Zam, in: White Gorillas ((1811-1813)(from the Old Josh series))

Zam, in: White Gorillas
(1811-1813)

There was no worry, or confusing thoughts of the future, for Zam, and his mother, the black boy was eight years old, it was 1811, the future wasn’t even on his mind, only the occasional recollections his mother told him to remember, his mother Zamia—to remember because of his environment, the tropical forest of the Congo was his home, a most alluring picture of beauty at nature’s best, but also nature’s beasts for his father was killed by one of the great apes, during his infancy. Hence, the equatorial sun beat through the tense jungle, the leafy sea of green overhead, this canopy of leafage devoured much of the sun.
Today was a hot summer’s day, on this side of the world, the year was 1813, he, Zam had just turned ten-years old, and it was a day for loafing, like many days in the rainforest, outside the large village he and his mother lived in, he was running his fingers through his mother’s hair as they lay against a tree, simply adoring her! He had no brothers or sisters.

She, his mother looked at her son, for a few minutes she watched him, caressed his arm, stroked it, she had produced this boy, she was proud.
She had catlike eyes, saw everybody and everything that approached too close, and like a lion she’d even snarl at it, produce a deep growl, if she sensed danger, yet she was a small women, bloodshot eyes.


Zam’s muscles were rigid, and he was a large boy for ten, great shoulders on him, like a bull-ape’s, likened to his father. Gray eyes that would turn dark brown; he stood up, looked about, squatted, played with the monkey’s, and ate some bananas, and even a few grub worms, he was hungry.
He wasn’t sacred of anything except a bull-ape, the kind that killed his father, and to the monkey’s he was their antagonist.
It was a life, for the most part, of brutal content, they lived like the sparrows, bellies full of whatever they found to eat, even monkey meat. He never heard of the white man, or other countries in the world, he was in his world, the jungle, the rainforest—his destiny, according to his mother was to survive each day, and die to feed the earth, to make room for another, to give back something. That if necessary, you court death to save his family from the fangs of the lions, these wild beasts were the enemy, not man per se. Never-failing, as the King of the village knew, this would be Zamia’s down fall as it would be her son’s.
(We must not blame them for their ignorance, in what took place this day for even in the most modern countries of its time, to this very day, man selects leaders, and leaders in most cases work on the theme, of self-interest, and it was to be that way with the king, yet he, himself the king, would have a surprise, you play with the devil, expect no mercy.)

For the most part, Zam was still developing those layers of untried muscles, the ones he would use in future time undeveloped and untried fighting muscles, and he would learn how to bite and fight, and run, and throw the spear, if given time to do so, and his mother was quite proud of his achievements at his present young age. But his attention was distracted when he saw the strangest thing, white men, or were they gorillas, talking to their king. He asked his mother,
“Is this a new kind of ape?”
He knew the beetle, and the caterpillar, the mouse and the elephant, and the lion and many more animals and insects, like the ape and monkey’s, and the many kinds of birds, but this new creature was different, had beards and moustaches, and lots of cloths on, and they were snatching black-men—like catching mice—even as they run off they ran after them, they leaped on them, while in pursuit. The thought in his mind, in Zam’s mind, was: the king must be angry, his face showed it, for evidently they had done some kind of wrong, these comrades, black-men, had done some kind of wrong, and these new creatures were trying to capture the natives for him.

The king approached Zam and his mother, introduced the seven white men to them, not a formal introduction, but one saying in essence, ‘these are my special friends from far away, they came to do business,’ and the king was going to leave it at that, leave the boy and his mother where they were; the boy noticed they had chains with them, having fondness for the king, Zamia didn’t run, didn’t consider an escape. The kind said,
“The boy needs his mother, he is too young for the journey on that ship of yours,” he had said this to the white men, but Zam didn’t know what a ship was, or journey, and felt quite alone with his mother as they talked about him and his mother in the third person, as if they didn’t’ exist. He could scarcely formulate the correct thoughts, to figure out what was happening.
Then the leader of the white men said:
“They’re all savages, even the king, attached or unattached take them all,” and they grabbed Zam and his mother, and the king, these men knew neither fear nor gave mercy, they were to Zam a strange inexplicable force, and now the mother and Zam both fought to gain their freedom.
One of the men dropped a noose around the boy’s neck, this stopped the mother from fighting, and he, the king was unconscious, he was hogtied to a polo, carried by two chained black men, and when he awoke, at the beaches, he was angry as a boar, but his grunts only gave reason to the white men to slash a whip across his back. And the boy looked at his mother, said, “White Gorillas,” he saw them as his enemy, the enemy of his father, the ones that killed his father.
The river winds, the village the huts he was born in, lived in, familiar with, all that was, all that used to be, was no more to be, gone with his youth, for a new tormenting life on a ship he thought looked more like a monster crocodile, than a wooden vessel.

((For Rosa) (7-16-2008))