by Jane Johnson
‘From the desert? Are you sure?’
She laughed. ‘Sorry, no, not really: I’m no expert. But you should ask around. Mhamid has similar necklaces at his stall in the souq. Houcine too. You could ask them if you want to find out more about it.’
Her husband appeared at her shoulder and fixed me with his glittering black eyes. ‘It is to Taïb you should talk. My cousin. He is expert in antiquities, he has business in Paris’ – Paree – ‘but he is in Tafraout now, for vacances. I arrange meeting for you if you wish.’
‘No, no, thank you; it’s very kind, but no,’ I said, flustered, and he shrugged and continued pouring out the teas. I could feel people looking at me, could feel the weight of their gazes on me, weighing me down; weighing upon the necklace. I swallowed fast, closed my eyes. Panic rose up like a black wave, worse than anything I’d felt on any climb I’d ever attempted; worse than the time I’d been halfway up Bubble Memory, stranded amid decayed limestone and flaky holds, and my only apparently good runner had popped out. I felt hot, then cold, and my heart hammered and hammered. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it down and forced myself to breathe steadily. Get back in the box, I told the panic fiercely. Back into the place in the back of my head where I stashed the things that mustn’t get out. I enfolded the amulet in my hand and felt it beat with my own pulse, slower and slower. When I opened my eyes, I found that actually no one was looking at me at all, not even Eve. Especially not Eve: she was hanging on Jez’s every word, her whole body angled towards him, mouth open and her eyes shining with such fervour that I had to look away. It was as if I’d walked in on them naked and sweating. I felt obscurely ashamed and appalled, as if I were in some way responsible for her. I tucked the amulet away beneath my jumper and tried hard to concentrate on getting back into the flow of the conversation.
That night I slept badly, woken at various times by the mournful cries of the feral dogs and the pre-dawn call to prayer. I lay there in my narrow single bed and listened to Eve’s steady breathing on the other side of the room. The tatters of a dream flickered and tantalized on the edge of consciousness, but no matter how hard I tried to go back to it somehow it evaded me, leaving me with a sense of unfocused dread, as if something awful had happened just out of my sight, something that had a bearing on my fate: a warning or a premonition.
11
Mariata sat on her heels in the palm-branch shelter a little distance away from the camp and watched the enad’s deft hands working the piece of iron over a flame so hot that it seemed to burn white at its heart. The hammer rose and fell with a rhythm that almost lulled her to sleep. There was something primal about the process that fascinated her; fascinated and repelled her in equal measure, if truth be told, which was largely how she felt about the enad too. Although many weeks had passed in her new home, and despite the fact that she went to the smithy almost every day to watch the enad work, Mariata still did not know what to make of Tana, with her big hands and her small, but undeniably womanly, breasts, her loose veil and men’s clothing. It was taboo for a woman to work metal over fire like this; taboo too for a woman to come here to watch; but Tana was not an ordinary woman, and neither was Mariata, and something about the enad and her craftsmanship called to something inside her. Did she find a parallel for the working of her poetry in the way Tana shaped iron and silver, hammering away incessantly and with a critical eye, exclaiming at imperfections and assailing the metal with angry little dinks and beats until it had succumbed to her will? Or was it that she identified with this strange person who stood with one foot inside the tribe and one foot without? Or possibly it was that after her long hours at Amastan’s side she felt the need to seek out someone else who communed with the spirits and might understand the exhausting demands that such work made upon her. Or maybe it was because she felt she could release the pent-up spirits into the enad’s fire. Certainly, the piece Tana was working now was proving to be more recalcitrant than usual. The smith grasped it in her delicate tongs and squinted at it critically, the firelight adding a fearsome red lustre to the planes of that uncompromising face. It was a key, a hand’s span in size, notched and incised along its length: it would when finished fit the intricately crafted lock that Tana had made the day before, the lock that would be fixed to a great wooden chest to contain a chieftain’s treasures. The smith now held it in front of her face and peered at Mariata through the open-worked circle at its tip, the circle that represented the world. At the other end, the key ended in a crescent, representing the endless sky. ‘Has he said anything to you yet?’
