Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [30]
Always, at his next chance, Kunta would wait until Lamin was out of the hut and then ask Binta or Omoro the answer he needed for Lamin. He never told them why he asked them both so many questions, but it seemed as if they knew. In fact, they seemed to act as if they had begun to regard Kunta as an older person, since he had taken on more responsibility with his little brother. Before long, Kunta was speaking sharply to Lamin in Binta’s presence about things done wrongly. “You must talk clearly!” he might say with a snap of his fingers. Or he might whack Lamin for not jumping swiftly enough to do anything his mother had ordered him to do. Binta acted as if she neither saw nor heard.
So Lamin made few moves now without either his mother’s or his brother’s sharp eyes upon him. And Kunta now had only to ask Binta or Omoro any questions of Lamin’s and they immediately told him the answer.
“Why is father’s bullock’s hide mat of that red color? A bullock isn’t red.”
“I dyed the hide of the bullock with lye and crushed millet,” replied Binta.
“Where does Allah live?”
“Allah lives where the sun comes from,” said Omoro.
CHAPTER 16
“What are slaves?” Lamin asked Kunta one afternoon. Kunta grunted and fell silent. Walking on, seemingly lost in thought, he was wondering what Lamin had overheard to prompt that question. Kunta knew that those who were taken by toubob became slaves, and he had overheard grown-ups talking about slaves who were owned by people in Juffure. But the fact was that he really didn’t know what slaves were. As had happened so many other times, Lamin’s question embarrassed him into finding out more.
The next day, when Omoro was getting ready to go out after some palm wood to build Binta a new food storehouse, Kunta asked to join his father; he loved to go off anywhere with Omoro. But neither spoke this day until they had almost reached the dark, cool palm grove.
Then Kunta asked abruptly, “Fa, what are slaves?”
Omoro just grunted at first, saying nothing, and for several minutes moved about, in the grove, inspecting the trunks of different palms.
“Slaves aren’t always easy to tell from those who aren’t slaves,” he said finally. Between blows of his bush ax against the palm he had selected, he told Kunta that slaves’ huts were roofed with nyantang jongo and free people’s huts with nyantang foro, which Kunta knew was the best quality of thatching grass.
“But one should never speak of slaves in the presence of slaves,” said Omoro, looking very stern. Kunta didn’t understand why, but he nodded as if he did.
When the palm tree fell, Omoro began chopping away its thick, tough fronds. As Kunta plucked off for himself some of the ripened fruits, he sensed his father’s mood of willingness to talk today. He thought happily how now he would be able to explain to Lamin all about slaves.
“Why are some people slaves and others not?” he asked.
Omoro said that people became slaves in different ways. Some were born of slave mothers—and he named a few of those who lived in Juffure, people whom Kunta knew well. Some of them were the parents of some of his own kafo mates. Others, said Omoro, had once faced starvation during their home villages’ hungry season, and they had come to Juffure and begged to become the slaves of someone who agreed to feed and provide for them. Still others—and he named some of Juffure’s older people—had once been enemies and been captured as prisoners. “They become slaves, being not brave enough to die rather than be taken,” said Omoro.
He had begun chopping the trunk of the palm into sections of a size that a strong man could carry. Though all he had named were slaves, he said, they were all respected people, as Kunta well knew. “Their rights are guaranteed by the laws of our forefathers,” said Omoro, and he explained that all masters had to provide their slaves with food, clothing, a house, a farm plot to work on