The Salt Road (38 page)

For stealing her stepmother’s jewellery, only half of which Ousman had managed to get back from the one-eyed camel trader, Mariata was punished in small ways each and every day. Lalla Zohra came in the mornings to read the Qur’an at her; but after initial resistance Mariata surprised herself by enjoying the stories it contained. Some even made her think about things other than the massacre at the village and the void of loneliness inside her. Almost as if Aicha intuited that this punishment was not sufficiently painful to Mariata, she sent chores at her thick and fast. Mariata was to clean and sweep and wash every item of clothing and every piece of fabric in the house until her knuckles were raw and red and her back ached to the marrow. She washed every item of clothing in the house, or so it seemed: garments that had never before seen the light of day. When she had done that, Aicha brought her armfuls of rugs and blankets, couch covers and cushions, dishrags and dusters and teacloths, and Mariata washed and beat them all, carrying out her tasks mindlessly, in a sort of haze. Physical movement of any kind provided some sort of release from the blackness inside her; and it stopped Aicha’s incessant nagging.

Her brother Azaz found her one day in the courtyard bent over a new tub of washing, spitting with fury over the stinging detergent. He watched as she rinsed and wrung out a huge white item and draped it, dripping, over the line.

‘What in the world is this?’ He took it down and held it up against himself: it was twice his size.

‘Mama Erquia’s bloomers,’ Mariata told him with a sigh. ‘She wears them underneath her robe. They do that here, you know.’

Azaz hadn’t had the chance to find out such information yet: the girls in Imteghren seemed to want nothing to do with him, had wailed and flapped him away when he tried to court them. They weren’t like desert girls at all. He made a face and swiftly slung the bloomers back over the washing line. ‘That old witch! Why are you washing her filthy underthings? You’re Kel Taitok, it’s insulting!’

Mariata gave him a small, exhausted smile. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘I’m going to tell Father: they can’t treat you like this!’

She looked away. ‘It won’t do any good.’

But while Aicha and Hafida were out of the house one day and their poisonous grandmother was snoring in her room, Mariata sought out her father. ‘They are treating me like a slave,’ she said wearily, showing him her cracked and reddened hands.

Ousman looked away, awkward. ‘The way of life here in Morocco is different from ours: there are no slaves in this community. Here, everyone has to do their own “work”.’ For this concept, he used a word unfamiliar to Mariata; in Tamacheq there was no such verb.

‘Aicha and Hafida do nothing!’

‘They cook, and they cook well – even you have put a little more meat on your bones.’

They had tried to make Mariata cook. It had been an experiment that lasted only a single day.

‘I hate them, and I hate their food!’ She caught him by the arm. ‘Let me go home, Father, back to the Hoggar. I will go with whatever caravan comes through Imteghren; I will have no pride. They can pack me up with the merchandise for all I care: just let me go.’

But he was adamant. ‘You will stay. The old way is dying out and we have to adapt to change. Besides, the conflict between Morocco and Algeria means that there are no caravans coming through Imteghren now; there are soldiers enforcing the border.’

‘What do I care about their borders and boundaries? We’re the People of the Veil. We have no boundaries: our country is wherever we wish it to be, we carry our territory within ourselves.’ How many times had she heard Amastan say these things? Her eyes filled with tears. ‘How can you bear this dull, settled life, amongst these awful people?’

Her father’s jaw set: she could see he would not shift on this matter. And she knew why. Every night, even from the other side of the house, she heard his groans of pleasure and the shrill, birdlike cries of his new wife. It brought back unwelcome memories of her life with Amastan, of the life that had been so brutally wrenched from her. Night after night she dreamt of lying with him down by the river, of how his skin felt beneath the palms of her hands: warm and smooth, the muscles bunching and shifting under her touch, and she would wake with tears still wet on her face and a dull, deep ache in her belly.

Then her father and brothers went on a buying trip to fetch supplies for the new shop in Marrakech, and Mariata found herself fully at Aicha’s mercy. With no one to intervene, Aicha treated her with sneering disdain, observing her as she went about her tasks, making comments all the while to her sister.

‘See how clumsy she is with the dishes, Hafida. In the desert they eat off stones. Even she couldn’t break those.’

