The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  ‘Offer? For me? What, am I a camel to be bought and sold?’

  Aicha laughed mirthlessly. ‘Sadly, nothing so useful.’

  One day a man knocked at the door. No one was in but Mariata and Mama Erquia, who was asleep. Mariata peered through the window grille beside the door. Outside stood a thickset man wearing a frayed brown robe, a bloodstained apron and a knitted hat pulled down low over his ears. His sleeves were too short, stopping three or four inches above the wrist to reveal large, hairy forearms; his hands looked filthy.

  Not liking the look of him, Mariata called through the grille, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’

  ‘My name is Mbarek Aït Ali,’ the man replied gruffly, ‘and I have some business with the lady of the house.’

  ‘Aicha Saari is not here at present, but she’ll be back later,’ Mariata told him sharply, hoping he would go away. There was a musty scent to him, deep and animal, that was wafting through the window. She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘I’ll wait for her.’

  ‘You can do what you like,’ Mariata said curtly.

  The man cocked his head. ‘To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?’ His accent was rough: the polite phrasing sounded sarcastic.

  Mariata drew herself up. ‘I am Mariata ult Yemma of the Kel Taitok.’

  The man took a step closer and applied an eye to the grille. Affronted, Mariata took a step back. ‘I see they do not lie,’ he said after a moment, and went away, laughing to himself.

  When Aicha returned, Mariata said, ‘There was a man here looking for you. He said his name was Mbarek Aït Ali.’

  Aicha looked surprised. ‘But he knew I would not be at home: I passed his shop on the edge of the souq an hour ago and he asked how Mama Erquia was.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did you let him in?’

  ‘He smelt disgusting,’ Mariata said, ‘and he was wearing a bloodied apron; of course I didn’t let him in.’

  A little while later there came another knock at the door and Aicha bustled off to answer it. Curious, Mariata slipped into the side room to see who it might be. It was a man with a deep voice that she thought she recognized. The usual greetings were exchanged and then Aicha said, ‘Mariata told me you had called by.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘I came to make you a proposition.’ He sounded very pleased with himself.

  ‘A proposition?’

  ‘An important proposition.’

  ‘Are you sure it is not my husband you want to see?’

  ‘I believe these matters are usually brokered by the women of the house. Unfortunately, I have no female intermediaries I can ask to act for me since Mother died.’

  ‘Well,’ said Aicha, sounding perplexed, ‘I suppose you had better come in, then.’ But, after a look at his grubby shoes and frayed robe, she ushered him into the utility room rather than the guest salon, Mariata following at a safe distance.

  Mbarek cast a sardonic glance around the shabby room. ‘Is this where you conduct all your marriage discussions, Mistress Saari?’ he asked, amused.

  ‘Marriage?’ Aicha sounded surprised. ‘I thought you’d come to sell me meat.’

  At her listening post, Mariata gasped. A butcher? A butcher had the gall to come and offer for a princess descended from Tin Hinan? She remembered the bull-necked man in the bloody apron and laughed aloud.

  The sound alerted Aicha. ‘One moment,’ she told the butcher. ‘Go through to the salon and I’ll bring us some tea.’

  In the kitchen Aicha caught Mariata trying to escape into the courtyard. ‘Come with me,’ she said sternly. ‘And be civil.’

  ‘You expect me to be civil to a man like that? A common butcher, with animal blood on his hands and slaves’ blood in his veins?’ Outrage drew out of her generations of Tuareg snobbery.

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers!’ Aicha snapped. ‘Now, go and fetch a headscarf to hide those wretched rat-tails!’‘

  I realize it is not the done thing for a man to come into a house of women or to press his own suit,’ the butcher said, draining his glass of mint tea in a single mighty slurp, ‘but I have no female relatives I can call on to carry out such sensitive business. You must excuse my plain appearance and my plain words. I like to run all my own affairs, and in the same straightforward way.’ He placed the tea glass back on the tray and leant forward, hands clasped.

  Mariata could not help but notice the caked black blood beneath his fingernails. At least, she thought contemptuously, seeing the balled-up cloth between his dusty naked feet – which looked huge and monstrous and yellow-taloned against the delicate colours of the best rug – he had taken off his bloodstained apron before coming in.

  ‘So, in the spirit of honourable business, I have come to make you a good offer for the girl.’ He nodded towards Mariata, but kept his eyes on Aicha. ‘She’s a nomad, I know, but I won’t hold that against her. I’m sure I can soon civilize her, eh?’ He spread his hands apologetically. ‘Not that you haven’t already done a fine job of that, I’m sure.’

  ‘An offer for the girl?’ Aicha echoed, sounding rather cowed.

  ‘I find myself in need of a second wife.’

  ‘A second wife?’

  ‘The first one is ill; and besides she has got too fat to run around after the children –’

  ‘Perhaps you would be better off employing a servant than seeking another wife,’ Aicha said acidly.

