Rules and Conditions

1. The prize is awarded annually

2. Entries should be published translations of full-length works of imaginative and creative writing of literary merit and general interest, published in the original Arabic no more than 35 years preceding its submission for the prize

3. Entries must have been first published in English translation in the year prior to the award

4. Entries can have been published in English anywhere in the world but must be available for purchase in the United Kingdom via a distributor or on-line.

5. Entries can be by one or more translators

6. Entries can only be submitted by a publisher

7. There is no limit on the number of submissions made by a publisher

8. Five copies of the translation and three copies of the original work should be submitted

9. The closing date for entries for 2013 is 28 February 2013

10. The judges can call in elegible titles that missed being entered by the publisher

For any queries and further information, please email: info@banipaltrust.org.uk

Entries should be sent to:

Paula Johnson
Awards Secretary
The Society of Authors
84 Drayton Gardens
LONDON SW10 9SB
UK

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

2013 NEW WOMEN’S VOICES

CHAPBOOK COMPETITION

A prize of $1,000 and publication for a chapbook-length poetry collection.

Open to women who have never before published a full-length poetry collection.
 

Previous chapbook publication does not disqualify. International
entries are welcome. Multiple submissions are accepted. Leah Maines will judge.

All entries will be considered for publication. The top-ten finalists will be
offered publication. Submit up to 26 pages of poetry, PLUS bio, acknowledgments, SASE and cover letter with a $15 entry fee (pay by check, money order or pay online to pay using your credit card at
http://finishinglinepress.com/submissionguidelines.htm)

Deadline: Feb. 15, 2013
(DEADLINE)

NWV
Competition

Finishing
Line Press
P O Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324

Or
email submission to finishingbooks@aol.com in PDF format only. 

Please confirm payment with submission.

You can pay the entry fee ($15) online here:  http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?cPath=2&products_id=566

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We read general submissions year round. Please visit www.finishinglinepress.com for submission guidelines, and contest announcements and results.

Manuscript must be a paper copy. We do not accept email submissions.  Please include a $15 reading fee with your manuscript.  Submit up to 26 pages of poetry, PLUS bio, acknowledgments, SASE and cover letter with a $15 entry fee (you can pay by check or money order.)

Send to
Finishing Line Press
P O Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324
USA

__________________________

Teen Chess Champion

Rochelle Ballantyne

on Starring in

'Brooklyn Castle'

 

This seventeen-year-old student is featured in a documentary about inner-city students that rank among the nation's top competitive chess players.

by Sierra Tishgart

Photo courtesy of Grant Cornett

At the I.S. 318 middle school in Brooklyn, 65 percent of students live below the federal poverty level. Yet despite the odds, the school has the highest ranked junior high chess team in the country and holds almost 30 national championships—more than any other school in the nation. A new documentary (in theaters on Fri., Oct. 19) takes a close look at how a few select students, including Rochelle Ballantyne, excelled at the game. Rochelle's the only girl featured in Brooklyn Castle, and she has her sights set on becoming the first African-American female master in the history of chess. It's been four years since filming of this documentary commenced—Rochelle is now a high school senior—but her name is still at the top of I.S. 318's list of best players. We spoke to her about competing against mostly male players and making plans for college.

What motivated you to start playing chess?
"My grandmother taught me to play when I was in the third grade. I was really active as a child, and she wanted to find a way to keep me relaxed and get my brain going."

When did you begin to take chess seriously?
"The first time that I won a national tournament when I was in the fifth grade. I won fourth place at the Girls National Championship and that's when I thought, I could really be good at this."

What's driving you to become the first African-American female master in the history of chess?
"My grandmother. When I first started playing, she introduced to me the idea of being the first African-American female chess master. I didn't think about it much because for me it seemed like an impossible feat, and I didn't think it could happen. I wasn't as focused and dedicated as I am now. I didn't think I was a good chess player—people told me I was, but it wasn't my mentality at that moment. But then after she died, that really affected me, because she was the one person that always had confidence in me. She never pushed me, and she always respected me for who I was. I have to reach that goal for her."

Are you still competing against mostly boys?
"I would say no because I like the idea of being the only girl! Winning is just that much more glorious because everyone expects me to lose. But many more girls are getting involved in chess, and I like that. The girls who play chess and go to national tournaments with me are my support system. The boys that I play with don't understand."

How does it feel to have your story broadcasted to the public through the release of this documentary?
"I'm really happy that my story is being told because it's inspirational. I don't want to sound over-confident, but we're really awesome kids and I hope that people see the film and follow suit. The biggest message is that you can achieve anything you want to achieve if you work hard for it. We're living proof of that."

Does it increase the pressure to win?
"With the documentary coming out, the pressure is going to increase. It's a bittersweet feeling to be a girl and one of the top players. To maintain that number one spot and excel in other aspects of life besides chess puts a lot of pressure on me. But I don't want to reach the mark of becoming the first female African-American chess master for other people; I want to reach it for my grandmother and me."

Before you play, what do you do to calm your nerves?
"I usually listen to music. I put my iPod on shuffle and whatever plays, plays."

How does playing chess impact your academic life?
"Chess makes me think. It helps me in school, and it can really help in the college applications. It motivates me and makes me push myself harder."

What about your personal life?
"Chess is emotionally burdening, but when I win, it makes me feel a whole lot better about myself. I feel like I can accomplish so much more, and so that's helped me through the years."

You're about to graduate high school. Do you have plans to attend college next year?
"I really want to go to the University of Pennsylvania or Stanford. I applied through QuestBridge, which is a scholarship program that has a partnership with those schools."

One of the issues raised in this documentary is that I.S. 318 is facing budget cuts, and the chess program is in jeopardy. What do you want audiences to know?
"Kids have achieved so much because of the chess program at I.S. 318, and now because of budget cuts, that program might not be there anymore, and that's really horrible. It's so sad that you can take out money from schools because education is what allows you to succeed in life. My brother goes to I.S. 318 now, and the chess team might not be able to go to nationals. When people watch the movie, I want them to see how important the school is to all of us, and how it molded our lives. We have to pave the way so that other kids can achieve what we've achieved."

Fear of a Black God

– Renee Cox’s

Yo Mama’s Last Supper

By Shantrelle Lewis Friday, June 1st, 2012  

 

During communication with poet and journalist Andre Bagoo, he suggested that we  look for ways to engage with multiple and disparate voices in our community. By inviting scholars, artists, curators, writers and those connected to the cultural industries in the Caribbean region and its diasporas, to comment one their favorite works of art, we hope that this serves as a platform of education, inquiry and conversation. This intention is grounded in the ability for each selected participant to write a few paragraphs to elucidate and comment on their choice. +FAV will be produced twice a month and will present a diversified field of ideas on which we can ponder and thus come to understand the critical and personal nature of how artwork seeps into our consciousness and affects the way we generate and manifest our presence in this world. Curator and cultural activist Shantrelle P. Lewis starts June off.

-ARC Magazine.

 

Shantrelle P. Lewis

 

Anybody depending on somebody else’s gods is expecting a fox not to eat chickens. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

The racialized, Eurocentric homo-gendered iconography of Catholicism automatically coerces someone existing outside of that spectrum to naturally experience isolation and distancing. This is especially probable for a Black girl child who wondered why nowhere in the Catholic Cathedrals where she genuflected, did she see an image of God in the form of sculpture, oil painting, or stain glass window that looked anything remotely like herself.

What happens then, when that same little Black girl, with Jamaican roots and upper-middle class upbringing, interacts with those negating images? She grows up into a Black woman, or most notably, a “rude gyal” with an attitude, who would thirty-something years later unabashedly confront that iconography, in the form of a series entitled Yo Mama. Although according to Genesis 1:26, God created (wo)man in the image of Him(her)self, nowhere in Christian texts could be found a brown skin God with the face of a girl child from the Diaspora. That is not until Renee Cox decided to photograph herself nude as Jesus surrounded by 12 fully-clothed male disciples, all of them Black with the exception of Judas, who was white, and titled the 5-paneled piece Yo Mama’s Last Supper.  

 

Renee Cox's Yo Mama’s Last Supper

 

My first time actually seeing Yo Mama’s Last Supper in person was a week ago during a visit to Renee Cox’s uptown studio in Harlem, New York. Back in 2001 when the piece was stirring up controversy with angry Catholics bearing theoretical pitchforks and torches, I was totally unaware of Ms. Cox’s work. At the time, I too was still a practicing Catholic (thanks to my quintessential New Orleans upbringing), and was in the space of trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, after recently graduating from Howard University and foregoing the medical career that I spent my entire existence up into that point, training for. I’m not sure how I would have reacted to the news or the image itself had I had the opportunity to interact with Cox’s controversial piece at that juncture in my maturation into adulthood. However, thankfully it wouldn’t be until several years later, after my conversion to African spirituality and an African-centered graduate training that I would come in contact with this work and read it through a particular lens.

Brooklyn Museum’s 2001 inclusion of Yo Mama’s Last Supper in the exhibition Committed to the Image, curated by Barbara Millstein, created controversy that is still memorable more than a decade later. The initial backlash, initiated by then New York City Mayor Rudolph Guilliani, was congruous with historical revisionist theology ascribed to more ancient cosmological systems, beliefs and practices, particularly as they relate to Black people. Despite the fact that the development of monotheism itself was first actualized during the 18^th dynasty of ancient Kemet under the rule of the Pharoah Akhenaten and that Jesus Christ is described as an individual with bronze feet and hair like wool, Cox’s audacious decision to confront both the patriarchy and racism persistent in both the structure of the Catholic Church and its iconography, was met with major dissension.

In this case, Guilliani and the Catholic Church’s dual reaction, was in line with the historical response Europeans both abroad and here in the western hemisphere had to African religions after the dawn of the Haitian Revolution. It was because of Dutty Boukman, the Jamaican houngan (Vodou priest), and his co-conspirators that white people began to fear a Black God. If insurrection and thus a successful rebellion was the result of enslaved Africans praying to a God whose face was Black like theirs, than that deity had to be destroyed and demonized by all costs.

Cox’s 1960 birth in Jamaica, comes two centuries after the birth of Boukman, a self-educated enslaved African who would in 1791, invoke the full-fledged support of the lwa and Bon Dje, the “Good God” at a ceremony at Saint-Domingue’s Bwa Kayiman. That ritual would serve as the inaugural event of the first successful rebellion of African people in the Western Hemisphere, which later would become known as the Haitian Revolution. Cox is also the product of the same land from which sprung another fearless warrior who is the subject of another one of her series entitled, Queen Nanny of the Maroons, which she completed in 2005.

Vodou, a world-view which is ancient as it is sacred, with origins in Benin amongst the Fon people, was transported to the New World in the belly of ships that carried human cargo, their memories, fears and resilient capacity to survive. In Vodou, the Supreme Being, Nana Buluku, is in fact a woman – a creation story very similar to that of many peoples throughout the continent of Africa. So when viewed appropriately, through an African-centered, cosmological lens, we see why in Yo Mama’s Last Supper, Cox is indeed, accurately posturing herself as the son (or daughter) of God and thus, according to Christian mythology, God her(his)self.

Viewing Cox’s work today, one sees the contradictions that exists for the Eurocentric, Judeo-Christian gaze, and can understand why her piece created such turmoil when it was included amongst Brooklyn museum’s installation of 200 other pieces created by Black photographers. With understanding or the lack thereof, of the contradictions that define an African cosmological and aesthetic framework  – especially when being able to pull from references such as the God of the mythical Allmuseri people in Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage [1], or the paradoxes expressed by figures such as the Diaspora’s deity Papa Legba – Gotham City’s former mayor and I, most certainly do not read Ms. Cox’s work in the same manner.

Perhaps both knowing and not knowing all of this, this Black woman Jamaican-American photographer inherently embraced her endowed entitlement – a gift bestowed upon her by birth. In her essay, “The Big Picture,” Shelly Eversley elaborates on Cox’s self-privileging – the entitlement she flaunts around series after series after series from Yo Mama to American Family.[2] After recently speaking to the artist at length, I was told that Cox couldn’t wrap her brain around what the big fuss was all about…back then or even now (See: reaction to Yo Mama’s Last Supper in Paraguay’s upcoming exhibition in October 2012).

So after that timeless studio visit, that lasted a few hours but seemed more like the passing of a few moments (not too different from the essence of timelessness of a Yoruba ceremony), we spoke about everything from our shared Catholic upbringings, Ekhart Tolle, maroons, merpeople and Afro-futurism. I had an opportunity to gain an even greater appreciation of the artist behind Yo Mama’s Last Supper, behind the Black woman who was bold enough, authentic enough, and self-aware enough to assert herself as Jesus Christ, the savior.

If Renee Cox could see God as her reflection, and to reference Hurston again if Black women are indeed the mules of the earth,[3] if Black people are indeed the most oppressed creature of humankind, what would happen if every Black woman, man or child, also believed that at their bare essence, they too were the divine? This philosophical quandary, is perhaps the underlying angst experienced by Guilliani, as he gazed upon Cox’s deified self. Perhaps, just as the Hebrew Christ figure before her died for the salvation of his believers, Renee offered her naked body up for martyrdom so that we too may have life eternal.

 

 

[1] Charles Johnson’s 1990 Middle Passage, presents an intriguing tale of the guttural reality of life on a Slaver, as these vessels were called. Though fictional, the story includes the character of a deity who is described in this passage: “’Oh, I’m not one to believe in heathen gods, but I know ‘tis different from anythin’ seen back in the States. The Allmuseri have worshipped it since the Stone Age. They say it sustains everythin’ in the universe…Naturally, they do not speak its name. That takes too long. It has a thousand names. Nor do they carve its image. All things are its image: stone and sand. Master and slave.” Johnson, Charles, Middle Passage (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 100-101.

[2] Eversely, Shelly, “Renee Cox: The Big Picture,” NKA, The Journal of Contemporary African Art 18 (Spring Summer 2003): pp. 72 – 75.

[3] The actual phrase, spoken by Janie Starks’ grandmother in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Nanny was “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd.’”

 

+++++++++++++

Shantrelle P. Lewis, a native of New Orleans, is currently the Director of Public Programming and Exhibitions at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) and relocated to Brooklyn in October 2009.  For two years, she worked in the capacity of Executive Director and Curator of the McKenna Museum of African American Art. Having received her undergraduate degree from Howard University and master’s degree from Temple University’s Department of African American Studies, Ms. Lewis has demonstrated a commitment to researching, documenting and preserving African Diasporan culture. Additionally, she works with young artists and independently curates exhibits and initiates projects in various cities that are meant to incite, inspire, and shift the paradigms of their audiences.

QUEEN NJINGA’S MILONGAS

The ‘dialogue’ between

Portuguese and Africans

in the Congo and

the Angola wars

(sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries)

In : Africamericas: itineraries, dialogues, and sounds. ed. Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger and Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2008). [1]

 

Among them there are neither golden nor other metal coins as money, nor is there anything else that responds to that, but they use certain things instead, which have their fixed and regular prices, such as slaves - called pieces by us (Informação acerca dos escravos de Angola, 1989 [1576]: 118).

From these [slaves] the number of those captured in war is nothing in comparison with those who are bought on markets, to which the kings and the chiefs of whole Ethiopia send their slaves for sale. This trade is very old among them, and they always used to handle pieces instead of money for buying clothes and whatever else they needed. (História da residência, 1989 [1594]: 188).

The money used in this city of Luanda has different qualities and values. The best is peças de Índias, which are slaves who are shipped to the Indies [the Americas] for the value of 22.000 reis; they also have pieces who are boys, girls, bearded blacks, and less valuable blacks, who are meant for the State of Brazil (Sousa 1985 [1624-1630]: 310).

And the richest mines in this Kingdom of Angola are the quantity of pieces which depart from this port every year, from 7 to 8000 heads of slaves each year (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: 243).

The most important trade of the Portuguese and other whites with the inhabitants [of Congo] is the trade with the slaves, who are shipped to the islands of Puerto Rico, Rio Plata, Santo Domingo, Havana, Cartagena, and to the continent, especially to Brazil and other places, where they are forced to work in the sugar mills and in the mines […]. And the Portuguese and Spaniards, therefore, owe almost all their wealth in the West Indies to the work of these slaves (Dapper 1964 [1688]: 294-295).

European discourse vs. African discourses

In search of a maritime route to India, the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão arrived at the mouth of the Zaire (or Congo) River in 1482. That same year, the Portuguese must have started, although modestly, the extraction of slaves. Two events occured in the following two decades which completely transformed the incipient international trade of African slaves: the Spanish arrival in the Caribbean (1492), as well as on the American continent (1498), and that of the Portuguese in Brazil (1500). Based on forced labour, the development of mining in Spanish continental America and the creation of a sugar industry in the Caribbean and Brazil led to the deportation of an ever-increasing number of African slaves. For more than two centuries, Central Africa was to be desolated by the European slave trade. It has to be remembered that this would not have been possible without the collaboration of local kings, chiefs, and other agents. Assigned to satisfy the voracity of an ever-expanding slave market, Angola, at that time, entered world history as a sub-colony of Brazil (Rodrigues 1982: chapter II).