‘Are those rat-tails growing out of her head, do you think? Perhaps she has a rat’s nest for a brain.’

‘It does not look much like hair to me, sister.’

‘And that great piece of tin she wears around her neck: I have never seen a necklace so badly made. Poor thing, she probably thinks it is worth something.’

‘I expect she thinks a spirit lives in it: an
afrit
or a djinn!’

‘They are a backward people, the nomads, old-fashioned and barbaric. What do they know of the modern world? They don’t even have houses, Hafida: can you imagine? They live in houses made of goatskins, with their goats.’

‘That will be why she smells as she does.’

‘Don’t worry, sister, it’s her bath-day tomorrow.’

‘Imagine living without electricity or running water.’ The sisters were very proud to inhabit one of the first houses in the town to own such amenities.

‘No showers.’

‘No cars.’

‘No market, and only one smelly old dress.’

‘Did her father lie with a goat to get her, do you think?’

There was a pause, and a slap, followed by a cry, and then Aicha said icily, ‘Do not speak of my husband so.’

*

The next day at the hammam Aicha regarded Mariata critically as she got undressed. ‘You’ve put on weight, daughter. It suits you.’

‘My mother was a Tuareg princess, and she is dead,’ Mariata replied sullenly. ‘Do not call me daughter.’

Aicha shrugged. ‘Like it or not, I stand in place of a mother to you now.’ She put her head on one side and looked Mariata up and down. Then a line appeared between her brows. She turned to her sister. ‘Take hold of her, Hafida.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t question me, just do as I say.’

Obediently, Hafida took Mariata by the arms. Aicha walked around Mariata, scrutinizing. She frowned as she took in the girl’s fuller breasts and rounded contours. ‘When was your last period?’ she asked sharply.

Mariata stared at her dully. ‘What?’

‘Your period. Your monthly bleed.’

Mariata flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘It is none of your business.’

Aicha was not to be put off. ‘I am your stepmother and you will answer me. So think: when was it?’

Silence. Mariata thought about the question, for her own benefit. She could not remember the last time she had bled. Not since leaving the Adagh, that much was certain. She had not given it a thought: there had been too much else to think about, to mourn. But now that Aicha had called her attention to it, she turned her mind inward to examine herself as she had not done in a long, long time; and then she knew. Just like that, she
knew
. The realization was world-changing, immense. A spark of warmth flickered in the core of her, flowing up from her belly and around her ribs, engulfing her heart until she felt as if she were on fire – on fire with hope.
Amastan, oh, Amastan
…

She must have smiled to herself, because when she focused on Aicha again, the older woman was staring at her in rising fury. Gathering herself, she said, ‘I really have no idea.’

‘Insolent brat!’ Aicha took her by the upper arms and shook her till her head flopped this way and that. ‘Think, damn you! Think. When did you bleed? You have been here for three months now: have you not bled during all that time? Are you ill? You don’t look ill.’ She thrust her face aggressively at Mariata. ‘Have you somehow managed to sneak out of the house and sell yourself to men?’

The whites of Mariata’s eyes showed all around her dark pupils. Unable to fight free of Hafida, she spat at Aicha, who slapped her hard across the face, so hard that the sound ricocheted off the tiles.

Mariata’s shriek of rage drew Khadija Chafni from the hammam’s antechamber. ‘What is going on here? Are you having trouble with the Tuareg girl again? People will talk!’

‘They certainly will.’ Aicha shoved Mariata’s robe at her. ‘Put that on: we’re going home before anyone guesses your shame.’

But Mariata felt no shame: only a glorious, rising triumph.

Back within the safe walls of the house, Aicha was inexorable. She consulted feverishly with Mama Erquia, as the resident expert on such matters, and the old woman sent a boy and a donkey to fetch a healer from an outlying village. It took several long hours for this person to arrive, by which time Aicha had worked herself into a froth of rage and Mariata had settled herself comfortably in the knowledge of her changed state.

The healer was not from Imteghren but was of the Aït Khabbash, a semi-nomadic tribe living on the fringe of the desert. She wore a blue robe pinned with huge silver fibulae and had a sigil tattooed uncompromisingly on her forehead: two diagonal lines crossing at the top with a triangle of three dots seated above the intersection. A huge, colourful scarf enveloped her head and draped down her back. Ushered into the room in which Mariata had been shut, she removed this with a flourish.

