This water seemed wider, terrifying, because it was never calm; the waves crested and fell forever. Husseina looked at the land she was leaving behind, and thought of her family. She had no idea in which direction they were any more. She’d travelled so far that she was losing her language. She could say quite a lot in Portuguese, and even thought in Yoruba, while Gourmanchéma was for very specific things, which only came in snatches now. She’d left home a long time ago, and even though it wasn’t a choice she’d made, she had accepted her new life and longed for what the next land would bring.
When the canoe arrived at the ship, which was enormous now that they had pulled up beside it, they had to reach up for a rope ladder, and it was so shaky Husseina clung to the roughness of the rope, fearing she would fall into the waves below, bringing her dream to life. Yaya went up ahead of her, and Husseina followed, placing both feet on one rung at a time. Her belly ached, and she held her breath, only releasing it after she was up on the deck. Aboard the ship, everything was cut from wood and long poles stuck out of the ship into the air, from which flew white squares of fabric. They were surprisingly loud, producing a sound stuck between a constant slap and whoosh. She stared and stared at the fluttering in the wind.
Yaya, unsurprised by all the newness, having been on a ship many times, prodded Husseina ahead, saying they wouldn’t find a good berth if they kept lingering. They went down two flights of a narrow wooden staircase and came to a landing with several doors lining the hallway. Yaya briskly pressed her palm against the first door and it was bolted shut. She went to the next and it wasn’t until the fifth door to the left of the corridor that they were able to find a free room. In it were two beds, one on top of the other, and a round window against which the waves crashed, making Husseina wonder how solid the window was. She held on to the wooden frame of the bed, because the ground on which she stood felt as if it would slip away from her at any minute.
“You’ll get used to it after four days,” said Yaya, taking off the sheet on the bed and shaking it out. “Make your bed.”
Husseina pulled off the sheet and copied Yaya, but her head felt too heavy on her neck.
“I don’t feel well.”
Yaya pursed her lips and hurried Husseina out of the room. She took the key out of the lock and ushered Husseina upstairs and outside.
The damp ocean air felt better. Husseina thought about the stories Yaya had told her about the other people who had made this journey not because they wanted to, not with the comfort of a bed, with no clothes on, tied to each other, forced to lie cramped together. Her head swirled. Before she could help it, she dry-heaved and Yaya led her to the side of the ship, where all the akara she’d eaten for breakfast came out.
“If you’re already sick, this is going to be a long journey,” said Yaya, rubbing Husseina’s back.
Husseina retched and retched, overtaken by sadness. She thought of Yaya’s first trip on the sea. Who were these people who thought it was right to put human beings into such vessels and to treat them worse than animals? Surely they weren’t humans themselves, to be capable of such cruelty. She had felt caged in their room, yet this, she knew, was comfort. She thought also of the people Yaya had told her about who hadn’t made it. What happened to their spirits so far away from home? And what had happened to their bodies, thrown into this wide and probably deep lake?
Yaya extracted groundnuts from a cloth tied around her waist.
“One of the tricks I’ve learnt is don’t leave your stomach empty.”
Husseina was meant to sleep on the top bunk and Yaya on the bottom, but Husseina could keep nothing in her belly, so at the foot of the lower bed they kept a metal bucket that Husseina could vomit into. Yaya paid a boy, not that much older than Husseina, to come in every hour to empty the bucket into the sea.
Even when she was near sleep her stomach felt no better. Only when sleep completely took over did she have peace.
We are running from a chasing fire. It stretches its fiery arms, tries to engulf us in its heat, but together we’re beating it. She is running too fast. She breaks our grip on each other. She’s gone.
She spent the next two days completely emptied and didn’t leave the room despite Yaya’s insistence that fresh air would help her. She made do with groundnuts. When her eyes opened, all she saw was the water crashing against her window. Sometimes, the water reached the top of the window; mostly, she saw a grey spread of sky, once in a while dotted with a bird. She thought of home, of Baba, Na, Aminah, her brother, grandmother and, most of all, of the other part of herself, Hassana. Who was still alive? Who had escaped their bodies and become air? Where would they go next? Would she herself survive this? Would she see any of them again? What was this life that gave you everything and then took it all away?
On the fourth day, Yaya brought her a morsel of kola nut—red, meaty and bitter—which she chewed. Then Yaya gave her a cup of water, which she drank. Yaya helped her out of the room and outside. The world had completely changed. All around them was water and sky. No other soul. No land. No ships. It was beautiful and empty and frightening all at once. Then, a bird flew in the sky and the loneliness went away. Yaya gave Husseina a banana, and it stayed down. In the distance, a fish jumped up into the sky and went back to where it felt most at home. This was so different from the land of Botu. She wondered why she was being led on this voyage. What would be its purpose?
Strength came back to Husseina day by day. Soon, she was helping Yaya clean their room as well as the rooms of others to earn some coins here and there. She spent a lot of time on the deck, contemplating the wideness of the ocean. The fluttering of the white sails gave her days a steady beat. She watched the other travellers, some of whom had not made this trip before, and many for whom this was life, like the boy who had emptied her bucket. He lived on the ship. He came and spoke to her often. He said that when the captain had adopted him, he felt an instant kinship with him.
After about twenty-five days on the sea, Yaya roused Husseina and told her to come upstairs. Up on the deck, many of the travellers lined up on the edges, and ahead of them was a luminous sun, showing the first traces of land, a dark band beyond the water. Someone started beating a drum that lit up Husseina’s heart. They had survived.
The shade of land widened, but impatience also set in. It was so close and yet so far. People went away and came back. Husseina didn’t want to miss anything, but Yaya pulled her away to go and eat.
After her meal of boiled beans and gari, she went back and saw that the land was beginning to hug them. The wind speed increased and sails fluttered above them. More ships came into view. As they got closer, tall coconut trees bent and whispered words of welcome.
They made for a port filled with even more ships. Above them, land seemed to shoot from the water. It was dotted with trees and tiny boxes of houses. Husseina had never seen land so high.
Yaya pressed the small of Husseina’s back. “Welcome to Bahia.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Hassana
After a long four-month wait, Richard kept his word and helped me load a chest with all the books he’d gifted me and the clothes the villagers had sewn for me, and off we went to the Basel Mission.
Our path there was hemmed in by trees and hills and mountains that sometimes overshadowed the trees. On some stretches a porter carried me, and when I had to walk on my own, I had to stop and swallow as much air as I could, because I couldn’t breathe properly. I towered over some of the porters, like Kwame, who I knew from bringing things to Richard from time to time. I refused to let him carry me. He and the others didn’t seem to suffer from a loss of air, as Richard and I did. To make matters worse, we had to climb up the hills and walk on their ridges. It was the safest way, because in the forest dwelt leopards and other wild animals. In it, said the porters, were also people who weren’t afraid of kidnapping us, even if we were accompanied by a white man. In fact, Richard’s presence made us valuable targets. Up on the hill, we could supposedly see better, but all I beheld were the green, boll-like tree crowns below us. I was lucky I wasn’t carrying my chest on my back and that Kwame was doing that for me. I slipped many times. Kwame told me to push my weight into my heels, but I felt off balance so often that the only solution was to get on all fours and climb up the hill like a toddler.