 One of the consequences of the irruption of European slave-traders was the breaking out of a more or less generalized war between the Africans and the intruders. This war may also be read as a ‘war of discourses’ or a ‘dialogue’ – certainly asymmetrical – between the European conquerors and their local adversaries. Which sources are we allowed to use in order to study this ‘dialogue’? Unfortunately, we are not able to retrieve authentic African “voices” of this period. Undoubtedly contemporary Africans tried to shape, in their songs or oral narratives, the trauma caused by the irruption of the European slave-traders, but no written testimony of such literary productions has been preserved. The few written ‘African’ sources are the letters in which local chiefs – called mani or muene in Congo and soba[2] in the Ndongo (central area of the present-day Republic of Angola) – used to address Portuguese authorities. Eminently diplomatic, such letters – written in Portuguese – do not reveal the real thoughts of their African authors. The remaining sources are exclusively European: chronicles, reports, and letters written by navigators, traders, political agents, governors, and priests, all of them involved in the colonial slave trade. Fortunately for us, not all of these documents represent a purely official or unilateral view of the events. Less marked by the official ideology than their Spanish colleagues involved in the conquest of America (cf. Lienhard 2003), some of these “writers” did little to disguise the real goals of the conquerors or to keep secret the resistance of their adversaries. None of them, however, was really interested to know how the African chiefs or their subjects thought about Portuguese intrusion. For that reason, the historian trying to discover the “discourse” of Africans in the documents written mostly by their European adversaries resembles someone listening to a phone talk between an individual located close to him and his distant phone partner. In such a situation, the indiscrete listener cannot hear the utterances of the distant interlocutor, but he is able to imagine them. Thanks to Bakhtine’s research about the ‘dialogical’ nature of language, we know that any statement, as an element of a speech chain, refers to a previous utterance and anticipates, in one way or another, the following utterances (Bakhtine 1977). That means that an unheard or ‘lost’ utterance may be reconstructed from the preceding and/or the following utterances.

            In the Portuguese reports mentioned before, the role of the ‘distant interlocutor’ is performed by the “silent” Africans. We cannot hear their voices, but we can try to imagine their reactions. On this base, we will analyze a certain amount of letters, chronicles, and reports written mostly between 1580 and 1680 by different actors of the military, economic, and ‘spiritual’ colonization of the territory the Portuguese named “Angola”[3]. Two of these texts are ‘classics’: Descrição histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola (‘Description of the Three Kingdoms of Congo, Matamba and Angola’, 1965 [1687]) by the Capuchin Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi de Montecúccolo, and the História geral das guerras angolanas (‘General History of the Angolan Wars’, 1972 [1680]) by António de Oliveira de Cadornega. Particularly rich in ‘echoing’ African voices, however, is the lesser-known “Extensive report” (published by Beatrix Heintze in 1985) in which Fernando de Sousa, Portuguese governor of Angola between 1624 and 1630, addressed his sons inviting them “ to learn from things that happened to me ; I give you a written account of them as of landmarks of government errors in order to allow you to choose” (Sousa 1985: 217). In contrast to the majority of the reports produced during the conquest of the Congo-Angola area, and without excluding the more official writings of the same author, this text manifests an uncommon lack of premeditation. It is a sort of diary in which the governor successively recorded the manoeuvres of his adversaries as well as the measures he took to strengthen the Portuguese hegemony in the region. As a diary, this text is rather “spontaneous” and does not obey “political correctness”. In a more official document, Fernão de Sousa certainly would have made the effort to reinterpret all the events in the light of the ‘political’ image he wished to give of himself to his principal addressee, the Luso-Spanish Crown. In his “Extensive report”, the governor also transcribes or summarizes the correspondence received from his interlocutors: Portuguese officials and African chiefs, allies or adversaries. All of these other ‘voices’ contribute to reinforce the “dialogicity” of this report.

Mona N’Zinga, Yonamine, 2005, técnica mista sobre tela 4 x [60 x 80cm] Cortesia Colecção Sindika Dokolo, Luanda 

 

Slavery and Slave Trade

The famous ‘kingdom of Congo’ – Kóngo dia ntôtíla (Kongo of the King) – existed before the arrival of the Portuguese expansionists in 1482.[4] The central part of this rather vaguely defined state embraced the Kongo ‘provinces’ or chiefdoms of Sonyo, Nsundi, Mpangu, Mbamba, Mpemba, and Mbata. Its capital, Mbanza Kongo, thereafter baptized São Salvador by the Portuguese, was located in the north of the present-day republic of Angola. During the reign of Dom Afonso I or Mbemba a Nzinga (1509-1540), the kingdom of Congo, as a vassal state of the Portuguese empire, was a reservoir for slave labour. In the final years of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese, because of the difficulties encountered in obtaining pieces in sufficient quantity (Glasgow 1982: 24), transferred their slavery headquarters south to Luanda, but they still considered the king of Congo as their vassal. When demanding his collaboration in expelling the Dutch in the 1620s, for example, the governor of Angola, Fernão de Sousa, recalls the ‘benefits’ the kingdom of Congo had received from the Portuguese, including ‘Christianity’ and military support against the jaga warriors in 1571 (Sousa 1985: 222).

            Officially, the justification for Portuguese penetration in Central Africa was the conversion of the autochthonous kings to Christianity. As a matter of fact, the evangelization of the “savages” was part of the conditions the Pope imposed on the Iberian powers when he divided the ‘world’ among them in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. However, even a superficial reading of the Portuguese reports of the conquest of the Congo-Angola area demonstrates that the actual preoccupations of the conquerors were quite different. The only goal they had in mind was obtaining the greatest possible number of pieces for exportation. On account of the Portuguese aggression, a permanent war developed in the matos and savannas of Angola between the intruders and the local chiefs who tried to defend their sovereignty and, at times, their own position in the slave trade.  In the last years of the sixteenth century, the Angola-based Jesuits remarked that “as you learn by seeing the many slaves shipped to Portugal and in even greater quantity to the State of Brazil and the mines of the Spanish Indies, as well as by considering the high income earned by the economy of His Majesty thanks to the slave trade, the number of slaves obtained each year in Angola is very considerable” (História da residência, 1989 [1594]: 188). Not the conversion of the Africans, but the slave trade was, actually, the context in which the first exchanges between Africans and Europeans took place. Even for the clergy, the evangelization of the Africans was never a priority. In his “Extensive report”, Fernão de Sousa brutally stated: “Until now, the way of baptizing the heathens has been very insatisfactory, lacking the convenient instruction for the obtention of Holy Baptism, because the priests who came to these parts are more occupied with the buying and shipping of the negroes than with their catechization” (Sousa 1985: 262). It is worthwhile to remember that this blame comes from a governor who never opposed to the slave trade. “The slave markets”, he writes, are “the substance of this kingdom” (Sousa 1985: 223). By the way, no Portuguese writer of that period seems to feel horrified by the transformation of African people into pieces.

            The moral indifference of the Lusitanians toward the enslavement of Africans is not too surprising: the use of slave labor was traditional in the Mediterranean area (Saco 1853; Capela 1978; Maestri Filho 1988a). In spite of that, as if trying to justify the trade, many Portuguese documents of that time declare that the buying and selling of slaves had been established in Africa long before the arrival of the Portuguese: “this trade is very old among them: they are accostumed to make use of pieces instead of money to buy clothes, and whatever else they need” (História da residência, 1989 [1594]: 188). Modern European or African historians also admit the existence of slavery in ancient Africa. But what was slavery in the African tradition? According to Portuguese sources of that period, slavery in Central Africa was based on a conjunction of traditional rules. War prisoners, traitors, and criminals were taken as slaves, but neither noble persons nor women and children could be sold as pieces.[5] Moreover, the sale of slaves took place only at specific times on markets specifically designated for such commercial transactions. Sometimes, slaves could also be given as a tribute to a more powerful chief . Besides, slaves became part of the family of their master and could not be sold, usually, to anybody else.

            With the intrusion of the Europeans, ‘traditional African slavery’ was transformed into ‘colonial slavery’ (Gorender 1985). All the consulted documents underscore that Europens didn’t respect the traditional rules of obtaining slaves. For example, they didn’t hesitate to buy slaves who “had royal blood and were outstanding dignitaries” (Pigafetti e Lopes, 1989: 85). According to Fernão de Sousa (1985: 122), there were also many freed slaves found, among the persons shipped to the Americas.  The most noteworthy novelty of the Atlantic trade was, however, the mass deportation of slaves to a distant continent. The voracity of the American markets was to increase the demand for slaves to a degree never before seen . During the seventeenth century, Brazil alone imported no less than 44,000 pieces yearly (Glasgow 1982: 51).

            In the mind of the slaves, to be a slave in Africa or to be deported to the Americas was not the same. In his Descrição histórica, the Capuchin Cavazzi recalls the terror felt by Africans threatened with deportation to the Americas::

There is a big difference between the slaves of the Portuguese and those of the negroes [Africans]. The first do not only obey words, but even signs. They are especially afraid of being taken to Brazil or to New Spain, because they are convinced that when they arrive at those lands, they will be killed by the buyers, who, as they think, will make gunpowder of their bones and extract of their brains and flesh the oil that is sold in Ethiopia [….]. The reason they invoke is that they sometimes find hair in the leather bottles, which in their opinion comes from humans skinned for that purpose. Therefore, out of fear of being sent to America, they get frantic and try to run away to the forest. Others, at the moment of embarking, challenge the blows and kill themselves, jumping into the water (Cavazzi 1956 [1687]: I. 160).

Aside from such individual acts of resistance, we also know about mass rebellions. In 1798, a Portuguese navigator, Joseph Antonio Pereira, tried to obtain a refund of the damages caused to his ship in the port of Cabinda (present-day Angola) by the rebellion of the 278 slaves he had on board (my cursive)[6] from an insurance company in Cadiz. To be deported outside of Africa was, according to a Portuguese explorer who wrote during that same year, “the worst of all the punishments you could inflict on a caffre” (Almeida 1798: 113). In fact, besides threatening the “peace” of African households, the so-called ‘Atlantic trade’ implied radical changes for the African societies. In the words of Jan Vansina (1990: 197),

[…] the Atlantic trade was a spur, equivalent to the industrial revolution. Its effects must have been equally impressive. However, unlike the industrial revolution, which was home-grown, the Atlantic trade was accompanied by foreign values, attitudes, and ideas. It therefore posed even more of a challenge to the old ways than the industrial revolution did in Europe.

The mato as a refuge

The resistance of the local kings or chiefs against the Portuguese penetration develops mostly in the mato [‘bush’, ‘forest’].  The history of the resistance of ’colonial’ slaves begins, in the African mato as well; it develops simultaneously in the African and the American forests. In his wide-ranging study about the rise of the first states in Central Africa, Vansina (1985) emphasizes the importance of the rainforest in the ancient history of the area. He argues that these states rose in accordance with the regional environment, characterized by the existence of a tropical forest sprinkled with savannas. In Central Africa, the rain forest played a decisive part in the war between Africans and Portuguese. Outside the forest, Africans had only few possibilities to escape the Portuguese aggression. In the villages and in the open savanna, their sole options were slavery or death. However, they soon discovered the ‘bush’ as their safest ally. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits in Angola asserted that, “the Africans are never on the winning hand in the plain field, but when they take shelter in their strongholds, which are dense forests in times that they have leaves, they make fire without being seen, and they mostly damage our men a lot“ (História de residência 1989 [1594], 190). Sometimes, the mato is a stone “forest”. Queen Njinga, “Lady of Angola” (Sousa 1985:223) and a strong enemy of the Portuguese, often fortified herself in the rocky hills of the interior. Difficult to access, the rainforest was, certainly, the strongest ally of Africans who fought – for different reasons – against the Portuguese. For these, men of the Atlantic, the tropical forest was an unknown and unfriendly space, or even a military and theological inferno. The General History of The Angolan Wars by Cadornega (1972 [1680]) reveals the obsession the forest aroused in the imaginary of the Portuguese. In virtue of the abundance of its forests, Cadornega calls Angola “a dense land” (ibidem: I, 102). In the work of this early historian, the forest becomes the quintessential expression of a hostile continent. It represents everything that hinders the advancement of Portuguese penetration. Referring to the fugitive slaves of a former Portuguese governor of Angola, Fernão de Sousa (1985: 286) assures that they “hid themselves in the bush with the intention of defending themselves, apprehensive because of the crimes they had committed and the eating of human flesh” (ibidem). What really troubles the governor is, of course, that the hidden slaves are out of his reach. Instead of recognizing the advantage the knowledge of territory offers to the Africans, he disqualifies them by accusing them of grave crimes against humanity. In his narrative, the forest – like in the famous novel by Joseph Conrad - is the heart of darkness, the very seat of barbarism. When the Africans discovered that the mato inspired such horror in the Portuguese, they made it their habitual refuge, patiently negotiating from there with the intruders. Queen Njinga, in Angola, played this game to perfection, thus provoking the increasing anger of the Portuguese. Referring to the subterfuges the Portuguese governor opposed to the liberation of her sister, prisoner in Luanda, she wrote on 13 December 1655: “For these and other betrayals I took shelter in the matos, far from my territories” (Cadornega 1972, II: 501). By withdrawing to the forest, the queen was not only obeying a military imperative, but also  putting pressure on the Portuguese. If they wanted her to get out of the forest, they had to fulfill a series of conditions. Meanwhile, she would resist: that was, in her political language, the sense of her withdrawal to the matos.

Besides its strategic function in the military and political struggle between the Africans and the Portuguese, the forest constituted, in the eyes of the autochthonous, a ‘sacred’ space. In the História of Cadornega, as was mentioned before, allusions to the “dense forests” of Angola are abundant. By repeating observations made by Jesuits almost a century before, the Portuguese historian hints to the religious dimension the bush or the forest had for Africans: “seeing that they could not triumph over us in the open lands, they gathered unwillingly in the sanctuary: their vast and dense matos” (Cadornega 1972 [1680], I: 81). By 1586, Father Diogo da Costa (1989: 163) had affirmed that the natives “worship wood and stones”. In the same period, Duarte Lopes alluded to the “symbiosis” that existed, in Congo, among humans and the elements of nature: “men and women don’t have proper, convenient, and rational names, but are called after plants, stones, birds and animals” (Pigafetta / Lopez 1989: 65). By giving themselves names of plants, stones or animals, the natives manifested the intensity of their relation with the natural cosmos. The mato, concretely, becomes a sacred space in which men receive the protection and the power of their traditional ‘deities’. It is true that in the texts written by functionaries of the Portuguese empire, the quality of the relationship the Africans maintained with the mato or the forest as a sacred space is not described precisely. Something that may allow us, at least to a certain point, to imagine the content of this relationship, are certain songs – mambos[7] - of the present-day Cuban ‘Congos’. Being a creation of Cuban slaves, these songs are not strictly ‘African’: it would be naïve, therefore, to consider them as a ‘source’ for the reconstruction of an African (Kongo) cosmovision. It is probable, however, that their ‘core’ still draws upon the kongo cosmovision. In the mambos I had the opportunity to hear in Havana (1993), an ever present word is (n)finda[8]. In present-day Kikongo, mfìnda is ‘bush’ or ‘forest’. (N)finda is invoked by the palo monte communities as the residence of the spirits of the dead and the spirits of nature. It is the the space of the origin and of tradition. Therefore, we can suppose that by hiding themselves in the matos, the Central African populations not only tried to escape the persecution of the slavers, but also renewed contact with their ancestors, their traditions and their ‘powers’. The mfìnda allowed them to recover the energies they needed to keep struggling against the mindèlé (‘whites’).

For the Africans the war was never a purely military matter. On the contrary, they dedicated to it with the whole stock of their traditional beliefs. Many Portuguese texts suggest that, for the Africans, all circumstances involving military activity bore religious meanings: “When some poor soldier in the camp happens, in his dream, to cry itá, itá, which means war, war, the others take that as a bad omen and cut his head off” (História da residência, 1989 [1594]: 190). Before going into action the Africans consulted their ‘deities’. A nobleman “consulted his fetishes before crossing a river. He was told that crossing the river, he would be killed” (Afonso 1989 [1581]: 138). The invoked fetishes were right, but the nobleman was not given time to take advantage of their advice: “By seeing that he  did not cross, our troops attacked him and took forty women, the most distinguished of his house, and killed some of his men” (ibidem).

Europeans also invoked their ‘deities’: Saint Anthony, the Mother of God, and Santiago, the Iberian holy warrior. A battle that broke out in December 1622 between the Portuguese and the army of Manibumbe, a vassal of the king of Congo, was transformed into a battle among rival deities: “Our Portuguese, in the heat of the battle, called Santiago, and the Muxicongos[9] did the same. When they realized it, they said ‘you have a white Santiago, while ours is black’. But our white one showed to be more powerful” (ibidem: I, 105).

