The Salt Road (42 page)

She heard her own voice, plaintive as an owl’s call: ‘Can we not rest for a while?’

There was a long pause in which the silence hung heavy. Then the old trader said, ‘Information has a way of finding those who seek it; and if you would not be found and returned to Imteghren, we must put as much distance between ourselves and the Tafilalt as we can.’

When at last they made camp for the night, Mariata found it hard to sleep, though she was bone-weary. She lay on her back on a coarse camel-hair blanket and stared at the sky. Somewhere up there, Amastan was looking down on her, his spirit wandering the distant black sky. She searched each cluster of stars for some sign of him, but they gave nothing back but a cold and pitiless regard. She must have slept a little, for when she was aware of herself again, the stars had moved position and a portion of sky was paling. A short distance away the camels shifted and snorted; one of them lumbered to its feet as the sun showed its gold rim over the eastern horizon, as if it knew there would be no more rest, that the journey must be continued.

Atisi surprised her by making porridge over a small fire and bringing a bowl of it to her and then moving away so that she could eat in privacy. Even on the road it did not do for men and women to eat together or to see one another eating. It tasted far better than she had expected, hot and savoury with the aroma of pepper, and she ate quickly, her hunger sharpened by the chilly dawn air.

Vehicles passed them early in the morning on the road to Merzouga. They were commercial lorries, painted in red and blue, hugely overloaded and festooned with charms and plastic flowers, and with amulets and Qur’anic verses dangling from their rear-view mirrors. Their drivers regarded the pair with greater than usual curiosity, and after the third of these passed them Atisi drew the camels off the road. ‘Now we must deviate from the usual route. There is an oasis at Tahani. We will make our way towards it and take a pause there till darkness comes. It will be easier to cross the border when night falls. Then we will head into the Hamada du Guir and let the camels graze there overnight. It’ll be the last good pasturage they get before the sands. And after that’ – he spread his hands – ‘our lives will be in God’s hands.’

In the heat of midday Mariata swayed with the gait of her camel, oblivious to the monotony of dried watercourses and parched hills through which they moved. The sun was like a hammer on the top of her head, beating incessantly, making her temples throb. Trickles of sweat ran from the nape of her neck and down her back. The weight of her growing belly dragged at her spine, making it ache, but she did not have the energy to shift position in the hard saddle and rode as if in a stupor, mesmerized by the motion of the animal beneath her. They saw no one but a herder tending a flock of scrawny-looking black goats that scavenged for the last morsels of vegetation in the unpromising landscape. The herd’s ram was thin and wild-looking; it turned its yellow slotted eyes upon them balefully as they passed, as if it knew that its herd was on a doomed journey to death by starvation. She could not help but wonder whether her own journey was equally doomed.

Have courage, she told herself. This was only the beginning of her journey: a few meagre hours out of the weeks that lay ahead. Could she survive such a journey, through terrain that would soon become far crueller and more hostile than the dull rock-strewn wastes they had thus far traversed? Was it mad to think she could make such a perilous journey? Was it dangerously selfish even to try? Already she was plagued with doubt and they had hardly made a start. Mariata touched her amulet to ward away these bad thoughts, and as she did so they crested a rocky rise and saw the green palms of Tahani in the distance.

Lying in the shade of the oasis trees while the hobbled camels methodically chewed their way through what vegetation they could find, and Atisi ag Baye sat on an outcrop keeping watch for bandits or rogue troops, Mariata dozed. And as she dozed she dreamt. She was back in the Adagh and the rhythmic sound of the breeze that rattled the palm fronds above her transformed itself magically into the distant tap of drums and the singing of wedding songs, and she was lying not on the hard ground wrapped in a smelly camel-hair blanket but on a soft bed in her own bridal tent, with fragrant incense burning in a dish, wrapped in the arms of her husband, breathing in his warm and vital scent as they lay skin to skin beneath a cover embroidered with rows of geometric red camels that marched across a background of gold. By the light of the candle-lantern she saw over Amastan’s burnished shoulder how the stylized flowers sewn into the coverlet’s borders made pretty star shapes just like one of the mosaic tileworks she had seen in the mosque at Tamanrassett, and she sighed contentedly. Could any person be so happy? She did not think so. They were married at last and no one could ever separate them now: they were one flesh; man and woman brought together to be each other’s eyes and ears and hearts. They would be together for ever; they would have a dozen children and establish a new dynasty, honouring the name of Tin Hinan. And with their flocks and their camels they would travel the salt road for the rest of their lives, moving from one fertile oasis to the next, free from constraints, living lightly on the land, at one with the spirits. Warmth cocooned her, hazing her thoughts. She drifted contentedly, half aware of the distant drumming and of the regularity of Amastan’s breathing as his chest rose and fell against her own.