Mariata felt herself flush. She dropped her eyes to the coin she had been fiddling with, one from a pile of assorted silver pieces the enad would melt down for the next jewellery commission she received. ‘This morning, when I brought him his porridge, he spoke.’ What she did not tell Tana was that he had accompanied these first words he had addressed directly to her (for you could not count those inadvertent explosions of anger or fear that seemed to come shooting up out of some dark place in his memories, sparked by something in her poetry or some movement she made, eruptions that often terrified her and made her run away) with a slight touch upon the back of her hand, a touch she had felt like a lightning bolt through the very core of her.
Tana’s still face registered not a flicker of reaction. ‘Are you sure it was Amastan who spoke, and not the spirits inside him?’
Mariata turned the coin over and furiously applied her concentration to it. Only when she had stared at it for several moments did she realize that what she was looking at was not a random arrangement of lines and engravings but a design, a representation of things that belonged in the living world, and not on dead metal. Images made on carpets and shawls were a different matter: textiles came from living things, from the wool of sheep and camels, or from the cotton plants that grew by rivers. But images made on metal, there was something wrong about that. She turned it back, realigned it, turned it around again. On one side there appeared to be a fierce bird with two heads and wings spread so that the primary feathers fanned out like fingers; on the other was the profile of a rather fat person of indeterminate gender whose head grazed a series of strange-looking symbols ringing the edge of the coin. ‘Who is this?’ she asked, holding the coin up. ‘Is it a man or a woman?’
Tana frowned. ‘Is it so important to know?’
Mariata had never seen a visual representation of a person before, nor one of any living thing that looked as it did in life. Those who followed the new religion said that it was blasphemous, disrespectful, to imitate Allah’s work: even the symbols they worked in their woven rugs were heavily stylized, triangles for camels, diamonds for cattle, dotted circles for the frogs that stood for fertility. She had certainly never seen anything rendered so minutely that you could make out curls in the hair or the drapery of a robe falling off a shoulder. She peered at the silver disc more closely. The marks around its edge looked nothing like the Tifinagh, but somehow she felt sure they constituted some sort of language. How she knew this she was not sure; it was no more than a twinge of recognition. ‘Perhaps. I was curious. I just wanted to know.’
The enad’s smiled widened, though her eyes remained cool. ‘They all want to know. “Is it a man or a woman?” That is the question I always feel on their lips, hovering behind their tongues like a bee vibrating with its own importance. How can we know? Shall we crawl into her tent at night and watch to see when she disrobes which organs she owns? Shall we jostle her in a crowd, feel through her clothes and pretend we were just brushing past?’
Mariata was dismayed. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant at all. I just wanted to know why there is a person on this coin and who it might be.’
‘The coin is a thaler, and the woman on it was called Maria Theresa. She was a great queen. The coin was made during her reign in the eighteenth century as the Christians reckon their years.’
‘I have never heard of her.’
Tana laughed and her heavy silver earrings spun and ca
ught the firelight. ‘Ah, so the child of Tin Hinan’s line believes there is only one great queen, does she? It will be news to you, Mariata of the Hoggar, that there are many queens in the world, and many lands beyond those you know. This was a queen – more than a queen, an empress. The Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia and Slavonia, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Parma and Piacenza, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, mother of Marie Antoinette, queen consort of France and wife to Louis XVI, whose head was cut off by her people.’
Mariata had heard of none of these places other than France; their unfamiliar names washed over her and left her untouched; but the last detail caused her to stare at Tana in horror. ‘Her head was cut off?’
‘With a guillotine: a great sharp knife lowered, very fast, by ropes.’ Tana chopped her hand down so hard that Mariata jumped.
‘But if the head and the body are separated in death, the soul will roam for ever. The Kel Asuf will capture it and it will become one of them, one of the People of the Wilderness.’ There was no worse fate in the world. She shuddered at the very thought of it; and that such a horrible thing should happen to a woman who was the daughter of a great queen too. Almost, she could feel the cold blade on her own neck …
‘They were cruel people.’ Tana cocked her head on one side, considering this. ‘The world is full of cruel people, which keeps the Kel Asuf thoroughly satisfied.’
‘How do you know these things?’
‘Do you think I have lived here all my life? I have travelled, more widely than you would imagine.’
‘I thought this was your home.’
