Dial - Season 1 - Episode 126

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 1 - Episode 126

People stared at Okomfo Basabasa as he struggled to his face, and when he looked at my grinning face, a look of sheer murderous fury cut across his face. With a deep curse, he pulled out a sharp knife from somewhere within the folds of his raffia skirt and approached me.

“Go ahead, cut me up basabasa Okomfo Basabasa!” I said, grinning even broader.
“Your mother!” he hissed furiously, and for one wild moment I suddenly felt he was going to actually cut me up with the knife, so incensed was he. However, he just slashed at the cords binding me, and a moment later I stood free.

“Nana Basabasa!” King Obiba said angrily. “What’s the meaning of this? Are you letting that man go after he insulted my wife-to-be, our future Queen?”
Okomfo Basabasa approached the king and bowed low.

“No, Your Majesty, no!” he said as he put his knife back in its scabbard and mopped the blood around his neck with a piece of white cloth. “That man is a cursed man! I just saw a vision of a superior priest who has placed the curse of death on this man! If we harm his body, great calamity will befall us!”
“So we can’t do anything to him?” Abena Adobea asked, her lovely face now filled with great fury. “He goes scot free?”
“No, my dearest Royal Princess,” Okomfo Basabasa said with a sly, wicked smile. “We can’t harm his body, but we can do whatever we want with him, including imprison him in the dungeons if he refuses to atone for what he did!”

“Atonement then!” the king roared, and this was greeted by a wild scream from the people around; they were finding their voices again after the scare that Nana b0s0mba had put in them.

“He shall be made to slaughter a sheep to appease you!” Okomfo Basabasa told the princess.

“No!” Abena Adobea screamed. “I want him to be imprisoned in the dungeons for a week to teach him some lesson!”
Okomfo Basabasa shook his head.
“No, my Princess, we can’t do that, unfortunately!” he said tightly.
“And why not?” Abena Adobea screamed. “We have other people in the dungeons!”

“They are our subjects, my Princess,” the fetish priest said. “This man is a stranger, alas. First we charge him to pay atonement, and if he refuses, then we can send him to the dungeons! The priest who has put a curse on him is called b0s0mba. He knows our customs, and so we can’t do anything but go by the customs, otherwise b0s0mba Nana can curse our village.”

The Royal Princess’ body shook with rage as she glared at my face, her face made even more beautiful in her anger.
“So, he pays for only one sheep? Only two hundred cedis?” she asked in a bitter tone.
A sly smile played around the lips of the fetish priest.

“Ahh, my Princess, that is where our custom becomes sweet!” he said with a cold glint in his eyes. “You’re the one he offended, and he must pay atonement! How many sheep do you think might appease the sacrilege he caused?”

The lady’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t understand, Okomfo,” she said carefully. “Are you speaking in tongues now?”

The fetish priest smiled gently at her.
“You see, atonement must always be the blood of a sheep,” he said with a knowing look. “But, the harsher the crime, the more blood we need! If the crime is against a royal, like in this case, we normally ask the royal how many sheep would appease the crime!”