Sorry for the late post - but I wonder if *South Africa will include *Namibia, Mozambique and *Nyassaland(sic) eventually. And hopefully, Natal will rejoin its fellows in the union.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
It's been a while since I commented, so I thought I'd give my two cents.
The Egypt-Ethoipia war will likely have a ton of effects, more than I can speculate really. The NIlotic tribes that the Ethopians are trying to integrate to the Empire's culture are going to be first in line for struggles with the Egyptians simply based on their proximity to the area of conflict, which should moot some of the problems existing between them and Gondar and Asmara. This could cause a lot of good for Ethiopia and a lot of problems for Egypt, possibly.
The activity of Weisz in the East African is surprising, but not necessarily problematic. As much as we're all rooting for native African polities to survive, I kind of had the feeling that the Omani Empire could not survive wholly intact as it was during the Great War. It should be interesting how that all pans out. And, of course, I love seeing Baganda's cultural and religious development.
Funmilayo's intrigues in the Oyo confederation are interesting. I always wondered how the other city-states in the confederation reacted to Ilorin. It seems like up until this point Ilorin controlled all of their foreign and much of their domestic policy, and I can see why that would be resisted when there's reasonable opportunity. I'm waiting to hear more of these developments more than anything to be honest.
Keep up the good work, JE.
The Egypt-Ethoipia war will likely have a ton of effects, more than I can speculate really. The NIlotic tribes that the Ethopians are trying to integrate to the Empire's culture are going to be first in line for struggles with the Egyptians simply based on their proximity to the area of conflict, which should moot some of the problems existing between them and Gondar and Asmara. This could cause a lot of good for Ethiopia and a lot of problems for Egypt, possibly.
The activity of Weisz in the East African is surprising, but not necessarily problematic. As much as we're all rooting for native African polities to survive, I kind of had the feeling that the Omani Empire could not survive wholly intact as it was during the Great War. It should be interesting how that all pans out. And, of course, I love seeing Baganda's cultural and religious development.
Funmilayo's intrigues in the Oyo confederation are interesting. I always wondered how the other city-states in the confederation reacted to Ilorin. It seems like up until this point Ilorin controlled all of their foreign and much of their domestic policy, and I can see why that would be resisted when there's reasonable opportunity. I'm waiting to hear more of these developments more than anything to be honest.
Keep up the good work, JE.
Riverboats on the Nile? Another Siege of Khartoum with the Egyptian defence led by a formal British general and Imperial exile named C.G. Gordon Jr.? Janjaweed militas being mowed down by Darfuri machine-gun fire?
Oh. Man.
That war will undoubtedly be affected by oil, either after the fact or during the fact. The oil in South Sudan (which in TTL is more under Ethiopian influence) was found in the late '70s OTL, but could always be discovered earlier. In fact, Jonathan, I think you have slightly neglected oil - oil will have been discovered all over the place from 1890-1930 and will have big consequences.
Getting back to Africa, if the oil is discovered before the war, it'll make it bloodier and more unpleasant. If the oil is found after the war when the region is firmly under the control of one power or the other, than it'll be a boon to one state at a crucial time for development.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Dragos Cel Mare
Banned
I notice; both factions are morally light grey, at least at the start. Egypt's making war not for the heck of it, but because Ethiopia's using up its water. Ethiopia, meanwhile, is using up said water because it wants a better life for its people. Both factions have good reasons for making war, it seems.
Edit: And by 'good', I mean good in comparison to the FAR during the Great War or Great Britain during the Indian War for Independence.
Edit: And by 'good', I mean good in comparison to the FAR during the Great War or Great Britain during the Indian War for Independence.
If I can remember the discussion on Saudi Arabia, I don't think the House of Saud would ever gain the Arabian Peninsula now, if ever. I would be more worried of what Qajar Iran would do with that black gold, seeing that the Shah has made it to become the equivalent of Romania/Yugoslavia.
Either that, or taking Najaf and Karbala from Ottoman *Iraq due to it's religious significance. Unlikely, yes. Impossible, I don't think so...especially if a manipulative Qajar assumes the throne.
Sulemain
Banned
They have Iraq, which has plenty of oil. And influence over the Arabian Peninsular, if nothing else. To be honest, I must have missed that conversation.
