Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [127]
One thing he didn’t hear, it occurred to him, and hadn’t heard since he left Africa, was the sound of drums. The toubob probably didn’t allow these black people to have any drums, that had to be the reason. But why? Was it because the toubob knew and feared how the sound of the drums could quicken the blood of everyone in a village, until even the little children and the toothless old ones would dance wildly? Or how the rhythm of the drums would drive wrestlers to their greatest feats of strength? Or how the hypnotic beat could send warriors into a frenzy against their enemies? Or perhaps the toubob were simply afraid to allow a form of communication they couldn’t understand that could travel the distance between one farm and another.
But these heathen blacks wouldn’t understand drumtalk any better than the toubob. Kunta was forced to concede, though—if only with great reluctance—that these pagan blacks might not be totally irredeemable. Ignorant as they were, some of the things they did were purely African, and he could tell that they were totally unaware of it themselves. For one thing, he had heard all his life the very same sounds of exclamation, accompanied by the very same hand gestures and facial expressions. And the way these blacks moved their bodies was also identical. No less so was the way these blacks laughed when they were among themselves—with their whole bodies, just like the people of Juffure.
And Kunta had been reminded of Africa in the way that black women here wore their hair tied up with strings into very tight plaits—although African women often decorated their plaits with colorful beads. And the women of this place knotted cloth pieces over their heads, although they didn’t tie them correctly. Kunta saw that even some of these black men wore their hair in short plaits, too, as some men did in Africa.
Kunta also saw Africa in the way that black children here were trained to treat their elders with politeness and respect. He saw it in the way that mothers carried their babies with their plump little legs straddling the mothers’ bodies. He noticed even such small customs as how the older ones among these blacks would sit in the evenings rubbing their gums and teeth with the finely crushed end of a twig, which would have been lemongrass root in Juffure. And though he found it difficult to understand how they could do it here in toubob land, Kunta had to admit that these blacks’ great love of singing and dancing was unmistakably African.
But what really began to soften his heart somewhat toward these strange people was the fact that over the past moon, their great showing of distaste for him had continued only when the “oberseer” or the “massa” was around. When Kunta came by anywhere the blacks were among themselves, most of them by now would quickly nod, and he would notice their expressions of concern for the worsening condition of his left ankle. Though he always coldly ignored them and hobbled on, he would sometimes find himself later almost wishing that he had returned their nods.
One night, when Kunta had fallen asleep but drifted again into wakefulness, as he often did, he lay staring up into the darkness and feeling that Allah had somehow, for some reason, willed him to be here in this place amid the lost tribe of a great black family that reached its roots back among the ancient forefathers; but unlike himself, these black ones in this place had no knowledge whatsoever of who they were and where they’d come from.
Feeling around him, in some strange way, the presence of his holy-man grandfather, Kunta reached out into the darkness. There was nothing to