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By Root 1322 0

to deliver his possessions to the husband, one at a time, until the husband said “I have enough,” which might not be until the adulterer had only his bare hut left. But with both men poor, which was usually the case, the Council might order the offender to work as the husband’s slave for a period of time considered worth the wrongful use of his wife. And Kunta flinched for one repeated offender when the elders set a date and time for him to receive a public flogging of thirty-nine lashes across his bare back by his most recently wronged husband, according to the ancient Moslem rule of “forty, save one.”

Kunta’s own thoughts about getting married cooled somewhat as he watched and listened to the angry testimony of injured wives and husbands before the Council. Men charged that their wives failed to respect them, were unduly lazy, were unwilling to make love when their turn came, or were just generally impossible to live with. Unless an accused wife presented a strong counterargument, with some witnesses to bear her out, the senior elders usually told the husband to go that day and set any three possessions of his wife’s outside her hut and then utter toward those possessions, three times, with witnesses present, the words, “I divorce you!”

A wife’s most serious charge—certain to bring out every woman in the village if it was suspected in advance—was to claim that her husband was not a man, meaning that he was inadequate with her in bed. The elders would appoint three old persons, one from the family of the defiant wife, another from the family of the husband, and the third from among the elders themselves. A date and time would be set for them to observe the wife and husband together in his bed. If two of the three voted that the wife was right, she won her divorce, and her family kept the dowry goats; but if two observers voted that the husband performed well, he not only got the goats back but also could beat the wife and divorce her if he wished to.

In the rains since Kunta had returned from manhood training, no case that had been considered by the Council filled him and his mates with as much anticipation as the one that began with gossip and whispering about two older members of their own kafo and a pair of Juffre’s most eligible widows. On the day the matter finally came before the Council, nearly everyone in the village gathered early to assure themselves of the best possible seats. A number of routine old people’s problems were settled first, and then came the case of Dembo Dabo and Kadi Tamba, who had been granted a divorce more than a rain before but now were back before the Council grinning widely and holding hands and asking permission to remarry. They stopped grinning when the senior elder told them sternly: “You insisted on divorce, therefore you may not remarry—until each of you has had another wife and husband in between.”

The gasps from those in the rear were hushed by the drumtalk announcement of the next names to be called: “Tuda Tamba and Kalilu Conteh! Fanta Bedeng and Sefo Kela!” The two members of Kunta’s kafo and the two widows stood up. The taller widow, Fanta Bedeng, spoke for all of them, sounding as if she had carefully practiced what to say; but nervousness still gripped her. “Tuda Tamba with her thirty-two rains and I with my thirty-three have small chance of catching more husbands,” she said, and proceeded to ask the Council to approve of teriya friendships for her and Tuda Tamba to cook for and sleep with Sefo Kela and Kalilu Conteh, respectively.

Different elders asked a few questions of all four—the widows responding confidently, Kunta’s friends uncertainly, in sharp contrast to their usual boldness of manner. And then the elders turned around, murmuring among themselves. The audience was so tense and quiet that a dropped groundnut could have been heard as the elders finally turned back around. The senior elder spoke: “Allah would approve! You widows will have a man to use, and you new men will get valuable experience for when you marry later.”

The senior elder rapped his stick twice