Granite

by Jenny Robson

  “Yes,” said my grandfather. “That is their custom of Sutti. They say that any loving and faithful wife would not want to stay alive after losing her husband.”

  That left me shaking and with nightmares. I suppose because my mother was a widow too, with my father killed serving in the Mamluk army.

  But worse still were my great-uncle’s tales of the Crusaders and their clever inventions: instruments of such misery and torture! Which he also told me only when my mother was well out of the house.

  “Yes, and it is a thing of great amazement, young Shafiq. For we believe that knowledge brings with it gentleness and human kindness. Yet these people of the west use their knowledge and ingenuity, their engineering skills, to manufacture machinery of the greatest cruelty! The Rack, the Iron Maiden, the Scold’s Bridle, the Judas Chair: all cleverly worked by pulleys and screws and hinges and gears. All given names that make light of their purpose.”

  It was the metal basket that terrified me most. For some reason I do not understand, that metal basket stayed strongest and in the nearest part of my memory. The Scavenger’s Daughter, it was called. So my great-uncle said.

  Allahu Akbar.

  8. The cathedral in the valley

  But next morning brought disappointment for my friend Tshangani, and as well, a strange white rain that fell about us. It lay on our karosses like scatterings of ash.

  “This is snow.” So you told us, Shafiq. The fires were already lit. The cook-slave was already preparing our morning meal. “Yes. And this snow does not sink into the ground like rain. Instead it lies on top of fields and trees and grass until whiteness covers everything. Even the animals and the people, so I have heard.”

  I thought that was strange: people with white bodies and covered over with this white substance. Did they even notice when it lay there on their skins? But of course they would feel its cold dampness.

  And then Chivhu told Tshangani and me that we might not accompany them to the Milk people’s village. No! We must stay in the camp with the slaves and the sailors.

  Tshangani was rebellious. “But why, Chivhu sir? This is not fair.” He sounded like my sister Raii! “We have travelled so far and for nothing! We will see nothing of the Milk people, nothing of their ways. We will see nothing except this hill and this white rain.”

  “It is already decided,” my father said then. “You youngsters will stay here in safety. If disaster should befall us down in the valley, then we will know that still our eldest sons will return to head our clans.”

  Disaster?

  What disaster, I thought in fear. I could not imagine leading the Stonemason clan. Nor could I imagine a world without my father’s quiet strength and skill.

  But we must stand on the summit of the hill, Tshangani and I. We must watch as the group of adults descend towards the fields below that are already turning white.

  Shumba led the way between two slaves: Martijen and another equally huge man with a shaven head. Behind them were our fathers, along with you, Shafiq. And then followed three bearer-slaves with the presents from our King.

  I watched for the longest time while the figure of my father grew smaller and smaller, grew less and less visible through the white rain and the thickening valley forest.

  And if I should never see him again? If he were swallowed up forever in that foreign distance?

  From the campfire down the slope, an Arab sailor called, “Come, lads. Come warm yourselves by the fires. There is a hot drink for you.”

  But Tshangani had another plan. “Mokomba, let us go and find our own adventure. Let us do our own exploring. Surely somewhere amongst these hills there are Milk people?”

  He tugged at my kaross while I protested. But my friend Tshangani has always ignored my protests, since we were small boys. And soon we were pushing our way through branches and bushes and tangled vines, all dusted with white.

  I practised to myself the words you taught us, Shafiq. “We come as your brothers. We mean you no harm.”

  Would the Milk people understand me?

  The hut stood in a small clearing. All alone, with no other huts to be seen. Such a strangely shaped hut, with flat walls joined together at sharp corners. Shaped like one of my father’s dressed granite stones.

  So ugly it looked, and hard and unwelcoming! I thought how unpleasant it must be to sleep within such a structure. At Zimba Remabwe, the walls of our homes curve gently to follow the circle-shape of the sun and the moon. Rounded as the stomach of a waiting mother. Even if the stones themselves are cleaved flat and sharp-edged, that sharpness disappears with the skill of the stonemason’s hands.