After the longest time she heard a voice. Amastan was talking to her, whispering in her ear. She struggled up through the heavy waves of sleep that had engulfed her, trying to break the surface of consciousness. What was he saying? Something important, something crucial … She fought for clarity, strained to listen.

‘Lady …’

A hand on her shoulder. A chill on her face.

With a start, she jolted upright. But the hand that had touched her was not Amastan’s but an old man’s, his face seamed and weathered by passing decades, and the chill she had felt was his shadow falling across her. Who was he? For many seconds she did not know, could not think because of the panicked batter of her heart. Then the man withdrew and hot light fell on her once more, so that she blinked and squinted at the dazzle of sun through the palm branches overhead, branches that replaced the dark and comforting cocoon of her marriage tent. Bewildered, she closed her eyes and reached after the dream, trying to focus on the material details that would bring it back to her, wrap its alternative reality around her and comfort her. Tatters of its gorgeous imagery trailed away like mist burned off by the rising sun. The coverlet, she thought wildly, clutching to herself the marching camels and the star-like flowers. For a moment she could feel the cool cotton beneath her fingers and the raised texture of the stitching. And then she remembered where last she had seen that lush embroidery: in her Aunt Dassine’s tent in the Aïr Mountains, on the night Rhossi ag Bahedi had tried to force himself upon her. Where it likely still lay. She had never taken it with her to the Adagh, had hardly taken anything of her own on her flight through the Tamesna with Rahma, the mother of Amastan.

Amastan …

The loss of him struck her anew and she gave a ragged cry and then began to weep bitterly, broken once more by the loss of all hope.

Atisi ag Baye drew back. Despite the long years of his life, his experience with women was limited. Their volcanic emotions he found far stranger and more confusing than the simple exigencies of the desert. And so he walked a discreet distance away and set up his little brazier to make some tea. In his experience, a glass of sweet green tea made everyone feel better: it was one of Allah’s gifts to man.

By the time he came back, Mariata’s sobbing had quietened, though the tracks of her tears still stained her cheeks. He handed the glass to her without a word and she took it with a slight inclination of her head to indicate her appreciation of the gesture, then drank the contents while staring morosely at the ground. After a long while she said, ‘I have something to tell you. It is not pretty or pleasant, and my circumstances are such that you may reconsider your offer to guide me through the desert.’ Her voice was hoarse; she paused, gathering herself.

Atisi sat quietly waiting. He had learnt his patience from his long dealing with camels, which after women were surely the most intractable creatures God ever made. Besides, he sensed a story in the air and he knew that all stories have their own way of being told and can never be hurried.

And so at last Mariata told the old trader her tale. When she described Amastan’s affliction being a sickness brought upon him by the Kel Asuf, Atisi ag Baye’s grizzled eyebrows rose high into the brim of his turban and one hand touched covertly the small leather amulets he wore on a string around his neck, and when she came to the ritual that had drawn the spirits out of him she was careful to assure him that she did not think it had been her doing, but more likely the magical intervention of the village enad.

‘An enad? Ah, the inadan are men of great power.’ Atisi nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is true that they can manipulate the spirits.’

‘Ah, the enad was not a man,’ Mariata said.

‘A female enad?’ He sounded incredulous. Women could not work with iron: it was taboo. To work with iron meant commanding the spirits that lived in fire, and that could cause irreparable damage to a woman’s ability to bear children. Besides, anything they touched would surely fail: a key would not turn in a lock, or would stick fast and never come free; a tool would crack in two, the head of an adze fly off and harm an animal or a child; a sword or spear-head break at the most crucial moment. Everyone knew that.

