This is part of a series: Njeddo Dewal, Mother of Calamity
While the king and leaders of Heli and Yoyo tried to find a way to avoid the calamity threatening to befall them, Njeddo Dewal began to build an invisible city in her domain. Once she had completed it, she named it Wéli- Wéli (lit. sweet-sweet).
It was not so called because of anything of material pleasure or spiritual allure1 of which neither were present in Wéli-Wéli, except for women enough to keep men company. The only women of Wéli-Wéli were the seven daughters Njeddo Dewal had begot from her union with Dandi. Not only were they beautiful like nymphs, but their mother had made sure through magic that they would remain constantly virgins. Deflowered at night, the next morning they became once more intact.2
At that time, the women of Heli and Yoyo began to die one after another. Soon only virtuous women remained, the wives of silatigis or of certain chiefs.3 No sooner word spread that a free woman lived somewhere, men rushed in droves to try their luck, fighting and killing each other along the way.
But one day, mysterious travelers who were traveling through the country of Heli and Yoyo, and who were none other than agents of Njeddo Dewal, spread some astonishing news: in a distant city there lived seven virgins without equal whom their mother, Queen of that city, intended to give in marriage. However, they added, the Queen had decided to only give her daughters to the men they chose for themselves. She therefore invited suitors to come try their luck.
As soon as the news broke, prospectors flocked from all the surrounding areas. They were introduced into the city only in groups of seven. Once inside, they were presented to Njeddo Dewal. She, who had taken on a pleasant and reassuring appearance, welcomed them with these words:
“I hope you will take the time to get to know my daughters well. Make yourselves at home and return tomorrow evening. Each of you may spend the whole night chatting with your companion. Just as a rider would like to know everything about the character of the beautiful horse he is about to acquire, even should it be descended from jabalen’ngou the horse of the devil, so too would every man like to know the character of the woman he desires to marry.”
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1 Everything in Wéli-Wéli is an illusion, a mirage. Beauty only covers what is in essence ugliness itself.
The spiritual allure, or spiritual mirage (makarou in Islam), is all that makes the follower stop along the
way. Dazzled by a spiritual phenomenon or by his own realization, he loses sight of what is the real
goal of his quest.
2 This male-perpetuated fallacy of the hymen as a protective film that is broken and bleeds when a
young woman first loses her virginity is entirely false. If it were true, it would be impossible for a
woman to have her period. The state of the hymen is not an indicator of whether a woman is a virgin,
and first-time bleeding is usually the result of tightness and tension in the vagina and nothing to do with the hymen.
3 As had been foretold, men and women who had not sinned or fallen into the easy ways of the age would not succumb to the calamities.
Alas, the naive candidates did not know that Njeddo Dewal was in the habit of revitalising herself by drinking human blood, and she preferred above all the blood of stripling youths without a hair on their chin! (29) Each of her daughters had hidden beside themselves a long, smooth, well-tanned intestine with a dwarf doe horn sucker. Now, who does not know the great evil that resides in the head of the dwarf doe (30) whose horn, the main instrument of sorcerers and bewitchers, is used in many magical operations? The other end of the long pipe was in Njeddo’s chamber.
The next evening, the seven suitors presented themselves and the Queen opened to each of them the resting place of one of her daughters. Each beau bantered with his belle until midnight. Then, lowering the tone of his voice and dimming the lamp, he would join her on her bed. Instinctively, he reached out his hand to caress the body of his beloved. The virgin would abandon herself to the point of making him believe that she was impatient, but when he drew too close, she moved back:
“Brother, take it easy”, she said, “Don't hurry so. Haste makes waste more than it helps. First, I would like to make sure that you really love me, that you love me as much as you love yourself. I want to be yours and I want you to be mine, but first you must give me a proof of your love, a proof that there is nothing within your power that you would not be willing to give me. Once I have this certainty, I would know that even if I were to ask for your soul, you would give it to me — then I would give you what is my honor and my life: my virginity.”
Such words inflame the lover's heart. The intoxication of love clouds his intelligence. Drunk, he forgets even where he is. Mind weakened, he stops thinking and becomes a slave to his passion, reverting briefly to the state of an animal. This is how you behave when hunger for a woman takes hold of you. Fired up with passion, the suitor cried out:
“My sister, ask what you want of me, and I will give it to you at the hour and at the moment! Make me do what you will. I love you. I long for you. Just do not hold me back from you!”
Seeing him at her mercy, the cunning girl replied:
"Listen, my brother! My mother is sick. Only a man’s blood can heal her. Allow me to bleed you and take some of your blood for my poor mother. As soon as she drinks it, she will fall into a deep sleep. I will then take advantage of her sleep to stretch out my neck and you can satisfy all your desires.
However long the night, I will be patient and compliant. You will find me a virgin and can possess me at will. The tips of my breasts will poke without hurting you; your manly chest will weigh upon them and they will draw back like a defeated army. No foul-smelling milk shall come from my breasts, for I am a virgin and have never breastfed a child.
I will set aside my shy modesty and let your eyes have their fill as you look at me. The dim light of the lamp will let you see how my slim waist moulds into my firm chest. You will admire the curve of my legs. You will see how my heels were shaped and smoothed, my arms sculpted, and my fingers finely fashioned by Guéno. You will contemplate my nails, beautifully long and brilliantly white.
Yes, my brother, I am pelemri, a virgin not yet deflowered. For those who do not understand this language, I am an impenetrable house...”
Never had any of Njeddo Dewal's daughters ever made such remarks to a suitor without the latter, caught in her trap, exclaiming: “Bleed me, yes, bleed me to fulfil your mother’s need and let this yearning man quench his thirst on your virginity!”
Then, without waiting, the girl pricked a vein and applied the dwarf deer horn to it. Warned by an agreed-upon means, Njeddo Dewal grasped the other end of the long intestine that ran from her daughter's bed to her own and she began to suck out the blood of the unfortunate victim.
Once the young man had been drained of a good portion of his blood, the girl would let herself be deflowered, secure in the knowledge that her lover would die of exhaustion the next day or soon thereafter and that her mother, revitalised, could continue her macabre and evil work.
Thus the young men of Heli and Yoyo were exterminated seven by seven, as time went on, without anything ever preventing them from rushing joyfully to their atrocious end.
Meanwhile, every time Njeddo, replete with fresh blood, breathed out the air from her infernal chest, her breath dried out the vegetation of the country, from the blades of grass to the most powerful trees. She dried up the rivers and streams and did not even spare the wells. The trees died in the forest. Herbivorous animals and game starved or were struck by strange disease.
All of the calamities predicted by the seers were coming down upon the country one by one. Not a day, a week, a month or a year went by without a catastrophe: whole cities collapsed, rivers ran dry, mountains crumbled. Food was scarce, and women and cows with wide sides hardly gave birth anymore. Only certain places were spared, populated by honest and good people, but everyone suffered. Thus, for seven years, the inhabitants of Heli and Yoyo experienced a misery as arduous as the well-being of times past had been pleasant and enchanting.
Endnotes:
29. Blood: Blood is sacred because it is the vehicle of life. When a man loses his blood, he first loses his vitality, then his life itself. In traditional sacrifices, the gods are supposed to ask only for the blood of the victims, not their flesh which is then used by men. By absorbing this vital element, Njeddo Dewal strengthens her own blood and marks herself out as a witch, for it is said that witches “suck the blood of young men to revitalise themselves”.
Translation from Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Contes initiatiques peuls
Painting: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (1893) by John William Waterhouse.
