by Jane Johnson
I wouldn’t tell him about the amulet. What had happened seemed unreal now, too strange to have actually occurred. ‘My harness,’ I said brightly at last. ‘It caught on the rock, pulled me up short.’
He gave a low whistle. ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’
I really didn’t want to discuss it any more. My head was swimming in waves of pain now, the specific agony of the ankle pulsing up my thigh and into the core of me. I felt alternately nauseous and faint, then horribly present, a boiling bag of nerves and blood beating against the rock. ‘Right, then,’ I said briskly. ‘Better get going.’
‘Just find some shade and wait for us. We won’t be more than an hour or so.’ He leant across and checked my harness buckles, the descender and screw-gates. ‘I’ll look after Eve,’ he said suddenly.
‘Eve can take care of herself.’
‘Sure, I know. Independent modern woman and all that. Still, it’s just, well, I really like her.’ The lazy eye was suddenly wide and alert to my reaction, his whole being focused on my response. What was he waiting for: my blessing?
I mustered a grin. ‘Good luck with that.’
I manoeuvred myself to the edge and let the ropes take my weight. Abseiling has always terrified me – that initial step into space, like the Fool in the Tarot pack, trusting everything to chance, and a decent anchor – but once I was started it wasn’t so bad. I hopped the first twenty metres SAS-style while contact with the rock was still possible, then I was dangling in clear air like a spider on its line of silk.
Down I went by increments, trying not to overheat the descender, surveying the surroundings, looking for a likely landing spot. I couldn’t quite make out the ends of the ropes against the bright colours of the ground; then with a jolt of realization I understood why. The ends were hanging free at a distance of five metres off the ground where the gully fell suddenly away into what looked like the dry course of a waterfall. My head started to throb and swim. Was I concussed? That was all I needed. Damn. There was no way I could jump that last section, not with a damaged ankle. I made a hitch in the ropes and clipped them back into the harness system so that I could stop and think. Jez wouldn’t be able to see me now that I had vanished under the angle of the cliff. I looked down: could I swing myself further up the gully? I thought not: it would probably mean a punishing drag and fall back into the cliff …
‘Hoi!’
It was a voice, somewhere below me. I spun round, stared down. Two figures in native robes, with dozens of little black goats and some scrawny-looking sheep milling around them, and a dark brown burro laden with panniers. The man who had shouted shaded his eyes and called something again in a language I couldn’t understand. Then, quite clearly he shouted, ‘Voulez-vouz de l’aide?’
Well, yes: but what could he do? Here I was hanging on a rope! ‘Oui, merci!’ I shouted back, largely because it seemed polite.
The man came clambering further up the gully and called in French, ‘Can you see the ledge there?’ He pointed to a place above him on the cliff, and when I looked down I could see that about ten metres or so below me was a wide ledge with a cave behind it. The rope might just get me there: but the cliff was undercut, and swinging into the ledge would be hard, but I called down, yes. The man ran back to the donkey, rummaged in its packs and returned a moment later with a short rope weighted with a stone. Then he shrugged off his robe, revealing jeans and a T-shirt underneath, and monkeyed up the rock to the ledge with the rope slung over his shoulder. When he turned his face up to me, grinning, I could see that he was indeed one of the local Berbers, despite the polish of his French accent. Under the grubby white turban he wore he had the deep walnut-brown skin and sharp cheekbones of the region, the bright black eyes. ‘Can you come down more?’
I released the hitch in the abseil ropes and lowered myself closer, then wrapped them around my leg as a brake that would leave at least one hand free. Adrenalin and the need to concentrate banished the pain and wooziness as he sent the weighted rope up towards me, and I caught it neatly. It was a hobble rope for the donkey, a worn length of old blue polypropylene, frayed and sun-bleached, its nylon fibres harsh and prickly against my palm.
‘I’ll swing you into the ledge.’
And he began to pull me towards him with the hobble rope, until the knotted ends of the abseil rope came within his reach. Anchored, I abseiled the final few feet of available rope until I was standing, one-footed, on the ledge. ‘Broken ankle,’ I said, indicating the left foot. Cheville cassée. ‘I think.’