  But Tshangani’s eyes were back to shining with excitement. “Surely there are Milk people inside, keeping out of this snow? Shall we call out to them, Mokomba?”

  I protested from my place behind a tree.

  But Tshangani was already striding into the clearing, calling greetings in our language. I shook my head at him. How would the Milk people understand us?

  But no humans appeared at the dark entrance of this hut. Some fowls huddled together against the wall, looking damp and miserable as only fowls can. Some hog-like creature crossed our path, pink and naked of hair. Making hog-like sounds. But no humans.

  Tshangani called a second time. Louder.

  Still nothing.

  I whispered, “Maybe they are so white that they are transparent. You know, like stream water? Maybe they are standing in front of us right now but we cannot see them?”

  Tshangani rolled his eyes at me. He said, “Yes, but still we would see their clothes. Their clothes would not be trans­parent.” And then he was tugging at my kaross again, pulling me towards the ugly hut and its dark entrance. He said, “There is no fire. So it must be that the people are gone.”

  With great unwillingness I stepped inside that hut. It was empty apart from some large iron pots and a broom. Apart from a pile of cloth rags in one sharp corner.

  And apart from the smell.

  I knew that smell. I recognised it instantly, even though we were so far from home.

  I pulled myself out of my friend’s grasp and ran. Out of the hut and back through the trees, scraping against branches and tripping over roots. I ran all the way back to our small camp and our fires.

  “What is it?” demanded Tshangani when he finally caught up with me.

  But I didn’t answer. I didn’t explain about the smell that was the same smell which had spread through my grandmother’s hut in her last days of old age and pain.

  The smell of death.

  Darkness fell slowly there in the land of the Milk people. The grey light slipped by degrees into a pitch blackness. With no moon and no single star above us.

  And still my father and the group had not returned from the cathedral in the valley.

  “No need for concern,” said the Arab sailor Fazeem. “There is information to be gathered. The Milk people have surely given them food and shelter for the night. You sleep now, young lads.”

  I thought: I will never sleep while my father is off in that foreign valley.

  Yet I must have slept. For the next thing I remember is awaking to the sound of your screaming, Shafiq. You were screaming close to my head.

  “Get up! Get to the boat. Leave all goods behind. Quick, we must leave this accursed land. With haste, Mokomba! Tshangani!”

  I wanted to ask if my father was safe. But you had disappeared amidst the dark figures of people rushing past the dying fires, rushing down the hill towards the beach.

  *

  Aah yes, the Scavenger’s Daughter!

  I am smiling as I write this. Even though I must approach the awful subject of torture. But I realise I have been infected by Mokomba’s strange method of telling: not completing the chron­icle; leaving a question hanging in the air.

  And I see he is right: it helps a great deal in knowing where to begin the next day. So, forward then to this Crusader invention.

  “You will not believe it, young Shafiq
,” my great-uncle said there in our front room in Egypt. “So many different instruments of torture, each one more inventive than the last. I made a friend of a jailor in a northern Frankish town named Reims. And he took me down into dark dungeons to show them to me. With great pride he demonstrated the workings of pulleys and screws, of hinges and gears. Happily for me, the instruments were empty of victims at that time.”

  My great-uncle rattled off those strange names once more, listing them on his fingers: the Thumb-Screw, the Iron Maiden, the Rack, the Catherine Wheel.

  “Oh, and yes, this metal basket named the Scavenger’s Daught­er. This one was not empty. I saw its use with my own eyes, Shafiq. There was a victim squeezed inside hooped metal bars. He sat crouched over and with his knees up under his chin and his arms wrapped around his shins. Completely enclosed in this small metal cage. And the lock that held the bars shut was already rusted. There in the dark shadows, I looked into this unfortunate man’s eyes. Such depth of hopelessness I have never seen before.”

  I shivered despite the sunlight streaming through the front door. But willed my great-uncle to tell me more. Even if that night would be another filled with bad dreams.

