The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  I cleared the table and set the box on top of it. It looked ridiculously out of place amongst the shining stainless steel and polished granite of the kitchen: a piece of old rubbish salvaged from the street. I ran a sharp knife down the top seam and watched the paper and packing tape part. Isa, it said on one side of the cut, and belle on the other.

  Eve and I craned our necks over it. Inside, at first glance there appeared to be just a load of dusty old papers. I took them out carefully: they looked fragile enough to disintegrate in my hands. The first sheet was small and a pale green in colour – my mother would have called it ‘eau de nil’. It had been folded and refolded many times. On one side there were odd-looking squiggles, impossible to make out since the ink was so old. I turned it over and found an indistinct heading. Something Maroc … Whatever came next was lost in the fold. It looked as if it might once have been an official document of some kind, for I found a couple of words that appeared to have been printed. I picked out provi … and a word that began hegir … But whatever else had been written or printed on it had vanished over time, evaporating inside the box. For a moment it occurred to me that by opening it I had allowed this information to escape, that somehow it was in the air around us, invisible but full of meaning. Fanciful nonsense! I passed the thin green note to Eve. ‘Not much help.’

  She turned it over; held it up to the light, squinting hard. ‘Maroc: that’s Morocco in French, isn’t it?’ she said after a while. ‘And is that a stamp?’

  In the bottom corner there was a small, embossed-looking rectangle. It bore a faint image, but even under the brightest of the halogen bulbs we couldn’t tell what it was. I put it aside. Next was a sheaf of typed papers, brown at the edges, the printing obviously that of a manual typewriter, since missing serifs and filled spaces appeared in the same letters each time, and occasionally a full stop had punched a hole right through the paper. My father had always had a heavy hand when typing.

  Notes regarding the gravesite near Abalessa, read the heading across the top of the page. I scanned it, frowning, taking in the phrases confused jumble of stones, otherwise known as a redjem and commonly found in the Sahara. At the bottom of the first page the word skeleton leapt out at me. Gingerly, I picked up the article, turned the page and quoted aloud to Eve: According to witnesses, the skeleton of the desert queen had been wrapped in red leather embellished with gold leaf. She lay with her knees bent towards her chest upon the decayed fragments of a wooden bier secured with braided cords of coloured leather and cloth. Her head had been covered by a white veil and three ostrich feathers; two emeralds hung from her earlobes, nine gold bracelets were upon one arm and eight silver bracelets on the other. Around her ankles, neck and waist were scattered beads of carnelian, agate and amazonite … I skipped a bit and then continued: Professors Maurice Reygasse and Gautiers of the Ethnographical Museum believe this site to have contained the remains of the legendary queen Tin Hinan.

  ‘Wow,’ said Eve. ‘What fabulous stuff.’ She closed her eyes. ‘You can almost smell the desert, can’t you? Treasure and a legendary Saharan queen. It’s like something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! But what’s it got to do with you?’

  I shrugged, feeling a bit sick. ‘I haven’t the least idea. From the tone of the notes it doesn’t even sound as if Dad was the one who excavated the site.’ I put the papers aside: it was like going back in time, seeing their punched-out o’s and feeling the impression made by the typewriter keys on the reverse side. It was some sort of message to me, a message from beyond the grave – both the Saharan queen’s and my father’s. The skin on the back of my neck tingled as if hairs were rising one by one.

  The last item in the box was obviously the thing that had shifted when I picked it up in the attic. It was a cotton pouch with a cord wrapped many times around it. It weighed heavily in my hand, more heavily than I’d expected. A sudden electrical current ran up my arm, as if it had given me some sort of shock.

  ‘Do you think it’s something from the gravesite?’ Eve asked eagerly.