Ironic fate Zanzibar is going through. Still, I got some hope they'll sort that mess out and not collapse, maybe even become a functional nation that they were on the path toward previously. The mention of India's influence makes me think that TTL's version of India will end up being vastly more influential on the world scene than compare to OTL.
So Weiz is in the weapons smuggling game. Like how he ended up in the multireligious fest of Buganda. Very fitting considering his epic odyssey across Africa.
Ethiopia looks to be going down a very interesting path. The Russian influence was always an interesting touch to the region, and it made me happy to not see this come about by direct exploitative colonialism, but by influence. Funny how it not only absorbed the Russian monarchy, but now its radical politics too. Very nice touch. Really wondering what the big shake up in international relations will be coming out of the conflict between them and Egypt.
And I see Funmi is going to be the next big mover in the Abacar tradition of shaking up the region. Hope to see that Nigerian Federation begin out of the coming mess there. Love how the main branch of the family has for the most part moved out of direct politics, as in being prime minister or an unofficial king like the first two generations, but still their legacy carries such a soft power still.
So Weiz is in the weapons smuggling game. Like how he ended up in the multireligious fest of Buganda. Very fitting considering his epic odyssey across Africa.
Ethiopia looks to be going down a very interesting path. The Russian influence was always an interesting touch to the region, and it made me happy to not see this come about by direct exploitative colonialism, but by influence. Funny how it not only absorbed the Russian monarchy, but now its radical politics too. Very nice touch. Really wondering what the big shake up in international relations will be coming out of the conflict between them and Egypt.
And I see Funmi is going to be the next big mover in the Abacar tradition of shaking up the region. Hope to see that Nigerian Federation begin out of the coming mess there. Love how the main branch of the family has for the most part moved out of direct politics, as in being prime minister or an unofficial king like the first two generations, but still their legacy carries such a soft power still.
Last edited:
More that they're stirring things up in the Reichstag and holding pro-autonomy marches in Polenpartei-controlled towns. At this point, most of the Posen Poles, and for that matter most Germans, would rather get on with their lives, but the diehard nationalists on both sides are getting in the way.
Posen may eventually become an experiment in post-Westphalianism, but not without blood and tears.
It includes parts of *Namibia already. Mozambique and Nyasaland will be harder - the former doesn't have Afrikaner or British cultural links, and the latter is separated from South Africa by a strip of Portuguese territory. Further expansion isn't out of the question, but the South African leadership is beginning to focus on deepening the union rather than broadening it.
And Natal - well, you'll see.
Always glad to see you - I was wondering what you might think of the Catholic Church developments covered a few updates ago.
The Sudan will be a natural battleground, both because it's a border region and because control of the Nile can be decided there. It won't be the exclusive theater, but it will be the major one, and it could either tie the Sudanese peoples closer to their patrons or alienate them altogether.
Pace azander12, Gordon Jr. probably won't be involved, although there will be a few characters nearly as colorful.
Yes, to a certain extent, it will be a conflict between right and right - two countries, both of which want to survive and support their people, and which have different ideas about how to share a scarce resource. As I mentioned, this will be the kind of conflict that results in significant changes to the international system.
At the moment, the Ottomans have the Mosul oil fields, and the Baku fields, which are under Ottoman influence, have been known for a long time. Iran and the United States are also established oil producers.
A number of new oil fields will be discovered in the 1920s, including the eastern Arabian ones, and these discoveries will have a major impact on regional politics. If I remember the Saudi discussion correctly, the Gulf Coast clans are predominantly Shi'ite, and would resist Saudi domination even if the House of Saud can re-establish a foothold in the Najd. They could become proxies for Persian intrigue, though, or some foreign power might back the al-Sauds for its own reasons. You'll find out soon enough.
I'm not sure the Sudanese fields would be on the radar this soon, though - someone needs to get the idea of exploring there first. They'll shake things up when they're found, though - as, for that matter, will those in the Niger Delta and Gabon.
8713645 said:
The Ottoman army outweighs the Persian one pretty heavily, so attacking Najaf and Karbala would require not only a manipulative Qajar but a megalomaniac one.