Languages of Violence

The fundamental context for the start of the Luso-African ‘dialogue’ in the Congo-Angola region was, as we already know, the development of the Atlantic trade. To make contact with  African chiefs, the Portuguese would ‘propose’ an agreement of vassalage through which they committed themselves to providing them military help; the local chiefs would have to pay tributes and allow them full commercial freedom.  The Africans did not always show a great hurry to accept those conditions. If  they rejected the proposed alliance, the Portuguese, according to ‘juridical’ rules established by themselves, declared war. Any war, whether they were victorious or not, was always an opportunity for the Portuguese to obtain large quantities of slaves. Very explicit in this sense is a commentary of Father Baltasar Afonso (1583: 142): “There is no war in which our troops do not get rich because they take many pieces [slaves] oxen, sheep, salt, oil, pigs, mats.”

            Besides its military and economic aspects, war was also a means of communication, a ‘language’ based on more or less institutionalized codes. Through their specific way of making war, the Portuguese sought to demonstrate their superiority and their ambition of total control over the territories. The ‘signifier’ used to transmit this message was indiscriminate violence: 

(85)

It happened here that a father fleed with his child from our troops, and seeing that he could not save his son he turned to us and shot all his arrows until they killed him; he never abandoned his place so that his son could hide, and the father died and went to hell. Another man was in a house with two women and defended himself without any intention to surrender,  so strongly that they put fire to the house, and burnt all three of them. This caused such a terror amongst our enemies that the whole of Angola was afraid of us (Afonso 1989 [1581]: 135).

 

This story of an Angolan father’s heroism provides evidence of the symbolic aspects of Portuguese violence. By acting with utmost cruelty, the conquerors continuously ‘signified’ the futility of any resistance. Another frequent practice of the Portuguese, mass decapitation,  was the signifier of a similar message. Around 1620, “conforming to the customs of these kingdoms”, the lieutenant-general of the Portuguese in Angola, João Mendes de Vasconcellos, convoked the sobas vassals of the Crown for a maca[10] – a sort of public trial based on the intervention of witnesses. Officially, the concern was to judge the ‘betrayal’ of these chiefs, allies of Queen Njinga. According to Cadornega, the real goal of this encounter was to stage

[…] a mass decapitation of black people (not inferior to that which King Xico inflicted on the Abencerrajes in the City of Granada, or to that of the famous duke of Alba in Flanders), who all had to pay with their heads for the betrayal, an event which would remain immemorial for the future of all the heathens of these astonished and fearful kingdoms: only with rigor and terror, we are able to maintain our domination over these indomitable pagans (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 92).

To further enhance the impact of such messages, the Portuguese did not hesitate to violate the bodies of their dead enemies: “From another war, [the Portuguese] brought 619 noses of decapitated men, and in another there were so many dead that they said they couldn’t avoid walking on them” (Afonso 1989 [1583]: 142).

            The Africans fully understood the meaning of such messages. According to the stories of their adversaries, they used to respond with verbal violence. In the course of a battle on the Kwanza River, for example, the Africans, “loudly screaming, said they would eat all of us the next day” (Afonso 1989 [1583]: 137). It has to be remembered that in European reports of that period, we frequently find allusions to African ‘cannibalism’. Jerónimo Castaño, a Spanish missionary in Angola comments in 1599: “This is the fourth time [the king of Angola asks for peace]. The last time, when Governor Paulo Dias sent presents to him with some Portuguese and [the king] agreed with the peace terms, when they arrived, he ate all of them” (Gomes 1951: 60). Did he actually eat them? In European colonial sources, allusion to cannibalism is always suspect because it is used to justify the so-called ‘rightful war’ against populations who reject colonialism. In fact, far from being based on actual observation, allusions to African cannibalism mostly derive from an inaccurate interpretation of certain African speech patterns. As we heard before, African threatened the Portuguese by boasting that they would eat all of them. By saying this, they aren’t really uttering the intention to eat the Portuguese. By using a speech pattern I call boasting speech, they only intend to scare their enemies. Verbal violence against real and unlimited violence: the asymmetry of the “dialogue” between Europeans and Africans is evident.

Diplomatic Languages

In Angola, during the first half of the seventeenth century, the exchange of diplomatic letters was the most prestigious ‘channel’ for the ‘dialogue’ between the Portuguese governor and his African interlocutors, allies or adversaries. It is important to understand that the correspondence between the representatives of the Portuguese crown and their African ‘vassals’ was only an annex to a circuit of communication whose center was located in Europe. The messages exchanged through this channel always bore the mark of the European written tradition and the feudal language used in the Spanish-Portuguese empire. Of course, epistolary communication was radically alien to the local oral tradition. No expression of autonomous African thought would fit in a letter which respected the rules of feudal correspondence. By writing or dictating a letter, African kings or chiefs implicitly recognized their submission to the Iberian crown. When a Portuguese governor, in a diplomatic letter, offered the status of a ‘vassal’ to some of the local chiefs, the latter, if responding via the same channel, could only declare his acceptance. That means that the channel or medium - diplomatic correspondence, in this case - decisively shaped the content of the message. The famous theory of McLuhan (1967) – “the medium is the message” – receives here an evident confirmation. Of course, African chiefs didn’t always agree with the Portuguese hegemony. If they wanted to speak out their refusal, they would lay hand on other means like orality, body-language, and - last but not least - war.

            A letter of Angola Aire, puppet king of the Portuguese “Angola”, who had been elected under pressure and in the presence of the Portuguese by a council of autochthonous ‘electors’, in October 1626, offers a good example of what an African lord was allowed to say in a diplomatic letter addressed to a Portuguese authority. In the words of Fernão de Sousa, its author, the ‘king’

[…] thanked me for having made him a king, and excused himself for not having sent me what he owed to me for this reason; he [said] he would do it at a given time, because in this very moment, he didn’t have any properties. He begged me to catch the free maroon negroes in order to people with them his kingdom. He explained he could not open the [slave] market for not being ready yet. Arguing that people said that the jaga Caza and [the queen] Ginga Ambande were between Zungui Amoque and Andalla Quesua causing great damage and threatening war, he begged for protection and security of life. He asked me for an umbrella and a hat for himself, similar to that worn by the king of Congo, some tambourines and some bells, a carpet and a silk blanket and paper, and he sent me a black woman with hanging breasts, a bearded negro, and four negroes (Sousa 1985: 260).

In this piece of writing, Angola Aire, the new and so grateful ‘king’, is speaking as a ‘good vassal’. A thorough reading of his letter, however, shows that he does not offer anything concrete to the Portuguese. Pointing to the difficult situation of his kingdom, Angola Aire refuses, without saying so explicitly, to create the slave markets and to pay the tributes the Portuguese expect from him. His letter is a refined diplomatic exercise: by simulating his submission, the ‘vassal’ hopes to avoid its consequences. As can be learned from the governor’s summary, the puppet king accompanied his epistle with another kind of message. The gift of a “black women with hanging breasts, a bearded negro, and four [other] negroes” doesn’t meet, of course, the expectations of the governor. Without breaking the rules of official communication, the mediocrity of Aires’ gift symbolically indicates the limits of his good will. As we will see later on, the puppet king would finally get tired of this role.

 In his report, governor Fernão de Sousa transcribes a letter that queen Njinga sent on 3 March 1625 to the capitão-mor (‘field-marshall’) of Angola, Bento Banha Cardoso. Notwithstanding the hate she always seems to have felt for the Portuguese (Sousa 1985: 227), she knew perfectly the rules of diplomatic correspondence:

With all my heart I appreciate that Your Honour will come to this fort of Embaca, allowing me to give to you, as to a father, an account of how, when I sent some pieces to the market of Bumba Aquiçanzo, Aire launched an attack and stole some thirty pieces from me. When I gave orders to demand satisfaction from him as my vassal, my warriors found themselves face to face with nine men who were with Tigre [Estêvão de Seixas Tigre] in my territory, and when he pushed these nine men against my troops outside the Pedra [de Pungo Andongo], they were, God willing, defeated by my warriors. The surviving six of them were delivered to me. It made me sad to learn that in Aire’s rocks, there are Portuguese soldiers supporting Aire. I received them warmly because they are vassals of the king of Spain, to whom I owe obedience as the Christian I am (Sousa 1985: 244-245).

This letter is one of the best examples the report of Fernão de Sousa provides to anybody willing to see to what point the means (or the ‘channel’) determines the form as well as the content of a message. Through her attack on the Portuguese, the queen, in the transparent language of war, ‘declared’ that she would not tolerate the penetration of the Europeans into her kingdom, and that she didn’t lack military means to defend her territory. However, as an author of a diplomatic letter addressed to the chief of her enemies, “Dona Ana de Sousa” exposes the same circumstances according to the norms of epistolary communication with a superior. If we read what she actually wrote, it seems that she never attacked the Portuguese: she only sent an expedition to punish one of her vassals, the puppet king, for the hold up he had launched against her slaves. By pretending to ignore the privileged relations that existed between Aire (Aquiloange)[11] and the Portuguese, she argues that the encounter of her warriors with the troops of the governor was purely accidental. As for the victory of her warriors against the Portuguese, it was, simply, ‘God’s will’.

            Although the queen’s argumentation is absolutely sarcastic, she formally confirms her submission and loyalty to the Spanish-Lusitanian Crown.  Throughout her long struggle with the Portuguese, the queen, without abdicating her principles, always showed a great ability in the choice of the ‘channel’: diplomacy or war.

            In Angola, diplomatic correspondence was usually conveyed by macunzes[12], ‘ambassadors’ of the local chiefs – or of the Portuguese. These messengers were responsible for transmitting oral messages. In the court of the Portuguese governor, the oral messages, recited by the ‘ambassadors’ in some African language (probably Kikongo and Kimbundu), required the help of an interpreter.  To what extent, African chiefs had the possibility to choose between oral and written communication?  For the sobas, written communication was certainly out of reach. Only the kings seem to have had interpreters and scribes at their service. The king of Congo as well as Angola Aire, the puppet king of Ndongo, apparently preferred writing as a way of demonstrating their real or feigned loyalty to the Portuguese. As for the queen Njinga, she systematically alternated letters with oral messages.

            On 17 December 1627, Alvaro Roiz de Sousa, captain of the fort of Embaca, informs Fernão de Sousa about the arrival of two macunzes of queen Njinga conveying an oral message. In the previous month, the governor had declared an all-out war on the queen (Sousa 1985: 294). In the governor’s words

 […] the [queen’s] message contained instructions proposing to submit [the macunzes], in her name, to an ordeal they call quelumbo[13], in order to prove that the incident which occurred in the Quezos: the death and the imprisonment of several pombeiros[14] [catchers of slaves], the robbery of pieces and fabrics, had not been ordered by her, and if the said two negroes died because of the ordeal, she would be glad to have her head cutten off, but if they didn’t die with the ordeal, it would be clear that she didn’t have any responsibility in this incident, because she didn’t join with the Quezos, nor did the sobas of Lucala join with her, and she wasn’t at war with any of them. The only wish she had was to be a piece and a daughter of mine, and to obtain permission to tungar[15] [settle] on the island of the imbillas[16] [graveyards] where her brother died, and that for God’s sake Angola Aire should be the king, because she wanted to retire for being tired of living in the matos (Sousa 1985: 296-297).

According to this summary by the governor,  Njinga, by choosing the oral ‘channel’, seems to pursue the same goals as when, in the former example, she addresses the governor by the means of diplomatic correspondence. The way she justifies herself and denies any responsibility for the ‘crimes’ attributed to her by the Portuguese resembles perfectly the way she used in her letters. There are, however, several allusions to another kind of argumentation. One of them is the wish to tungar (‘settle’) on the island which hosts the grave of her brother. If we remember the importance of the ancestor’s cult amongst Bantu populations, we understand immediately that the ‘Christian’ queen intends to honor, in that place, the memory of her dead brother. A Congo king quoted by Wing (1921: 285) in the early twentieth century seems to justify the queen’s wish: Ga k’akala nkulu aku ko, k’ulendi tunga ko (‘Don’t settle in a place where there aren’t any of your ancestors’). Everybody knew that Queen Njinga never detached herself from a receptacle called mosete[17]  in which she “enclosed the bones of her forefathers”(Cadornega 1972 [1680], II: 167).  In a diplomatic letter, the expression of her wish to continue honoring – in an African way - the memory of her brother would certainly have been perceived as an evidence of her persistent resistance against Christianity and European values[18]. In an oral message in an African tongue, however, the same expression does not seem to have scandalized the Portuguese governor.

Perhaps, the script proposed by Njinga for the reception of her oral message – an ordeal - is an even clearer evidence of her ‘African way of thinking’. Used as a means of diplomatic exchange, the written word is a ‘weapon’, but certainly not the expression of truth. On the contrary, in the African – oral - system of communication, an ‘ethic code’ guarantees, in principle, the sincerity of the speaker as well as the veracity of the transmitted message. This veracity, as we see in Njinga’s message, may be controlled through a ritual proof: to certify her sincerity to the governor, she proposes indeed the application of the quelumbo, an ordeal, to her macunzes. If they died, she explains, “she would be glad to have her head cutten off”. Based on a non Christian theology, the proof proposed by Njinga to assert the veracity of her message demonstrates that the Christian faith she professed in her diplomatic letters was merely ‘diplomatic’. Of course, the ‘authentic’ Christian faith of the Portuguese didn’t allow them to accept the ‘diabolic’ proof proposed by their enemy. As ‘Christians’, the technique they chose in order to know the ‘truth’ was ‘Christian’. More concretely, it had developed in the jails of the Inquisition. Like the defendants in the trials organized by the Holy Office, Njinga’s macunzes were considered guilty before they had had the opportunity to ‘confess’. In a secret session, the Portuguese decided that “if they didn’t show willing to confess, they would oblige them by torture to declare where [the queen] was, and that this – to prevent negroes from speaking about it - had to be done by Portuguese” (Sousa 1985: 296). The first to pay for his ‘crime’ was the queen’s mani lumbo[19], who accompanied the two macunzes. In a desperate effort to escape death, he offered an apparently full ‘confession’. In spite of it, the Lusitans, declaring him guilty of espionage, condemned him to death. Thus, the Portuguese, like the Africans, had at their disposal a quilumbo of their own: an arbitrary means to test the sincerity of their adversaries. The main difference between the African and the European ordeal is a contrasting attitude toward orality. The African attitude is positive: sacred, the spoken word is considered to be ‘true’. Nobody, therefore, minds to submit to a quilumbo. For the Portuguese, the spoken word, on the contrary, is essentially deceptive; only violence allows the ‘truth’ to emerge.

 

monumento dedicado à Rainha Ginga em Luanda

 

African Rhetoric: nongonongo

If we stick to Fernão de Sousa’s transcriptions of the oral messages he received from his African interlocutors, it seems that they were free of any rhetorical or poetical artifice. To what degree, however, are these transcriptions reliable? The makunzes, without any doubt, recited their messages in one of the local Bantu languages. The governor didn’t speak any of them; moreover, he does not show any particular interest in understanding the surrounding linguistic culture. Only in a few fragments of his report, the veil that covers the rhetorics of his African adversaries is partially lifted. As we already know from the letter queen Njinga sent to the governor on 3 March 1625, she had - thank God - captured six Portuguese. In a message transmitted by her mani lumbo to Sebastião Dias, the captain of the fort of Embaca, the queen made their delivery conditional on several requirements, especially the suppression of the military support given by the Portuguese to Aquiloange Aire, the puppet king she considered her vassal. As the captain did not accept her conditions, the queen sent her moenho[20] – private ambassador – to repeat her demands. The dialogue between the queen’s emissary and the Portuguese captain developed, in the words of the governor, as follows

 

[…] in the message he transmitted from Ginga, the moenho said the same by way of the following comparison: “ There has been a heavy rain, which has reached some hen and plucked them; they have retired to a house, where they wait now to recover their feathers”. Sebastião Dias answered that if she didn’t want to bring those Portuguese, she would better send them and not retain them as hostages [to be exchanged] for Diungo Amoiza and Aire Quiloange, because there might be a thunderstorm and a flash might fall on the house where the hen were recovering their feathers, and burn it down (Sousa 1985: 243).

 

A missive sent by the six Portuguese to the captain helps to understand the issue of this rather enigmatic dialogue. They wrote that their liberty “would not cost more than to hand over Dungo Amoíza and to embark Aire” (ibidem). The queen pretended, as a matter of fact, to exchange her prisoners for a befriended soba prisoner of the Portuguese and to obtain, at the same time, the withdrawal of the puppet king Aire Aquiloange. Through his ironical ‘comparison’, the moenho stressed that the queen was prepared to wait until the Portuguese accepted her conditions. His interlocutor, Sebastião Dias, a Portuguese soldier familiarized with this type of verbal exchange, responded in the same way, evoking – with evident sarcasm - the risks the queen would run should she not cede to the pressures of the Portuguese. This apparently strange dialogue may easily be situated within the Bantu tradition of ‘enigmatic dialogue’. Referring to this tradition, our always well informed Cadornega wrote in 1680:

 

This heathens from the province of Quissama [south of Luanda] speak in an enigmatic way, using nicknames and metaphors. He who knows their fashion and their tongue speaks to them and answers in the same style. Thus, he who understands their inventions and their tricks, manages to pay them back in the same coin (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: II, 344).