  I was shaking now; but whether from excitement or from terror, I did not know. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ I said, dropping the pouch back into the box, then shovelling the papers in after it. I closed the ruptured flap and put the knife down on top to hold it down. ‘This is all too weird and cryptic. And so typical of my father. I remember something he once said on TV: “Curiosity in children is to be encouraged. Give a child knowledge on a plate and it will leave it there to dry up, craving something more forbidden. Let it ferret out a treat for itself with the aid of a judicious clue or two and it will learn something for life.” Well, I hate being fed sodding clues like this. It’s designed to draw me in and prey on me, and I just don’t intend to let it. “Let sleeping beasts lie,” he said in his letter; perhaps that’s what I should do.’

  ‘It’ll only prey on you more if you don’t open it.’

  I knew she was right. I wrestled with my irrational fears, then took a deep breath, removed the knife from the top of the box, delved inside and drew out the pouch. Swiftly, before I could change my mind, I unwound the drawstring and shook the contents into my palm, and we both stared at the thing that lay in my hand.

  It was a solid chunk of silver, around five millimetres thick at its top edge, flaring to almost a centimetre or more at its base, the whole being the best part of four centimetres square. Circles of red glass or some semi-transparent stone embellished the central boss, and diagonal bands of complex, arcane patterns were engraved across the corners. A twisted leather thong was attached to the top. I picked it up by this and it swung from my fingers, twirling this way and that like a divining pendant, the red discs capturing the light like rubies. Against the backdrop of my modern kitchen it looked impossibly foreign and out of place.

  ‘Oh, Izzy,’ Eve breathed, her eyes round with wonder. ‘It’s … unreal.’

  Its weight and massiveness made it feel very real to me; but what on earth was it?

  Eve took it from my fingers and examined it closely. For some reason without it in my hand I felt strangely insubstantial.

  ‘I think it’s a necklace,’ she said after a while. ‘But what a barbaric-looking thing!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not my style; not yours, either, my love.’

  It was true: you couldn’t get any further from what she called ‘my style’ than this curious object. I picked up the pouch. A slip of paper protruded from the bag. I eased it out and read there in my father’s neat print: ‘Amulet, date and provenance unknown, possibly Tuareg; silver, carnelian, leather.’ A chill ran down my spine. Was this thing part of the grave-goods of the skeletal queen mentioned in my father’s archaeological paper? I pushed it back into the pouch and stared at the lump it made under the cotton. Convulsively, I shovelled it back into the box, feeling quite illogically as if it might bite me. What had I brought into my home? I felt like running outside, digging a hole beneath the patio and reinterring it, along with the papers my father had left me.

  That night, for the first time in years, I dreamt.

  Through the narrow eye-slit in my veil I see palm trees and my heart rises. I have crossed the desert and survived. Alhamdulillah.

  Before me, the other caravanners lope easily, their blue robes dun with sand and dust, their veils wound tight against winds that have stripped the fine patina of colour from my grandfather’s saddle and torn the bundles from our animals’ backs.

  I blink and a herd of gazelles flashes past, their brilliant white scuts dancing in and out of the red granite boulders. I blink again and we are in a wide valley at the foot of a deep gorge and there is something watching me. A lion, vaster than any lion can be, gazing down from the cliff! I cry out in alarm.

  When I look again I realize it is a natural feature, many camels in height, incised into the rose-red rock by God’s own hand, and given perspective by the scatter of adobe houses on the slopes below it and the tiny figures of black-robed women tending to the cultivated terraces.
One bold soul accosts Soleymane, asks what we have brought. When he tells her salt and millet, her face falls. She is as old as my grandmother, her eyes outlined with kohl. ‘No jewellery?’ she asks. ‘No gold?’

  The days of gold and slaves are past. Times are harder now.

  As we enter the oasis town, the muezzin calls out the adhan. We lead the camels to the caravanserai and some of the men go to the mosque, but I want to see the market.

  In the souq, artisans are working iron over open fires. I give them a wide berth: the inadan channel spirits. Old men sit on blankets selling pyramids of spices, vegetables and, wonder of wonders, leather babouches, bright yellow, as yellow as the sun. Suddenly I imagine them on my feet, resplendent. Such slippers are sure to impress pretty Manta. The next thing I know my hand is reaching for my silver amulet to make a bargain.

