THE BOOK OF NEGROES by Lawrence Hill

mother and my father outside my village and I kept standing. Warm urine ran down my legs, which made me burn with shame.
    The medicine man passed me a calabash of water. “You help me,” he said.
    I drank but said nothing.
    “You help me, and I help you.”
    I had no idea how he could help me, or what I could do for him. I wished I had been sent away with Sanu and Fanta. I watched the working homelanders leave the ship, climb into the canoes below and row away. They were allowed to come and go, but we, the captives, were to be taken away. Of that I was sure.
    THE MEDICINE MAN’S HAND rested on my shoulder. He was saying something I couldn’t understand. The helper explained that I was to go with them down into the ship. He led the way. The medicine man grabbed my arm and took me down steep steps into a dark, stinking hold. I choked at the stench of human waste. I imagined the biggest lion of my land—as big as the lion mountain on shore, but living and breathing and hungry. It seemed as if we were being taken straight into its anus. The lion had already rampaged through the villages and swallowed all the people live, and was now keeping them stacked and barely breathing in the faint light of its belly. Up ahead, the assistant held the portable fire that threw light into the shadows. The medicine man also carried fire in a container. Everywhere I turned, men were lying naked, chained to each other and to their sleeping boards, groaning and crying. Waste and blood streamed along the floorboards, covering my toes.
    Our corridor was nothing but a narrow footpath separating the men to our left and right. Piled like fish in a bucket, the men were stacked onthree levels—one just above my feet, another by my waist and a third level by my neck. They could not lift their heads more than a foot off the wet, wooden slabs.
    The men couldn’t stand unless they stooped—chained in pairs—in the narrow corridor where I walked. On their rough planks, they had no room to sit. Some were lying on their backs, others on their stomachs. They were manacled at the ankles, in pairs, the left ankle of one to the right ankle of the other. And through loops in these irons ran chains long enough for a man—with the consent of his partner—to move only a few feet, toward the occasional cone-shaped bucket meant for collecting waste.
    Men grabbed at me, begging for help. I recoiled from their scratching fingernails. One inmate bit the helper on the hand. The helper clubbed the man on the head.
    The men called out in a frenzy of languages. They called out Arabic prayers. They shouted in Fulfulde. They hollered in Bamanankan, and in many other tongues I had never heard. They were all shouting for the same things: water, food, air, light. One hollered over and over that he was chained to a dead man. In the flickering light, I could see him striking the motionless body attached to him, foot to foot. I shivered and wanted to scream.
No
, I told myself.
Be a djeli. See, and remember
.
    “Sister, sister,” one man said.
    He spoke with an authority that I could not ignore. He spoke like my father. I saw a face that was taut and tired but full of purpose. He was on the highest of the three levels, so his face came close to mine.
    “Sister,” he whispered hoarsely, in Bamanankan. “Where are you from?”
    “Bayo, near Segu,” I told him.
    “We have heard of you. Are you the one who catches babies, but is still a child?”
    “I am not a child. I have seen eleven rains.”
    “What is your name, Eleven Rains?”
    “Aminata Diallo.”
    I told the helper that somebody ten rows back was attached to a dead man. He went with two toubabu men to fish him out. They rattled chains, grunted, rattled more chains, and finally pulled out a man by his feet and dragged him through the slop. My head spun and my knees weakened, but I couldn’t let myself fall in filth like this. The cries of the men rang in my ears.
    “Pass by here every chance you get,” said