“Maroon Democracy” and Le Morne Brabant

They found companionship, these two women, in spite of their distant origins. In their whispered creole, muffled by the virile leaves, flowers and fruits that adorned their tropical nightscape (was nature with them, too?), they negotiated the next steps of their escape. As it was this night, of all nights, that they chose to run from the French sugar plantation that bought them from Arab slavers. And because it was this night, of all nights, that they would chase the promise of an emancipated place protected by a mountain, of a democratic garden, of a society made by others like them – by the stolen.