The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel (55 page)

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Authors: Arthur Japin

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Literary, #Literary Fiction

BOOK: The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel

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Among the many people who have helped me in the course of the ten years of research and writing, I would like specially to thank Mrs. van Heumen and Mrs. de Gruyter, Kwasi Boachi’s granddaughters.

Kwasi Boachi as an old man

1
It is true that slaves, condemned men and defeated warriors were executed in Kumasi. But I must add that it was not known to us in those days that the northern tribes also belonged to the race of men. The notion of a single human race, comprising a diversity of coexisting peoples who were in essence equal, was foreign to us. In Europe, too, that notion had only recently arisen, and the practical implications were still inconsistent. We knew only one people—ours—and the dangers to which our kin were exposed. As a boy, the routine executions were little different to me from the slaughter of goats. Later in life this boyhood insensibility filled me with shame, until I discovered that a man’s life counted for just as little in Europe at the time. The wars fought between 1792 and 1815 alone caused the sacrifice of one million five hundred and thirty thousand lives, not counting the loss of life in epidemics spread in the course of the conflicts. Another two hundred thousand souls died in the war between Russia and Turkey, and an equal number in the Polish uprising. At the very time that van Drunen was startled by a few heads lying on his path, tens of thousands of heads were rolling in the Caucasus.

2
“Yes, madam!”