 

The ‘metaphorical’ rhetoric Cadornega ascribes to the ‘pagans of Quissama’ is, in fact, common in the Bantu area. Among proverbs, riddles, apologues and jokes, it nurtures a gamut of minor literary genders. According to Chatelain, one of the names assigned to the riddle in Kimbundu (the language probably used by the emissary of the queen and the Portuguese captain in their venomous dialogue) is nongonongo (Chatelain 1888-1889: 143). In Kikongo, nóngo[21]  is used for a ‘pungent saying’, for a way to mock the interlocutor through a fable or an apologue. In the following Kimbundu ‘proverb’, recollected by Chatelain (ibidem: 140), the sarcasm often accompanying the enigmatic rhetoric is evident: Uanienga xitu, nguma ia jimbua (‘Who carries flesh, is an enemy to dogs’). It is used to criticize a person whose arrogant behavior provokes social reproval. When uttered after a person has already suffered ‘the dog’s bite’, i. e. the negative consequences of his arrogant behavior, it takes a clearly sarcastic meaning. 

            In the seventeenth-century reports of the Portuguese, allusions to the rhetoric used by the Africans in their verbal exchanges with the Europeans are rare. Typically, their authors reduce African speech to its purely denotative aspects. Therefore, the brief dialogue between the queen Njinga’s moenho and the Portuguese captain is one of the rare opportunities we have to imagine the ‘tone’ of the verbal exchanges between conquerors and conquered. An irony similar to that used by Njinga’s ambassador in his nongonongo can be discovered, retrospectively, in several of the queen’s written messages we find in his ‘diary’. If we go back to the letter in which Njinga declares her ‘compassion’ for the six unfortunate Portuguese who fell into the trap laid by her troops (3 March 1625), we now ‘hear’, notwithstanding her perfectly diplomatic language, the verbal perfidy it hides. In fact, the affirmation of her ‘regrets’ for the ‘divine’ punishment suffered by the Portuguese – those ‘plucked hens’, in the oral message of the moenho - scarcely cover the expression of the most profound sarcasm.

African Rhetorics: milonga

The ‘journal’ kept by Fernão de Sousa contains numerous allusions to another African speech pattern: milonga. In Kimbundu, milónga (plural of mulónga) refers not only to ‘words’, but also to more specific uses of the speech: ‘affirmations’, ‘reasons’, ‘trial’, ‘calumny’, ‘offense’. In the text of the governor, milonga seems to point to a rather specific speech pattern. According to Fernão de Sousa, Njinga’s milongas have the power to persuade whole villages to flee to the lands under her control

[Njinga] kept temporizing with messages she sent me, and her macunzes, on their way back, in this city as well as in [the lands of] the sobas along where they passed, persuaded our slaves and our black soldiers, whom they call quimbares[22], that they would better go to her, and that she would give them land to work and live on, because it was better for them to be native lords than to be our slaves; and with such messages, which they call milongas, she’s got such an influence over them that that complete senzalas[23] [villages] run over to her (Sousa 1985: 227).

In Fernão de Sousa’s report, milonga seems to hint at a speech of persuasion based on promises or threats. From the viewpoint of the governor, this sort of speech is essentially treacherous. Africans were not the only ones who knew how to use it. The governor shows that Portuguese also were capable to practice it successfully:

’To dress’ is a fashion that was introduced to ask the sobas for pieces [slaves] in the following manner: the governors sent a macunze – who is an ambassador – with quantity of silk clothes, empondas [clothes] and farregoulos, which is the clothing of the negroes, and this macunze told each soba that he was the macunze of the governor and that he came looking for loanda [tribute], and as the macunzes were always persons well trained for this business, they stripped the best they could from each soba, obliging them with practices they call milongas to give to the governor, the macunze, the interpreter and their companions, the [number of] slaves they could not [really afford to] give (Sousa 1985: 279).

In this case, milonga seems to be a speech somebody uses to persuade his interlocutor to do or to give something he is not really prepared or willing to do or to give. In the journal of Fernão de Sousa, we can see that the practice of milonga often implies the use of body-language, mime and other theatrical means. The Africans as well as the Portuguese seem to know how to use such means for their purposes of persuasion.

Body-language

Body-language seems to play a capital role in the Luso-African ‘dialogue’. One day, in order to convince the puppet king, Angola Aire, to support the war against queen Njinga, the Portuguese field marshal reminds him of the duties he has as a vassal of the Portuguese king (Sousa 1985: 328). Conscious that “the kingdom didn’t belong him”, Aire refuses to continue the masquerade. Replying to the field-marshal, he stages a curious mime sequence:

[…] he answered that he and Ginga were children of the field marshal, that he didn’t mind if [the Portuguese] wanted to crown her queen, that he would go to Pedras or to Lembo and stay there, and that they could cut his head off. Then he sat on the ground, stood up, took a straw in his hand and handed it over to the interpreter, so giving to understand that he surrendered the kingdom, and, by turning his back very impolitely, he left without giving anything to the porters who had asked him for provisions for the war that was being made in his favor and that he had requested, even if he said he didn’t (Sousa 1985: 328).

What is interesting about this scene ist that Aire, at the exact moment he gives up his role as a puppet king in the service of the Portuguese, stops talking and adopts  non-verbal means of communication undoubtedly inspired by the ‘autochthonous’ tradition.  This way, he shows that he has resolved to leave definitely the world of the Portuguese. These were quick enough to understand the meaning of this body-language message. The governor had already chosen the person who, in his opinion, had the capacity to play the role of the king or the queen of “Angola”: Dona Maria Cambo, sister of Njinga and of Ngola Mbandi, the former king of Ndongo[24].

            As to the Portuguese, they learned to use mime or body-language to their own advantage. Sousa offers a vivid description of the methods used by Portuguese officials and traders :

At other times, certain persons offered to realize such missions by contract for a certain amount of pieces [slaves], and some were so devoted that they offered to do that on their own cost. When they made the journey in such a way they provided themselves with silk and other things, went to the provinces, and every time they arrived to [the residence of] a soba, they sat down on an armchair and performed the role of the governor, and by intimidating the soba, they obliged him, when he was powerful, to give them at least ten slaves, and when he was less powerful, only five, not counting the other ones he had to give them for their needs of company, alimentation and lodging, among them sometimes women and children of the sobas, with a great disrespect they felt deeply. The captains of the forts did and continue doing the same by sending macunzes to the sobas in imitation of the governors (Sousa 1985: 279-280).

In alle these and other similar cases, the use of mimic codes by Portuguese adventurers creates the fraudulent illusion of the governor’s presence. Fernão de Sousa obviously denounces such simulacra. That notwithstanding, certain stagings realized by the governor himself were hardly less spectacular than those of his subalterns. As a great ‘comunicator’, Fernão de Sousa skillfully combined diplomatic writing, body-language, and the language of violence. In his answer to a letter the field marshal sent him on 16 February 1629, Fernão de Sousa’s (1985: 327), he wrote: ”If the imprisoned sobas do not submit as vassals, you shall give orders to apply to their chests two stamps of mine, and let them go: on account of their little value and things that may happen in the future, it is more important that they remain marked as my slaves. This way, the ‘presence’ of Fernão de Sousa would remain ‘staged’ forever on the bodies of the humiliated sobas, compelled from now on to act as involuntary propagandists of his politics. By marking the bodies of his adversaries with his stamp, the governor repeats a particularly perverse use of writing, which we know also from other areas colonized by the Europeans. A missionary-chronicler of the colonization of Mexico wrote, around 1541, that the Spaniards “applied on the faces [of the Indians] so many inscriptions besides the principal stamp of the king that they had the whole face written, because they had inscriptions of all who had bought and sold them (Motolinía 1985: paragraph 50). An imitation of the branding of cattle, this practice expresses, better than any words, the mentality of the European slavers in Africa and America.

Rumors

In Angola, the communication between Africans and Portuguese was not always carried out  within the ‘official’ circuit discussed above. Fernão de Sousa’s report presents many cases of indirect or ‘oblique’ communication. I am referring here especially to messages received by the Portuguese through their prisoners and to the rumors constantly buzzing around their ears. Some of these indirect messages contain details about the life in African military camps that never figure in the official messages of the sobas nor of the queen herself. How does ‘indirect’ or ‘involuntary’ communication work? Who – if anybody - wants to communicate with whom and with what intention? The ‘journal’ of Fernão de Sousa does not provide explicit answers to such questions. Who are, for example, the real interlocutors in the following story?

[… ]  and the negro [slave of Pedro de Sousa Sotomayor] said that she [the queen] did not have many soldiers, and that she retired to a house, very sad and angry about what happened, and did not talk to anybody, and for that reason sent the macunzes to take the quelumbo, which is a local ordeal, to prove that she had nothing to do with nor ordered what happened (Sousa 1985: 299).

The governor summarizes here the apparently ‘spontaneous’ testimony of an anonymous African captured by the Portuguese. Rather curiously, the testimony of the ‘negro’ recalls the arguments Njinga had used to prove the Portuguese her sincerity. Are we faced, then, with a false testimony, directly ‘inspired’ by the instructions of the queen? The governor’s ‘Extensive report’ suggests continuously the charisma and the influence Njinga exercised not only over her own subordinates, but also over broad groups of the African population theoretically controlled by the Portuguese. It must not have been difficult for her to organize and control the circulation of certain ‘rumors’. Thus, the ‘testimony’ of the anonymous slave may have been a rumor deliberately spread by the queen to strengthen her credibility among the Portuguese. The following passage of the governor’s diary evokes another history of rumors:

Ginga, knowing that Aire [Aquiloange] had gone to the fort, revealed her mood  and convoked all the sobas of Coanza to declare war on him. She pretended that the sobas had told her that he [Aire] had gone to the fort and, by the same occasion, taken the title of ‘king’, and that, therefore, they wanted to declare war  and not obey him, and [that] they had asked her to approve them and to give them a chief capable to lead them to war. She, Ginga, had answered that she did not order the war, but, as they wanted to launch it, she would give them a chief – it was a macota [‘elder’] of her’s (Sousa 1985: 240).

It is clear that in the eyes of the governor, the debate between Njinga and the sobas about the opportunity of a war against Aquiloange Aire is pure ‘fiction’: a story invented by the queen in order to delude him into thinking that only under pressure of the sobas had she undertaken the war. But how was this ‘fiction’ transmitted to the governor or to his representative in the war zone, the field marshal Bento Banha Cardoso? The most likely answer is that the queen herself spread the rumor of her lack of responsibility in the launching of the war; a rumor that may not have been a complete ‘fiction’, because the attitude Njinga imputes to the sobas doesn’t seem to be a mere product of her fantasy. In fact, the governor himself presents many formal testimonies that confirm the anti-Portuguese attitude of several African chiefs. In June 1629, for instance, he notes that the soba Andala Quionza of the sobado of Andala Queçuba did not accept to receive the ‘ambassadors’ of the Portuguese field marshal. Back from their mission, the macunzes declared in the presence of several witnesses that

[…] traveling to the lands of the said Andala Queçuba, they arrived at the libata (that is a residence) of a macota (that is an adviser) who lives on the border of the lands. [This macota] did not let them pass to transmit the milonga they brought for his soba Andala Queçuba, but he told them to deliver the message they brought from [Aire] Angola, because they did not know the captain [field marshal] neither wanted to have anything to do with him (Sousa 1985: 337).

The unfriendly attitude of this makota shows that the traditional chiefs were not necessarily willing to collaborate with the Portuguese. At the same time, they didn’t always feel strong enough to undertake war against them. The best option was, in that case, ‘passive resistance’. Fernão de Sousa’s report is full of stories showing attitudes of this type, but it offers also some examples of more radical attitudes of resistance. Particularly hostile was the attitude of soba Bujlla or (A)mbuyla. The Portuguese, considering his territory part of the ‘kingdom of Angola’, demanded his submission. Mbuyla, however, always declared to be a vassal of the king of Congo (Sousa 1985: 258-259; 269). The differences between Mbuyla and the Portuguese threatened to develop into an ‘international’ conflict, because the king of Congo, who supported the soba, was at that time an ally of the Dutch, competitors of the Portuguese in Africa as well as in Brazil. Considering the gravity of the situation, Fernão de Sousa did not hesitate to threaten the king of Congo, reminding him, in good Africanized Portuguese, that “mocanos[25] [‘problems’] among kings had to be decided by arms” (Sousa 1985: 259). His transcription of of Mbuyla’s speech deserves our attention:  

Bujllas became even more arrogant and said that Bento Banha [the Portuguese field marshal] had to be his macota [‘elder’] and that he [Mbuyla] had to appoint governor in Loanda, and he started to upset the sobas vassals persuading them that they should revolt, [saying] that he was mani Puto [‘lord of Portugal’] and his wife mani Congo [‘queen of Congo’] (Sousa 1985: 340-341).

Where did the governor hear the inflammatory speech he imputes to Mbuyla? As he doesn’t reveal his sources, we must assume that he is drawing upon rumors spread by the soba to create confusion in the territory ‘controlled’ by the Portuguese. If we accept the authenticity of Sousa’s transcription, Mbuyla was clearly trying to radicalize the struggle against the Portuguese. In contrast to queen Njinga, whose intermittent war against the Portuguese was basically defensive, Mbuyla seems to have formulated the ideological bases for an anti-colonial movement of a messianic type (cf. Queiroz 1977). By declaring himself mani of Portugal, he claims to the (almost) divine status of the distant European king. In other words, he assumes the right to choose, to his liking, the personalities to whom he will entrust the different local governments. His wife will rule the kingdom of Congo; a mestizo, as he declares later, will govern that of Angola. The Portuguese field marshal will have the privilege of being one of his own ‘elders’. Ironically, there isn’t any place left for the actual governor, Fernão de Sousa… Mbuyla’s speech presents an openly messianic utopia. The prophet, thanks to his supernatural power, will invert the actual political situation. As in other similar cases, the power of words substitutes a power the speaker is not likely to win. As a matter of fact, the messianic utopia Fernão de Sousa attributes to Mbuyla is only an extreme form of a seemingly widespread ‘dissidence’ among the soba ‘vassals’ of the Portuguese.

The language of flight

Until now, little attention has been paid to the interventions – at least the more or less ‘autonomous’ interventions – of common people in the ‘dialogue’ or ‘war of discourses’ between Africans and Europeans in ‘Angola’. Unfortunately, the Portuguese chronicles and reports don’t offer many evidence about the speech and the attitudes anonymous Africans used to adopt under the circumstances we know. Apart from occasional testimonies about events witnessed only by them, common African people – free, freed or enslaved – do not speak on the pages of Fernão de Sousa’s ‘Extensive report’ nor on those of any of the other documents I have mentioned. Their part is mostly reduced to that of pieces in a game played by others, Africans or Portuguese. It is not easy, therefore, to recover their ‘discourse’, but, with some effort, we can retrieve a few allusions to their more ‘practical’ attitudes. In a way, an attitude is also a ‘language’. In the Angola wars, the most common attitude of the African masses is to flee. Besides its practical purposes, the flight is a sort of language used mainly by those who don’t have any voice in the sphere of power. The message that common Africans delivered by their flight was their refusal of Portuguese colonization and its perverse effects on their traditional life. Fernão de Sousa clearly understand this language. The Africans, he explains, flee to escape war and to avoid enslavement by the Portuguese or their African allies. Often, he acknowledges, they try to take refuge on the lands controlled by queen Njinga or to flee to the residence of a still independent soba. All these ‘statements’ in the language of flight clearly underline the common African’s aversion to European colonization. The Portuguese quickly felt the veiled threat contained in such ‘messages’. Sebastião Dias Tissão, the old soldier capable to speak in riddles like his Bantu interlocutors, informed the governor that “Ginga had recruited people and planned to reconquest the land; that our slaves ran away again taking refuge with her, through which she made herself more powerful and weakened our position” (Sousa 1985 : 241). How to respond to the fugitives? Portuguese opinions on this point greatly differed. Preoccupied by the constant erosion of their slave capital, some Portuguese settlers proposed to Fernão de Sousa to “capture people of Quiçama [a still independent territory] in order to exchange them against the slaves of ours they have” (ibidem: 323). The governor categorically rejected this proposal. He was afraid of “what could happen if the said people were captured, as well as of the assaults they necessarily would launch on account of the protestations”. All this, he argued,

might lead to a revolt and block the shipment of provisions to this city [Luanda] as well as the navigation of the ships sailing upstream with goods, besides other accidents that might happen to the Portuguese traders who sail up and down the Coanza river, like the seizing of merchandises; by defending them, people might be killed, the quilombo [military head-quarters] being to distant [to intervene]”.

Drawing attention to the catastrophic consequences a raid in Quissama might lead to, Fernão de Sousa places the phenomenon of flight in the wider context of the ‘dialogue’ between Portuguese and Africans. He understands that such movements have to be “read” as signs of the only language threatened or enslaved Africans have at their disposal when the wish to be “heard” by the Portuguese: flight. As a matter of fact, Africans, by fleeing, show a certain disposition to ‘dialogue’. That’s what the governor tries to explain to the slavers: if they want to avoid the outburst of a general revolt that might even threaten the permanence of the Portuguese in the area, the have to decipher correctly the flight movements of the Africans. In contrast to the (common) slavers, the governor was aware of the danger implied by an unilateral breaking off of the ‘dialogue’ with the Africans.