Rebuilding Persepolis, on the other hand, is just the sort of thing that would fit in with an absolutist personality cult.
I'm not sure Weisz' involvement is even that surprising - he spent a long time in the eastern Congo during the Great War, saw a lot of suffering there, and wants to help out the people who are now suffering in their turn.
At any rate, I agree that the question is which African polities will survive, in what form, and what new entities will emerge from those that fail. I'll say that in TTL's present, there will be a state which is the lineal descendent of the Omani empire. What it will call itself, and what its borders will be, remain to be seen.
They're taking what they want from foreign cultures and interpreting it their way, somewhat like Japan in both OTL and TTL. There might actually be a few more countries like that in TTL, simply because more of the world has some control over the terms of modernization, but Buganda will always be considered among the most creative. (I wonder what adapted Baganda art form in TTL might gain anime-like popularity.)
The Oyo Confederation was always an alliance of convenience, formed for mutual protection against the Royal Niger Company and maintained in order to present a united front to Britain. Ilorin has never controlled the members' domestic policy, but it has dominated foreign policy and the economy. One of the subplots during the Great War was Adeseye making sure that Ilorin didn't hog all the industrial investment, and that's still a problem.
The city-states are much more developed and modern than they used to be, though, and they're about to chart a more independent course.
India is certainly thinking in terms of building ties with its diaspora - the support it got from overseas Indians during the war made it realize how beneficial such ties can be - which means it will seek influence in places like Zanzibar, Mauritius and even Malaya. It doesn't really have world-power ambitions at the moment, though; it has to take care of its own rebuilding first. But that may change.
It started with colonialism, but Russia was always more dependent on local goodwill than other colonial powers, and once the colony was cut off from its patron, the Russian settlers fit in pretty well to the Ethiopian elite. The Ethiopians, for their part, look on the Russians as symbols of progress and modernization, so there's a lot of cultural sharing and borrowing in both directions.
And yes, it's kind of ironic how Tsarist exiles are now being followed by narodnik and Marxist ones, but history tends to have a twisted sense of humor.
They haven't gone entirely soft: Funmi is a French legislator, and she isn't shy about invoking her dynastic connections to the Yoruba city-states. But certainly her feminist novels and political protests, and Paulo the Younger's diplomacy and consulting, mark a move toward a softer kind of power. Their grandfather clawed his way up, so they don't have to.
Funmi learned idealism from her father and brother, and practical politics from her mother. She tends to get what she wants. And she's more loyal to her grandfather's ideals than to any single nation.
Last edited:
Interlude: Two old women and the yamali, 1922
Salvador, Bahia:
In Salvador, they called Matilde the charm lady. She sold everything in the store she kept on the Liberdade hillside, and people came to buy food and clothes and trinkets, but her fame was the charms: protective amulets, love potions, herbal remedies and a thousand others. Matilde was magic, the people said – they didn’t know why, but there was something about her. She dispensed advice with her charms, and when she did, her voice carried ninety-four years of wisdom, made all the wiser by the hint of foreign lands in her speech.
Matilde was always to be found in the store or just outside it, making her charms in a back room or sitting by the door while one of her grandchildren minded the counter. Stand by the door and call her name, and she would always hear. But today she was not there.
It was hard to climb the hills now, very hard, and she felt her age with every step. But everyone knew her in Liberdade, and they were happy to offer a hand. They respected her almost as they would a mãe-de-santo, and on a day such as this, wise old women were particularly honored. For it was January twenty-fourth, the day of the yamali, and who knew them better than the old women did?
The street was a riot of color today – it was always that, with its rows of painted houses, but especially today. The brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the candomble competed with the buildings, some in the red and white of the orixá Xangô, others in horned hats to honor Yansã of the storm, still others in bright foil armor bearing images of St. George or the archangel Michael. And everywhere were men in white robes and turbans carrying the banners of the yamali, warriors of burning eyes and flaming swords who were the scourge of slavers everywhere.
Matilde climbed now through a street of whirling yamali-brothers, their drums beating time as they danced. Their banners showed the warriors mounted on eagles and wielding crescent-shaped swords, appropriating both the crown of the mães and the symbols of Islam. They took her hand, each in turn, and danced a couple of steps, handing her to the next in line. A mae in armor of gold leaf led a chain of women in the other direction, cutting and thrusting as a soldier might, and why not, for this was a festival of war.