‘The inadan have always travelled. We are the news-carriers and the messengers of the Kel Tamacheq, as well as the smiths and the makers. We keep the knowledge of the tribes, and we know the things they do not wish to know for themselves.’
Mariata was not sure what to make of this last pronouncement, so instead she asked, ‘Have you taken the salt road, then?’
Tana took up her file and ran it along a rough edge on the key. ‘Both literally and symbolically.’ Her smile was wry, lopsided. ‘My father was a travelling smith who often accompanied the caravans; my mother a slave from this tribe. In the beginning they treated me as a boy. Maybe they did not even know my secret: my mother kept me covered, and called me son. Who was to question a mother’s word? I learnt my trade from my father and I travelled with him too. With the azalay I have crossed the Djouf, taken salt from Tawdenni to the Adagh and the Aïr, even to your homeland in the Hoggar. Then my courses came and my breasts began to grow.’
Mariata leant forward, fascinated now. ‘Then what did you do?’
‘To start with I bound rags between my legs and pissed in private. I let no one see my body. It was not difficult: no one washes in the desert, or ever disrobes. But then I fell in love with another caravanner.’
‘Did you tell him?’
The file rasped and rasped. ‘What, that I loved him? Or that I was “not as other men”?’ She paused. ‘Nor women either, for that matter. No, I did not tell him either thing, though I made such sheep’s eyes at him that he avoided me at night. All through that long journey, though the sun burned down on me like a fire and there was not enough water to go around, it was not the heat or the thirst I thought I would die of, but love. Every time I looked at him and he looked away it was like a dagger to my heart. When he laughed with the other men and fell quiet when I passed, I wept inside. When we reached his village he announced he was to be married to his cousin, and I went out into the desert and lay down and begged Allah to send me my death. Baghi n’mout, I told him. I am ready: it is my hour. But he did not take me and so here I am, and I am happy enough in my own way. I have accepted my place in the world, and that I will never be either a husband or a wife. But even so, you should know that I understand what it is to love a man.’
Mariata felt like one of the pieces of the coloured glass the smith worked into her creations: transparent to her eagle eye. Her heart began to beat very fast; she could feel her pulse throbbing around the coin she held tightly in her fist.
Tana put down the key and the file. ‘Such a fiery love is never a good thing, child. The desert lies outside you: why bring it within?’
‘He needs someone to love him,’ Mariata said, not looking at her.
‘His mother loves him enough for everyone,’ Tana said drily.
‘She crossed the Tamesna to find me because she believed I could help him. I must make him better: I must! And he will get better, I know it.’
‘You are very young and the young never listen to the old, especially in matters of the heart.’ Tana shook her head. ‘You will have heard the rumours, I am sure. Well, I am no great advocate of rumours: heaven knows I’ve been subjected to enough of those in my long life; but what I will say, child, is that you must beware of Amastan. He carries the scent of death with him. He does not smell like a lucky man, or one who brings luck to those close to him.’
The hairs on the back of Mariata’s neck rose.
‘You must ask yourself why the spirits follow him,’ the enad went on. ‘Do they haunt him for the lives he may have taken, or for those he has yet to take?’
Mariata stared at her, dismayed. She could not believe him a murderer – she could not. ‘He is beset by spirits, that is true: they invade his dreams. But it is not his fault,’ she said steadfastly. ‘They gather around the thing he has clutched in his right hand.’
‘Have you seen what it is?’
‘It is an amulet. And there is dried blood upon it.’
The enad gave a little hiss, or maybe it was just a sudden spurt of flame in the fire. Then she said, ‘When he first came here there was much of his father in him: his tongue was as sharp as a viper’s, and there was a lot of anger in him. It can be hard to shake one’s first impressions of a person.’ She pushed herself to her feet and walked across the smithy. ‘But I should have helped him when he came to me with that amulet. All actions have consequences; things come back to haunt you later in life.’
From a plain leather box Tana took a small pouch on a black string, and this she hung around Mariata’s neck. It smelt musty and unpleasant, and when Mariata craned her neck to look at it she was sure she could see something that resembled a chicken’s foot inside, as well as other, less identifiable things.
‘The gris-gris will protect you from what we are about to attempt,’ Tana pronounced. ‘But I am trusting you never to mention what you will see me do here today. It is hard enough to be an enad who is not precisely a man, without adding the accusation of sorcerer to my reputation.’