His face went very still and grave, then he called down something in his own language to the other figure, who I saw now was a woman, her head swathed in a blue scarf tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. ‘My sister will bring the donkey up the old goat-track,’ he told me, indicating where the ledge disappeared behind a huge tree that seemed to grow right out of the cliff.
The pain and relief were so intense I could only nod. With fumbling fingers I released myself from the abseil ropes, gave them a sharp tug to let Jez know I was down, and watched as they magically retracted and then vanished altogether.
Sometime after this I must have passed out, for I have no recollection of the woman appearing, of having my rucksack removed, or being laden on to the donkey, of the goat-track down the rock into the gully. All I recall of the later passage occurs in vivid blasts, like snapshots, or isolated frames of a movie: a cactus with brilliant white flowers; a lizard disappearing into the shade of a crack with a flick of its brindled tail; one of the little goats almost nose to nose with me, regarding me curiously with greedy yellow eyes. The rose-red rock in vast blocks and pillars, boulders and canyon walls, striated with grey and green, striped with light and shadow. Tiny white-shelled snails like little quartz pebbles; flat purple flowers like amethysts; the lyric hum of the couple’s low conversation in counterpoint to the high cries of the goats. I sensed the brooding presence of the mountain that had broken me moving away, and then I passed out again.
13
Over the weeks that followed the tribe welcomed Amastan back little by little into their society in their courteous, reserved manner, accepting outwardly at least that he had recovered from a long and mysterious illness. By the end of this recuperative period no one mentioned the nature or cause of his erstwhile madness; no one gossiped any more about the fate of the sweetheart he had left in the mountains. He was his own self again: the spirits had left him, cast out by the girl from the Hoggar, and they were proud to count Mariata as one of their own. Mariata found herself accepted by the other women, encouraged to take her place amongst them. After the antagonism of the Kel Bazgan it was a relief to be treated with a measure of acceptance; more pleasant still to have her lineage acknowledged with a degree of respect. Here, no one poked fun at her or called her Tukalinden – Little Princess – with a curled lip or a sneer, and, while she knew that it was Tana who had proved to be the real catalyst in Amastan’s return, Mariata found that she did not mind at all that they credited her with the cure. The older women brought her dates and listened to her poetry with real appreciation, bringing drums and setting her words to music with which they all joined in; the mothers urged her to teach their little ones to write the Tifinagh, and the unmarried girls came to her increasingly for slips of paper to put in their amulets – the more devout ones asking for verses from the Qur’an to carry around for good luck, the more superstitious amongst them seeking love charms and magic to ward off the tehot, the evil eye. In return, they offered advice of their own: ‘You should marry and stay here with us,’ said Khadija.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Nofa chided. ‘Mariata is Kel Taitok: why should she lower herself to marry a man of the Kel Teggart?’
There was a certain amount of head-nodding at this, but Yehali said fiercely, ‘Our men are as good as those of the Hoggar! They are tall and handsome and toughened by much hardship. It has made them sinewy of limb and serious of spirit.’
‘Too serious, where Ibrahim is concerned!’ so
meone said, and they all laughed. ‘But his brother Abdallah is a good man, and Akli is good company. She need not marry if she does not wish to spoil her descent-line.’
‘She must want to dance!’
‘Ah, well if you want to dance, then Kheddou is the one.’
‘He likes to dance too much,’ said Nofa, and they all brought their headscarves across their mouths and laughed uproariously, and Mariata suddenly realized that here they used the word for dance to mean other things entirely, and found herself blushing.
‘Ah, we have all danced with Kheddou in our time,’ agreed Tadla. ‘He is an excellent dancer. But you’ll have to be quick if you wish to take your pleasure with him, for he marries Leïla next moon.’
‘Poor Leïla: she will have her hands full with that one,’ Nofa said with mock seriousness, and they all took the double meaning and fell about laughing at her wit.
