Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [35]
“Our father’s brothers are also the sons of Kairaba Kunta Kinte, for whom I am named,” said Kunta proudly. “But our uncles Janneh and Saloum were born of Sireng,” he said. Lamin looked puzzled, but Kunta kept on explaining. “Sireng was our grandfather’s first wife, who died before he married our Grandma Yaisa.” Kunta arranged twigs on the ground to show the Kinte family’s different individuals. But he could see that Lamin still didn’t understand. With a sigh, he began to talk instead of their uncles’ adventures, which Kunta himself had thrilled to so often when his father had told of them.
“Our uncles have never taken wives for themselves because their love of traveling is so great,” said Kunta. “For moons on end, they travel under the sun and sleep under the stars. Our father says they have been where the sun burns upon endless sand, a land where there is never any rain.” In another place their uncles had visited, said Kunta, the trees were so thick that the forests were dark as night even in the daytime. The people of this place were no taller than Lamin, and like Lamin, always went naked—even after they grew up. And they killed huge elephants with tiny, poisoned darts. In still another place, a land of giants, Janneh and Saloum had seen warriors who could throw their hunting spears twice as far as the mightiest Mandinka, and dancers who could leap higher than their own heads, which were six hands higher than the tallest man in Juffure.
Before bedtime, as Lamin watched with wide eyes, Kunta acted out his favorite of all the stories—springing suddenly about with an imaginary sword slashing up and down, as if Lamin were one of the bandits whom their uncles and others had fought off every day on a journey of many moons, heavily laden with elephants’ teeth, precious stones, and gold, to the great black city of Zimbabwe.
Lamin begged for more stories, but Kunta told him to go to sleep. Whenever Kunta had been made to go to bed after his father told him such tales, he would lie on his mat—as his little brother now would—with his mind making the uncles’ stories into pictures. And sometimes Kunta would even dream that he was traveling with his uncles to all the strange places, that he was talking with the people who looked and acted and lived so differently from the Mandinkas. He had only to hear the names of his uncles and his heart would quicken.
A few days later, it happened that their names reached Juffure in a manner so exciting that Kunta could hardly contain himself. It was a hot, quiet afternoon, and just about everyone in the village was sitting outside his hut’s doorway or in the shade of the baobab—when suddenly there came a sharp burst of drumtalk from the next village. Like the grown-ups, Kunta and Lamin cocked their heads intently to read what the drum was saying. Lamin gasped aloud when he heard his own father’s name. He wasn’t old enough to understand the rest, so Kunta whispered the news it brought: Five days of walking in the way the sun rose, Janneh and Saloum Kinte were building a new village. And their brother Omoro was expected for the ceremonial blessing of the village on the second next new moon.
The drumtalk stopped; Lamin was full of questions. “Those are our uncles? Where is that place? Will our fa go there?” Kunta didn’t reply. Indeed, as Kunta dashed off across the village toward the hut of the jaliba, he barely heard his brother. Other people were already gathering there—and then came Omoro, with the big-bellied Binta behind him. Everyone watched as Omoro and the jaliba spoke briefly, and Omoro gave him a gift. The talking drum lay near a small fire, where its goatskin head was heating to extreme tautness. Soon the crowd looked on as the jaliba’s hands pounded out Omoro’s reply that, Allah willing, he would be in his brothers’ new village before