After a few minutes of prodding the healer declared the Tuareg girl four months pregnant; maybe more. Aicha paled. Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God,’ she muttered. ‘My God, what will we do? Such shame it will bring down on us all. It will destroy our reputation.’ She turned to the healing woman. ‘What can you do about it?’

The Aït Khabbashi considered Mariata with her head on one side, her eye as bright as a bird’s. ‘I can attend the birth when it comes.’

Aicha glared at her. ‘No, no, you’ve misunderstood. I want you to get rid of it.’

‘No one is getting rid of my baby,’ Mariata said quietly, but nobody paid her any attention.

The healer regarded Aicha steadily. ‘She’s too far along for me to do anything other than that.’ Out of Aicha’s sight, the woman looked Mariata briefly in the eye. One lid dropped swiftly, then she turned back to Aicha. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

Aicha let out a wail. ‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Quite sure. I’m sorry.’

‘A lot of use you are as a healer, you old charlatan!’

The Aït Khabbashi shook her head in mock sadness. ‘What will people say when I tell them? Great goodness, they’ll be surprised to hear the Tuareg’s daughter will be beating you to the first birth in this house.’ She rubbed her hands in glee.

Aicha pursed her lips. Then she took off one of her gold bangles and thrust it at the woman. ‘Take that and stop your mouth. If I hear one whisper of this I will send someone to come and find you. In the night. Do you hear me?’

The healer regarded her with loathing. Then she turned to Mariata and said something to her in the old language. Mariata caught her hands and kissed them, smiling, then kissed her own hands and pressed them to her heart. ‘Thank you,’ she replied in the same tongue. ‘Thank you.’

‘Get out!’ Aicha caught the healer by the arm, digging her nails in hard, and propelled her towards the door.

The woman did not flinch. At the door she disengaged herself from Aicha’s grip and made a complicated gesture in the air, chanting as she did so. ‘And that is no more than you deserve!’

The next day they found strange symbols chalked on the door. When she saw them, Mama Erquia almost swooned in horror. She subsided against the door with her head in her hands. ‘
Sehura
,’ she kept saying, ‘
sehura, sehura
… It is my fault: I knew she was a sorceress. I have brought woe upon our house!’ and no one could get anything more out of her for the rest of the morning. Mariata noticed when they went to the souq to buy vegetables that people who had most likely passed their door on the way regarded them curiously and no one greeted Aicha with their usual warmth, keeping their distance as if she carried some contagious disease.

By the time they got back to the house, Aicha was in a foul temper. She marched into the old woman’s quarters and switched on the electric light, flooding the room with its harsh glare. ‘Put it off, put it off!’ Mama Erquia covered her head with her hands, moaning that now the djenoun would come for her.

Mariata smiled to herself. Today she could hardly keep from smiling. She felt as if she carried a furnace within her, as if the world was being remade in her own belly. It was just as she had suspected: the healing woman had cursed the house and placed a waymarker on the front door to attract any passing djinn. But before leaving the house she had blessed Mariata, and the baby she was carrying, to exempt them from this curse. ‘May you have a fine son,’ she had told Mariata. ‘As fine and strong as his father.’ For that, Mariata had kissed her hands.

Ousman had barely set foot inside the house on his return from Marrakech before Aicha was upon him. ‘She is pregnant!’

‘Who is pregnant?’

‘Your daughter! Your stupid, stupid daughter!’ And when he threw his hands up as if to deflect her words, she rounded on him accusingly. ‘Did you know?’

Ousman sighed. Then he said, ‘It is no shame for a woman to bear her husband’s child.’

‘What husband? There
is
no husband!’ Aicha stormed, hands on hips.

‘Not now, no: he is dead.’

‘No one will believe that tale for a moment. Well, she had better
have
a husband, and soon: I will not have her dragging my family’s reputation through the streets.’

‘She is still in mourning for his death. And our women have always made their own decisions about whom, and whether or not, they marry. I cannot force Mariata to marry if she does not wish it.’