Mariata shook her head, grinning. They were a scurrilous lot, these women of the Kel Teggart; they worked hard, for without many slaves or harratin to do the daily manual work there was not much time for leisure, but when they did enjoy themselves it was clearly with a whole heart.
Tadla sighed. ‘It is not easy to find a good husband here, it is true. We have lost men on the salt road, and others have gone into the mountains. There are not enough good men to go around.’
‘There is Bazu.’
‘Too fat.’
‘Makhammad?’
‘Too religious.’
‘Azelouane?
‘Too old.’
‘There is Amastan ag Moussa,’ someone said. ‘He is the son of an amenokal after all. He would not sully Mariata’s bloodline.’
There was a pause as if people were weighing their words before letting them free. After a time Yehali said, ‘He is very handsome, the son of Rahma. He has the most beautiful hands,’ and after that they all joined in with good things to say about him.
‘He is the best poet in the region. He beat all comers at the ahal in the year before the locusts came.’
‘And he can dance too – no, really dance; don’t be so rude, Nofa, you will shock Mariata. He has the most nimble feet and he can leap as high as a gazelle.’
‘He is most expert when it comes to racing camels.’
‘He can wield a sword.’
‘He is a good shot too!’
‘He has travelled far.’
From all this Mariata learnt that before he had ‘gone away’, as the girls put it, Amastan had been a celebrated visitor to the settlement, passing through infrequently en route from his annual trading trips to visit his family and bring treats for the girls. He had been popular and admired, a proper figure of a man, and one they all would have wished to marry. They were sad when they learnt he had found a bride elsewhere. But then … Tadla changed the subject. ‘Well, maybe not Amastan. He is not a lucky man, and in these days we all need lucky men, eh, Nofa?’
‘Lucky and rich,’ Nofa agreed. ‘Five camels at least.’
‘Ten!’
Mariata let their joking float like a cloud around her. She had not needed their praise of Amastan to rekindle her interest in him, for in truth she thought of little else. But it was curious to note that the other girls had not noticed his attention towards her over these past weeks, and for that she was grateful. Every evening as the sun set, he would seek her out and they would walk together and talk a little; once he had taken her hand and brushed it with his lips. When he looked at her she felt as if his eyes were burning her; it was not a comfortable sensation, but even so she longed for it and a day was not a good day unless it ended with him gazing from his place at the men’s fire to where she sat amongst the other women at their own fire.
And because she was a part of his community she found herself embracing a way of life she once would have thought beneath her. She immersed herself in the quiet daily rhythms, every morning rising at dawn to help to milk the goats, and on those days when she did not accompany the animals while they foraged she was content to stay behind at the village, pounding the grain to make the day’s tagella with the other women, listening to their chatter and gossip, entertaining them with her poetry as they prepared and drank endless pots of green tea. It was perhaps the very simplicity and absorbing practicality of this new routine that brought her this unaccustomed sense of peace.
Even so, every morning before setting out with the goats or going about her other chores she would walk out to the highest vantage point beyond the village and gaze eastward for any sign that Rhossi ag Bahedi had come to take her and his camels back with him to the Aïr. But one day she realized that five full moons had come and gone since she had fled the Kel Bazgan, and that if he had still not managed to link her disappearance to his hated aunt, or persuaded the harratin to give him the information they held, that it was unlikely he was going to suddenly turn up in the Teggart. For her part, Rahma had arranged that the two distinctive white mehari be taken to the camel market far to the north, at Goulemime, and there their Bazgan brands were subtly changed and they were sold for an excellent price, for it was unusual that two white Tibestis of such quality should make it to market in that area. She had given into Mariata’s hands all the money the animals fetched, which was a not inconsiderable sum, even after the traders had taken their cut, and refused a small commission for her part in arranging the sale. ‘You are a woman alone now, and as I know to my cost it is hard to be a woman of no family and no wealth. You might think to invest some of it in a caravan when the azalay sets out again, maybe entrust it to Amastan when he takes up the trade once more.’
Mariata did not think this was likely, for in the conversations she had shared with Rahma’s son in these past weeks he had professed little interest in returning to the salt road; not that she had managed to persuade him to talk of many serious things, for every time she moved towards dangerous ground, he would become silent and withdrawn. But she raised the subject again when they walked together down by the river that night.