  Azelouane appears, as if by magic. ‘What are you thinking of? That amulet is worth a hundred pairs of babouches; a thousand! What else will protect you from the evil influences of the Kel Asuf?’

  But when I look down there are yellow babouches on my feet. They pinch: too new, too tight, but in them I look like an emperor.

  Now it is night and we are sitting around our fire wrapped in our blankets and Ibrahim is telling me, ‘God created the desert so that there might be a place where he could take his ease. But he soon changed his mind. So he summoned the South Wind, the North Wind and all the other winds and ordered them to become as one and they obeyed. He took a handful of the airy mixture and there came into being – to the glory of Allah, to the confounding of his enemies, and to the benefit of man – the camel. To its legs he bound compassion, on its back he laid saddles, and to its flanks he tied riches, and finally he fastened good fortune to its tail. The desert and the camel are God’s gifts to the People.’

  ‘Allahu akbar,’ I say, because I know it will please him.

  ‘God is great.’ He pauses, then leans in. ‘Those who are born to the Great Desert can never be free: no matter how far they travel, no matter where they go. The spirits are always with them, those beings that have inhabited this world before there was time, or rock, or sand. Beware the Kel Asuf: wear your veil high; keep your nose and mouth covered. They love the body’s orifices, the spirits: they are always looking for a way in. When you make water, use your robe like a tent. When you shit, make sure you do it where the sand is undisturbed.

  ‘You will see their marks if you look closely. Amongst the dunes you will sometimes see a spiral of sand rise in the air for no reason. Where the sif dunes ripple like serpents, you may see where their claws have raked the ground. Watch for the changing angles of sun-shadows and moon-shadows, for eddies and ripples, for the perfect tiny circles formed in the surface by blades of grass bent flat by the wind: they leave their traces everywhere. Keep your amulet close at all times: it will keep you safe from harm, and remember, always, that the desert is your home.’

  I woke before dawn and my mouth felt strangely dry and gritty and there was a strong, musky scent in my nostrils. I lay there for a while, luxuriating in the smooth coolness of my London bed; but it was hard to shift the sensation that instead of a quilted silk comforter and luxury Egyptian cotton sheets upon me, there lurked a smelly camel-hair blanket somewhere in the room.

  4

  I must have gone back to sleep, because the next time I looked at my watch it was well past ten: an event unheard of in my regulated world. I gulped down two glasses of water, put the coffee on, then ran down the road to fetch a copy of the Sunday Times, but when I got back found I couldn’t sit still for long enough to get halfway down the front page. I felt filled with some kind of hungry energy that made me want to run and leap, to stretch and climb.

  I called Eve. ‘Let’s go climbing.’

  Had there been the geographical possibility of such a thing, I’d have selected a sea-cliff or a moorland tor, somewhere elemental and unfrequented where I could hang off my hands from a rock ledge, or pad up a sunlit slab, laughing with glee at the yawning spaces beneath my feet; but the closest possibility of wild climbing lay several hours’ drive away, so half an hour to the Westway climbing wall would have to suffice.

  While I was waiting for her to arrive I looked up the word ‘amulet’ on the internet. The Online Etymology Dictionary offered me this:

  amulet

  1447, amalettys, from L. amuletum (Pliny) necklace or brooch worn as a charm against spells, disease, etc. Of uncertain origin, perhaps related to amoliri, to avert, to carry away, remove. Not recorded again in English until 1601; the 15th century use may be via Medieval French.

  I frowned at the entry, feeling none the wiser. Perhaps the necklace wasn’t an archaeological find after all. Perhaps it had been something passed down through my late mother’s family, though I couldn’t imagine my petite, chic French mother ever wearing any piece of jewellery like it; nor, with her chilly pragmatism, ever resorting to superstition.

  I had meant to look up ‘Tin Hinan’ and ‘Abalessa’ too; but I simply couldn’t sit still for long enough: I had to move, to find an outlet for the monstrous energies that filled me. In the end I leapt in the car and picked up Eve at the corner of the road.

