Free Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

during one of those times, while he wandered through the darkness, that Bobbio saw them.
    A man striding. A woman pleading. Please. Please. Bobbio marches with matchstick straight legs and arms. Begs with a sideways bent body and clasped fingers. Points at me. Cradles an invisible baby in his arms.
Your mother
. My mother and my father. In the night.
Your father is very angry
. Hooded eyes, a rigid mouth. Now a sorrowful face.
Your mother is crying
. Bobbio follows them. At a distance. Ducking in and out of shadows. Down to the river.
    I wish Bobbio could speak. I wonder what they are saying to each other. Bobbio stares at me silently.
Your mother
. Yes? My mother. Bobbio looks around. Points beyond the trees in the direction of the houses. Something about the village? Our house?
No! No!
Madam Bah’s shop! Now, I am certain. The snuff. Of course. My father found out about us making snuff. Not good, but not so very bad. I let the air out of my chest.
    Bobbio shakes his head. Shoulders droop. For several moments we are silent, gazing at each other. My friend drops to his knees, mimes a person praying. The mosque. Praying in the mosque.
Your mother
. My mother is a Muslim? Shakes his head vigorously and waves a finger.
Not
. My mother is not a Muslim? Shakes his head despondently. Shrugs.
Your mother is not a good Muslim
.
    That evening my father had interrupted my mother in her room, as she read her fortune in the stones. My mother never looked for trouble, perhaps that’s why she wasn’t more careful. She never believed trouble might look for her. But at that time my father was in the grip of a fever, determined to end all the superstitions that marked us out as half-hearted Muslims. He demanded her stones.
    My mother pleaded. Crawling towards him, trying to touch his feet. I watched Bobbio grovel on the ground, holding illusory garments around imaginary breasts. Reaching out to touch invisible feet. O mama! I felt my heart pounding. My father stepped smartly back, refused to allow her to abase herself. Now Bobbio was up, chest out. He pulled her up. Bobbio grabbed me and held meagainst him. I felt myself go limp, just as my mother had. He threw up his arm. Scattered the stones to the stars.
    Bobbio could see in the dark, almost. He noted where the stones had fallen. When my mother and father had gone he went closer, inspected the stones lying on the ground. Saw they were different to the ordinary river pebbles. He slipped back into the shadows. Left them there. That was all.
    A dark rock the shape of a man’s cigar. A broken pebble, open like a split plum. A stone with a dimple that fitted my thumb. A twinkling crystal. A pale three-cornered stone. I won’t say I found them quickly. Not at all. Bobbio helped me. But even then, there were some I never found, whose faces I did not remember as well as I imagined.
    The Ancestors, she called them. Her murmured chant, once engraved upon my brain, now suddenly was gone. The effort of remembering turned into a great rock. Then, when I finally abandoned the effort, the words appeared, like a sculpture carved out of sandstone. And now I recognise them for what they are.
    Names.
    The name of my mother’s mother. Of my grandmother. Of my great-grandmother and her mother. The women who went before. The women who made me. Each stone chosen and given in memory of a woman to her daughter. So that their spirits would be recalled each time the stone was held, warmed by a human hand, and cast on the ground to ask for help. And as the names emerged from the shadows, I saw how my father had destroyed my mother.
    Mama returned. She stayed for a while. Then one day she left again. Danced on the outskirts of villages where superstitious villagers, thinking she was possessed by the spirit of some siren, left food out for her. Nearer the town they chased her away with sticks and stones. Once, twice, maybe three times, she returned, but the restlessness was too great. She could