Book Chapter: A Line Back Home: Ancestral Echoes in Seven Turns

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Book Chapter
A Line Back Home: Ancestral Echoes in Seven Turns

In: in: Walk Notations. org.: Eirini Fountedaki. p. 143-151. AG Dissident Paths, nGbK: Berlin, 2026.

A Line Back Home, Ancestral Echoes in Seven Turns.
Suelen Calonga

Um, THE TREE. They planted a tree and called it Oblivion. They called it sacred so that forgetting would feel like faith. They chose some of us to walk toward the sea, the opened door of No Return. Seven turns for women, nine for men. Of course, not voluntarily. Around it, we were made to turn and spin until memory fell from us like northern autumm leaves. Centuries later, we walk again in circles, but we still remember. We turn counterclockwise, undoing the spell. The museum’s thick stone walls are built upon an enchantment of erasure, filled with glass walls that pretend transparency. Forum, they say. Maybe they forgot their own name. Our words return; the songs take root in the air. Their spell didn’t work—because we are better wizards. We have been walking ever since. Too many steps for such small legs. So tired, yet confident. Their spell didn’t work. It only delayed the return, but not for long. What centuries could face the glory of our history? We are recovering, and they fear our awakening, fearing it seeks revenge. Would it be safer to call it justice? What is the difference? We know the technologies; you couldn’t erase them. We did it once, and we can do it again. “Há um manifesto kicongo, Bois Caïman.”¹ On this side of the riverbank, we will also turn. Turn to undo, turn to redo, turn to awaken the spirits that lie among boxes and cabinets, among shards of wax, cold shelves, and silence. “We spin the movement of the world. Each time we turn, we reconvene with our ancestors.”²

1 Lyrics of the song "Saudação Malungo" by Carlos Roberto Ribeiro da Silva and Orlando Santa Rita, sung by Luedji Luna. In: Um Corpo no Mundo, YB Music, 2019.

2 This phrase is part of an incantation taught to Suelen Calonga by Olúwo Ifáyòmí Adélónà Sàngówálé Ìṣọlá Awólọlá.

Dois, THE AXIS. The Forum stands where empires once rehearsed their symmetry. Every stone repeats the fiction of a center; every column measures obedience. And yet, it is so young—despite its appearance of age—and it is aging so badly. And the statues! Everything about it is fiction. When I began walking around it, the geometry started to tremble. Each step dislocated the coordinates, returning weight to the ground. The circle is not a path of devotion but of refusal: to orbit what claims universality and to find, instead, the pulse of what was displaced. A circle drawn against the square. I imagined many times the river overflowing, infiltrating, taking down the entire fake island. Berlin. The stupidity of founding an empire on a swamp echoes the colonial gesture of imposing firmness on what is fluid. I beg the peat, the shallow lakes, and the unstable soil to reclaim what is theirs. And in return, I agree to surrender everything of mine that sits inside that building. They said there is no other salvation, no other name given to men but the name of Jesus, in honor of the Father; that in this name all beings in heaven, on earth, and under the earth should bow their knees. It is written there still, in golden letters on a blue ribbon, below a cross, under which lies our sacred. What a place of cult! Ùnlọ! I am not seeking salvation. I am everywhere: in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and I will not kneel. None of us will kneel. And we are prepared to give you back something that is not the other cheek. “They knew, even as we slept, that our spirit was more powerful than their white death.”³ Inside this monument, the voices of my ancestors remain trapped, sampled, numbered, archived behind climate-controlled glass. I hear them when I enter that space: the low frequencies that the microphones could not translate, the breath between syllables, the hum of presence mistaken for noise. The building is a fortress of amnesia, but also a battlefield. The war is spiritual. Each act of listening is an attack; each turn around the Forum is a strike of memory. “Os palácios vão desabar sob a força de um temporal. E os ventos vão sufocar o barulho infernal. Os homens vão se rebelar dessa farsa descomunal. Vai voltar tudo ao seu lugar, afinal.”⁴ I walked not to arrive, but to turn the axis itself—until the monument began to look dizzy.

