YOONIR

Aileen Muhammad

She had run with every ounce of yearning as she fought the image in her mind of his precious soul, in pain and on the run. But she arrived just in time for him to raise his eyelids and look straight into her being, and in seconds his oxygen seemed to leave.

The reflection screamed in the water. Saba looked down and there it was, right beside him, his image wavering on the surface of the water. The warmth of the day jabbed at her ribs. The breeze would have been pleasant but she looked into the shore of the river, startled, as she placed her forehead to the ground. Shadows had begun to crawl. The heat was heavy and her exhaustion settled right beside her heart. The vision was real, and Saba was jerked from real time and wept for the loss of her love.

The heart stopped pumping and there he was with the breeze of evening coming to him, and the sun coming down on him looking like rain crossing over across his whole body swaying there, with the willow branches hanging low towards the water. Yoonir, who planned his freedom moment to moment. Yoonir. His face still shining and the water lit with the sun. The water breathing silver tracks with his image interrupted by red from the blood that dripped from his neck and back.

The sun's radiation like his words, advising, speaking in different languages, always searching for the new ones who would know or the old ones whose words were like gold. To Yoonir, the earth was moving only because of the great star calling, the great mind being and the evident succession. For Yoonir, captivity was the current challenge, no reason for anger, but a time to plan, a time to study and a time to be aware of the new animals in their life. Ones who mirrored with a blank, aimed their arrows low, missed the center but manipulated to gain whatever they needed operating without consciousness, and, as if the cycle of life and death had no beginning, or, as if the law within the air, beside the cedar and under the ground were not connected.

Yoonir planted the Quran behind the shack in front of the white rock to the left of the cedar tree. In 1822 he was given the book by the old slave Rakiyyah known as Ruby. Rakiyyah had moved into the big house as the head caretaker, but she wore the mask and used the slave master's need to be important to get her way. Eventually she made contact with the West Indian traders and secured the Qur'an for Yoonir, and she made secret alliances with travelers who were agitated with the slave trade and who brought her news and gave her secret gifts from Mali. The Dogon's mark was over their eyes cautious and aware as they wore the mask when enslaved. And that's how Yoonir got that book. Often Rakiyyah would come to the slave quarters with a bowl of chicken bones and gravy for the slaves bringing it to them in a basket and at the bottom lay a towel folded over a book, jewels or instructions.

She had watched his twisted neck hanging from the tree for almost 40 minutes. Then she got soaked with him. Soaked with his memory like blood and smeared with his treasures bruised and despised by the pale faced animals. He was the example. The strong one under suspicion. But with every blow, the strong got stronger. Appearance was able to deceive their captors. That was one gift they had. The slaves on the Whitmoor Plantation were not deceived. They were alive and at all times planning their travel to a place where they could love again. With instinct and development. With concern and development. Unharnessed. Pure. Unafraid.

The year before two men from the Maroons crept onto plantation grounds after midnight and met with them bringing them food, books and jewels. They let them know the star to look for, the cycle of the moon to wait for and when they would return. Yoonir was their friend and brother from their homeland.

But after Drew, riding on his horse brought him back that day, one might have thought Yoonir may not make it. The men and women and children in the field looked over at him trampling down the road with Drew close behind him on his horse, sneering and laughing hollering at Yoonir, calling him "Yoba" and swinging his whip in the air. Yoonir's face ran with his guts spilling across his brow, his feet stumbling upon themselves, his backbone gone.

Later that night Saba crept into his shack as she always did and held his hands. His eyes embraced her and she waited to see if he could speak. He smiled and she nestled against his chest, listening to the knocking and the blocked blood flow. She knew better than to advise him for he was the helper and inspiration to them all. He was their sign that a Dogon is never broken. He was their memory, their future and the life that made them remember and smile in the face of terror.

Now as Saba reviewed the events, she remembered the bird screeching, heard from the wooden shack late in the afternoon. She rose from her Maghrib prayer and went to the window. A screeching call that irritated her and made her stop her formal submission to prayer. In that stopping her heart ached and a chill blew into the room. It was late on a Sunday afternoon and her work was done. The window showed only the small cedar tree and beyond that was a haze of clouds and stretched shadows crossing the rows of shanties where her people lived. A mist had settled and she heard the voice of Yoonir travelling right to her insides.

"Mama" she called out loud, "He's leaving. Yoonir is leaving us" And it wasn't her birth mother but it was the woman who taught her to survive. It was the woman who covered injury and tried to prepare her for the opposites. The living in this place and the memory of life in her home. The conflicts of memory and existence, of love and betrayal, of conquest and servitude and of freedom.

