Some five southward miles from the village, in one of the jungle's manifold sunken glades, the men's chapel looms. The trail leading to it is unkempt, and scrupulously hidden from the women and children. On the midsummer of their 13th year, Yamamo males, having endured a brutal day of initiation, are taught to read the secret signs pointing to its location.
It is a structure very unlike the domestic huts, which consist of naive wooden frames thatched with straw and uncarded wool. Mud is incorporated only for waterproofing, and roofs include a central vent through which the smoke of the hearth is drawn. By contrast, the chapel is an uninterrupted dome, its exterior coated entirely in a black mud, dark like iron-rich stool, which the men transport to the site from a distant quarry.
The event which occasioned my visit was a yearly engineering work: the application and polishing of a new layer of mud. By the close of the evening it gleamed, a marble half buried in the ferns and mulch, reflecting the sun's red sinking eye. I was not invited inside.
My guide and translator, Aoba, explained that this was the shabaoma, a term roughly equivalent to "place that god does not look into". (I was later to learn that there is vitriolic debate among the Yamamo as to whether the correct formulation states "god does not look" or "gods do not look" — an inconsequence to foreigners, but contested internally due to the ontological implications embedded in their language's plurals.)
Freedom from the divine gaze is not, or not exclusively, an architectural property of the chapel. Strict customs must be upheld to maintain its invisibility. One such custom is the relinquishing of all religious trinkets at the threshold; the Yamamo are not a theologically unified people, despite their small numbers, and I have watched the gatekeepers confiscate a stupendous variety of items. Amulets; medicinal tubers carved by the region's wisemen; the braided hair of ancestors and wives; scalps and tokens of success in war; bulbous fertility icons; wands; the medallions of western saints they steal from the upriver missionaries. All text is forbidden, as even the most banal may disguise prayer. Yababe, an esteemed chieftain, was asked to daub paint over his birthmark, which was said to be a heavenly brand.
This alone is insufficient. Within the shabaoma, Aoba says, the men may not refer to each other by name. Even a whispered name will compromise the laboriously preserved stealth of the zone. Men's names draw gods like the river's sharp-toothed fish are drawn to blood.
When this rule is broken, as it sometimes is, a well-established series of emendatory actions are taken. The offender is often, but not always, killed. Leniency is extended to imbeciles, and to the newly initiated, whose boundary pushing compulsions are tolerated. Then, the man who has been named must be unnamed.
I have, in other writings, commented on the characteristic Yamamo preoccupation with the collection and creation of useless objects. Envision small flutes with unusual holes, rendering them musically sterile; fishing hooks twisted like labyrinths; chunks of fired clay that resemble nothing but whose craftsmanship broadcasts intent. They are, I now know, all destined for the shabaoma.
When a man, for example, Yababe, is named, the first to catch the slip, or the most authoritative speaker, will exclaim "A yababe, pass me a yababe!" Then, whoever is closest will draw one such useless object from a pile of them reserved for these emergencies. "Here is a yababe," he will assert. Others will agree. The proper noun is transformed into a common noun, and the eyes of the gods are diverted.
The unnamed man will be named again, later, and adopted into the family of the offender. This is costly, as they will pay all of his future bride prices, and share in any curses he attracts.
No two men may bear the same name (though many of the women do.) The names of the dead may be recycled, and it is understood that unnaming reverberates backwards through chains of ancestors. Every man has a terminal referent, revealed to him upon dying, which consists of the name he will be called at the end of time, after all the future unnamings of his name-twins.
Aoba refused to share any ex-names. However, I was able to glean a list from the village children, among whom many useless objects are in circulation. They are a source of great delight and many games, and the focus of a long, rambling nursery rhyme which seeks to enumerate them. It took me several months of listening to reconstruct it, as its recitation is too great a task for any individual child, and the complete poem seems only to exist in their moments of collective play. Of note is the final verse:
mabuya, baoga / yaya shabaoma
Is the shabaoma itself a useless object? I can only postulate. Perhaps, in time, the men will take me into their confidence.
Aoba, I think, is beginning to trust me. After a recent communal dinner, flush with chicha, he confessed that a dark theory has come to cloud the meetings at the chapel: some wonder whether the useless objects are themselves divine, and whether their council is being spied upon by gods wearing vessels whose purposes cannot be assessed by reason; inhuman, sinister gods. (The manifestation of these doubts seems to have coincided with the Yamamo's exposure to the wider world — I must investigate.)
Discussion of the shabaoma chilled until, weeks later, I was inspired by a wedding ceremony to ask whether women had ever found their way to it. Aoba scoffed. They had not, and, furthermore, they weren't interested; there was no want for it, because the gods are never watching women. They have their own chapel up North, where they go when they need to be seen.
The word we use for shabaoama is Discord.
How do I buy an NFT of this story?