Vonetta McGee credited as playing...
Aleme
- Shaft: Look, why don't you get rid of that jolly giant over there, so you and I can get down to the finer strokes.
- Aleme: Oziat has guarded me since I was a child. Sometimes I think of him as my living chastity belt.
- Shaft: Damn! - A man that size, baby, that's a whole lot of chastity!
- Aleme: I'm still on my first age grade. We call that fareita. No one is permitted to marry while they are in fareita.
- Shaft: What do you do for relaxation?
- Aleme: I enter chala, my second age grade, this February. Then, even the emir's daughter may have sex and marry, after my clitoradectomy.
- Shaft: Your what?
- Aleme: My clitoradectomy. Female circumcision.
- Shaft: You mean when they cut off your...?
- Aleme: Are you afraid to say the word? My clitoris! Yes! That's what they do in the time of chala.
- Shaft: Hell, no wonder the natives get restless!
- Aleme: Mr. Shaft, the emphasis in our marriage is not about sexual pleasure, but on the rearing of children.
- Shaft: Listen, baby. Now, February is just around the corner. Now how the hell are you gonna know what you are missing unless you give it a little wear and tear before they take it away?
- Aleme: Are you volunteering?
- Shaft: You're damn right!
- Osiat: Where are your stick?
- Aleme: It's time for your lesson.
- Aleme: They vanished as mysteriously as they appeared. But, they left behind our spoken culture, their drums, their copper spears, their beaded crowns. Nobody knows what happened to them. But, our tribes are descendant from these proud... ancestors. Don't laugh, Mr. Shaft. Your survival depends on how much you can remember.
- Shaft: Who's laughing? I was just thinkin', they made us study Shakespeare in school. Man, was he a Johnny-Come-Lately, compared to your Cats groovin' on poetry a thousand years ago.