The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  Mariata gazed out to where sand and sky merged in a shimmering haze and felt her mind drift wide as if it too were flowing into the vanishing point. A delicious peace spread through her, softening her muscles, soothing her bones. ‘Beautiful,’ she whispered. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

  Rahma smiled. ‘And, like all beautiful things, quite deadly if you do not treat it with the respect it deserves.’

  ‘You came all this way on foot?’

  ‘I did.’

  Mariata shook her head, astounded. ‘You must truly love your son.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Tell me about him. Is he handsome? Is he noble and a poet? Does he wear the blue? Is his skin stained with indigo from his veil? Does he travel the desert routes? Or perhaps he is a warrior, with a famous sword whose name he cries as he flourishes it in battle?’

  The older woman clicked her tongue. ‘You young girls are all the same: silly romantic dreamers. And the boys are as bad: no, worse, with their dreams of war and foolishness. All I will say now is that he lies close to death. If he dies, you will need to know no more; if he lives, you can ask the rest yourself.’

  Mariata was disappointed. ‘Will you not even tell me his name?’

  ‘His name is Amastan.’

  ‘But what is his full name?’

  Rahma sighed. ‘So many questions.’

  ‘If I am to cross a desert, I should know something about the one I am making the journey for.’

  For a long while the old woman was silent, gazing out into the wilderness, her eyes narrowed against the brilliance of the air. At last she said, ‘His name is Amastan ag Moussa.’

  ‘Like Moussa ag Iba, the amenokal, high chief of the Aïr drum-groups?’

  ‘Thanks be he does not take after his father.’

  ‘He is the son of the amenokal?’

  The older woman tapped her camel smartly on the poll of its head and hissed loudly. Obediently, it came to a halt and sank to its knees and she slipped easily to the ground.

  ‘And therefore Rhossi’s cousin?’ Mariata pressed.

  ‘Do not think to judge my Amastan by what you know of that one. Until my boy was born, Rhossi had been Moussa’s chief delight. Rhossi had only to mention a thing and it was his – a pretty trinket, the best cut of meat, a play-sword fashioned from wood. But Amastan was Moussa’s firstborn, and his heir; from the moment he set eyes upon him he adored him, and that made Rhossi insanely jealous. As my lad grew up, all the time I found bruises and cuts upon him he could not have come by from simple play, and once he came to me with clear fingermarks upon his throat as if someone had tried to strangle him. He never said a word against Rhossi; but a mother knows.’

  ‘Was that why you left?’

  Rahma pressed her lips together tightly. ‘Now we walk,’ she told Mariata.

  ‘We walk?’ Mariata was horrified.

  ‘We must rest the camels.’ She took a long drink from the waterskin, then passed it to Mariata, after which she wound her headscarf up around her face in a semblance of a man’s tagelmust. Then, leading her beast by its head rope, she strode out briskly, her back arrow-straight.

  Mariata half dismounted, half fell, from her own mount and followed suit, twisting the dark cotton of her headscarf around her face until only her eyes were visible. Unused to wearing a veil, she found it uncomfortable and stifling, but as soon as the first breath of wind came up off the dunes she understood why it was necessary. Particles of sand scoured her skin, stinging her eyes. Hot sand burned her feet through her thin sandals; her body moved stiffly and awkwardly after the hours on the camel’s back.

  Despite her age and the attack Rhossi had made upon her, Rahma moved easily, as if she made such journeys every day of her life. She walked, Mariata thought, like a man, like a caravanner or a hunter, and she could not help a welling admiration for the older woman, who was so hardy and so determined. As the wind whipped up, Rahma moved to the lee side of her camel so that it sheltered her as she walked; Mariata did the same. They walked in this way till the sun was high in the sky, and still there was no sign of pursuit.

  Mariata walked until she thought she could walk no more; then she walked some more. She walked as if in a trance, or a dream, her legs moving automatically, her arm attached to the camel by its braided head rope; she walked until she was no longer aware of the discomforts that had infuriated her at the beginning of the day. Freed by the demands of her body, Mariata’s mind ranged far and wide. Why was she making this mad journey with a woman she had just met, and in such bizarre circumstances? Was staying with the tribe really so terrible? If she had called out, surely someone would have come to her aid, whatever Rhossi had said. The protection of women was sacred to her people; women were respected above all things. Her fear of Moussa’s nephew had twisted her logic out of shape, driven her to make mad decisions. But then she remembered the starving harratin, and the furious temper of the high chief whom everyone said was dying. And when he died, Rhossi would be chief and then no one could protect her from him. He had even tried to strangle the son of the amenokal!