3 Ani, Marimba. (1994). Yurugu: An Afrikan‐Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. pp. xxi–xxii.Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

4 Ani, Marimba. (1994). Yurugu: An Afrikan‐Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. pp. xxi–xxii.Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Três, THE CROSSING. I learned to walk between waters. Nessa terra distante, minha mãe se chama Spree, and she carries reflections that are not her own: the brown river of my childhood, the sound of Pretuguês⁵ vowels dissolving into German consonants, the rhythm of a tongue that keeps changing temperature. I crossed the bridge slowly, leaving offerings for Oṣun, who knows every river is plural, and all are hers, and all is her. This river is a witness. Witness to what was done to it and to us. They believe concrete walls can contain water. They believe memory can be channeled. But nothing stops water. Ọ̀ṣun blesses what cannot be seen; no heavy chain binds her hands or her feet. I poured gin to wake her, honey to please her, palm oil for strength, salt for truth, and àtàré for movement. The river answered with a shimmer, a vibration in the wind. Migration taught me that the line between banks is also a prayer. Every current remembers the hands that once rowed upstream. This river, too, is ancestral. She knows the way home.

5 This is a neologism that means a mix of Preto (Black) and Português (Portuguese), developed by Lélia Gonzalez (see Gonzalez, Lélia. (1988). Theories of Black culture in Brazil. In: Jaime A. Alves & Abdias do Nascimento (Eds.), The Afro-Brazilian mind (pp. 69–88). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.).

Quatro, THE THRESHOLD. Two doors, two breaths. One opens toward the Museum Island — toward marble and silence. The other faces the river, where names run free and boats full of tourists drift by, unaware of what the water remembers. I left an offering at each. Each time we passed the back door, I offered words other than mine, to animate the collectivity. Each time we passed the front door, I ate pepper to talk with Èṣù, and offered palm oil, honey, and a whisper. Èṣù guards both sides; master of duality, owner of all possibilities, trickster of passage, diplomat of dissonance. He laughs when institutions call themselves open, their hinges rusting from disuse. Each turn of the circle was a negotiation with him, a bargain for permeability. I walked barefoot, covered only in osun powder, until the thresholds began to breathe, unsure which one I was exiting from. Eu chamei Èṣù, e ele veio. Pedi bons caminhos abertos e maus caminhos fechados. Èṣù não me deixou falar tudo o que eu queria em sua presença. Talvez porque não se possa desfazer a palavra dita e aquele lugar é um lugar muito difícil. Eu disse o que foi possível dizer. Sete padês foram arriados na porta da frente, um a cada volta. “We are the beginning, the middle, and the beginning.”⁶ Round and round and round —voltas e voltas. Let our feet still dance in spirals. Let our tongues return to spin in languages of enchantment. Let the stored sounds become spells. Let the silenced voices rise and shout. Let the noise become prayer, and silence, a sleeping scream returning to roar. “Pẹ̀ lú omi, iyẹfun, epo ọpẹ àti ọbí, à ń fọ ibi tí ṣubú, tàbí tí lè ṣubú sórí wa”. With water, with cassava flour, with palm oil and kola nut, we cleanse the place where something fell or might still fall upon us.
palma palma palma
palma palma palma palma palma palma palma
palma palma palma
palma palma palma palma palma palma palma
palma palma palma
palma palma palma palma palma palma palma
palma
My mother, my son, my companion, many friends, people known and unknown, visible and invisible, walked with me. Together we carried the rhythm that unfastens doors, the laughter that Èṣù loves, the memory that refuses to bow. The path opened, and the circle remained alive.

6 Bispo dos Santos, Antônio. (2018). Nós somos o começo, o meio e o começo. Nossas trajetórias nos movem, nossa ancestralidade nos guia. Lecture at Instituto Maria e João Aleixo – Mestre das Periferias Prize, Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Video and transcript in: https://ytscribe.com/pt/v/Tqt9BnrolF).

Cinco, THE NOISE. I am speaking in tongues! I am speaking in tongues! Inside the building, silence is curated. Outside, I heard what was never archived: from the mouths of the (never) forgotten. I spoke some back. É fogo que brilha no escuro, I said. Ọ̀ṣun gbé mi o. I quoted the living, not the dead, because even our dead are still living. The sound moved with us, a soft insurrection of tongues, a chorus of interference. Museums fear noise because it multiplies meaning, because it messes up the narrative. Ours is a frequency of return, ultrasound, a sonic trespass that refuses translation. This time we didn’t have drums, but claps, a bell, loud singing, and persistence in passing again, again, and again. Palma palma palma. Songs, prayers, citations: the living textures that inhabit the seven turns. Sound leaks through the building, contaminating its silence. The acoustics of resistance. Portuguese is my first colonial language. My mouth knows it. Yet my words refuse to obey; they bend, crack, transform. Our voices echo through the cold stone wall, the cold stone sidewalk, the cold stone heart of the Forum. Not natural stone — lapidated, squared, reshaped stones, perfectly stacked, reshooting an old photograph of that space. Our echoes refuse containment. They multiply in the air vents, in the corridors, in the intercoms. “Existiremos sempre, sorrindo nas tristezas para festejar a vinda das alegrias. Nossas trajetórias nos movem, nossa ancestralidade nos guia.”⁷ My gods sing and dance, and we are made in their image and likeness. There is humanity in the stone, the water, the air. At Barazani, across the bridge, sounds await us. Sounds that are trapped inside the building but still find their way through the walls, whispering, calling, singing for us as we celebrate our arrival. They recognize us. They tune to our breath. We answer back: àṣẹ, àṣẹ, àṣẹ.