            Another event referred to by Fernão de Sousa shows the consequences of the breaking off of the ‘dialogue’. In 1627, the politically inadequate response given to the massive flight of the slaves of Luiz Mendes de Vasconcellos, former governor of Angola, caused a very perilous situation in Ilamba (ibidem: 286). Pursued by Portuguese soldiers, the fleeing slaves joined a substantial number of free blacks and some ‘misguided’ whites. With their 2000 bows and the political dynamics their guerrilla-like activities provoked, this not very regular army presented a serious threat to the Portuguese power in that zone. When the governor sent troops to avoid a ‘general mutiny’

[…] the tendalas[26] [‘representatives’] disappeared and did not obey the messages of Manuel Antunes [the Portuguese commander] and hid in the mato with the aim of defending themselves, out of fear of the crimes they had committed and of eating human flesh (ibidem: 286).

The breaking off of the ‘dialogue’ is followed by the emergence of a nightmarish phantasm: the return of the Africans to the mato. If we recall the connotations of the mato as a space of ‘evil’ in the imaginary of the Portuguese, the governor’s preoccupation cannot surprise us. Should the Africans return to their matos, all efforts of conquest and colonization would have to start all over again, and under much worse conditions. In contrast to the recently ‘discovered’ Africans, the fleeing slaves, the freed slaves or the whites who felt tempted by the liberty promised by the ‘bush’ had had all the time necessary to ‘study’ their enemies. Moreover, they could oppose them with modern weapons.

Conclusions

At the beginning of this essay, I suggested that the war that developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between Portuguese and Africans in the matos of the Congo-Angola region could be read as a sort of ‘dialogue’ - or a ‘war of discourses’ - between the European conquerors and their African adversaries. I hope to have demonstrated the interest of this approach. It allows us to ‘discover’, in a documentation written by the European aggressors, the different ways how Africans – chiefs, common people, and slaves – ‘responded’ – and reacted to the penetration of the slave trade. The quite complicated histories I have tried to disentangle show at least that the inhabitants of Congo and Angola did not undergo passively the political, social and economical cataclysm caused by the Portuguese invasion. Not always, however, their ‘discourse’ refers to an attitude of radical resistance to the European conquest or to slavery. Many, maybe the majority, of the local chiefs seemed rather inclined to renounce a part of their sovereignty if, doing so, they could take advantage of the economic possibilities promised by the presence of the European slave traders. Others, like queen Njinga, accepted the ‘dialogue’ with the Portuguese, but without renouncing the defense of her sovereignty. Only few undertook the road of a more radical resistance. As for the African ‘masses’, victims of the struggle between their chiefs and the European intruders, they fought above all for survival and against deportation to America, moving in accordance with the evolution of the military and political situation. Some fugitives managed to organize themselves as guerillas, threatening in this way the Portuguese power.

            Throughout the whole story, the ones who dictated the rules of the game were, without any doubt, the Portuguese. How did they succeed in imposing their political hegemony? Their commercial power certainly impressed and attracted many local chiefs and may have persuaded them to fully cooperate with the foreigners. This argument, however, isn’t sufficient to explain the feeble reaction of many African chiefs to the Portuguese appropriation of the strategic points of their territory. There may be, of course, many reasons to explain the lack of ‘strategic’ reaction of the local chiefs, but the most important, in my opinion, is the ‘rational’ use of indiscriminated violence by the Portuguese. By following the traditional rules of war and negotiation they had learned throughout their local history, the Africans positioned themselves, from the beginning, in a place of strategic inferiority before a handful of truly ‘macchiavelian’ intruders. Most likely, the advantage the Europeans won in the wars of Congo and Angola was not their – uncertain - military superiority, but the terror they managed to inspire in the autochthonous population through acts of unpredictable, unjustified, indiscriminate, and murderous violence. In the first pages of this essay, we had the opportunity to appreciate – and to be horrified by - several cases of such ‘strategic violence’. As in other places where, at nearly the same time, Europeans established their hegemony or domination, the inexorable progress of the Portuguese conquest of Central Africa definitely conveys the triumph of a ‘modernity’ that banishes, in the name of colonial efficiency, any consideration based in – European or local - tradition or ethics.

 

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l’évangelisation en Angola au XVIe siècle”, in Histoire des métissages hors d’Europe.

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[1]Slightly abridged version of chapter two of Martin Lienhard’s O Mar e o Mato: Histórias da Escravidão (Luanda: Editorial Kilombelombe, 2005). Translation into English by Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger and the author, revised by Marina Lienhard.

[2] In this and the following linguistic footnotes, kmb. means Kimbundu, and kk. Kikongo (the two major Bantu languages in the area). Ass. refers to the Kimbundu dictionary by Assis júnior (1947), and Sw. to the Kikongo dictionary by Swartenbroeckx (1973). Muene. Lord, political title. “Muene puto means in the Ambunda language of Angola the Lord of Portugal. And in the maxiconga language mani means lord, and they call the king of Congo Mani Congo or Mueni congo” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 353). Kk. mwéné, pl. mamwéné, nobleman, free man, lord (Sw.). Soba. Kmb. sôba (pl. in ji-). Generic name of the representatives of the local authority in a specific region (Ass.). “They are like counts or great lords” (Simões 1989 [1575]).

[3] Ngôla was the title given to the kings of Ndongo, a kingdom situated in the central part of the present-day Republic of Angola. When speaking about « Angola », the Portuguese, in the early years of their occupation, meant only this kingdom. Later on, « Angola » took approximately the shape of present-day Angola, incorporating, among many other chiefdoms, the central part of the kingdom of Congo. 

[4] The best introduction so far to the history and daily events in this kingdom is La vie quotidienne au royaume du Kongo, du XVI^e au XVIII^e siècle by Georges Balandier (1965) .

[5] Based on História da residência (1989), Informação (1989), Pigafetta & Lopes (1989), Sousa (1985), and D. Afonso (1992).

[6] Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHC), Madrid, Consejos, 20257, exp. 2, 1806, 1-5r. e 5v.

[7] Mambo. Ritual song in palo monte communities. Kk. màmbù (pl. of diàmbù), trade, word, process, story,

ritualized conversation (Sw.).

[8] (n)finda. Also finda. “Those dense wood that these people call enfindas” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: II, 56). “The land of the dead is often called mfinda” (Bentley 1887: 347). Kk. mfìnda (class i-zi), forest, wood (Sw.).

[9] muxicongo. Inhabitant of the Kongo kingdom. Kk. músí (pl. bísí), inhabitant, and kóngo, population of the Congo basin (Sw.).

[10] maca. “Maca is a meeting in a public place where people can expose their arguments” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 91). Kmb. máka (pl.), conversations, questions, disputes (Ass.).

[11] (Aquiloange) Aire should not be confounded with (Angola) Aire. After the dead of the father of the future queen Njinga, the Portuguese needed to find a new king for Ndongo or ‘Angola’. By maintaining a hostile attitude towards the intruders, Njinga couldn’t be their candidate. Therefore, they chose (Aquiloange) Aire, “the closest family member of the king of Angola” according to Fernão de Sousa (Heintze 1985: I, 202). As Aquiloange Aire died of pocks in the Portuguese camp, theiy finally “supported” his half-brother Angola Aire.

[12] Macunze. “Mukunzes are envoys or ambassadors in the Ambunda language” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 349). Kmb. múkunji (class mu-a), envoy, prophet, missionary (Ass.). Kk. nkùnzi (class mu-ba), bearer, ambassador, envoy (Sw.).

[13] Kmb. kilúmbu (class ki-i), ordeal. Test which serves to assert the truth of the affirmations of an individual. Testers apply white-hot metal to the body of persons suspected or oblige them to absorb some poison. 

[14] pombeiros. African slave traders in the service of the Portuguese (area Congo-Angola). Pumbo or pombo “are places and villages in which the slave markets are organized and where they sell our products in exchange of clothes and pieces of slaves” (Sousa 1985: 324).

[15] tungar . “Tungar means to make quarter and houses” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 345). Kmb. and  kk. -tunga, to build, to construct, to settle.

[16] imbilla. Name of an island in the Kwanza River (Angola). “They call their graves imbilla” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: III, 263). Kmb. mbila (plural in ji-), tomb, grave (Ass.).

[17] Kmb. músete (class mu-mi), shrine, bag (Ass.).

[18] As it becomes clear from Cavazzi’s Descrição histórica, the worship Njinga dedicated to the memory of Ngola Mbande, her defunct brother, still continued thirty years after her negotiations with Fernão de Sousa, creating a serious strain on the relationship between the queen, officially Christian, and the Europeans – especially the catholic priests - present on her territory (cf. Lienhard 1999).

[19] mani lumbo. Also muene lumbo. “Muene lumbo is the one who has contact with the Royal House and supervises the most valuable things of that house” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: I, 353).

[20] Moenho. “This is life” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: III, 265). Kmb. muénhu (class mu-mi), soul, existence, spiritual force (Ass.).

[21] Class i-zi.

[22] Kmb. kimbari (class ki-i), tenant.

[23] Kmb. sanzala (plural ji-), village, settlement outside the residence of the soba.

[24] See Sousa’s letter of 25 August 1629 (Heintze 1985: II, 230-231).

[25] Mocano. “Mocanos are judgments realized from person to person without any paperwork involved” (Cadornega 1972 [1680]: II, 61). Kk. mòkána, mòkéné, to entertain, to speak with each other (Sw.). Kmb. múkanu (class mu-mi), condemnation.

[26] Kmb. tandála (plural ji-).

Translation:  Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

by Martín Lienhard
A ler | 17 May 2011

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

TRANCE

(Based on an idea by Lynn Pitts)

 

Juno listened intently, his lean body hunched forward and tightly coiled as though he was preparing to leap into the screen. Bashe paced back and forth across the back wall of the control center, her head down but obviously attentive; she would pause every time a salient point was made. The debate was winding down and it was almost time for the vote of the extraordinary session. We all knew the decision could go either way.

 

"Don't be so stupid as to think that only tomorrow counts," Juno snapped as one anti-project elder spoke, citing the meagerness of our resources and a need for more defense development. "What better defense than completely knowing our history?"

 

A decision to discontinue the time travel, history-recovery project had never been this close before, but then again, we had never before been so besieged. Most people on the planet had either been overwhelmed by or had voluntarily accepted merger into the OnePlanet scheme, and only a few pockets of Diversity proponents were still active.

 

For me it was simple, no matter how mixed my history, I wanted Blackness to always exist. Everybody turning beige just didn’t appeal to me. But then, Juno always said, the only color that counts in OnePlanet is the color of money. Social values and a way of life is where the real difference is and that’s what we are fighting to preserve and develop.

 

I couldn't take it anymore, I got up and started to walk back to quarters. Sometimes I just get so frustrated. Why couldn’t we just be left alone. We were already reduced to tiny outposts, strategically located across the southern zones of the Americas, Africa and the Pacific Isles. We were barely twenty million strong. We just wanted to be ourselves, we…

 

"Sheba, don't leave," Bashe didn't even look up as she said that while continuing her slow strides. Her intonation told me her injunction wasn't a request.

 

"This is so stupid," I muttered to no one in particular as I sat back down.

 

Just then Muta entered control. "Have they voted yet?" he asked flopping down into the console seat next to me.

 

"I think they will as soon as this asshole…"

 

"Sheba," Bashe got on my case again.

 

"Sorry, but this is getting on my last nerve. And all we can do is sit here and wait while these guys decide our fate. And you know half of them are…"

 

"Quiet. They are about to vote." I looked over at Juno who held up his left hand, palm out, as he gave his full attention to the screen. Muta and I moved over to Juno's console to look over his shoulder.

 

The tally was almost instantaneous: 19 green, 10 red, 1 yellow. "Oh, shit. What do they do now. How do you count a yellow?" I asked, turning around to stare at Bashe. We needed at least 20 votes.

 

She looked up unsmiling. "If it's a vote to maintain an existing policy, yellow is counted as a green and if it's a vote to initiate a new policy, yellow is counted as a red."

 

I looked around, neither Juno nor Muta seemed pleased. "So why is everybody looking so glum?"

 

"Because the yellow vote came from my father," Bashe said as she moved to the center of our module.

 

I knew his enthusiasm had cooled on our project after we lost Celine on that last jump, but I thought Bashe would be able to persuade him to continue his support.

 

"Listen up." All eyes fastened on Bashe as she started running down the game plan, "We just got a reprieve, but it's only temporary. My father is going to vote to cancel our program in the next session if we don't retrieve Celine."

 

"That means we're through."

 

"Juno, don't say that. We've got two more months before the next council session, and…" Juno never even looked up as I babbled on trying to paint the most positive picture I could, "…once the new scanner is calibrated, we should be able to find her."

 

"Sheba, I'm not so sure of that. It takes two of us to safely operate the scanner and the transport system." As much as I would be glad when the project was over, I didn't want it to end unsuccessfully. As Bashe spoke, my mind started to drift. "And the council won't authorize us to accept any more jumpers this cycle. Which means we have at the most a total of three more jump opps."

 

"Bashe, technically, I could do two more jump operations." I finally spoke up, but not very loudly and not very confidently.

 

Muta shook his head and delivered the bad news in a slow monotone as though he had no emotional investment, even though we all knew how much he wanted to retrieve Celine. "The real problem is if we go searching for Celine we won't be able to gather critical history to complete this phase of the project and…"

 

"If we don't find Celine, there won't be support to continue our project."

 

"You're exactly right, Sheba. But—and you know I want to find Celine—we do have a chance to finish the project without finding Celine. If we go searching for Celine, we won't have enough jumps left to finish the project, especially if we loose another jumper."

 

Muta's assessment hung heavily in the artificial air of the module. When we started almost ten moons ago we were a team of twelve plus Bashe as commander. We were now down to four.

 

"I'm not feeling searching for Celine." Juno looked over at Muta, then slowly swiveled his head to take in each one of us. "Look, realistically, the technicalities don't matter. We only have two jump opps left and what's been our return ratio? The average is only one of every three jumpers makes it back. Celine had the best record out of all of us. We've got jumpers out there who never made it back from their first jump."

 

It got awfully quiet. Finally, Bashe attempted to bring closure, "Ok, ok. If Juno’s assessment is correct, then it's either finish the project or try to find Celine—we don't have the resources to do both."

 

"I vote we finish the project," Muta spoke up.

 

I could tell Muta wasn't speaking his heart, but instead was just saying what he thought a good trooper was supposed to say. "Well, I vote we search for Celine."

 

"Who the hell said this was a democracy," Juno hissed as though Muta and I had no right to speak. "We knew this was a goddamn suicide mission when we signed up. But we all thought salvaging our history was worth all the risks. Besides, what's so special about Celine. We've got eight other jumpers out there. I don't hear anybody talking about searching for them to bring them in." Juno stood up slowly. "The fact of the matter is, we've got two jumps left, maybe three…"

 

"What do you mean, maybe three. You just said…"

 

Juno cut me off before I could finish, "I know what I said. Two jumps to finish the mission and one jump to find Celine. Bashe you've got to stay. Sheba and Muta, in that order, should jump to complete the mission and, after the mission is complete, I'll take the third jump to try and find Celine." I looked over at Bashe to see what her reactions were. As the team leader she was going to have the last word.

 

"Juno, we can't afford to loose you. You're the only one of us left who really understands the technology."

 

"Yeah, but I wouldn't jump until the project was complete and then… well, if I didn't make it back, we still would have a completed project."

 

"That's true, but there are other considerations. Eventually…" Bashe looked up at the module ceiling. We knew everything we did was recorded. "Look, there is some classified info I can't say, but Juno you're going to be needed. I'll take the last jump."

 

"Permission to enter space." At the sound of Elder Hodari's voice code, all of us except Juno jumped to switch our console screens on.

 

"Screen on," Bashe gave an immediate command.

 

Elder Hodari's handsome image flickered and quickly stabilized into a sparkling picture. He looked stressed. "I assume you all saw the vote."

 

Bashe answered for all of us, "we did."

 

"Commander Bashe, I'm sorry. I know how much this project means to you, but it's basically over. I was able to negotiate a stall period, but there are other pressing priorities." He let that hang for a moment. We looked at each other but said nothing. "Bashe, did you mention the FutureBlack project to your crew?"

 

"No. It's classified and not everyone here is cleared for that level."

 

Muta stood up and moved away from the line of vision of his console screen, looked over to me and silently mouthed, “What's FutureBlack?” I hunched my shoulders in response and looked over to Juno. Juno just shook his head no. Meanwhile, Elder Hodari continued talking. "Bashe, hit me back on a secure line."

 

"Forty." Our screens blanked out as Bashe started pushing code. The lights dimmed, we were switching power and frequencies. "Everybody go to helmets," Bashe ordered and we each plugged into the black box console. We had direct contact with each other in the module and encrypted, relay-delayed contact with the outside.

