lagos. Prices were agreed with a barely perceptible nod of the head. At night we returned to the house where we stayed with four other women. Two from Ghana. One from Guinea. Another from Upper Volta. All doing the same thing we were doing. All traders. Some buying. Some selling. The Ghanaian woman showed us some samples of cloth, heavy machine-loomed cotton in green, yellow and gold. She told us we could order in any colours we desired, for she was the owner of the factory where the cloth was made.
Within two months of our return all the cloth we had bought was sold. Madam Turay was delighted. She had given me thirty lappas, each measuring two yards, to sell initially. She offered me a ten per cent commission, we agreed twelve. One evening I cooked and invited a number of women round to my house. After we had eaten I opened my chest, the big one my mother had once owned, and I displayed the lappas. For those who bought three I discounted the last. I encouraged the women to return the next week and bring a friend. Whenever a woman introduced me to a new customer she was rewarded with a discount on her next purchase.
I followed Madam Turay to Lagos and then to Accra. Four months later we went into partnership and I began to make the trips alone. The following year we opened a store right in the centre of town, close to the Agip petrol station and the place the long-distance buses arrived and departed. On the morning we raised the sign ‘Kholifa Turay Cloth Merchants’ there was already a sizeable crowd outside, we could only allow six inside at a time while the others waited outside, some under the shade of the awning, the ones at