The charm lady always greeted this day with both wry amusement and a sense of loss. She knew now who the yamali were – everyone did. They were men, not spirits, and their rebellion had taken place in this very city on this day eighty-seven years before. Their descendants lived in Africa still, and Matilde sometimes wondered if they knew they were worshiped. It was the spirit of the yamali that the brotherhoods sought to conjure, not the men themselves, but like most points of doctrine, that wasn’t something an outsider might realize. But most of her feeling was because she herself had fought under the yamali banner – not in a mock war but a real one, and indeed, in one of the wars that the costumes and images of this day were intended to evoke.
That was something no one knew, even her family. Her husband, even, had never known: he’d believed all his life that he was married to a neighborhood charm-maker. The candomble was tolerated now, even if it was still illegal, but even after all these years, it might still be dangerous if the authorities found out what Matilde’s name had been two generations ago, and what she’d done under that name. She was a mãe too – more than that, she’d been a prophet – but she didn’t dare become known as one, and when she saw the other mães in their holy ecstasy, she felt a stab of longing for the communion she had once known.
There was a shrine at the top of the hill, and at last Matilde attained it, pausing to catch her breath and look down on the streets below. She entered – mãe or not, no one questioned her right to do so – and murmured a prayer at Yansã’s altar, laying an offering of tobacco and plums at its foot.
She had left this offering on the day of the yamali for forty years and more, and many people wondered who it was for – a family member, surely, or the place of her birth, or a friend dead in some battle. Only she knew that it was none of those, but the Empress Isabel. That too amused her – Isabel’s Catholicism had bordered on the fanatical, and she would have considered Yansã no different from the devil – but had she not finished what the yamali started? Had the late empress not finished Matilde’s own war, the one she’d fought when she was called Mariana, and which had set the north aflame with the anger of slaves? [1] It was Isabel, in the end, who had ended slavery in Brazil forever, and for that, surely, the yamali would honor her.
She left the shrine and stood again outside, gazing down at the rows of houses, the harbor, the graveyard where someday soon she would be buried. She’d left instructions to her grandchildren in a secret place: she would be buried not as Matilde or even Mariana, but as Mary Ann from Virginia, the name her mother had given her, the name her Mande grandmother had whispered to her. That was what she truly was, a slave from America sold to work the Pernambuco sugar fields and filled with the yamali’s power and wrath. [2]
When she went to join them, she hoped they would be there, and that Isabel would be with them.
Columbia, South Carolina:
“Cabinet coming at four o’clock?” asked Harriet Tubman.
“Every day,” Senator Kabbah answered. “You’ve got four hours. Plenty of time to eat and take a nap.”
“Nap first, I think. I’m not too hungry now.” Harriet turned around sharply at the sound of laughter. “You don’t have to laugh, Otter. When you get my age, you’ll know.”
“I don’t have to, but I want to.” A second later, Harriet dissolved in laughter herself. It was nice to have someone around willing to tease her – too many of the young ones looked at her like she was some kind of tin god. And Missy Kabbah was no spring chicken herself. She was old enough to have known slavery, old enough to remember the rising in ’63 and to have scouted for Harriet’s brigade as an eight-year-old child. They’d called her Otter then because she swam like one, though she and Harriet were probably the only ones who still remembered. [3]
“Fair enough. What’ll they want to talk about today?”
“The state university plan, probably. And the land reform, the one I dropped by to talk to you about.”
“Yes, that.” It was long overdue, taking the collective land away from the Circles and putting it in the hands of the town councils. The townships ran by one person one vote, and they were required by law to have open meetings where anyone could speak: there was no way a few families could buy up most of their shares and do everything in back rooms. There were a lot of things the Circles could still do, but it was clear now that controlling people’s land and livelihoods wasn’t one of them. “Important, that one.”
“Surely is. And they’ll be ready to go, after how the election came out yesterday.”
Harriet nodded; there had been a special election in the low country to fill the seat of a senator who’d died in a fiacre crash. “Democrat, though. Not sure what I think of that.”
