Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [34]
For the rest of their lives, “even when you have come to be men,” said their father, they must be on guard for toubob. “He often shoots his firesticks, which can be heard far off. And wherever you see much smoke away from any villages, it is probably his cooking fires, which are too big. You should closely inspect his signs to learn which way the toubob went. Having much heavier footsteps than we do, he leaves signs you will recognize as not ours: He breaks twigs and grasses. And when you get close where he has been, you will find that his scent remains there. It’s like a wet chicken smells. And many say a toubob sends forth a nervousness that we can feel. If you feel that, become quiet, for often he can be detected at some distance.”
But it’s not enough to know the toubob, said Omoro. “Many of our own people work for him. They are slatee traitors. But without knowing them, there is no way to recognize them. In the bush, therefore, trust no one you don’t know.”
Kunta and Lamin sat frozen with fear. “You cannot be told these things strongly enough,” said their father. “You must know what your uncles and I saw happening to those who had been stolen. It is the difference between slaves among ourselves and those whom toubob takes away to be slaves for him.” He said that they saw stolen people chained inside long, stout, heavily guarded bamboo pens along the shore of the river. When small canoes brought important-acting toubob from the big canoes, the stolen people were dragged outside their pens onto the sand.
“Their heads had been shaved, and they had been greased until they shined all over. First they were made to squat and jump up and down,” said Omoro. “And then, when the toubob had seen enough of that, they ordered the stolen people’s mouths forced open for their teeth and their throats to be looked at.”
Swiftly, Omoro’s finger touched Kunta’s crotch, and as Kunta jumped, Omoro said, “Then the men’s foto was pulled and looked at. Even the women’s private parts were inspected.” And the toubob finally made the people squat again and stuck burning hot irons against their backs and shoulders. Then, screaming and struggling, the people were shipped toward the water, where small canoes waited to take them out to the big canoes.
“My brothers and I watched many fall onto their bellies, clawing and eating the sand, as if to get one last hold and bite of their own home,” said Omoro. “But they were dragged and beaten on.” Even in the small canoes out in the water, he told Kunta and Lamin, some kept fighting against the whips and the clubs until they jumped into the water among terrible long fish with gray backs and white bellies and curved mouths full of thrashing teeth that reddened the water with their blood.
Kunta and Lamin had huddled close to each other, each gripping the other’s hands. “It’s better that you know these things than that your mother and I kill the white cock one day for you.” Omoro looked at his sons. “Do you know what that means?”
Kunta managed to nod, arid found his voice. “When someone is missing, Fa?” He had seen families frantically chanting to Allah as they squatted around a white cock bleeding and flapping with its throat slit.
“Yes,” said Omoro. “If the white cock dies on its breast, hope remains. But when a white cock flaps to death on its back, then no hope remains, and the whole village joins the family in crying to Allah.”
“Fa—” Lamin’s voice, squeaky with fear, startled Kunta, “where do the big canoes take the stolen people?”
“The elders say to Jong Sang Doo,” said Omoro, “a land where slaves are sold to huge cannibals called toubabo koomi, who eat us. No man knows any more about it.”
CHAPTER 17
So frightened was Lamin by his father’s talk of slave-taking and white cannibals