  She mused about that. Whatever had happened between Rahma and Moussa must have been serious: for an amenokal to divorce his wife, or worse, for her to divorce him, was uncommon. She sensed a scandal.

  All these thoughts moved through her head like moths around a fire, sometimes vanishing into the darkness, sometimes catching light and zigzagging crazily about.

  At last Rahma turned to her and said something inaudible.

  Mariata’s head came up. In front of them were palm trees, shivering in the heat haze. Was it a mirage, she wondered. She had heard that the desert played tricks on the mind, and especially on novice travellers.

  ‘Oasis,’ Rahma said again, more distinctly. ‘The oasis of Doum. We are more than halfway there now.’

  They watered the camels, and let them graze. They refilled the waterskins, and while Rahma lay down in the shadows to sleep Mariata sat with her feet in the cool water of the guelta and gazed at the reflections of the date palms and the dazzling sky beyond. Such peace! She had never felt such peace. Before, there had always been the coming and going of family and neighbours, the noise of children, goats and dogs, the endless procession of the chores of daily life. She had been Mariata ult Yemma, daughter of Tofenat, daughter of Ousman, sister and cousin and tribe member. After that, she had been the niece of Dassine, outsider from the Taitok tribe suddenly displaced amongst the people of the Bazgan; taken from her homeland and set down amongst strangers, and somehow because the Kel Bazgan were strangers there seemed to be so many more of them, with names and patrimonies and stories she did not yet know, all milling about the camping ground, talking, shouting, going about business she knew nothing about. But now, in this moment, there was just herself – Mariata – and Rahma, fast asleep, a woman she had met only a day ago and to whom she was bound by neither tribal loyalty nor family ties; and the desert, beautiful, serene and eternal.

  This moment of freedom, of perfect being, swelled inside her until she felt light-headed, as if she might float off into the gilded air like a gossamer seedhead …

  How much time passed like this she had no idea, but she was shocked out of the moment by a sudden sharp report, like two rocks struck together close by the ear.

  At once, like a cat that appears asleep but is napping with one eye open, Rahma was on her feet. ‘Mariata, get your camel. Now, hurry!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No time for questions. Quickly!’

  Mariata ran and took the hobble off her mehari, then stood there with the head rope in her hand, indecisive, not knowing what to do.

  ‘Get on, get on! Head for the high dunes there and wait for me: they will not go there, the sand is too deep. Go!’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘Just do what I say, girl, or we’re both dead.’

  At last Mariata managed to get her camel to its knees and, as soon as she was on it, took off as if it had intuited the required action
. She slapped its rump and it increased its pace, the sand flying up from the great pads of its feet. The dunes reared up, great sweeping hills of sand. She headed the animal towards the intersection of two of the biggest ones and by sheer will urged the camel up and over the other side. Then she hurled herself down from its back without waiting for it to couch, and crawled forward to look over the crest. The oasis seemed miles away, much further than the distance she had just covered in that short time, and for a moment she could not see Rahma and her camel at all. Panic rising, she scanned the landscape desperately: if she lost Rahma she was surely doomed. Then suddenly she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye –

  Rahma, far to her right, her camel at a gallop, its ungainly limbs flying out at all angles. Mariata watched as their course veered towards the eastern edge of the long bank of dunes on which she lay, then disappeared from view.

  Now there came another noise entirely, a rough growl of a sound, low and rumbling. Travelling towards the oasis at speed was a dusty vehicle: a truck with several dark-clad men sitting in the back, their rifles pointing towards the sky. Mariata froze. Had Rhossi brought in government authorities to ensure the return of the camels? To bring her back to the tribe? A chill shivered her stomach.

