ADAMA IGBO
By Sheila M. Curtin

     Only the sails were visible at first, broad and white and triangular, rising surreptitiously from the river below, their movement slow and cunning, like a predator stalking its prey. The drummers hidden in the forest warned of their approach and of their intent, their rhythm rapid and hurried, war-like, cautioning that the sails rising slowly from the river below brought toubob, and their only purpose in coming upriver was to wage war with the Igbo.
     Men and women began to appear on the trail rising up the mountain, coming up from the rice paddies they were tending along the marshy riverbanks below. They had heard the warning only minutes before the sails appeared, and were now rushing back to their homes, to children left tended by lesser wives and grandmothers. Adama looked in the faces of the advancing adults, searching for her mother and father. She saw her father first, tall and strong and broad shouldered, handsome, and she felt a rush of pride to be his daughter. He saw her and smiled and then bent down to her mother, his principle wife, kissing the tight black curls crowning her head.
     Her mother's face held a worried expression and she extended her arms to Adama, pulling the child close and whispering we must hurry, but her father's face betrayed no concern. He looked strong, confident, undefeatable, and Adama felt reassured by his strength. Whatever was wrong would soon be all right.
     As they neared the town, the drums began to sound their warning again, toubob, had come out from their ship and had entered the forest, and the drummers of Adama's town took up the message, relaying it through the forest to the next town, and so on, warning the Igbo and Hausa and Fulani, and any others that could hear, of the enemy's advance. Upon arrival in town the men went straight to the government house, to form their council and agree upon their strategy, and retrieve their weapons. The women and children were instructed to hide in hunters' platforms hidden in the trees above.
     In less than an hour the noise from the toubob was heard, the loud report from their muskets disturbing all creatures within the forest, flushing out parrots nesting among the leaves and causing them to take to the air shrieking in a blur of greens and blues. Adama lay on the thatched floor of the hunters' platform admiring her father as he carried his bow, moving noiselessly through the forest below with the other members of the council. Soon the toubob could be seen, pale and ghost-like, as specters come to steal their very life force. The warriors hidden among the trees began to let loose their arrows, dipping them first in the little gourds containing deadly mamba poison, then moving quickly and silently away, keeping low, remaining hidden in the brush.
     More toubob began to appear at the back of the town, behind the men, and these began to advance toward their companions, quickly trapping the warriors between themselves and those in front. A woman huge with child cried out a warning to her husband in the forest below, and in doing so gave away their location. It was all to no avail, the toubob were too great in number, and after a fierce and bloody battle finally overwhelmed the Igbo warriors.
     The toubob began shackling the men, one to another, and forced them to walk in a long line back down the side of the mountain, to the banks of the great river below. Adama's father was one of many warrior fathers who lay dead upon the ground, having been caught in the sights of a toubob musket. Her father's wives sat huddled together, looking to Nandi, her mother, principle wife, for direction. She exhorted the women to fight, to protect their children, the wealth of the nation. They began to gather what weapons had been left behind by the hunters.
     Having thus captured or killed the noble men of her town, the toubob turned their attention to the women and children sitting above them on the platforms hidden among the trees. The women began to ready themselves for the inevitable attack. The whites began to climb the trees up to the huts above them.
     Nandi prepared her husband's wives for battle, warning that they must kill as many toubob as possible to honor their husband, their lover and protector, the father of their children. The women placed their children in the center of the platform and formed a tight circle around them, armed with what weapons they could fashion or find. As the first of the whites reached the platform Nandi attacked, catching the man in his throat with a silent thrust of her spear and sending him plummeting to the forest floor below. The women fought bravely, holding the marauders at bay and preventing their access to the platform for well over an hour, but the number of toubob was too great, and eventually they accessed the platform. One closest to the group of women discharged his musket, striking Nandi in her chest. She fell to the forest floor still clutching her spear, to honor her warrior husband even in death.
     The women began to lose hope, becoming exhausted from the length of their battle, and seeing Nandi die before their very eyes weakened their resolve. Some succumbed to their exhaustion, though a few were determined to fight to the end, but they too were overcome as more whites accessed the platform, and soon only two wives remained standing with Adama. They were forced down the rope ladders and shackled together as their husbands and brothers before them. The forest ground ran red with the blood of the fallen Igbo.
     The toubob began to mock and harass them, mauling them, touching the women in places only their husbands were allowed to touch and laughing among themselves as they did so, pulling some of the women and older girls off the line and raping them on the ground before their children's very eyes. Those that resisted were beaten bloody until they acquiesced. One woman tried to run as she was pulled off the line, but a musket barked and she was killed before she could get even a few yards. Adama watched the nightmare unfolding before her, her young mind unable to fully comprehend the horror of what was happening. Soon she was pushed toward the line and shackled with the rest of the women, and forced to walk down the side of the mountain to the riverbank below. As they began to descend the trail they passed the lifeless body of her mother Nandi, lying twisted and broken and bloody upon the ground. Adama lost consciousness at the sight of her mother's broken body and fell to the ground in a faint. The toubob took no notice and forced the women to continue walking, pulling the shackled child along. Two women closest to Adama each took one of her arms, and supported the child down the trail to the river below. Their horror had just begun.