 

"Standby." Bashe punched in some more code. An old identity shot of Elder Hodari filled the patches on our goggles as he came online. I hated these things. Every time someone talked they just showed an image of who was talking, an old ID shot. "Elder, the team is online."

 

"I'll make this brief. FutureBlack is a classified project. The official clearances will come down shortly, but commander Bashe your whole crew is going to be switched off the history project and on to FutureBlack. The Creoles knocked out another module early this morning. We have had to make the decision to accelerate our escape program. Our immediate future depends on finding a future. Some of us are betting on you guys to find that future for us.”

 

Nobody said anything. We were trained to listen when a ranking officer was speaking. Whatever questions we had would be discussed later.

 

“We're bringing you guys in. The gang over at R-D have constructed working, time-forward transports and we have to do some quick forward probes to find a suitable space where we can community. We have no idea how far future we will have to go, nor do we have any idea of what we will find. They've been sending out box probes but…" he hesitated.

 

Juno spoke up. "They come back empty."

 

"How did you know that, officer Juno?"

 

"The same thing happened when we first started our jumps. I thought those guys in R-D would understand that by now. Time warps can't transport unprocessed matter. That's why the jumps are so hard. When we get there all we can bring back is what we remember… if we can get back at all."

 

"The R-D guys told us they could design a transport to jump as many as twenty people at a time."

 

"Yes, elder. We can transport any number of people, we just can't guarantee retrieval nor can we bring anything concrete back. Plus, there's the problem of pinpointing where we send people. Our calibrations are just not that good. About ten minutes is max before we lose reference signals. What you need are jumpers to act as scouts. The problem is ten minutes is not enough time to reconnoiter whether a spot is safe. But then again, I imagine the new scanner might give us a bit more time."

 

"Between 24 and 30 hours, officer Juno."

 

Juno let out a long, low whistle. "How did they do that?"

 

"I really don't understand all the technical stuff like you do, officer Juno. Anyway, commander Bashe, your crew has the most experience with time jumps and we have had to accelerate our escape plan. The new scanner calibration will be complete on this end within a couple of hours. It works exactly like the previous model except it has a finer calibration. The council has decided that the FutureBlack project is critical to our survival and for the time being we will put on hold all history retrieval probes except for one more ju…"

 

"You want us to find Celine?"

 

"Officer Juno, I want you to test the new scanner. Now if you happen to find Celine during the test run, then so be it. After the test run, we will start immediately on the FutureBlack project. Copy?"

 

We all answered "forty" near simultaneously.

 

"Commander Bashe, download your new assignment. Oh, and one more thing. You're running silent from here on in. There will be no further direct contact until you file a mission report. Good luck, brothers and sisters. Commander Bashe?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Daughter, I love you."

 

"Love Black back at 'cha."

 

"A luta continua."

 

We all answered the salute and then the screen went blank. As I pulled off my helmet, I saw a faint smile on Muta's face. Maybe he and Celine would be reunited after all.

 

***

 

Jump center is eerie—we've got nine bodies laid out on slabs, surrounded by translucent tubes. Each of them looks like they are sleeping… or dead, and they are neither. They are suspended, their minds are gone. No, not their minds. Juno always tells me, it's not the mind we send out but the spirit, the life force. Their minds are still functioning, er functionable. If they had the lifeforce they could get up and move and think and respond. I don't understand all of it, no matter how often Juno tries to explain.

 

Muta is, of course, looking at Celine, I mean, looking at Celine's body.

 

"Muta, I've got a good feeling that Juno is going to find Celine."

 

Muta doesn't respond to me. He touches the pyrex shell with the tips of his fingers on his right hand. "Sheba, I appreciate your gesture, but…"

 

"No buts, Muta." I move pass Ishmael's tube, stand beside Muta, and place my palm next to his hand. "If any of us can make it back, Celine will. She was… is our best jumper. She knows what she's doing. And Juno… you know Juno can work that scanner. He's going to find her and they'll make it back."

 

"We couldn't retrieve any of the others." He steps away from me and slowly looks around at our comatose comrades. I look directly in front of me to the unnerving sight of Harriett with her huge, unblinking, dark brown eyes popped wide open like she's playing a game of holding her breath, except her body metabolism is slowed so much she is technically alive but practically a vegetable.

 

Unfortunately, Muta was right. It really didn't look too good for Celine. Even though we had gotten pretty good at retrieval and we had had four successful jumps before we loss Celine—and it couldn't have come at a worse time. We loss her one day before yesterday's council meeting. Buzzard luck.

 

"Muta, I know how you feel."

 

"No, you don't. You know how you feel. You only think you know how I feel." An undercurrent of bitterness thickened the quiet wisp of Muta's normally massive voice. He stares at me and then looks away. After a short moment that seemed like an eternity, Muta returns to his post at the head of Celine's pod.

 

This was why command was always discouraging intimate relations among team members, but here we were. Living in close quarters with each other for over a year at a time in this spherical module that was only about 4500 meters in diameter; no human contact except among ourselves. Buried deep into the side of a mountain in what used to be Suriname. What else were we going to do but grow closer or get on each other’s last little nerve, or both?

 

Muta leaned over and kissed the shield right above Celine's face. And then he embraced the tube like he was going to physically lift it, but instead lay the side of his face on the coolness of the covering. I went to him and bent to hug him. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I didn't say anything, I just hummed an improvised song hoping the vibrations would make Muta feel better, and, more than that, would make me feel better.

 

The intercom crackled with the unmistakable double whistle calling us to the control center.

 

I reluctantly peeled myself from Muta and started slowly out of the jump center. While the computer read my palm print before disengaging the automatic lock on the door, I turned to look at Muta, who was still looking at Celine. Even though my eyes and grown accustomed to the blue dimness of the jump center, at the distance of only 10 meters or so, the whole scene was like I was in the audience watching a science fiction movie. It was hard to believe that nine comrades in suspension and one comrade near immobilized by grief was real.

 

***

 

"We've got a problem, yall?" Juno was talking into his fist, which he was bouncing back and forth against his lips.

 

"The scanner’s not ready?"

 

"No, Sheba, it's up and running fine. All systems go."

 

"So what's the problem?" I asked as I looked back and forth between Bashe and Juno. I could tell they had been talking before Muta and I arrived. Bashe had her arms folded and was peering at me like she was trying to look through me. I know she doesn't like me, and I know why she doesn't like me. I turned away from the nearly palpable distaste of her unblinking gaze. I flopped down to my console and as I looked around at the twelve empty consoles, I suddenly felt very, very weary. When I looked up Bashe was still staring at me. I glanced briefly at Muta who appeared to be deep in thought, then I peeped at Juno, who had his head down—as though the answer to whatever the shitty problem was was down between his boots—and then I closed my eyes.

 

"The new scanner only goes forward."

 

My head snapped up as I processed in shocked disbelief the meaning of what Juno had just calmly uttered. Juno avoided my eyes and turned towards Bashe. I followed his lead and clearly saw her nod an almost imperceptible but unmistakable signal to Juno. It was like everything had already been decided and nobody had told me or Muta any goddamn thing.

 

"So, we're just going to abandon Celine?" I blurted out louder and with more of an accusatory edge to my voice than I actually meant.

 

"So, so what's the problem?" Muta folded his arms across his chest and locked stares with Juno. For almost a full minute nobody said anything.

 

"Fuck! Why doesn't somebody say something?"

 

"Take it easy, Sheba."

 

Before I could spit my disagreement at Juno for even suggesting that I should be cool about the problem, Bashe interrupted our exchange, just like she had interrupted us when I was in Juno's pad.

 

Bashe gave me that same damn look, that same timbre in her voice. "Oh" was all she had said. Just "oh." Like as if one little silly syllable could explain everything. Could explain what I was doing sitting on Juno's bunk, and explain what she was doing visiting Juno's pad when her quarters were on the other side of the module. Oh!

 

"That's not the real problem."

 

I glared at her. What wasn't the real problem? The scanner? The fact that both of us were trying to get next to Juno? What?

 

"Not being able to go back and search for Celine seems like a real problem to me," I icily responded.

 

Juno got up and walked towards me. "We've got a solution for that, Sheba. The problem is the new scanner only goes forward and network central is only going to bring us topside for one more launch before they retool our module."

 

I knew we had to be on the surface to make a jump and being exposed to satellite surveillance was a big risk that our position might be discovered or our security compromised, but Juno seemed to be suggesting something else. "So, I don't understand."

 

Bashe cut in quietly, "If we're going to search for Celine we have to do it on this next jump."

 

"But I thought he said the damn thing only went forward." I waved my hand with my thumb extended in Juno's direction without taking my eyes of off Bashe. "We can't find Celine by going forward."

 

"We're going to do a double jump."

 

"A what?" I blurted out incredulously.

 

"A double jump, Sheba." Juno said quietly as though he was talking about running a routine module check.

 

"The problem is I don't know how to use the scanner. I mean, theoretically I know, but I don't have any experience at it and neither do you." Bashe actually  gave me warm body language as she spoke. First she pointed to herself and then as she said "neither do you" she placed her hand lightly on my shoulder.

 

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. "Wait a minute, if we do a double jump and we use the old scanner and the new scanner, we're going to need an operator at each one, who’s going to operate the transports?"

 

"I can handle the transport but I…" Muta stopped and we all silently filled in the rest, each of us remembering the day before yesterday when Muta had fumbled with the codes on what was supposed to be a routine jump. I was working the transport. Juno had been standing next to Muta assuring him that he could handle the scanner when something went terribly wrong and within the short space of a few seconds we lost contact with Celine and by the time Juno took corrective measures her signal was fading fast.

 

Bashe walked over to Muta and stood directly in front of him. "Trooper Muta, you and officer Juno will operate the scanners and the transports while officer Sheba and I make the jumps. You can do this. You have to do this."

 

Muta visibly flinched as Bashe issued her instructions.

 

"But the old scanner. Is. In a different area. From the new. Scanner," the words leaked out of Muta's mouth in awkward clumps. "Suppose. Something. Goes wrong?"

 

"Nothing is going to go wrong." Bashe firmly grasped Muta by the shoulders, "And if something does go wrong, you will just have to deal with it. We will all have to deal with it." Starting with Juno, Bashe slowly surveyed our tiny crew.

 

"Muta is going to operate the old scanner and Juno is going to operate the new scanner." Bashe paused as the full impact of her words penetrated each of us. She turned to face me, "I will inject you and then I will inject myself. We will preset the transports and hope for the best."

 

"But you know that sometimes you have to adjust the levels on the transport. The risk is…"

 

Bashe cut off Muta's objections, "We have one shot, and one shot only at retrieving Celine. We have lost nine other jumpers. We can't afford to loose Celine."

 

"I don't understand." Everybody looked at me like I was suggesting a mutiny or something. "You know I want to find Celine, but I don't understand taking the risk that we will loose Commander Bashe—I mean I'm not even worried about me." I hesitated to say what I was really thinking because I didn't want Muta to think I was being callous, but like Juno had said, what was so special about Celine other than that she had made eight successful jumps before we lost her? Of course, that was amazing, considering that nobody else had done more than three successful jumps.

 

"I don't believe we lost the other eight."

 

"Juno, what did you say?" This was tripping me out. Juno slumped down further in his console.

 

"I said I don't believe we lost the other eight. I believe something happened, I don't know what, but I know it wasn't pilot error…"

 

"So you're saying I lost Celine but all those other eight people just disappeared?" Muta took a few steps in Juno's direction. I could see that Muta was really roiled. "You were at the controls for six of those other eight. What happened if it wasn't pilot error?"

 

"I don't know what happened, trooper, but I do know it wasn't pilot error." Juno had such a fierce expression on his face when he looked up at Muta that Muta actually backed up two steps.

 

"Muta, we reviewed the logs. I personally inspected each entry, looked at the video of the procedures, poured over all the printouts, there was no indication of pilot error and…"

 

"Except for when I lost Celine."

 

"Except for when we lost Celine." Bashe moved next to Juno. "We lost Celine on Juno's watch, Muta. I have never held you responsible. Besides, the question now is how to carry out our mission."

 

"That's simple," I replied, "We do a forward jump. Gather the required information, file it with control central and that's all she wrote as far as fulfilling our mission."

 

Bashe shook her head from side to side. "Officer Sheba, we have multiple missions. One is to do a forward jump and the other is to retrieve trooper Celine. And I intend for us to accomplish both. Understood?"

 

Bashe took turns silently assessing each of us. No one moved or said anything, finally, I broke the silence. "So, when is jump time?"

 

"07:00 hours."

 

I checked my console. It was 22:48 hours. "Well, I guess I ought to go get some sleep. Or is there another problem we need to solve before jump time?"

 

"You and I just have to decide who’s jumping forward and who’s jumping backwards," Bashe said just as I was about to shove off.

 

"Tell you what. Why don't you just surprise me in the morning," I said sarcastically and started walking toward quarters.

 

Bashe reached out and touched me gently, not to stop me but to physically share her feelings, "Sheba, you know me. You know I hate surprises and bes…"

 

"Oh," I interrupted Bashe's comments. "Well, surprises don't bother me. I'm a jumper. I've been there and back three times before. Since this will be your first time…" I looked Bashe dead in the eyes and as I brushed past her, I cavalierly tossed my decision over my shoulder without breaking stride, "…you make the call. Make it easy on yourself."

 

I kept expecting Bashe to order me to stop but the only sound I heard was the slap of my sandals thudding against the double-thick synthetic, hard rubber flooring.

 

***

 

 

I don't handle rejection well and that's why I'm careful about what I ask for. I don't even know why I am sitting here. I know Juno doesn't have any deep feelings for me and...

 

"Unless I'm really misreading the situation, you're going to have to search for Celine and Muta is going to have to be your operator. He's not comfortable enough at the scanner controls to work the new scanner and the old scanner doesn't go forward, and..."

 

He just stopped talking. I looked up at him as I leaned back against the wall. All of the compartments were the same tiny size: a six foot bunk, a small desk with a hutch, a cabinet and that was it. Everything looked just like my compartment. Juno was staring at me. He sat down on the bunk on the opposite end from where I was hunched into the corner.

 

"What?" I gathered myself for whatever Juno was about to say.

 

"Sheba, I know you didn't come over here to talk about the jump tomorrow."

 

I hate it when people want to make you beg for what you want. One part of me was pissed. Pissed that I was here. Pissed that I even thought about coming here. And another part of me was so damn needy. I knew, tomorrow I could be dead or worse—who knows what happens to your spirit when you get lost out there. Your body vegetates here in jump control and your spirit... fuck it. I start to get up but don't. When I look up, Juno is not even looking at me.

 

"Why do you think I came?"

 

“Sheba, I’m not going to play that game.”

 

“I’m not playing.”

 

He looked away, silently took a deep breath and then looked at me. Without sounding like I was some kind of freak, how could I explain to him that I didn’t want to die horny. Sacrifice is one thing, but if liberation doesn’t include love-making than how liberated are we? Was it my fault that there were only four of us left? Muta is thinking about Celine. And Bashe is our leader.

 

The intercom buzzed interrupting my scheming on how to make a move on Juno without looking like I was just throwing myself at him. I knew it was Bashe, maybe I had conjured her up by thinking about her at that moment.

 

Juno responded, "Yes."

 

"Juno, can we talk?" It was like she knew I was there and was choosing her words carefully.

 

"Affirmative. I'll be over in five."

 

"Ok."

 

Juno looked at me as he stood up. "This shouldn't take long."

 

"Does that mean you want me to wait here for you to come back?"

 

Juno hesitated. "Sheba..."

 

"Tell you what. I'll be in my compartment if you want to stop by when you finish talking with Bashe."

 

"No, Sheba, let's not play those games. I'm not going to stop by and I..."

 

"And you don't want me to wait here."

 

Juno didn't say anything. I put my head down on my knees. When I looked up he was still standing in the doorway. "Sheba, I'll see you tomorrow morning, 06:30."

 

I got up and started toward the doorway, squeezing between the desk and the bunk. Juno stepped into the corridor. He grabbed my arm as I brushed past him. "It would be worse if I let you stay."

 

I looked him full in the eyes. He let go of my arm and then turned away. "Don't forget to secure your quarters," I said. Juno kept walking away, not even acknowledging what I had just said. Then I heard his door automatically slide shut and lock. I headed in the opposite direction back to my compartment.

 

After I rounded the first corner I stopped and sat down on the floor. I didn’t want to go back to my little lonely space. I didn’t want to be alone… I know it sounded so undisciplined not to be able to face the severity of our situation. But sometimes you get tired of being strong, alone. Sometimes it would be nice to be held by someone before you made a leap into the unknown.

 

Suddenly all I heard was the hum of our module; all the equipment doing whatever it did: the computers, the air supply, the power generators. I put my hand down on the floor and could feel vibrations. I knew I was just going stir crazy. Except for the jumps, I had not been topside in the natural world for almost a year. And the last time I had made love was with Harriett and that was over six months ago. And… I threw my head back and intentionally bumped it on the wall. Two, three, four times. I never saw people get horny in none of the space movies—there might be a romance, but… I jumped up. I must have been sitting there feeling pitiful for at least ten minutes. Although I tried not to think about it, I knew I was going to do what I usually did when I felt this way: masturbate, fall asleep, and forget about it.