  Surely not even Rhossi would involve the police? Their people lived beyond national boundaries and jurisdictions, and had done so for a thousand years. Mariata lay there, suspended in time, waiting for something to happen, for something to determine her fate. Don’t let them see me, she mouthed silently, then swiftly amended her prayer to: don’t let them see us. Let them leave and not see us …

  Several heartbeats passed and all was silent, except for the rush of blood in her ears. Even her camel seemed to sense the need for quiet: it had knelt down on the cool lee side of the dune, where the sun had not yet reached, with its head up and its long-lashed gaze fixed on nothing in particular, the strange, clear membrane of its third eyelid flicking back and forth to dislodge grains of sand.

  Then the jeep reappeared, accelerating out of the oasis along the well-beaten track to the east, which it followed for several hundred yards. Then suddenly it veered off, where Rahma and her camel had veered off just minutes before. Mariata stopped breathing; then her heart began to thump as if it wanted to escape her ribcage. She watched as the jeep began to climb the dune, then became bogged down in the softer, deeper sand of the flank. Two of the men vaulted out, guns slung across their backs, and began to search the ground. She saw them touch the surface, talk animatedly, then move upwards, leaving the rest to push the vehicle out of the sand. The two men wore trousers, not robes – a Western style of dress; and caps instead of a veil or turban. They looked like spiders, Mariata thought, thin and dark and fast and dangerous, as they picked their way up the dune. Soon the swell of the sand obscured their progress.

  What should she do? Should she leap on her camel and flee before they saw her, or wait and hope they passed by? She had just about made up her mind to remount the camel and make a run for it when something hissed. Mariata scrambled to her feet intuitively, for the bite of a horned viper could kill –

  ‘Get down!’

  It was Rahma, leading her camel by a length of cloth she had tied around the creature’s jaw.

  Obediently, Mariata flattened herself against the hot sand. ‘Who are they?’ she whispered.

  ‘Soldiers.’

  ‘Soldiers? What soldiers?’

  ‘There are soldiers everywhere now. On that side’ – she gestured to her left – ‘the newly independent country of Mali; to the other’ – waving to the right – ‘Niger. To the north, Algeria. They all have soldiers swarming around this quarter. They have found precious ores beneath these sands: all their governments will be wanting to get their hands on it. Ripping out the guts of the earth, destroying our ancestral lands; shooting us if we get in their way.’ She took another length of fabric and briskly bound the second camel’s jaw shut. It wouldn’t render the beast silent, but it would stifle a bellow that might betray their presence. ‘Now, if you don’t want to die, follow me quickly.’

  She led Mariata down the side of the dune, keeping the curving crest between them and any sight-line the two soldiers might have, and as they went Rahma used a palm frond to smooth over the marks of their passage. It wouldn’t fool a nomad scout; but at a distance the dune would look relatively untouched.

  Down through the soft sand they ran into a deep valley between sandhills, then Rahma led them into another intersection where the dunes towered up on either side.

  Rahma shoved the head rope into Mariata’s hand. ‘Wait here.’

  And with that she was gone, scuttling sideways up a tall dune to look for their pursuers. Mariata hugged her knees to her chest. Soldiers. Men armed with guns. Enemies. She had never even considered the possibility of having an enemy before, someone who might actually want to kill her. There were tribal rivalries, of course, duels and raids; but these were things between men. No one ever threatened a woman with violence – except for Rhossi. But even Rhossi did not scare her as much as these anonymous, uniform-clad men. For the first time since they had entered the desert, she felt truly afraid.

  8

  The shadows were slanting deep into the valley before Rahma reappeared, striding out with her elbows jutting angrily and her feet kicking up puffs of sand. She looked like one of the spirits of the wilderness herself, her robe all dusty and her eyes shining with anger. Mariata hugged her knees tight to her chest. ‘Did they attack you?’ she asked timidly. ‘Are you hurt?’

  The older woman barely looked at her as she said, ‘Get on your camel.’ She unhobbled her own and mounted up nimbly.

  ‘Have they gone?’ Mariata tried again once she had managed to catch up with her companion, but all Rahma did was to give her a curt ‘Yes’, then fold her lips tightly and stare straight ahead, lost in her thoughts, thoughts that knit her forehead into a kinked maze.

  Mariata tried several times to draw her further on the subject of the soldiers as they rode through dune after dune and then over a wide sandy plain, but the older woman kept her counsel and barely spoke a word during either day. Towards the end of the third day after they had left the oasis, the sun veered westwards, dipped and fell, stealing all the red from the landscape and leaving it violet and chill.