“You’re the one who started it. Once you break down the door, anyone can walk through.”
That was true enough, certainly, and it wasn’t like the Democrats in South Carolina were much like the ones in Georgia or Alabama. They’d been a black and white party for decades now, and they’d picked up some of the church-and-mosque people, the ones who didn’t like the way the Republican elite had managed things but also didn’t want to vote Independent Republican or Farmer-Labor. The man who’d just won the election for them was the son of slaves. “But still.”
“Can’t do anything about it now, and it looks like he might do some good. The more the low country is cracked loose from the Republicans, the more people’ll think their hides are safe if they vote for the reform. Anyway, let’s get you outside if you want that nap before the meeting.”
“Sure enough,” Harriet said, and then, “Hah! Senator for a nurse!” She stood up herself – that was still a point of honor – but she accepted Kabbah’s arm and leaned on her as they made their way out the door. When you got to be a hundred and two, some things had to give.
It was warm in the garden, and the wicker chair was comfortable and yielding. There was a pitcher of sweet tea on a table by its side, but Harriet left it alone; she settled on the cushions and closed her eyes. She’d want to be fresh when the cabinet came – sure, the lieutenant governor did most of the work, but she made a point of attending the meetings and throwing in her ideas. The land reform was hers, and she’d spent months working out the details with the secretaries and legislators; that state park in the Congaree was hers too, and a few other things.
No need to think about that now, though. The sunlight spotted the insides of her eyelids with red and orange, but she didn’t notice for long. She drifted off, and into the colors of dreams.
It was a jumbled dream at first, South Carolina and New York and Maryland, the governor’s mansion where Harriet lived now and the slave shack she’d lived in as a child. Her old master was throwing that two-pound weight at her head again, and she was slipping into Maryland to rescue her family, and she was leading an ambush during the rising. She was on the floor of Congress, and wading into the sea behind her house on St. Helena Island, and pouring lemonade for the neighbor girl who’d come to clean.
It all seemed to be leading someplace, and she found herself looking up to the sky. It was evening already – how’d that happen so soon? – and the first stars were coming out, but then she saw they weren’t stars. They were flaming swords, carried by turbaned men and women on the backs of great hawks.
She almost laughed out loud. The yamali? They were nothing but Brazilian slaves who’d made good their freedom. She’d met some of them, and she knew damned well that they stood on the ground like anyone else. They didn’t fly through the South Carolina sky as if they were some kind of… some kind of Valkyries. And why were some of them women, and why did their faces look so much like people who’d fought with her in ’63?
They were coming closer, and Harriet saw that one of them wasn’t a face from the Rising but her grandmother Modesty. That made a sort of sense, she guessed. The Malê came from somewhere in Guinea, didn’t they, and didn’t the Haitians say souls went there after death? And grandmama always had said that she was Asante, and they didn’t come from all that far away. She’d find out soon enough when the yamali got there: it seemed grandmama was saying something. It was just that it had been ninety years since she’d last dreamed of her, and she wondered why she’d do so again after all this time.
_______
[1] See post 305.
[2] See post 198.
[3] See post 1281.
Salvador, Bahia:
In Salvador, they called Matilde the charm lady. She sold everything in the store she kept on the Liberdade hillside, and people came to buy food and clothes and trinkets, but her fame was the charms: protective amulets, love potions, herbal remedies and a thousand others. Matilde was magic, the people said – they didn’t know why, but there was something about her. She dispensed advice with her charms, and when she did, her voice carried ninety-four years of wisdom, made all the wiser by the hint of foreign lands in her speech.
Matilde was always to be found in the store or just outside it, making her charms in a back room or sitting by the door while one of her grandchildren minded the counter. Stand by the door and call her name, and she would always hear. But today she was not there.
It was hard to climb the hills now, very hard, and she felt her age with every step. But everyone knew her in Liberdade, and they were happy to offer a hand. They respected her almost as they would a mãe-de-santo, and on a day such as this, wise old women were particularly honored. For it was January twenty-fourth, the day of the yamali, and who knew them better than the old women did?
