Three

We waited for several more days on the shore as people arrived from other villages, but suddenly they were in a hurry to get us all on the boat.  One line at a time was unchained, but too many men surrounded us for anyone to try to escape.  We were shoved onto the boat, and my mother and father and Farhani got pushed ahead of me.  I fell behind to stay with Akin.  We were thrown roughly against the wall, and I sat on the floor next to him and held his hand tightly.  I listened to the air whistle through his chest wall.   After several hours, the ship began to rock, and I fell asleep.  When I awakened, it was dark on the ship.  I felt around on the floor next to me.

“Akin,” I whispered. 

All around me, I heard the grunts and snorts of people nearby.  I listened closely for Akin next to me, but his whistling had stopped.  I found his cold arm in the dark and followed it up to his chest where it was still wet and sticky.  His chest was still and there was no warm breath at his mouth.  I held on to him tightly, but Akin was gone. 

Several days of sunrise and sunset passed, and I didn’t get up from the floor where I lay with Akin’s body.  After a few days at sea, the crewmen unchained us.  They came around on the boat to clear up the dead bodies and throw them overboard.  Before they came for Akin’s body, I took the bracelet made of animal bone my father had brought him.  I put it in the pocket of my dress.  I didn’t want to wear it myself since it had brought him bad luck. 

  The man who took my brother leered at me and watched as I kissed him one last time. 

“You can kiss me like that tonight after the sun goes down,” he said.  He glistened with sweat.  His eyes were blood shot.  The air around him smelled of rotting fish.  I didn’t know what to say.  He took Akin’s body away and threw it overboard.

When the sun rose again, I sat up to eat a bit of the bread they left for us.  I slept.  When I had to, I relieved myself right where I lay.  I slept again.  Each time I awoke in the half light, I forgot where I was.  The dank sea air was unfamiliar at first.  I waited for the rustle and whoosh of the grasses in the wind.  I listened for the bell on my littlest goat, but the sounds of living and dying were all I heard around me.  I looked around expecting Akin to jab me in the arm, but he didn’t.  I don’t know how many days passed.

One night in the ship’s inky blackness, a woman began to sing a song in a tongue I couldn’t understand.  The haunting melody reminded me of a song my mother sang during her mother’s burial ceremony.   I prayed to the gods for blessings for Akin in the afterlife.

A few nights later, Farhani shook me awake from a deep sleep.  My heart startled.  I thought at first it was Akin come back to me.  He took my wrists and helped me off the floor.  I saw women nestled with their children sleeping around us and wondered where my mother and father were.  Farhani brought me more bread and a bit of water.  I ate and drank hungrily.  He helped me to my feet.  I looked around for my mother and father, but they were gone.  Farhani and I sat together during the day, and he laid with me at night.  He was all I had in the world.

We all had long days where we had to amuse each other.  People from different villages spoke with different tongues, so communicating wasn’t always easy.  Farhani pointed at a fat crewman with a flat nose.  He was the one who usually barked orders to the other crewmen.  Farhani made a honking sound and rolled like a warthog in the mud.  It was a game, pointing at objects, miming scenes, and acting silly with each other.

I imitated a big lumbering animal.  Then I motioned to indicate its long trunk and brayed like the animal I had heard in pain.  I tried to show them that my tall Uncle had ridden one, but I don’t know if anyone understood that.  Farhani tried to show a story about a lion, and we could tell that he had been very frightened.  I think he was showing the lions in our village.

We got a few words together and talked about our families in broken conversation.  I showed them my dress and tried to describe Uncle’s wedding. We had been celebrating Uncle's wedding when the captors came to our village.  A few people around us understood the words I was saying.  Several women around us excitedly got up from the floor.  Some of them surrounded Farhani to act as his family.  One woman introduced his family to mine.  She spoke as if she was reading the letter to ask for my hand in marriage.  Then Farhani’s family laid down flat at my feet to beg for me to be his wife. 

As we danced the traditional wedding dances, all the people around us joined to dance together.  For a few minutes, I forgot all the stink and fish rot and the fear of what was ahead of us.  It was like a spirit possessed me and everyone around us.  Women and children joined together to kick and drum and chant and wave our arms.  The sound was louder than it had been since we had gotten on that ship.  The usual dull clangs of the chains at our ankles, the repetitive sound of the water hitting the sides of the ship, the high pitched whistle of the steam that we usually heard around us were there now.  A woman crooned, a boy drummed with pieces of wood right there on the floor of the ship, and the many feet tapped together in time to the rhythm of the beat of the music and the drumming.

Soon the crewmen were there to see what all the commotion was.  I thought they would stop us.  Others had certainly gotten beatings and worse, even thrown overboard for insubordination or talking back or less, but this time, they must have welcomed the entertaining diversion too.  Soon, all the crewmen were on our deck mesmerized by the dancing, cheering us on.  Farhani noticed that only the youngest crewmen were there.  The fat crewman with the flat nose who usually barked orders wasn’t there to watch.

The next morning, there was no gruel, no bread, no rotted fish to eat, only shallow dishes of water, barely enough for each woman and child to have some.  The crewmen’s eyes were bloodshot and they smelled even stronger of liquor than usual.  One of the younger crewmen came near me walking carefully, wincing, and holding his back.  I saw red welts across the backs of his arms. Farhani brought me a little of the water.

For several days afterwards, we had only water to drink, just enough to keep our mouths from parching completely.  Everyone around us was getting weaker.  Fights broke out all around us.  The kind people we sang with earlier now stole our little bit of water and gruel.  There were more dead bodies for the crew to throw overboard.  The next morning, there were more fresh fish swimming around the boat, attracted by the dead bodies.  The crew caught them with their nets.   

Farhani and I huddled closer together than usual.

“Where is your father, and mine?” I asked him.

“They were pushed another way when we got on the ship,” he said.  He had seen the men pushed to a lower deck in the boat.

 “Do you think they are asking about us?”  We decided our fathers must be sitting together talking. 

“What will happen to us?” I asked.

He looked at me with his deep brown eyes.

“I will hold your hand,” he said.  “We will stay together.”