  The climbing wall was packed: there were people hanging from ropes all over the place like stranded spiders, kids treated to a birthday celebration being tutored up the practice wall, shrieking their heads off with excitement and terror; serious soloers and boulderers applying themselves fiercely to the problems at the back of the hall. A miasma of loose chalk hung in the air, invading the lungs within minutes. I remembered the place when it had just been a scruffy outdoor facility: a basic traverse wall and a couple of large slabs of concrete bristling with holds from which you could see the traffic speeding past on the A40 flyover; at the top you could surprise drivers by being at eye-level with them. Now it was a state-of-the-art modern climbing gymnasium, its fifty-foot white translucent polyurethane walls anchored to the underside of the underlit flyover like a circus arena, lending real height and a sense of exposure to the routes inside.

  At university I’d joined the climbing club but I never enjoyed being under someone else’s control, especially that of the lads of the club, who liked to lord it around on the crag, showing off their superior strength and shoulder construction, barking instructions at us feeble women as we failed to reach the holds they pointed out to us, or swinging monkey-fashion in their flashy, slap-dash style. Having honed our rope technique, a couple of us girls sneaked off to try our better balance and more delicate footwork on some hard slabs. Ross Myhill, the worst chauvinist in the group, went straight up an easy crack system in the same rock face and deliberately pissed down the slab ahead of us, like a dog asserting its territory rights. We never climbed with the men again.

  I watched Eve now make her way along the traverse wall. She had good technique and dancer’s feet, and she moved neatly, avoiding the bulges and overhangs with an undercut here, an interim toe-dab there. I followed, faster and stronger from pulling weights and circuit training at the gym, and soon caught her up. By the time I had covered the traverse wall three times my forearms felt as hard as wood.

  Eve raised an eyebrow. ‘Got energy to burn off or something?’

  ‘You could say that.’ I felt full of vigour and ready to take on anything. Warmed up now, we put on our harnesses, fetched the rope and worked our way up half a dozen routes of varying degrees of difficulty, clipping the in situ bolts and lowering off from the top with pumped muscles and a sense of easy achievement.

  I enjoyed working out on climbing walls. I liked the sheer artificiality of them, the reduction of an outdoor adventure sport to a games board of coloured holds, delineated by French technical grades, by rules and protocols, and all in a controlled environment. Climbing in the outside world demanded a lot of you: expertise, risk and judgement, and a total trust in your climbing partner. It was the latter that had always been my sticking point: placing your life in the hands of another human being. At a climbing wall,
you trusted your partner to hold the rope and not to let go if you fell: but even if they suffered a lapse in attention you’d still be hard pressed to kill yourself, with all the supervisors and crash mats around.

  When we took a break I went off to buy some cold drinks and fortifying flapjacks; when I returned it was to see Eve’s blonde head bent over a magazine someone had left on the café table. She looked up and beckoned me over. ‘Look at this article about this place they’re calling the new climbers’ paradise: it’s very laid back and easy-going, the weather’s brilliant, and the climbing looks amazing. See this crag here: there’s a fantastic 5a line going right up the front of it. It’s called the Lion’s Face or something.’

  My gaze locked on to the photo in the double-page spread. The rock was the precise rose-red of the landscape I had seen in my dreams, and there was the very cliff that had towered above the caravan traders, its rugged features carved as distinctly as those of any Disney lion. For a moment it felt as if the world spun. My nostrils were filled with the scent of saffron; my skin felt hot and dusty. I became aware of a strange rhythm in my head, like a slow drumbeat, and for a moment the blood was so loud in my ears that it was like a sea, or like the wind over sand dunes, a susurrus turning to a roar, and I heard a nonsense word again, over and over and over: Lallawa, Lallawa, Lallawa …

  I blinked and shook my head. Eve was staring at me. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘What? I …’ I frowned. I focused on the picture again. It was just a place, I told myself, a place in the world, a place someone had taken a photo of for a climbing article. What was so unnerving about that?