 

When I turned the last corner and saw Bashe, her bald head bowed, eyes closed, sitting in a lotus position, meditating beside my compartment door I was shocked. I thought she and Juno would be going at it by now. I stopped but she must have sensed my presence because she calmly looked up at me and smiled. I saluted her as she stood up. She returned the salute and then opened her arms to embrace me. I just stood still. Bashe stepped forward and hugged the rigidity of my body to her.

 

"Sheba, I'm not your enemy. In about seven or so hours we are going to face a very tough situation." Bashe relaxed her arms and stepped back. "I came here to talk with you because... well, because I need, no, because I want our team to be a team. We are down to four people and after tomorrow... well, who knows. This situation has been very tough on all of us. I admire the way you have held up. I wish I had your spunk."

 

Bashe was trying to use textbook psych on me. I looked her in the eyes briefly. What I saw there frightened me. She was totally in control of herself. I was shaking inside. I turned to face my door.

 

"Sheba, I am 37 years old. Juno is 34. You are 26. I know..."

 

"Don't forget about Muta."

 

"Muta is not part of this triangle."

 

I refused to look at her. I started to say, what triangle, but I knew I wasn't prepared for whatever might be Bashe's response.

 

"I have prepared myself for years to be able to do whatever needed to be done and to control my emotions. I believe I can face anything. Right now, I have questions. Make no mistake, I am going to go forward with our mission, but at the same time I am questioning. Questioning everything."

 

"I don't understand."

 

"There is something happening out there and we don't know what it is. We don't know what happened to our crew. There is a great unknown, but I am prepared to face it and I think you are too. But the unknowns outside are not my major concern at this moment. What concerns me is our inability to face the problems we know about."

 

She paused. I looked over at her briefly. Bashe's unblinking stare was fixed on me. "I don't understand," I pretended.

 

"You want to be with Juno and I want to be with Juno. Neither one of us is going to get our wish. We don't need to carry this baggage with us when we do our jumps tomorrow. Juno is committed to celibacy during the course of this mission. I know because we've talked about it. And because he practices..." Bashe paused. She was still staring at me. She was still not blinking. "It is my responsibility to monitor everything that happens on this unit."

 

I can not return Bashe's unblinking focus so instead I look at a spot in the middle of her forehead just above her eyes, the place where the mystics say the third eye is located, the place where Hindu women wear a red dot. I hate it when I loose a battle of wills but Bashe is by far the most intense person I have ever encountered. I have never been able to stare her down. Never. At the same time I am trying not to succumb to her hypnotic force, I reactively wonder how much was “everything”. Did she really mean everything—bathroom, bed? Did she mean there is never a time when someone isn't watching us?

 

Bashe firmly but softly repeated herself, "Everything."

 

"That's a lot." Did they lie to us about not having cameras in our compartments, about allowing us that small bit of privacy? Had Bashe watched me touching myself?

 

"Sheba, I came here to thank you for not attacking me and to let you know that I do not stand between you and Juno." Then she reached out and embraced me again.

 

I actually shuddered. I couldn't help myself. Bashe scared the shit out of me.

 

"Good luck on your jump tomorrow."

 

I mumbled something in reply, but I don't know what. Probably, yeah, and good luck to you too. Her hug was both a shelter and a trap. As she stepped back after holding me all I could think to do was snap off a salute.

 

"Comrade sister Sheba, every little thing is going to be alright." Bashe didn't return my salute, instead she kissed my right cheek, smiled at me, turned slowly and seemed to float down the corridor back toward her quarters. I found out just how much I was shaking when I pressed my trembling palm to the cool screen to i-d open my door.

 

***

 

There is no time. Time is an illusion. Everything is now. The past. The future. It’s all now. All going on at the same time. And no matter how random or chaotic. It’s always the same. Changing but the same. And I have no fear because I don’t need to be me. In order to exist. I could ride the wind as a leaf, hug the earth as a tree.

 

Juno is so clever. He tried to explain to me that every death is a birth because to die is to be born on another plane since we can neither add to nor subtract from existence only transform in terms of what plane we exist on.

 

I guess if I could have children I might feel differently. I jump so well because it really doesn’t matter if I come back. I have no fear. No anxiety.

 

I am trying to describe the color I see when I close my eyes. To myself. I’m trying to explain me to me. Inhale nostrils. Exhale mouth. Suppose I am not coming back but going to. Suppose. Suppose. Suppose.

 

I tried to talk to Celine about jumping. But her experience was so different from mine. I think she wanted to be conscious. I just let myself be. And become. We searched by vibrations. I was confident that people who struggled gave off a certain vibe and tried to tune in to that vibe of struggle, and let my own self-awareness merge into my host. In a sense, I guess, I became one with my host.

 

I remember, once, when I was in this guy who living in the swamps, I don't know. It was so comfortable. He was so sure of himself. All alone out there. It wasn't even a thought process. It was a certainty of spirit. He was going to die out there rather than return. And I had to struggle with myself not to stay with him. Maybe that's what happened to the other jumpers. Maybe once we got inside a host who was really committed to our people, maybe we decided to stay. Just add our spirits to them. Make them that much stronger.

 

Something like Bashe. Maybe she has a jumper from some other place inside her. Juno says that a lot of the traditional ceremonies with the potions that people drank, and all the dancing and drumming, was just another way of time traveling and that people actually plugged into other times and other places and other people when they went into those trances.

 

I don't know. All I know is that we don't really know as much as we think we know. Who really knows what life is and how life works? Our job was to find the ones who didn't give up, regardless of what odds they faced. Find them. And learn their stories. Because those were the ones who were lost to us. And at the same time those were the ones who made it possible for us to be us.

 

I found myself thinking about being in that brother in the swamp and the time he slipped back to the plantation one night to be with this woman. She didn't hardly know him. But she knew what he was. She gave him some food. And she gave him herself. And I was with him when he lay down with her. And when he came I came. Damn. What an orgasm that was.

 

Did she get pregnant? Is any of this passed on in the dna? Juno says that there is never just one explanation for anything. Everything has a multiplicity of factors and for sure every new birth is a result of the mating of at least two separate forces… I'm not a thinker. Juno likes to deal with these kinds of questions. But I know how to make stuff happen. That's why I'm jumping right now.

 

Bashe was who I last saw. She had injected me. And was leaning over me. And squeezed my hand gently. And I felt loved.

 

Now it’s that pulsing dark, that warm brown that you get when you hold your face toward the sun with your eyes tightly closed.

 

I always go to sleep, just totally relax and drift. Usually I think about colors. Yellow-cream. The feel of warm water. The sound of my own breath: in through my nostrils, out through my mouth, in, out, nostrils, mouth. Butter. I’ve only tasted it once. It was soft, soft. Had been laying in a shallow dish on a counter all morning. Soft to the touch. I tasted it on my finger tip. Looked over the ridge and there was the soft sun rising, yellow. Yellow as the butter.

 

I have the feeling that I have been someone else before and am becoming someone else now. I lock in on the vibrations. I feel like I am getting close to Celine but I'm not there yet, and yet, somehow, I'm getting these vibes that feel good, feel right, feel Black like the Black we're trying to save. I will go with this and see where it leads...

 

This is strange. Because I know this neighborhood. I know these sidewalks. The houses. What goes on behind closed doors. The people. I recognize almost everyone I see. Foots is standing on the corner. I lower the driver’s side window and stick my fist up in the air.

 

“Hey, Kalamu.”

 

“Give thanks, Foots. How you be?” He crosses the street toward me, I ease my foot down on the clutch and ease the shift into first but keep the clutch to the floor.

 

“Man, I’m just getting ready for Jazzfest. I got some designs to lay on them.”

 

Foots, sibling of Billy Paul, he’s got some heavy new jewelry to sell. He pushes his hand into my open window and shakes. The car is rocking, I have Incognito turned up so loud. I like to ride with the windows up and the music up higher than the windows, which are all the way up. Foots smiles at me, bopping his head to that beat. I ease up on the clutch and swing on round the corner.

 

I’m 54 years old and sometimes I feel weary, but then I get a spurt of energy. I don’t know where from. Actually, I believe all my extra energy comes from either one, or maybe both of the major life forces other than the one I was born with. They are: one, the here and now; two, the been here and gone; and three, the soon come to be. The been here and the soon come, offer a reason to keep going, cause if it were left to me in the present, I could just check out at this point. My work is relatively complete. I have done my do. Fought the good fight. Reared—actually, to be honest and correct about it, helped to rear some slamming young people, those biologically from me as well as a number of others whom I have touched. And, well, what else is left, but a little bit more of the same.

 

I think about my parents. My mother dead of cancer at 57, and my father dying suddenly some years later. There are days when I dream about one or the other of them, usually my father—and when they were both alive, I always thought I was closer to my mother, but life is it’s own reality, not what we think, or wish, or hope for, but what it is and the truth, the real is sometimes something other than we are ready to admit.

 

There is something in me that will not let me stop and yet, I don’t believe in god. I don’t disbelieve. I just have no opinion on that issue. Once I left the church as a teenager, no organized form of religion has ever appealed to me. Spirituality, well, I studied stuff but anything organize around a specific system was just, well, was beyond where I was willing to go, or maybe not as far out as where I am. So when I say I believe in the ancestors and the unborn, I don’t mean it in any concrete way except to say that there is something inside me I can’t explain. Except I know it’s there.

 

It’s almost noon and I have not eaten anything at all yet today. But the music has me feeling upful. After unfolding myself from the driver’s seat, I stand beside the car a moment. The weather is warm. Sun in March.

 

When I get inside I call Lynn and we talk about workshop next week. I will be out of town and she will lead workshop and choose the study piece. Immediately I jump online and spend the next couple of hours doing email. Fortunately, I don’t have to teach school today and then as is always happening in Treme, I hear a brass band in the distance, sounding like it is coming this way. I jump up.

 

Sometimes I ignore the bands, but other times I go see what’s going on. As I step down to the sidewalk, the procession is rounding the corner and there is this little girl, maybe six or seven years old, prancing beside the lead trumpet. At times she looks up at the horn player, at other times she is dancing so intently her eyes get that far away stare like you see when people catch the spirit. Her little limbs jerk lithly, but not like a puppet on a string, rather like there is something inside her bucking to get out. Her knobby little knees wobble from side to side. She can’t weight no more than a matchstick but she’s flowing like a willow tree rocking in the breeze. I am transfixed by her; there is something about the way she dances that is older than she is. Something familiar. But I don’t know her, have not seen her in the neighborhood before. I feel like I should know her. She has that Dionne Warwick kind of face, triangular with almond-shaped eyes that sit at a slight upward angle on her dark face. She is not smiling. She is so serious about this dancing. I just look at her. When she jumps, turns around, squats, hands on knees and backs it up, I fall out. A whole procession of people passes, but all I see is this young girl. Dancing. Dancing. Dancing down the street.

 

 

***

 

“We’re locked on. We got her!”

 

At first I didn’t know what Muta was talking about. I’m leaning against the transport table for support. I always feel weak after a jump, like I want to sleep.

 

I look around the launch area for something yellow. There is nothing. Why am I looking for something yellow? And then I look up and directly above me is a yellow light on the ceiling connected to the transport control. I smile. I knew I wasn’t crazy…

 

“Sheba, did you hear me? Power up Celine’s transport. We got her.”

 

Celine? Transport? Power up…?

 

“Sheba, hurry. We’re going to loose her if the transport is not functioning.”

 

I try to move quickly, but I stumble. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It takes so much effort to take one step. What am I doing? I have that lost feeling, like someone waking me in the middle of a deep sleep and asking me to solve calculus problems.

 

“Fifty-eight ticks and counting.”

 

Celine looks so perfect. It’s funny, she could be dead… damn, what am I saying. She is dead. For all practical purposes. She is dead. But she doesn’t really look dead, or is it that I don’t want her to be dead, or to look dead. Her skin is healthy looking, there is blood circulating through her although at a very, very slow rate, sort of intermittent rather than continuous.

 

I remember us playing around once. Wrestling. She had me around the waist trying to flip me and I was holding her neck for leverage; she couldn’t flip me without me falling on top of her. And our heads were close together. I remember the wonderful sweetness of her breath. Not an artificial sweetness, but real sweetness. Deep inside of her she is sweet. And I know she shits like everybody else does, but her intestines, or at least her stomach, has got to be the healthiest in the world. Soft and cool. That was the thing. We were wrestling but her breath was still coming out soft and cool. And sweet. But her body was tough. I mean mostly muscle and bone, no fat, no padding. She must have had muscles all up in her breasts. Her neck was like a steel cord. And I could feel her fingers gripping me in a dead man’s grip…

 

“SHEBA! Code Black. Fourteen clicks and counting. Set the switches, Sheba.”

 

Eight-zero-niner. Enter. The switches run through the colors. Starting at red, burn through to amber. And then one by one. Green. Green. Green. Power up.

 

I look over at Muta. “Power up.”

 

Muta is lost in the gyrations of multitasking. Keeping the beat, easying back on the transport accelerator. Tapping in code with his right hand. Holding the frequency attenuator with his left hand and bumping it up at appropriate moments. His left foot tapping a beat for the vibration resonator. And his right foot dropping harmonics—Juno always said, the harmonics is the key to making everything work. Watching Muta from the rear he looks just like a jazz drummer playing keyboards and drums at the same time.

 

This was Juno’s innovation. Instead of using a gyroscope to set and lock the rhythm, the operator had to establish the flow. Juno said, flow allowed for maximum variation. The jumper could go wherever, experience whatever, change, flip in and out of time zones, in and out of hosts and it was no problem, except if the operator couldn’t keep up. The old way with the fixed rhythm never yielded great results because we would so seldom find somebody functioning at whatever vibrational frequency we were locked on, but this way, we could change to fit the conditions…

 

“Celine!” Muta pushed me aside, like I was a fly buzzing his face. He was lifting the cover on Celine’s transport before I fully understood what was happening.

 

I looked down at Celine’s body. It wasn’t moving. But the gauges on the transport control panel indicated that she was alive. She was back.

 

“Celine.” Muta was almost crying. Celine was not moving. He started checking for her pulse, and then he shook her gently. “Come on, baby. Wake up. Wake up.”

 

There was no sense in telling him to stop. He felt for her pulse by the big vein in the side of the neck. And he smiled his huge smile, the one that made him so attractive.

 

“Her heart is beating.”

 

I leaned over to put my ear next to her nose and I smelled her breath. “She’s back,” I whispered. “Celine is back.”

 

Muta broke down at that point. Sort of like made a choking sound and let his head keel over onto Celine’s chest. He was crying, softly at first. Then loudly enough that I knew he was not embarrassed about it and was just letting it go. Happy crying. He was hugging her, his face buried into her bosom. Hugging her and crying. And calling her name, between sobs. Over and over.

 

Then Celine’s hand rose up, the gesture was so slow and so graceful it looked like something you see in a dream. Her hand moved. Up and then out like she was reaching for something, and then her fingers spread apart, wide apart. And just as slowly she brought her hand to rest on Muta’s head and stroked his head over and over, like what I imagine a mother does to a baby suckling her breast.

 

Now I had to turn away. This was too intimate for me to witness. Muta was still crying when I heard Celine’s voice drawl like she had been drugged: “Muuuu-taaaaa. Whyyyy. Youuuuu. Cryingggggg?”

 

***

 

None of our palm prints would open the module. We had not been coded in, but we could see through the glass. Juno was thrashing away, his fingers flying, rocking back and forth, his knees pumping furiously—I had never seen him so animated at the controls. Something must have gone wrong.

 

“Dag, I didn’t know we had two scanners,” Celine says out loud although not directly to either Muta or myself.

 

“It’s brand new. This is the first tim…” I said.

 

“Whose jumping—not Bashe?”

 

Muta answered quietly, “there’s no one else left to jump.”

 

“How far back are they going?”

 

“Celine,” I reach out and touch her elbow, “it’s a future jump.”

 

“A future jump?” her eyes grow wide as though she dare not believe me. “When did all this happen?”

 

“You’ve been gone a long time…”

 

“Sheba, I thought you said it was only three days, some hours.”

 

“Yeah, well three days is a long, long time around here.”

 

“Damn, something is wrong.” We both turned and stared at Muta as he quietly sized up the situation and confirmed my suspicion.

 

“How can you tell?” I asked.

 

“Because look at the rhythm he’s using with his left foot and see how rapidly he’s stopping and going with his right foot, that’s not normal, that’s an extremely high level of activity. Plus he keeps swinging the antenuator to extremes in both directions. Damn.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s beautiful. Beautiful the way he’s working those scanner controls. How can he move that fast and not loose it, but look, he hasn’t dropped a beat.” Muta had his hands up beside his face like he was cutting off glare, or like a kid staring into a movie-scope. “But I still think something is wrong.”

 

Now all three of us had our faces pressed to the transparent wall separating us from the control module.

 

“This is weird. I feel like we should be in there.”

 

“Doing what, Celine?”

 

“Muta, you know there is always something we can do. Didn’t you just say it looks like something is wrong?”