The street was a riot of color today – it was always that, with its rows of painted houses, but especially today. The brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the candomble competed with the buildings, some in the red and white of the orixá Xangô, others in horned hats to honor Yansã of the storm, still others in bright foil armor bearing images of St. George or the archangel Michael. And everywhere were men in white robes and turbans carrying the banners of the yamali, warriors of burning eyes and flaming swords who were the scourge of slavers everywhere.
Matilde climbed now through a street of whirling yamali-brothers, their drums beating time as they danced. Their banners showed the warriors mounted on eagles and wielding crescent-shaped swords, appropriating both the crown of the mães and the symbols of Islam. They took her hand, each in turn, and danced a couple of steps, handing her to the next in line. A mae in armor of gold leaf led a chain of women in the other direction, cutting and thrusting as a soldier might, and why not, for this was a festival of war.
The charm lady always greeted this day with both wry amusement and a sense of loss. She knew now who the yamali were – everyone did. They were men, not spirits, and their rebellion had taken place in this very city on this day eighty-seven years before. Their descendants lived in Africa still, and Matilde sometimes wondered if they knew they were worshiped. It was the spirit of the yamali that the brotherhoods sought to conjure, not the men themselves, but like most points of doctrine, that wasn’t something an outsider might realize. But most of her feeling was because she herself had fought under the yamali banner – not in a mock war but a real one, and indeed, in one of the wars that the costumes and images of this day were intended to evoke.
That was something no one knew, even her family. Her husband, even, had never known: he’d believed all his life that he was married to a neighborhood charm-maker. The candomble was tolerated now, even if it was still illegal, but even after all these years, it might still be dangerous if the authorities found out what Matilde’s name had been two generations ago, and what she’d done under that name. She was a mãe too – more than that, she’d been a prophet – but she didn’t dare become known as one, and when she saw the other mães in their holy ecstasy, she felt a stab of longing for the communion she had once known.
There was a shrine at the top of the hill, and at last Matilde attained it, pausing to catch her breath and look down on the streets below. She entered – mãe or not, no one questioned her right to do so – and murmured a prayer at Yansã’s altar, laying an offering of tobacco and plums at its foot.
She had left this offering on the day of the yamali for forty years and more, and many people wondered who it was for – a family member, surely, or the place of her birth, or a friend dead in some battle. Only she knew that it was none of those, but the Empress Isabel. That too amused her – Isabel’s Catholicism had bordered on the fanatical, and she would have considered Yansã no different from the devil – but had she not finished what the yamali started? Had the late empress not finished Matilde’s own war, the one she’d fought when she was called Mariana, and which had set the north aflame with the anger of slaves? [1] It was Isabel, in the end, who had ended slavery in Brazil forever, and for that, surely, the yamali would honor her.
She left the shrine and stood again outside, gazing down at the rows of houses, the harbor, the graveyard where someday soon she would be buried. She’d left instructions to her grandchildren in a secret place: she would be buried not as Matilde or even Mariana, but as Mary Ann from Virginia, the name her mother had given her, the name her Mande grandmother had whispered to her. That was what she truly was, a slave from America sold to work the Pernambuco sugar fields and filled with the yamali’s power and wrath. [2]
When she went to join them, she hoped they would be there, and that Isabel would be with them.
*******
Columbia, South Carolina:
“Cabinet coming at four o’clock?” asked Harriet Tubman.
“Every day,” Senator Kabbah answered. “You’ve got four hours. Plenty of time to eat and take a nap.”
“Nap first, I think. I’m not too hungry now.” Harriet turned around sharply at the sound of laughter. “You don’t have to laugh, Otter. When you get my age, you’ll know.”
“I don’t have to, but I want to.” A second later, Harriet dissolved in laughter herself. It was nice to have someone around willing to tease her – too many of the young ones looked at her like she was some kind of tin god. And Missy Kabbah was no spring chicken herself. She was old enough to have known slavery, old enough to remember the rising in ’63 and to have scouted for Harriet’s brigade as an eight-year-old child. They’d called her Otter then because she swam like one, though she and Harriet were probably the only ones who still remembered. [3]
“Fair enough. What’ll they want to talk about today?”
“The state university plan, probably. And the land reform, the one I dropped by to talk to you about.”