"Wait Saba, wait for us to travel with you" But Saba tore through the wooden door and dug through the dirt road as if her racing might save him. She ran with love tangled around her throat and a symphony elevating her disposition, knowing he was leaving. Maybe he was caught reading or maybe caught teaching or maybe caught by an old slave-catcher who knew him from the islands and knew what he did. She ran and stumbled and took off her hand-made moccasins and went faster. Then she stopped at the crossroads. Which way was it? She stopped long enough to hear the wind still her heart. And she rose back up and went left down the old road that led through the woods. Those woods that echoed the men and women that were violated and hung, and the multiple gatherings that witnessed hangings smiling with their children. She ran with the new wind gusts another mile.

But as always, she ran with atrocities on her mind and the questions of why Allah allowed her people to be driven down to their new positions serving those who had no noble inclinations.

She ran down the twisted path and saw him there by the river. Shouting his name she couldn't hold him or get him down from that old willow tree. Their eyes met as he gave her instructions in one instant. The duty he had taught her. The power that falls from death and gives energy to the living. "Out of the dead comes the living, out of the living comes the dead and Allah is Knower of all things" she could hear his words the week before after he was brought back from the torture and he told them that night:

"Arise comes with death. Welcome it. Anew energy comes that triples the dead ones' power. For the good ones. Look at life, the earth, my beloved. Look again at where we are. It is only a sign, a short time here. Love each other purely and heal each other majestically"

Saba held in the long breath that does not want to exhale and she bent over to the earth. There was Yoonir and his head sacred to all the men and women taken into captivity working on the plantation and treated inhumanly, and there his head bent and dropped to the side. Saba looked away and into the water at his reflection right beside the sun moving over ready to go down and she stayed right there looking in the water. That was easier for he had completed her thinking and desire and being and he was every breath of happiness to her.

A rumble sounded there right on the river and water fell on water with large drops and then a sweeping wind swept across the surface of the water. Saba stayed there until the water began to fall heavily from the sky onto the river. Winds made the water look like raised mirrors. Raised mirrors that showed Yoonir to Saba on that Sunday evening. Clouds hastened faster than her running and their darkness pressed hard on Saba. He was there all strung up and passing to the next life or decomposing or dying on that tree. But the night was bringing a new day like Yoonir always said, and his death was calming now. Saba began to drink his death in the rain. She moved over under the tree and wrapped her arms around her wet body. She crossed the blood drops on the ground with her fingers as rain slapped into circles of blood. Saba in the warm air crying now. Saba knowing that they would be coming for her soon. The dogs and the old slave catchers would be looking for her now just like she knew when he swallowed his last breaths, they would come. She looked across the river and down the raging river and wondered what was there. She wondered if her people in Sudan would know where she was. She would send them a message about Yoonir. She would send the message so the warrior kingdom would not die. She would let them know she did not abandon them when they needed her most. She would let them know that Yoonir was a warrior still and a protector and a teacher and the guide for them all. She would send the message now in one instant one million moments and gifts would come to them and they would rescue her and they would find her parents and they would bring her children back and this was the first time she knew they would come to her and she knew they would hear her.

Saba heard the dogs and looked up at Yoonir in the rain and she agreed. She walked over to the edge of the river and dived in and began to swim underwater like her grandfather taught her when she was in her home land. Just like the Dogon taught her when they taught her to be the warrior and win the challenges and listen to the voice from the Dog Star and find her way by that. She swam underwater warm and filled with all the magic that leads and the diamond under the home of her heart until she could hold her breath no more. Then she pulled up easy reaching for oxygen and she looked around without seeing signs of them or hearing any barking. She was a few yards from the shore and she went back down and pushed the water aside with every aching muscle teaching her she would get as strong as she needed and her body would help her and with her arms heavy and her mind in Yoonir she pulled herself out of the water to begin her life.

She didn't know what was ahead except a gray sky. She saw no single thing except Yoonir's eyes. Darkness dropped after dusk.

But Saba forgot the thing Yoonir focused on. The Star that is the brightest star, the strong small star that is the light of his people the origin of his people and the deliverer in conflict. She forgot the things he taught of the mask and deceit and how it can save your life. She forgot that he mastered the art of wearing the mask and he escaped from slavery on the islands and returned to lead the revolt. Saba forgot that he could not be broken and she forgot that he staged his death and was able to get away several times before. As she was forgetting, she sat by a tree until the morning rose. About a half mile from the river and under a tree that reminded her of home, she sat and wondered what she would do next. She should have gone home. She should have let her mother know and she should have let them all know about Yoonir. But how? They loved him as much as she. They would risk living and seek revenge.