Mariata’s eyes became round. ‘You are a sorcerer?’
‘Not really, child, no. I make divinations; I speak with the spirits from time to time. But there are some in this tribe who might look for a reason to chase me away, even though I am just one weak creature.’
The tall smith did not seem weak to Mariata – not in the least, with her well-muscled arms, her big hands and her considerable height, as well as her fierce golden-brown eyes that seemed so bright in comparison with her charcoal skin.
‘Come, let us visit your Amastan and I will see what I can do.’
When he saw them coming, Amastan adjusted his veil and set his back against the wall of his shelter, looking, Mariata thought, like a dog that fears a beating. As they approached, his eyes never left Tana’s face.
‘Amastan ag Moussa. It is time to give up the amulet.’ And the smith walked right up to him and held out her hand, palm up.
Amastan’s eyes went so wide you could see the white above and below the dark pupils. Then he clutched his right hand to his chest, while holding his veil close against his face with his left, as if he were using it as a shield against the enad. They remained like this, unmoving, for long moments. Then Tana began to chant in a language Mariata did not understand, although she heard Amastan’s name repeated over and over amongst the unfamiliar sing-song words. Taking a piece of silver on a long string from beneath her
robe, she started to swing it back and forth in front of him. Mariata watched his eyes flicking from side to side, captured by the movement of the pendant.
This went on for so long that Mariata began to feel light-headed. Then she heard Tana stop her melodic chanting and say, quite distinctly, ‘It is the amulet that is holding you prisoner like this, Amastan ag Moussa. All you have to do is to give it up. The spirits inside it must be released: it is as cruel to them as it is to you to keep them trapped in this way. I will not ask you to relinquish the amulet to me; I know you fear me, as do the spirits you guard. But perhaps you will give it to one whose heart is open to you.’ And she beckoned for Mariata to come forward. ‘Give up the amulet, Amastan ag Moussa. Let Mariata ult Yemma, daughter of the line of Tin Hinan, take it from you. Place the amulet in her hand. Do it now.’
For several heartbeats the air hung still and heavy between them. Then, like a man in a dream, Amastan uncurled the fingers of his right hand and held out the talisman.
Without pausing the pendant in its action or taking her eyes from him, Tana said quietly, ‘Take it, Mariata. Take it from him, quickly now. You are protected against the spirits, I promise you; but only you can do this. There is a bond of trust between you.’
Mariata hesitated. What if the spirits were to swirl out of the amulet and engulf her? Would she be haunted by them all her life? Would she become mad, an outcast, condemned to live outside society, exiled to a mean shelter like this one, like a diseased dog? She shook the thoughts away: it was in her power to save Amastan. Tana said it was so, and, for all her oddness, she believed the smith when she said this was true. She dropped to one knee before him and quickly took the amulet, strung on a long cord threaded with bright black beads, into her own hand. For a moment she felt it throb in her palm, as if transferring the power it contained from Amastan to her; then the connection was broken.
Amastan’s entranced gaze slid from the smith’s pendant to Mariata. She watched him frown and look down at his empty hand, where the impression of the amulet was still deeply imprinted. The frown deepened. Then his head came up and he looked away from Tana and fixed his eyes upon Mariata. Dipping his head so that Mariata blocked Tana’s view, he dropped his other hand from his face, letting his veil fall. Mariata found herself staring. It was only the second time in her life that she had seen the naked face of a grown man, but Amastan’s gesture was one of vulnerability, and a gift to her, unlike Rhossi’s arrogant disregard for propriety. Neither did he resemble his cousin greatly: his bone structure was finer, and the cheeks that showed above his ragged beard were stained a dull blue. Here was a man who had travelled the world, buffeted by the desert winds, protected by a tagelmust whose powdery indigo dye had transferred itself to the skin. Then he bowed his head, ran a hand across his face to feel the rough and unaccustomed hair growing there, and slowly and very deliberately rewound his veil tightly about his face. ‘Would you ask my mother to let me have my shaving things, and bring me a bowl of water so that I can see who I am now?’ he asked after a while. ‘You can assure her I will not use the knife to slit my own throat.’