“Yes, that.” It was long overdue, taking the collective land away from the Circles and putting it in the hands of the town councils. The townships ran by one person one vote, and they were required by law to have open meetings where anyone could speak: there was no way a few families could buy up most of their shares and do everything in back rooms. There were a lot of things the Circles could still do, but it was clear now that controlling people’s land and livelihoods wasn’t one of them. “Important, that one.”
“Surely is. And they’ll be ready to go, after how the election came out yesterday.”
Harriet nodded; there had been a special election in the low country to fill the seat of a senator who’d died in a fiacre crash. “Democrat, though. Not sure what I think of that.”
“You’re the one who started it. Once you break down the door, anyone can walk through.”
That was true enough, certainly, and it wasn’t like the Democrats in South Carolina were much like the ones in Georgia or Alabama. They’d been a black and white party for decades now, and they’d picked up some of the church-and-mosque people, the ones who didn’t like the way the Republican elite had managed things but also didn’t want to vote Independent Republican or Farmer-Labor. The man who’d just won the election for them was the son of slaves. “But still.”
“Can’t do anything about it now, and it looks like he might do some good. The more the low country is cracked loose from the Republicans, the more people’ll think their hides are safe if they vote for the reform. Anyway, let’s get you outside if you want that nap before the meeting.”
“Sure enough,” Harriet said, and then, “Hah! Senator for a nurse!” She stood up herself – that was still a point of honor – but she accepted Kabbah’s arm and leaned on her as they made their way out the door. When you got to be a hundred and two, some things had to give.
It was warm in the garden, and the wicker chair was comfortable and yielding. There was a pitcher of sweet tea on a table by its side, but Harriet left it alone; she settled on the cushions and closed her eyes. She’d want to be fresh when the cabinet came – sure, the lieutenant governor did most of the work, but she made a point of attending the meetings and throwing in her ideas. The land reform was hers, and she’d spent months working out the details with the secretaries and legislators; that state park in the Congaree was hers too, and a few other things.
No need to think about that now, though. The sunlight spotted the insides of her eyelids with red and orange, but she didn’t notice for long. She drifted off, and into the colors of dreams.
It was a jumbled dream at first, South Carolina and New York and Maryland, the governor’s mansion where Harriet lived now and the slave shack she’d lived in as a child. Her old master was throwing that two-pound weight at her head again, and she was slipping into Maryland to rescue her family, and she was leading an ambush during the rising. She was on the floor of Congress, and wading into the sea behind her house on St. Helena Island, and pouring lemonade for the neighbor girl who’d come to clean.
It all seemed to be leading someplace, and she found herself looking up to the sky. It was evening already – how’d that happen so soon? – and the first stars were coming out, but then she saw they weren’t stars. They were flaming swords, carried by turbaned men and women on the backs of great hawks.
She almost laughed out loud. The yamali? They were nothing but Brazilian slaves who’d made good their freedom. She’d met some of them, and she knew damned well that they stood on the ground like anyone else. They didn’t fly through the South Carolina sky as if they were some kind of… some kind of Valkyries. And why were some of them women, and why did their faces look so much like people who’d fought with her in ’63?
They were coming closer, and Harriet saw that one of them wasn’t a face from the Rising but her grandmother Modesty. That made a sort of sense, she guessed. The Malê came from somewhere in Guinea, didn’t they, and didn’t the Haitians say souls went there after death? And grandmama always had said that she was Asante, and they didn’t come from all that far away. She’d find out soon enough when the yamali got there: it seemed grandmama was saying something. It was just that it had been ninety years since she’d last dreamed of her, and she wondered why she’d do so again after all this time.
_______
[1] See post 305.
[2] See post 198.
[3] See post 1281.
Last edited:
Sulemain
Banned
And so passes Harriet Tubman, freedom fighter, stateswoman, cool old lady extraordinaire. I may have cried a little; kudos on another brilliant peace of writing,
And the fact you've made a female Senator from 20s South Carolina plausible... Wow.
BTW, whatever happened to/in Liberia?
And the fact you've made a female Senator from 20s South Carolina plausible... Wow.
BTW, whatever happened to/in Liberia?
Last edited:
Good god, but you've created something truly special in this timeline Jonathan.