Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [46]
Kunta heard the marabout speak words in Arabic over him—which he couldn’t understand, except for his grandfather’s name—and he felt the holy man’s fingers touching his head as lightly as a butterfly’s wing, and then he went dashing back among those of his own age as the marabout went to meet the others in the welcoming party, conversing with them as if he were an ordinary man. The young ones in Kunta’s group began to trail away and stare at the long line of wives, children, students, and slaves who brought up the rear of the procession.
The marabout’s wives and children quickly retired into guest huts. The students, taking seats on the ground and opening their headbundles, withdrew books and manuscripts—the property of their teacher, the holy man—and began reading aloud to those who gathered around each of them to listen. The slaves, Kunta noticed, didn’t enter the village with the others. Remaining outside the fence, the slaves squatted down near where they had tethered the cattle and penned the goats. They were the first slaves Kunta had ever seen who kept away from other people.
The holy man could scarcely move for all the people on their knees around him. Villagers and distinguished visitors alike pressed their foreheads to the dirt and wailed for him to hear their plaints, some of the nearest presuming to touch his garment. Some begged him to visit their villages and conduct long-neglected religious services. Some asked for legal decisions, since law and religion were companions under Islam. Fathers asked to be given meaningful names for new babies. People from villages without an arafang asked if their children might be taught by one of the holy man’s students.
These students were now busily selling small squares of cured goathide, which many hands then thrust toward the holy man for him to make his mark on. A holy-marked piece of goatskin, sewn into a treasured saphie charm such as Kunta wore around his upper arm, would insure the wearer’s constant nearness to Allah. For the two cowrie shells he had brought with him from Juffure, Kunta purchased a square of goathide and joined the jostling crowd that pressed in upon the marabout.
It ran through Kunta’s mind that his grandfather must have been like this holy man, who had the power, through Allah, to bring the rain to save a starving village, as Kairaba Kunta Kinte had once saved Juffure. So his beloved grandmas Yaisa and Nyo Boto had told him since he was old enough to understand. But only now, for the first time, did he truly understand the greatness of his grandfather—and of Islam. Only one person, thought Kunta, was going to be told why he had decided to spend his precious two cowries and now stood holding his own small square of cured goatskin waiting his turn for a holy mark. He was going to take the blessed goatskin back home and turn it over to Nyo Boto, and ask her to keep it for him until the time came to sew it into a precious saphie chaim for the arm of his own first son.
CHAPTER 21
Kunta’s kafo, galled with envy of his trip, and expecting that he would return to Juffure all puffed up with himself, had decided—without any of them actually saying so—to show no interest whatever in him or his travels when he returned. And so they did, thinking nothing of how heartsick it made Kunta feel to arrive home and find his lifelong mates not only acting as if he hadn’t been away, but actually ending conversations if he came near, his dearest friend Sitafa acting even colder than the others. Kunta was so upset that he hardly even thought about his new infant brother, Suwadu, who had been born while he was away with Omoro.
One noon, as the goats grazed, Kunta finally decided to overlook his mates’ unkindness and try to patch things up. Walking over to the other boys,