  “Yes, and I asked the jailor for how long must this man be tortured thus. The jailor answered with the word ‘forever’.”

  “Forever?”

  “Well, until he died. Until his backbone dislocated. Until his stomach was forced to grow over his heart, until his entrails coiled around his lungs and stopped his breathing,” said my great-uncle.

  But then my mother’s figure appeared through the window. So my great-uncle began speaking of a great Spanish prince he had seen parading through the streets on a pure white mare and with his clothing shot with purest gold and lined with pearls.

  This is a strange thing, though.

  When my great-uncle wrote down his chronicle, he did not mention the metal basket. Nor the other instruments of torture. Nor the burning of the witches. No. His chronicle was filled with great princes and fine cathedrals and well-stocked markets and castles on mountain tops.

  It seems chronicles must report only what is good and civilised about far-flung places. As with Tshangani’s tales, it seems truth is not the only important aspect.

  So this chronicle of Mokomba’s will be a very different book from the others that fill the libraries of Timbuktu. Will it be acceptable to the professors there?

  When it is finally completed?

  But truth is truth!

  Aah yes, and that long path through the snow towards the cathedral and its surrounding town.

  Shumba strode ahead of us in brave arrogance – as if he were walking the green valleys of Zimba Remabwe. And ReDombo gazed through the greyness at the distant cathedral, shaking his head.

  He said, “How is it possible? So high and with so little support. And with its walls flat, it seems. What kind of stonemasonry is this?”

  I said, “But we must wait until we are close by. Perhaps it is a trick of vision? Perhaps it is not that the cathedral is so high, but that the clouds lie so low in the sky?”

  ReDombo shook his head. “It is high, Shafiq. High, and a marvel to behold.”

  Around us the land lay in silence. The sheep and cattle in the fields made not a sound. Such fat cattle, as Mokomba has mentioned, and with their pelts long-haired and thick as a lion’s mane. In the scattered trees and hedges, few birds sang.

  Chivhu said, “Maybe these Milk people stay here only in their summer time? Maybe now it is winter, they have gone off to warmer climes, leaving their livestock and their crops behind them? As is the custom of some birds.”

  Then the silence was broken by the sound of laughter. A man came out of the forest on the path. Not walking exactly. He seemed to be doing some strange dance. His face was white, I believe, but very muddied.

  In several different tongues, I addressed him. “We come as brothers, in peace.”

  But he did not seem to understand me. He was staring instead at Shumba and our guard-slaves. Laughing now like a person whose mind had gone on a journey and might not return.

  He spoke to Shumba. I recognised some of the words from what my great-uncle taught me all those many years ago. The tongue of the Englisher tribe, I think it was. But perhaps I am mistaken.

  “Are you come from Hell? Are you come to take them away? Yes, they await you there in the town. A long time they have waited for you. But not me. No, you cannot take me yet. I alone have escaped!”

  He ran off into the fields to laugh and dance before some cows. They looked at him with no interest, as though dancing madmen were a common sight in these parts.

  Shumba said, “It seems lunatics are found in all societies, Shafiq. But to let them roam free, that is strange indeed.”

  ReDombo said, with his gaze still fixed on the highest points of the cathedral, where they seemed to spear the very clouds, “Perhaps it is some witchcraft, Shafiq, that holds those towers in place? Or some power of their spirit world?”

  And so we continued on our way. Following the path as it wound around the edge of the forest. That was filled with silence also. Silence so strong that it seemed to echo. And when I looked back over my shoulder, I could no longer see the hill top upon which we had left Mokomba and Tshangani.

  Allahu Akbar.

  9. Back on the pebble beach

  Yes, and that terrible rushed and panicked descent! Sliding and tripping down the hill slope towards the beach. And the wind was howling about us like a hundred hundred lost ghosts. All was darkness save for a glow that came off the sea. So that at least our boat was visible. And we knew which direction to head.