‘I have seen enough of the old trade routes in my time,’ he said, his low voice a contrast to the singing of the frogs, which was shrill with challenge and desire. ‘I shall never travel them again.’
‘Tell me what you have seen,’ Mariata begged, her eyes shining. ‘Your mother told me that you once swore to walk to the Arbre de Ténéré, to see the sea and to touch the snows on the highest mountains; she also told me you achieved all of these things.’
Amastan’s eyes glittered with the red light of the sunset, but since the rest of his face was hidden behind the very proper arrangement of his veil Mariata could not read his expression. Then he sat down on a rock and spoke as if addressing an audience, all the while turning over a dried twig of oleander in his hands as if the repetitive movement enabled him to channel his memories, and all at once she remembered the storyteller who had once visited her home in the Hoggar, who came with a bag of pebbles, each pebble relating to one of the great tales, and how he had offered the bag so that the women might choose the story they wished to hear. Amastan spoke with just the same authority.
‘I have crossed the desert of stone and the desert of rock and the desert of sand; on foot and on camel I have traversed the old roads. I have seen the sun come up like a fire over the dune-sea; I have seen night steal every colour from the world, leaving everything a ghostly grey, while above the stars shone like a houri’s jewels. I have carried indigo from the dyeworks at Kano, millet and dates to and from Ingal and Ghat. I have seen the gold markets of the Tafilalt and crossed the great Atlas; it was there I saw the pure white substance they call snow, which though cold burns the skin like flame. In the famed city of Marrakech I walked the central square and was assailed by the clamour of dancing boys and snake charmers and speaking birds, magicians, soothsayers and charlatans by the hundred. I have seen the wide blue ocean at Agadir, which like the endless dunes shimmers and shifts beneath the caresses of the wind just as our own sands do; I have followed the foot-worn market-routes through the A
nti-Atlas Mountains from the fortified walls of Taroudant over the mighty Jebel el-Kest and down into the lovely oasis town of Tafraout …
‘It was while we crossed the Great Emptiness on our way to the saltworks at Bilma and Kauar in the Sudan that I saw the famed Arbre de Ténéré: a solitary acacia standing like an ancient sentinel in the middle of the cruellest waste land in the world. Our azalay ringed it and paid our respects as caravanners have for centuries; it endures, blind and thorny, alone and hardy, in the blasting heat of the desert as a talisman for the survival of our people. It is said that if the Arbre fails, so will the People of the Veil. I wanted to see it, just once, to ensure it lived still. But that was five long years ago, and, given what I have seen since, I fear it is dying, or may even be dead.’
The twig snapped loudly between his hands, and even the frogs fell silent at the sharp report. Amastan sat staring into space as if seeing the bleakest of futures playing itself out on the vast, reddening sky.
Mariata sighed, entranced. ‘If I were a man I would surely spend my life on a camel’s back travelling from wonder to wonder.’
Amastan snorted, brought back to himself. ‘Ah, little wanderer: what a romantic view of the world you have! I have learnt to spin words like dervishes, to bewitch and blur reality. You don’t often hear the poets telling of the difficulties of digging out a drifted-in well, of the stench of decayed bodies and shit found rotting in the base; of the disgusting taste of brackish water that you have to drink to stay alive, of the foul gripes that rack you; of how your skin feels like old leather tanned by the flying sand and your arse is so pained by the wood of the saddle that it is easier to walk than to ride, even though the hot ground burns through the soles of your sandals. They never make songs about how even in the deepest wilderness weevils get into the bread and the dried strips of goat meat you eat become so hard you can break your teeth on them because there is no water in which to soak it and all your saliva has dried up; nor do they make verses that tell how the tongue swells till it feels as if your mouth is full of wadded cotton; how fear and thirst lead you to hatred and distrust of every stranger. And no one says a word about the scorpions, the horned vipers, the jackals or the bandits. I do not think the azalay is a place for a girl.’