That sweetness that made the slave masters cringe. Made the English sweat and made the Dutch tremble: the idea that those beasts would retaliate. The idea that they could even think. How different they saw themselves. They kept their ancient language a secret. They kept their learning and teaching a secret. They played the fool, the idiot, the broken man and yielding woman, while Mama taught the arts and sciences of living and dying. While Mama would give a sign a word and a listening ear to a tragedy and the next week old Master or his wife would drop down with an illness that nobody had a remedy for and Mama would go attending to her, crying with the master while the men and women from the Dogon tribe knew it was Mama's doings. She was the cause of that illness. Payback for old Master taking and breaking that new seven year old Dogon girl. Just like the Elder said. The value of a life is high. Great Yoonir told us all that without freedom, we would not be able to return to our homes. One day, he said, our people, the warriors from the Masai, and the Dogon would come and find us and they would use tricks to find us. They would disguise themselves and fool the people of this land. And they would be powerful and make things happen just by thinking it. And Yoonir would talk and we would listen.

Morning was mild and warm. Love sat beside Saba. Love climbed down into her and she knew she had to swim again. She went through the night swimming underwater, coming up when she needed to for air and back down again, pausing at the bank to rest now and then. She nestled in the night air until she saw dawn heading her way. She needed food but could wait another day or so. She needed guidance but she knew it would come, maybe on a clear night it would reach her. Words from stars, music from the orbits and a remedy for her weary bones and muscles that wanted to swim back to her homeland. Yoonir had said the Life Force in Water sent Beings Holy and Able. He told them all that the water delivers and sanctifies.... but it is the Star that changes the transmission and he was able to know things because it made him that way.

Saba rose quietly and checked behind her and around. She could only hear the birds asking for their food, the dew waiting for the rise and the sun. The sun there in the water inching up on the horizon and Yoonir. It was him. He did it again. Yoonir swimming toward her smiling.

BEATINGS

Nathan Ross Freeman

He could not hear the drip. So he grabbed hold of one of those airport rope railings with their pretentious gilded brass and ... fell. He was used to falling, being beaten to the ground. They had put him in a foreign cell with excrements from the city's sewage leaking through a crack in the ceiling. He was among a group of tourist accused of smuggling. The highest ranked of the group was accused of spying. He, accused of only of smuggling, didn't rank the dignity of hostage. He was a prisoner. The embassy could do little for prisoners.

The leak in his cell, dripped in a perpetual cadence: three drops separated by a second, a half a second and another micro-something of a second. It tortured him. Eventually the off-beat rhythm challenged him to survive them as an enemy, negotiate sleep with them, and, finally, know them as friends. When he learned to look forward to hearing them, they helped keep him alive, sane.

He hoisted himself up. The velveteen railing ushering people to the proper gate swayed, laughing at his tipsy efforts. He listened for the drops across the sea to guide him through this maze of ... people ... who were chasing planes and stalking baggage. He was one of them now—free.

Somebody let him out. Actually broke him out. And together he and his heroes stumble-ran to the embassy. All the while he yelled when they touched him—no touching—and shouted at the sun, "I can't see, I can't see." And he chastised the heroes that they really better not get caught being outside in the yard for so long.

Every time he even fantasized the word "free," he cried. One thousand, two hundred and fourteen days (or so the drops had counted), "A prisoner found dripping," he thought to himself, suddenly laughing at the rhythm of those silly words. And he cupped his mouth because he couldn't be quite sure if he was laughing out loud. When they found him in the cell he was leaning against the wall, soaking up the drops, showered in their comfort. Water was touch.

He froze for a moment, hung in the balance, listening to the drops across the sea, keeping their cadence so he wouldn't fall again. He stood there, took a straightforward view of what was in front of him. He wore specially designed sun glasses that blocked everything except enough light to see. They were dark, dark glasses. He dared to hold his head up and look upon the presence of others. It was like standing on the edge of a building, and all that goes with that kind of fear. Every day for the last eternity, before the embassy came to his rescue, he had only one half hour of shaded light, per day, blindfolded, with others whose feet he could hear walking the 20 by 20 yard of stone. Yes, he knew each of his walking companions by their footsteps. They talked with each other in taps of toes and clicks of heels, sometimes scraping shuffles to share their despair or rally. No one ever spoke words, and no one ever touched. Beatings.