  The rising moon filled the sand with light and rendered the solitary thorn trees they passed a ghostly silver. Mariata had never seen country like this: it seemed unending, unrelenting, and still they rode on. As the land flattened it became more solid underfoot, little tufts of vegetation poking up through the ever-increasing scatters of stones. Finally, in an area in which huge detached blocks formed towering, solitary boulders, Rahma drew her camel to a halt.

  ‘We’ll stop here till dawn,’ she decreed. ‘We can’t go up into the hills by night: the ancestor spirits become vengeful by moonlight.’

  Even the most benevolent spirits changed their nature as night fell. Mariata muttered a charm that might ward off such dangerous influences and stared into the shadowed hills. It was hard to tell what was night and what was land, but she could see no sign in the darkness of any camp, no fires, no lanterns. All she could see were the boulders, dumped all over the place as if by a giant grown suddenly bored with a game.

  ‘This is an ancient, magical place, full of baraka,’ Rahma said softly. ‘No spirits will harm us here.’

  The boulders were vast, but to Mariata they looked neither magical nor full of blessings. She closed her eyes, exhausted. Every muscle ached, every hair on her head. She had been looking forward to lying down in the shelter of a tent; she wanted to rest her cheek on a cushion, to cover herself with a blanket and sleep and sleep and sleep. She was so tired she found herself swaying and had to reach out a hand to the closest stone for balance. The heat of the day had gone right out of it: it felt cold and rough beneath her fingers; rough and cold, but somehow alive …

  A succession of images flitted suddenly through her head: a wom
an whose tears darkened the indigo of her robe where they fell; a round-headed child grabbing its mother’s skirts; the flash of a sword thrown in the air, silver gleaming in blue. A swaddled baby with great dark eyes, lying helpless in the sand. A man’s naked body rising and falling, the curve of his buttocks lit by the jumping light of a candle. Her eyes snapped open, shocked.

  ‘What is it?’ Rahma said sharply, taking her by the arm. ‘Did you see something?’

  Obscurely ashamed, Mariata snatched her arm away. ‘No, nothing. I’m just tired.’

  She took the blanket from her camel and lay down on the ground, but sleep was hard to find. The world moved within her, as if she were walking still; her head swam. Images came rushing at her – armed men shouldering rifles, Rhossi’s leering face too close, a skeleton they had passed in the desert, its bones picked at by vultures and bleached by the sun; starved children, a weeping woman – until she felt sick with anxiety. When she sat up to clear her head, the only thought that came to her was that she was alone in the world and at its mercy, with no protection except for a strange, mad woman. Up above, the stars shone down, unmoved by her circumstances. Tears of self-pity stung her eyes, and it was then she heard the voice.

  Remember who you are, Mariata. Remember your heritage. You carry all of us within you: we are always with you, all the way back to the Mother of Us All. Remember who you are and do not despair …

  That night Mariata dreamt. She was back in the Hoggar: its hills rose jagged against a brilliant blue sky, and she sat in the sun watching her mother braiding Azaz’s hair. The last time she had seen her brother he had been tall and skinny, almost a man in his robes and blue veil, but in the dream he was still a boy, with round, laughing eyes and a wide gap between his front teeth, and she remembered how they had run rings around the old women and told stories to keep each other from punishment when one or the other had been caught misbehaving. Baye, the youngest, crawled naked in the sand. Her mother was so beautiful, Mariata thought, watching her quick, deft hands and the way the sunlight fell across the elegant bones of her face. How long she watched this tranquil scene she did not know: she was in dream-time. Behind Yemma’s head high clouds streamed; the sun fell and rose, fell and rose again as she plaited Baye’s first braids, reaching over the huge and growing swell of her belly. And then a shadow fell across her and she looked up and smiled and the world stood still. What a smile that was! Mariata could have looked at that smile all day, all night. Such love was in it, such pleasure. For a moment she wondered what it was that had made her mother smile in such a blissful way, and then she saw herself walking beside her tall father, carrying a basket of figs, the figs her mother craved in this, her last pregnancy. And she knew, as she had always known, that her mother loved her, that she had not willingly left her in this world; that she watched her always.