We relaxed our expectation of him. We understood. There was no failing. He couldn’t have known as a child that, one day, he’d be bound on the other side of the world and his life might depend upon his ability to speak to a bird. He couldn’t have known that a whole host of captives would, one day, solicit his spiritual insight in hopes of being free. He simply couldn’t have known. We couldn’t have either. But there we were. And nothing we could’ve done in the moment would’ve granted us the insight we didn’t have. So, eventually, the bird flew away. We missed whatever the message was. Oluwagbotemi apologized for being unable to do what his people did regularly. We forgave him. All of us suffered the same loss. Looking at us, no one would’ve guessed we came from people who traveled planets and cured diseases with plants and herbs. Instead, they would’ve guessed we were poor, unintelligent, spiritually defunct people who lacked civilization. This was simply untrue. Yet nothing about us said otherwise. From the looks of things, pale people were the keepers of the universe, the ones who enjoyed God’s favor. They ruled land and sea, it seemed, and we had nothing. Not even ourselves. They had bought our very flesh! When we’d had slaves, we’d purchased people’s labor—not their bodies! We never thought we owned someone’s arms, legs, feet, heart. How was that possible? How much does an arm cost? A leg? Feet? Hands? How did they know the amount of paper money equal to our entire existence? And when did they start this absurdity, this purchasing of human beings? Were we the first? And, anyway, why not simply bind their own rejected citizens ? They had to have them. We’d had them. Every society has them. That way, they wouldn’t have to go halfway around the world for what they needed. This was, of course, useless meditation. They had us, and that’s what they wanted. Someone unlike themselves. Someone upon whom they could place the burden of their luxurious living. Someone at whom they could laugh without feeling guilty. We were different enough that whatever they did to us they could do without shame. They could justify our abuse simply because we were something they were not. At least in appearance. And such difference, particularly in color, undoubtedly equaled a fundamental inequity in their minds. None of this made sense to us, but we considered it for them since, in any rational way, we couldn’t understand their stealing us from our homeland and refusing to let us return. They had to believe something about us that we didn’t believe, something that invited them to treat us as men and women without souls. But until we learned more of their tongue, to read and hear what, apparently, they would not say, we resolved to dodge their wrath whenever and however we could. We didn’t know what the end of this journey would be, but we intended to see it. Then we would know.