Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [45]
Kunta ran to join his father at the fireside just in time to hear the alimamo’s prayer. After it, no one said anything for a few minutes. Crickets rasped loudly, and the smoky fires cast dancing shadows upon the wide circle of faces. Finally, the leathery old elder spoke: “Hundreds of rains before even my earliest memories, talk reached across the big waters of an African mountain of gold. This is what first brought toubob to Africa!” There was no gold mountain, he said, but gold beyond description had been found in streams and mined from deep shafts first in northern Guinea, then later in the forests of Ghana. “Toubob was never told where gold came from,” said the old man, “for what one toubob knows, soon they all know.”
Then Janneh spoke. Nearly as precious as gold in many places, he said, was salt. He and Saloum had personally seen salt and gold exchanged in equal weights. Salt was found in thick slabs under certain distant sands, and certain waters elsewhere would dry into a salty mush, which was shaped into blocks after sitting in the sun.
“There was once a city of salt,” said the old man. “The city of Taghaza, whose people built their houses and mosques of blocks of salt.”
“Tell of the strange humpbacked animals you have spoken of before now,” demanded an ancient-looking old woman, daring to interrupt. She reminded Kunta of Grandmother Nyo Boto.
A hyena howled somewhere in the night as people leaned forward in the flickering light. It was Saloum’s turn to speak. “Those animals that are called camels live in a place of endless sand. They find their way across it from the sun, the stars, and the wind. Janneh and I have ridden these animals for as long as three moons with few stops for water.”
“But many stops to fight off the bandits!” said Janneh.
“Once we were part of a caravan of twelve thousand camels,” Saloum continued. “Actually, it was many smaller caravans traveling together to protect ourselves against bandits.”
Kunta saw that as Saloum spoke, Janneh was unrolling a large piece of tanned hide. The elder made an impatient gesture to two young men who sprang to throw onto the fire some dry branches. In the flaring light, Kunta and the others could follow Janneh’s finger as it moved across a strange-looking drawing. “This is Africa,” he said. The finger traced what he told them was “the big water” to the west, and then “the great sand desert,” a place larger by many times than all of The Gambia—which he pointed out in the lower left of the drawing.
“To the north coast of Africa, the toubob ships bring porcelain, spices, cloth, horses, and countless things made by men,” said Saloum. “Then, camels and donkeys bear those goods inland to places like Sijilmasa, Ghadames, and Marrakech.” The moving finger of Janneh showed where those cities were. “And as we sit here tonight,” said Saloum, “there are many men with heavy headloads crossing deep forests taking our own African goods—ivory, skins, olives, dates, kola nuts, cotton, copper, precious stones—back to the toubob’s ships.”
Kunta’s mind reeled at what he heard, and he vowed silently that someday he too would venture to such exciting places.
“The marabout!” From far out on the trail, the lookout drummer beat out the news. Quickly a formal greeting party was lined up—Janneh and Saloum as the village’s founders; then the Council of Elders, the alimamo, the arafang; then the honored representatives of other villages, including Omoro; and Kunta was placed with those of his height among the village’s young ones. Musicians led them all out toward the travelers’ tree, timing their approach to meet the holy man as he arrived. Kunta stared hard at the white-bearded, very black old man at the head of his long and tired party. Men, women, and children were heavily loaded with large head-bundles, except for a few men herding cattle and, Kunta judged, more than a hundred goats.
With quick gestures, the holy