Mariata looked uncomfortable. ‘Not … really.’

‘Neither a man nor a woman?’ He sat back suddenly, comprehension dawning. ‘I recall an enad and his wife who had a child once, a child that was neither boy nor girl, but both at the same time. They travelled with the Kel Tedele. Is it possible, I wonder …’

‘She – I always called her “she” – was called Tana and was one of the most remarkable people I ever knew. But she lived amongst the Kel Teggart.’

Now the old trader gave her a direct look. ‘You lived amongst the Kel Teggart?’

She nodded.

‘I heard something … terrible had happened to that tribe.’

Mariata opened her mouth to speak; but her torrent of words had dried up. She felt as if there was a boulder in her throat and that her feelings battered themselves against it in an attempt to get out. Instead, water welled from her eyes again.

Atisi looked away. ‘I will go and see to the camels,’ he said gruffly.

At last as twilight obscured her face she went to find him. ‘You are a man of few words,’ she said, ‘and I am a proud woman, so do not ask me more than I tell you. The child I carry is no child of shame but the child of my husband, son of the amenokal of the Aïr, late of the Kel Teggart. His name was Amastan ag Moussa and he was my moon and stars.’ Her voice caught: it was the first time she had spoken his true name since she had seen him die and somehow saying it aloud made it all the more real. ‘I will not have his child raised in ignominy by a butcher. There, I have told you all there is to tell.’

Atisi said nothing for a very long time. Then he sighed. ‘Truly, you must have excited much envy for the evil eye to have been cast upon you thus. I hope that with every step into the desert you take the distance between you and your misfortunes will be lengthened.
Insh’allah
.’

As they waited for full night to fall, Mariata opened Amastan’s amulet for the first time since her wedding and shook the roll of paper it contained into the palm of her hand. By the light of the rising moon she read the charm that Tana had made for her, but the lighter downstrokes were hard to read and all she could make out was her own name and Amastan’s. At last she gave up: whatever magic it contained had failed to save Amastan’s life, and so was meaningless. Feeling more bereft than ever, she was about to throw the useless scroll away. Then she closed her fist over it: to do so, here, in the realm and the time of the Kel Asuf, was likely to attract even worse luck, so she rolled the parchment back into its hidden compartment and closed the central boss over it again.

With a thin crescent moon rising slowly overhead, they picked their way down through the rocky darkness towards the road that crossed the disputed territory. To Mariata it was just a dead strip of nothingness, slightly paler than the surrounding ground, artificially flattened and smoothed, an imposition on the face of the wild. Nothing moved upon it as far as she could see, but, as they reached the last tumble of rocks before the road, headlights showed in the distance. The sudden light caught the side of Atisi’s face, and she saw something unreadable flare in his eyes. Then he turned his camel’s head towards her. ‘Get behind the boulders, quickly. There is cover there for one animal but not for three. If they stop I will talk to them. Keep Moushi quiet and whatever happens do not show yourself.’

Moushi was unwilling to leave her master: it took all of Mariata’s strength to urge her into the cover of the rocks. And only just in time, for the vehicles came roaring over the rise and bore down upon them at terrifying speed. Peering out, Mariata saw how the old trader got down from his camel and loosened his veil. Was it out of disrespect for the soldiers that he did this, she wondered, or so that they would not fear him?

For a moment it seemed that they had not seen the man and the two camels, or that they were not concerned by his presence. Then the leading jeep screamed to a halt.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ a man shouted, levelling a gun at Atisi. ‘Show me your papers!’

Atisi gaped. ‘Papers?’ he asked, thickening his accent to a raw peasant twang.

The man motioned two others out of the jeep. ‘Get his papers.’

The two soldiers approached, laughing. ‘He’s just an old man, lost in the desert.’

‘No one passes without papers. How do we know he’s not a Moroccan spy? And, while you’re at it, search his baggage. We don’t want a repeat of last week’s fiasco.’