  I screamed my father’s name as I ran. But my voice was rushed away by the wind. And Tshangani had disappeared from beside me.

  The beach pebbles were hard and painful against my bare feet. I had not thought to grab my sandals. Only my kaross.

  Then there was the coldness of the sea seeping into my blood through my legs. Until they felt like poles of iron. But at last I was seated in my space on the boat.

  “Tshangani? ReDombo sir?” I screamed on and on as other misty figures clambered over the boat’s sides. At least Martijen was there at his post just ahead of me.

  “Have no fear, Mokomba,” he said. “We all of us returned safe from the Milk town. Your father as well.”

  And then Shumba was roaring louder than a lion. “To your oars, slaves. To your oars and pull. One and over. Two and over.”

  The boat began to move out into the open waters. It lurched over the waves with their porcelain-coloured glow. From the shore I was sure I heard desperate screams of pleading. “No. Wait for us! Don’t leave us behind!” But perhaps it was just a trick of the wind.

  Between the arms of the oar-slaves I caught sight of my father, there in his space at the front of the boat. And I was comforted in some measure. Even as the moon broke through its blanket of clouds to show my father’s face. Which seemed still, and beyond sense and feeling. As though he had seen a vision of his own death-moment.

  But then, with joy, I saw my friend Tshangani weaving towards me. There through the passageway between oar handles.

  “You are safe!” he said.

  “You are safe,” I said.

  “And our fathers too.”

  The rocking of the boat on the water felt familiar now. How had it ever made my stomach retch with discomfort? No. Rocking that was as soothing as the back of an infant’s mother. Lilting as a lullaby at sunset.

  The oar-slaves rowed through the night. And in the morning, the sun appeared once more. Bright in a lightly clouded sky, even if its rays held little warmth.

  The accursed land of the Milk people was hidden behind us, wrapped away in its mists like a bad dream. And of our company, only two slaves were missing. Two bearers, I think they were.

  We stepped to the front of the boat after a meagre breakfast. To our fathers and to you, Shafiq.

  Tshangani said, “Chivhu sir, what happened in that town? What
did the Milk people do to you?”

  But Chivhu shook his head. “No, my son. You are too young, you and Mokomba. We must not burden you with such horror.”

  No matter how Tshangani pleaded, still Chivhu and my father ReDombo and you, Shafiq – still you all three shook your heads. And I saw that your faces were rigid as unworked granite.

  “It is because we are uninitiated,” Tshangani muttered to me. “So we are still considered children.” Back we headed to the boat’s rear, where Martijen was at work now, holding the rudder steady.

  Tshangani instructed him, “Tell us, Martijen. Tell us about the town.”

  And because he was at the rudder now and the course was straight, Martijen had breath to speak. “Are you sure your stomachs are strong enough to hear?”

  We nodded.

  Martijen said, “First we passed a madman on the road. Then, once we had passed by the forest, we reached the outskirts of the town and we understood what had driven him to his madness.”

  *

  Aah! So that is how Mokomba came to hear of the horror! I have wondered often. But of course slaves are quick to disobey if they think they will not be caught out! They do not have the moral sense of freemen.

  For there on the boat, his father ReDombo was adamant. “No. My son is too young to hear such things. He is only a boy, with a boy’s heart. Innocent and uninitiated.”

  It will be interesting to hear how Martijen described the scene that met us in that town. An Englisher town, if I am not mistaken.

  This evening we visited Mustapha once again. He is a good man and treats Mokomba with great gentleness. Even if he speaks only a little of the language of Zimba Remabwe.

  But this evening Mustapha had another visitor, a rough trader who had just returned from the hinterland.

  This trader complained most bitterly.

  “Yes, Mustapha! Yes, Shafiq and Mokomba! Days and many more days we walked. And then we arrived at Dom Bashabeng with the goods. And there was no one to receive them. Or to pay. Empty! The town was deserted.”

  I leaned forward. “Did you find out what happened to the citizens of Dom Bashabeng? Was there any explanation?”