 

I suck my teeth. “If they wanted us in there, they would have included our palm prints in the access codes.”

 

“Maybe they didn’t think about it. But on the other hand, even if they don’t want us, maybe they need us.”

 

“Celine, you’re always so positive.”

 

“Thanks, Sheba.”

 

“That wasn’t a complement,” I half joke.

 

“No, you were just telling the truth and it’s good to know that I am appreciated,” Celine chuckled. It was good to hear her laughter again.

 

For a couple of long minutes no one says anything. Juno has been working like a man possessed. Suddenly I notice that Juno is wearing a helmet—Muta only wore earphones. “Muta, why is Juno on helmet.”

 

“Cause he’s flying blind.”

 

“Flying blind? What does that mean?”

 

“It means he’s blocking out everything around him and only seeing the scanner codes and getting aural feedback through the ear phones,” Celine answered me matter-of-factly.

 

“Yeah, but the helmet does funny things to your hand and foot coordination, you can’t hear yourself operating the controls and there’s almost no tactile feedback.”

 

“Yeah, you get more control of the input but you get less feedback in terms of what you’re doing. Juno tried to show me how to use the helmet but I preferred the earphones.”

 

I glanced over at Celine, not only was she our best jumper, she also was pretty good at operating the scanner controls. 

 

“Look, you see how fast he’s doing code with his right hand and how smooth he’s manuvering with his left hand at the same time. I believe he’s bringing Bashe back now.”

 

I couldn’t see any difference in what Juno was doing.

 

“Damn, when I grow up, I want to be able to control a scanner like Juno,” Muta muttered softly, shaking his head in admiration.

 

“If you put the time in, you can do it. But even if you don’t get any better, you can transport me anytime.” Celine said, and then those two fools smiled at each other like they were both the first and the last people on earth to fall in love.

 

“Oh, no. Bashe!” Muta pounded on the window trying to get Juno’s attention. Bashe was back alright, but her body was thrashing from the waist down, her head spastically jumping like she was convulsing. Juno finally looked up, tore his helmet off and tossed it aside in one quick motion while bounding over to Bashe still strapped in the transport, her arms flailing frantically.

 

Juno threw himself atop Bashe’s body and locked restraints on her wrists and then he gripped her head with both hands.

 

Celine figured it out immediately, “she’s epileptic. That jump could have killed her. Secure her tongue, Juno, so she doesn’t choke on it. Give her an injection and then hope she pulls through ok.”

 

Juno moved as though he heard everything Celine said, right down to an injection. That went too smoothly. It was like Juno was prepared for the seizure to happen. And then it hit me. “I bet you that’s why they locked us out; they knew.”

 

“No,” Celine said, “it’s not that simple. They know I’ve got the most medical training, they would want me in there.”

 

“Yeah, but you just got back, and nobody knew where you were or if you wanted to come back” I joked, even though it wasn’t funny.

 

“I hear that, Sheba. But damn, Juno looked like he was prepared…”

 

“Celine, that’s just what I was thinking.”

 

Bashe was completely still now. Juno finally stopped to look around and noticed us standing there. He went to the console and opened the door.

 

We rushed in, nobody saying anything, everybody looking at Bashe. Juno eventually came over and hugged Celine, “Welcome home, trooper Celine.” And then Juno dapped up Muta, “Good job, trooper Muta.”

 

We all smiled briefly.

 

“Celine, please run a check on commander Bashe. Officer Sheba, have you done a full debriefing yet?”

 

“No. We came straight over here to see if you all needed some help.”

 

“Trooper Muta, do a full debriefing with officer Sheba. After you and officer Sheba have recorded the debrief, return to this module. Celine and I will see to commander Bashe.”

 

Both Muta and I snapped off salutes. Juno was not hesitating in taking charge. He was clear and direct in his orders and unhesitating about what had to be done, but I could see the concern swimming in his eyes, which were glazed over with moisture that I assume was tears or stress, or both.

 

As we were leaving, I heard Juno said something about Bashe predicted this might happen. How do you get up the nerve to volunteer for a jump if you know you’re an epileptic?

 

* * *

 

After everything was over, we all received promotions, except for Bashe who was already a commander. The ceremony, as such, was scheduled to take place within another two weeks when our small crew was to be brought topside. Meanwhile, here we are receiving final orders from Bashe.

 

Bashe looked at each one of us before saying a word, and then she looked down before finally raising her head proudly.

 

“Please stop me if I go too fast. I’m going to skip the official rigmarole. The deal is a truce has been declared and we are all being disbanded. Of course, it is not going to be announced like that, but the end result will be, the war is over.”

 

“Bashe, wait, you said, disbanded?”

 

“Yes, Muta. Disbanded. CC is being absorbed into…”

 

“I don’t want to hear it,” I blurted out my immediate reaction. “The jumps, the units…”

 

“Sheba, we were the only unit to survive. All the others either failed to complete their assignments or they were captured or destroyed. The elders decided the cost was too high and…”

 

“What about ‘no surrender, no compromise’?” I asked.

 

“Sheba, the truth is I don’t know.” There was a long silence while we waited for Bashe to continue. “I don’t think any of us know. This movement has been our lives. I grew up this way. My father was in this movement before I was born.” Bashe fell silent. Her head was angled slightly upward and to the side. If you watched her eyes you saw them shifting back and forth like she was reading something.

 

“This can’t be it. Not like this!”

 

“Sheba, calm down.”

 

“Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

 

I looked over at Juno. Leave it to him to suddenly quote poetry at a moment like this. “Who said that?”

 

Bashe didn’t even look in my direction when she answered my question, “T.S. Eliot.”

 

“Damn, Juno, at least you could quote a Black poet.” I retorted quietly.

 

“Is there some kind of amnesty program or something? You know some of us…”

 

“I know, Muta. Some of us are wanted. From what I understand there is some kind of table of responsibilities and consequences, and depending on what you’re wanted for, they’ve worked out… Look, all of you are cool. Any of you who wants to go back can do so without prejudice. I’ve checked on your cases.”

 

“Bashe, what are the options? I mean suppose we don’t want to go back. Where else can we go?”

 

“Celine, as far as I know there is no other place to go. OnePlanet is everywhere.”

 

“Well, I’m not going back. I’ll stay here, if I have to,” I looked at Bashe who was listening to me and sending out support-vibes. “When I said, no surrender, no compromise. I meant it. I meant every word of it.”

 

Juno spoke up suddenly, “Bashe, what about you? Can you go back?”

 

“No.”

 

“No, you can’t or no, you won’t?”

 

“Sheba, I can’t and I won’t.”

 

“So, what are you going to do?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Well, I tell you what, wherever you decide to go, count me in, cause I don’t want to go back.”

 

“I’m with Juno on that,” I said.

 

Before Bashe could respond, Celine spoke up. “Muta and I really, really have to talk this over. You know…” Celine paused. “My first inclination is to stay here with Bashe…”

 

“Yall, there is no here to stay at. Don’t you understand? This is the last module and tomorrow it will be turned over…”

 

“I mean, Bashe, I understand. But what I was saying is that my first inclination is to go wherever you go and…”

 

“I thank all of you for your support and for the confidence you have in me, but right now you are being confronted with a reality you probably never imagined. You don’t need to make any rash decisions. You need to think about your future. You understand? Think about what it is you want for the rest of your life. Sheba you are still very young, you could literally start over. Celine and Muta, you two have each other. Go start a family. If you register you can have a child.” Bashe looked deep into my eyes and then deep into Celine’s eyes and Muta’s eyes. Her look was saying much more than her words.

 

“What about Juno?” I asked even though I knew the answer already, or at least I thought I knew the answer. Juno wasn’t going back.

 

“What about, Juno?” Bashe never even glanced his way, but instead bore into me with those searching eyes.

 

“No, I was just saying, you gave advice to me and to Muta and Celine, but you didn’t say anything to Juno.”

 

Bashe smiled. “Are you asking me if Juno and I are getting together?”

 

It got quiet. Real quiet. I looked away. It was still quiet. I peeked over at Juno. He never even looked up.

 

“Well, Sheba, is that what you want to know?”

 

“Ah, I was just, ah, I mean Juno did say he was going to go wherever you go.”

 

“I repeat, are you asking me if Juno and I are getting together?”

 

“What the fuck, it doesn’t make any difference, does it? Just like that, it’s over. The Community Council has cut some kind of deal and some people will get taken care of and the majority of us will become some little cog in some urban center. And shit. Who cares, fuck it. I guess it was nice while it lasted but the fun is over and it’s back to the goddamn real world.”

 

“Sheba, you’re hurt and confused at the moment. Don’t say anymore… but then again, maybe you should. Maybe you should get all of that out of your system.” Bashe walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “The truth is CC negotiated a deal for the whole community. Most of you will be acquired as normal citizens, and all of us, rank commander and above, will be sent to a restricted zone for an indefinite time.”

 

Her touch felt so light and yet so strong.

 

“Sheba, do you want to be exiled on a restricted zone with me?” Of course I did not answer her. I could not lie and say I was ready for a life that was closer to death. Those zones were everything we were fighting against.

 

“I didn’t think so. I don’t think any of you wants to go through that. Right?” Bashe looked at each of us in turn. None of us spoke up to say we wanted to join her in such a harsh and pitiful place. “CC offered us the option of remaining underground, but we would probably never get back to the world again. I wouldn’t even bring that up to you all, confused as you are right now, we might have elected to do something irreversible that we would surely come to regret.”

 

Bashe was right. I really couldn’t see myself living the rest of my life on this module. I could easily see myself dying in battle, but living like this, I just never foresaw anything like this as being our future.

 

“Our movement ebbs and flows. There are no guarantees except that we must struggle. Sometimes we will have to withdraw and lie dormant, other times we must throw ourselves against impossible odds. Muta, Celine, Sheba, Juno, I love each of you. Fiercely. I do. I know your hearts are strong. I know your minds are clear. Your beliefs are with our people. I know this like my blood knows my body.”

 

Bashe looked at me last. I didn’t realize I was crying until Bashe stepped to me and wiped a tear off my cheek with her bare hand. Bashe hugged me and then drew back.

 

“You know how in our studies we found out that different groups of our ancestors had different ways of dealing with slavery? Some of us adapted and some us committed suicide. Some of us resisted and most of us just kind of did whatever we had to do to survive.”

 

At first nobody answered Bashe. We all just waited for her to continue. And then Juno spoke up, “Bashe, we know the story. You’re going to walk into the sea, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Bashe stepped away from me and continued talking to all of us, “I guess I just don’t have it. I don’t have that something inside that enables a person to put up with bullshit. You know I used to wonder what did our ancestors do when a slave revolt failed. The ones who were still alive but who had been part of the rebellion. What did they do? Well, we’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

 

“Bashe, you are the bravest person I know,” Celine was speaking very, very softly. “You took that jump knowing that it could have killed you… and you did it so that there would be a chance, just a chance that I could be brought back. I owe you my life, I know that.”

 

“Celine, you know what you owe me?” Bashe walked over to Celine and embraced her and then embraced Muta. “You owe me the two of yall having a child together. I chose not to have a child. Maybe if I…” Bashe didn’t finish her thought.

 

“I tell you what crew, this is a lot to think about. Let’s reassemble in the morning. Why don’t we all just sleep on what we want to do. Juno, Sheba, Celine and Muta, each of you have the option of going anywhere in the world you want to go. You will receive full global citizenship, a grade-omega passport, and a choice of service or research jobs. The details of the deal are being finalize as we… I’m terrible at giving speeches. Meet back here 09:00. That’s all. Dismissed. Oh, there is one more thing: CC is bringing us topside in the morning. Tonight will be our last night aboard this module. That’s all. Dismissed.”

 

We started to snap off a salute, but the words wouldn’t come. “We can’t even say ‘a luta continua’ anymore,” I said to no one in particular.

 

“Sheba, we can still say it,” Bashe looks at me with a tenderness I hadn’t recognized before. “It’s just that the struggle will now have to take a different form.”

 

* * *

 

The jerk of the module docking topside woke me up early, a little after six. Our compartments are soundproof, someone could have been shouting outside our door and we would not be able to hear them, but we could feel the motion of the module, which was always moving this way and that through a maze of tunnels. To evade detection, our module was never still for more than five or six hours except when we docked topside for a jump and that usually took no longer than two hours.

 

Before I even realized what I was doing I had finished packing and placed the bundle on my bunk. When I got tired of standing up looking down at my gear, I flopped on the bed and kicked at the backpack. The kick felt so good, I let go with a second and stronger kick. The pack thudded against the wall at the foot of my bunk. I kicked it again. And then another kick.

 

All my possessions were in that pack and I doubt if it weighed fifty pounds. None of us really owned anything much, we didn’t need much, not even clothes in this controlled environment.

 

I wondered what Juno was doing; what Bashe was doing; whether they were doing whatever they were doing together? I looked over at the computer screen. It was just a little after seven. I couldn’t just sit anymore.

 

Out in the hall, I just started walking. I didn’t have any particular destination. I was avoiding Juno’s compartment, that’s one place I wasn’t going.

 

Where was I going to go?

 

I decided to go say goodbye to all the jumpers who never made it back. When I got to the jump room, the room was completely dark, not even the usual night lights were on. And the door was open. We never left this door open. Even before I keyed up the lights, I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea how wrong. An involuntary gasp jumped out of my mouth when I saw that the room was empty. For almost a minute, I couldn’t believe it. All the pods were empty. Empty!

 

Things were moving too fast. How could all this have happened so quickly? I had no choice. I had to go see Bashe.

 

Her compartment was empty. The door was open. I ran to the control center. Sprinted. No one was there. Everybody couldn’t have left me. At control center I turned on the security monitors and started searching for Bashe, Juno, Muta and Celine. Anybody. Everybo… and there was Juno operating the new scanner. But who was jumping? I ran down the hall.

 

When I got to the new scanner room, Juno was standing in the open doorway, just like he was waiting for me. He started talking without looking up at me, “She’s gone. Jumped somewhere into the future and she’s not coming back.”

 

I looked into the room and there Bashe’s body was, laid out, perfectly still and unplugged. I glanced over at the scanner, it was off. None of the transport lights were on.

 

I kept trying to get a grip on my mind, but I couldn’t think a straight thought.

 

She left us. I looked over at Juno and when he finally looked up at me, I was stunned. His eyes were troubled, reddish. He wearily rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

 

“Bashe woke me up early this morning and asked me to send her on a jump and to disconnect her after she was out there.”

 

“You could have said no.”

 

Juno just sadly shook his head in response. “If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have told you no. Why should I tell Bashe no?”

 

I didn’t know what to say. This was all too much for me to process. I just sort of shut down. Turned away from Juno and looked at Bashe’s body.

 

“I used to believe in karma,” Juno said, “at the same time that I believe in evolution. I mean all the scientific evidence supports some form of evolution. But then I could never get with white people ruling the world, being the dominant branch of the species. Dominance and karma just don’t go together. In fact, dominance seems to be what evolution is about and… well, there are so many people who didn’t survive, who are now extinct. That was evolution, but was there any justice in that?”

 

I only half heard what Juno said. It was like he was babbling, more talking to himself than talking to me.

 

“Juno, I don’t understand. Everything is breaking down and you’re talking about karma and evolution, and… and, well, this doesn’t make sense. None of this, I mean all of this… it’s like chaos, just plain chaos.”

 

“Exactly. Like I said, I used to believe in karma and evolution.”

 

“And so what do you believe now?”

 

“Sheba, I believe shit happens. It just happens. Some of it be sweet, some of it be bitter. We endure the bitter and enjoy the sweet. I mean some of us. Some of us endure, some of us enjoy. But there’s no rhyme, no reason.”

 

I must have been looking at him like he was crazy, because he laughed, a hard and almost cynical laugh.

 

“You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. What do I know?”

 

I turned to look at Bashe for the last time. Her face was calm. Her eyes were closed. At least she was at peace with her decision. Impulsively I bent over and kissed her. Her lips were already cool.

 

“Sheba?”

 

“What?”

 

“I said, do you want to jump too? If you do, we have to do it now, we’re almost out of time?”

 

“What…?” I was totally disoriented. “Juno, I don’t know. What are you going to do?”

 

“I’m going to be one of the ones who stay on the shore.”

 

“What? Juno, what are you talking about?”

 

“I’m talking about how some of us walked into the sea and most of us stayed on the shore.”

 

“Oh.”

 

A chill went through me. I knew I was going to stay on the shore too, even though I had made four back-jumps, right now I just wanted to… to what? What did I really want? Before I realized what was happening, words were tumbling out of my mouth, “Juno, can we… I mean since I don’t know and you don’t know, can we kind of don’t know together?”

 

Juno smiled a half smile.

 

“Can I take that smile as a yes?”

 

“Yes, you can take it as a yes, but that’s not why I was smiling.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Come on,” Juno grabbed my hand. “I was smiling because the last thing Bashe said was if you stay, stay together. Don’t try to face down OnePlanet by yourself.”

 

Suddenly the main lights went out. The module automatically switched to backup power. Juno, hardly reacted except to murmur, “They’re here.” He was still holding my hand.

 

—kalamu ya salaam