     The river bank was crowded with toubob and people from many different towns, some Igbo, others Hausa, Yoruba, and Fulani. It seemed the toubob had made war and captives of all the people living along the great river. The very air itself was befouled with the odor of unwashed bodies, of excrement and vomit, of disease and misery and death. Adama lay upon the ground between the two women shackled with her, her head resting in the older woman's lap. The woman sat crying silently to herself, stroking Adama's forehead and face gently as the tears ran down her face. Adama woke to the noise and odor and turned as far as she was able to on her side, retching. The younger of the women shackled to her began to vomit in turn. Men, women and children were crying and moaning in many languages, in heartbroken misery, crying for the loss of their spouses and children and for their worsening predicament.
     The sails of the great ship could be seen waiting far off in the mouth of the river, and smaller ships were busily traveling back and forth between the great ship and shore, transporting the people captured by the toubob. Soon Adama and her companions were forced onto one of the smaller boats, and taken to the waiting ship. The rocking and bucking of the boat made Adama nauseous, and the child was unable to contain what contents remained in her stomach. She vomited with great force, splattering one of the toubob's pants and boots. The white was outraged at the child's transgression, and struck her on the side of her face with the butt of his musket. Adama mercifully faded into unconsciousness again.
     She awoke in total darkness in the dank hold of the ship, her left eye swollen shut, the right still blind in the total blackness. As she tried to rise she struck her head forcefully upon a wooden plank just inches above her. Her clothes and a few articles of jewelry had been taken from her, the silver bracelets that her father had fashioned for her had been replaced by iron shackles. The stench was worse than anything she had smelled at shore, and she began to retch again, but her stomach had been emptied of its contents. She heard voices all around her in the gloom, but their anguished words were unfamiliar. Men and women alike were crying and pleading, unable to come to terms with the reality of the hell in which they found themselves trapped. She began to think of her mother and father lying dead upon the forest floor, of the deaths or capture of her father's other wives and her many sisters and brothers. Something scurried across her chest and she let out a scream, joining the chorus of screams all around her. She closed her eyes against the nightmare she was shackled in and began to sob, quietly.
     Hours passed and as she lay there in the gloom she began to distinguish a few words spoken in her own language, words describing their plight, words which made her more anxious and miserable as they became distinguishable from the babble of moans and cries of others trapped in the misery in which she lay. She began to understand from the few words she could piece together that she was in the bowels of the great ship whose sails she'd seen rising from the river, and that ship was going up and down the coast, warring on the great peoples and taking them away in shackles and chains.
     Men and women alike were abused by the toubob, beaten savagely, but for the women the toubob had a special hell. They were taken out one by one and forced to service the crew, used like dogs, and those who refused were either beaten and raped or beaten and thrown overboard, to be devoured by the sea creatures or drown. There was no escape. And the toubob showed no mercy.
     She learned that every few days they were allowed on top of the deck, to breathe fresh air and be washed with sea water. The women dreaded their time out on deck more so than their time inside the fetid bowels of the ship, where they lay chained in vomit and feces. Soon she learned to dread her time on deck also.
     The third day on board some toubob came down to the hold with lanterns, and she could see that she was shackled in between a man and a woman. The woman had been silent since the night before, the only sound coming from her direction was the rustling of the foul creatures as they scurried about, torturing the captives with their bites and nibbles. Adama realized in the bleak glow of the lantern that the woman was dead. Rats had already found her, and had begun their feast on the woman's remains. The toubob marked her place with a piece of chalk and disappeared along the corridor, checking for others who had passed in the few days since they'd last checked. Two more toubob appeared with a wagon, and they unshackled the dead woman and pulled her down from her place, and dumped her in on top of the other bodies they would dispose of. When they returned Adama was taken above with some others, to be washed and exercised. Her legs were weak and her muscles useless as she was unshackled and pulled from the shelf and dropped to the floor below. She and the other women tried to cover their nakedness from the mocking eyes of the toubob as they were forced up the stairs of the hold, but the toubob beat them until they stretched their hands out in defense.
     The brutality described by the women up top panicked Adama, and she would experience that brutality herself shortly. She'd just been doused with seawater, having had two buckets dumped in on top of her, taking away her breath and nearly drowning her, to the laughter of the toubob crew, but at least the water washed away the stench of the hold. Her skin itched and turned ashy from the salt in the water and her muscles were sore from being forced to lie for days on end in one position, cramped, unable to sit or stretch or even to turn over. Unable to urinate or defecate in private, forced to hold her waste inside until both her bladder and bowels gave out. The salt water was cleansing, washing away the stench of feces and urine and all manner of human waste. She was just thanking the ancestors for this reprieve from the hell below, the taste of the salt in the air and cold of the water on her skin when she noticed she was being watched by two of the whites. Suddenly the two men grabbed her and took the child screaming off to the side, taking turns raping her as their companions watched, cheering them on. She screamed from the blinding pain as the first tore into her, trying futilely to fight him off, but the more she screamed and fought against her attacker the more brutal and forceful he became, and the louder the cheers from his companions grew. When he finished he rolled off and his companion climbed on and his abuse was likewise cheered on. They left her lying there where they finished, bloodied and mangled. After throwing another bucket of seawater upon her they forced her down into the bowels of the ship with the others again, and shackled her in the confines of the hold. 

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