Birth of a Dark Nation by Rashid Darden

Author:Rashid Darden [Darden, Rashid]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Urban, marie laveau, orisha, nightwalkers, vampire, Fiction, Fantasy, new orleans, djinn, voodoo, daywalker
ISBN: 0976598663
Google: hAz4nQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00FJLJSOE
Publisher: Old Gold Soul
Published: 2013-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

Loss and Liberation

Horrifying, humiliating, and demoralizing. Those are the weakest words in your language that can be used to describe the torturous middle passage. But I experienced it, just as the hundred or so surviving men in my tribe did, and as the millions of other Africans taken from the continent had, whether they were sold as prisoners of war or taken by entrepreneurial private kidnappers, as we'd been.

We feared for our lives. The sticks, which had sent invisible spears through the bodies of our kinsmen, terrified us. Indeed, they were the only things that kept us subservient. We could survive the lash or the cat-o-nine tails. But this great instrument of instant death, this "gun"-this was the thing we knew we could not surmount. There was no defense against it. There was just survival.

The slave ship was not large. It was on the small side, as was the space inside it. Small and dark and made of wood. It was too short to stand up inside. We could only lie down or scoot up to sitting position if the chains were loose enough. There were no pillows or blankets or anything to make it comfortable. It was just hard wood and our own bodies.

The darkness of the cargo hold of the ship was like nothing I'd experienced before. It was pure black. Nothing in Africa was this black, not even the backs of my eyelids. I was scared, but there was no time to turn away, nowhere to run, no possibility of fighting.

The first day at sea was bad. Several of us had been in canoes before, but the vast majority had not known what it felt like to float in deep water. The up and down motion of the ship made us violently ill. Many of us became sick to our stomachs and vomited. If we had known, we might have tried to focus and center ourselves to manage our health better, for the vomit that came out of us wasn't draining anywhere, nor was anyone going to come by and clean it up.

There were no private corners to excuse ourselves to when we had to urinate or defecate. We held it for as long as we could that first day, but when we had to go, we went. We tried our best to pull down our pants if our chains allowed us the freedom, and we aimed ourselves away from our brethren if it was possible. But it usually wasn't. We soiled ourselves and each other in the process of handling our natural bodily functions.

Every other day or so, the hatch to the holding cell would open and men with the guns would peer in. I couldn't understand it at the time, but there was one word they kept saying over and over until I came to understand it was what they were calling us:

Négro.

No, I am not Négro. I am Razadi.

Négro.

No, I don't know what that is, but it's not my name.

Négro.

No. No. We are Razadi. We will never answer to a name other than that one.

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