7 Bispo dos Santos, Antônio. (2018). Nós somos o começo, o meio e o começo. Nossas trajetórias nos movem, nossa ancestralidade nos guia. Lecture at Instituto Maria e João Aleixo – Mestre das Periferias Prize, Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Video and transcript in: https://ytscribe.com/pt/v/Tqt9BnrolF).

Seis, THE LINE. The line is colonial discipline. Straight, extractive, final. Introduction, development, conclusion. It promises order, demands obedience, and erases the curves that remember. I traced it backward with my feet, bending the line into a spiral. Every step rewrote a coordinate: from Ouidah to Contagem, from art to cult, from ship logs to breath. The archive calls this movement “documentation.” I don't. Walking is slow cartography, a way to teach the earth new routes, and a way for the earth to teach our feet new routes. Maps are agreements with power; steps are arguments with it. When the body moves with intention, maps begin to misbehave, like grass paths cutting across the park. The shortcuts people make between two arbitrary points on a paved road. What was once a border becomes a rhythm. The spiral, patient and insistent, remembers what the line tried to forget. The colonial line, from ship routes to museum catalogues, is rewritten through movement. The spiral continues even after we stop spinning: ungraspable, invisible. The foot as compass, the path as proof. Our genealogies of displacement are not broken, only dispersed. They echo across the Atlantic, across languages, across archives built to deny them. The return is not reversal but expansion. A movement that reclaims continuity through fracture. To return is to carry the fragments home, to let them breathe again. It is done. A Line Back Home, Ancestral Echoes in Seven Turns. Seven offerings were made to the path. We are ready to go home now. “O sol há de brilhar mais uma vez (...) o mal será queimada a semente (...) quero ter olhos pra ver a maldade desaparecer.”⁸ And the line, finally, curves toward light.

8 Lyrics of the song "Juízo Final" by Nelson Cavaquinho and Élcio Soares, sung by Nelson Cavaquinho in: Juízo Final, EMI-Odeon, 1973.

Sete, THE RETURN. After the seventh turn, we came back to Barazani. We carried names, songs, and silences. The circle had loosened its grip; the Forum was no longer still. There was food, there was music. Sounds that belonged to us, not to the archives. A moment to look into each other’s eyes and give thanks: to those who walked from the beginning to the end, to those who arrived halfway, to those who had to leave before the last turn. Gratitude to the space that received us, the river that is always witness and cradle, to the marsh beneath the stones, still holding some firmness under our feet; enough to let me keep walking, enough to let me try to bloom, even so far from the soil where I was planted. Return is not arrival, it is circulation. We are not people of the conclusion, we are the beginning, “we are the springwater.”⁹ An orbit that feeds itself with memory. I felt lighter, but not emptied. Something had shifted in the air, a pulse reclaimed. The walk had become a prayer, and the prayer a path that keeps unfolding. It is not over; it is never over.

9 Ani, Marimba. (1994). Yurugu: An Afrikan‐Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

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References
Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Africa World Press.

da Silva,Carlos Roberto Ribeiro & Santa Rita,Orlando (2019). Saudação Malungo. singer: Luedji Luna. In: Um Corpo no Mundo, YB Music.

Gonzalez, Lélia. (1988). Theories of Black culture in Brazil. In: Jaime A. Alves & Abdias do Nascimento (Eds.), The Afro-Brazilian mind (pp. 69–88). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Bispo dos Santos, Antônio. (2018). Nós somos o começo, o meio e o começo. Nossas trajetórias nos movem, nossa ancestralidade nos guia. Lecture at Instituto Maria e João Aleixo – Mestre das Periferias Prize, Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Video and transcript in: https://ytscribe.com/pt/v/Tqt9BnrolF

Cavaquinho,Nelson & Soares,Élcio (1973). Juízo Final. singer: Nelson Cavaquinho in: Juízo Final, EMI-Odeon.

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