  ‘Ah, well I would, but a man has certain … needs. Besides, we’ve only girls, and I’ll need sons to run the business.’ Mbarek stared frankly at Mariata and wet his mouth.

  Repulsed by the thick lips that now glistened like entrails, Mariata cried, ‘I wouldn’t be the second wife to a king, let alone a butcher!’

  Aicha shot her a furious look, but the butcher only laughed. ‘No need to chastise the girl on my behalf. I like a woman with spirit. I’ll pay you good bride-wealth for this one.’

  And he named, right out in the open and quite without shame, a sum that made Aicha’s jaw drop. ‘Goodness,’ she said weakly. ‘Goodness me.’ Then she just stared at him as if she had run out of words.

  Mariata took her opportunity. ‘You cannot buy a princess of the Kel Taitok,’ she said scathingly. ‘I suggest you go down to the livestock market and purchase yourself a nice fat ewe to fulfil your … needs.’

  She allowed herself the satisfaction of watching his slab of a face turn from ruddy brown to an unhealthy shade of puce before sweeping up the tea tray and marching from the room.

  The next week brought Omar Agueram and his sisters. Omar was a pleasant man, tall and well-enough made to remind Mariata somewhat of Amastan. When he smiled at her, she burst into tears, surprising herself and everyone present. The sisters bustled around, dabbing at her eyes so as not to smudge her kohl, patting her shoulder. When everything had calmed down, Omar started again. ‘I have a little carpentry business,’ he explained. ‘By the kasbah wall. I inherited it from my father, who died last year. Since then I’ve been working hard to get the customers back; he was ill for a long time and fell behind with the orders, so I didn’t have time to think about myself. But now the business is doing well, very well. I’ve got more work than I can handle and I’ve just taken on two assistants. I’m ready to settle down and take a wife. And I’d like children, lots of children.’

  Mariata felt the tears welling again. Another woman in her circumstances might well settle for this kind man and the life he had to offer, but her dreams still hung in rags around her. Forcing back the tears, she reminded herself of her Kel Taitok heritage and summoned her most haughty demeanour. ‘I’d prefer to raise goats,’ she said coldly.

  Omar looked taken aback; but she was a nomad girl and their ways were different, so he tried again. Leaning forward earnestly on the couch, he said, ‘We can have goats, if you like; and perhaps we’ll come to children later.’

  It was no good: he was too kind. Fearing she might suddenly lose control and accept his suit, Mariata ran from the room.

  The weeks went
by, and one by one they still continued to make their way to the Saari house, even though reports of the ‘Tuareg princess’ were less than inviting. There was a little round mechanic whose fingers bore the saffron stain of nicotine; an elderly schoolteacher whose wife had passed away; a bus driver with sunken cheeks and a greying moustache. Mariata was paraded in front of them like a prize mare; but even if she managed to keep a civil tongue, her eyes were insolent and it was not long before some of the sharper-eyed female relatives began to distinguish a swelling beneath even the most voluminous robe in which she was dressed. Aicha was beside herself. She cornered Mariata one morning in the courtyard. ‘You have to marry! You cannot bear a child without a husband in this town!’

  ‘I have a husband,’ Mariata answered dully.

  ‘He is dead! Dead, dead, dead!’ Aicha punctuated each word with a dig of a painted nail into her stepdaughter’s growing chest. ‘He’s dead and gone and he’s not coming back! Get that into your stupid, ignorant head.’

  Again and again Mariata saw Amastan fall back lifeless into the dust, the black stain spreading across his wedding robe. The loss of him and of their future together cut through her like the chillest desert wind. ‘He may be dead,’ she said bleakly, though even to admit this to Aicha felt like a defeat, ‘but this is his child and I will not let any other man claim it as his own.’

  ‘If you give birth to a bastard, it will shame the entire community!’ Aicha shrilled.

  ‘They will be talking of it from here to Ouarzazate!’ Mama Erquia added, grinning horribly.

  ‘Let me tell you this.’ Aicha wagged a finger in Mariata’s face. ‘If you do not take a husband I will have you thrown out into the street and proclaim that any man in the town may take you as his whore.’

  ‘My father will not let you treat me so.’

  ‘Ousman? Ousman will do the best thing for this family. How will his business thrive or his sons find themselves decent wives if everyone knows you to be a whore? I tell you this,’ she said, leaning closer, ‘if you have this baby, I will take it from you while you lie weak in the birthing bed and I will kill it with my own hands. I will wring its neck as easily as a chicken’s and take its wretched, stinking little body out to the abattoir where the wild dogs wait for bones.’

  Preposterous though this was, of all the things Aicha had threatened it rang most true to Mariata. She closed her eyes. ‘I will take Omar,’ she heard herself say faintly. ‘I will take the carpenter, Omar Agueram.’

  The old woman cocked an eye at her and then cackled. ‘You may wish with one hand and crap in the other,’ she cackled. ‘See which hand fills up first.’

  But the news when it came back was not good: Omar, under the urging of his family, who had heard the rumours of Mariata’s condition, had retracted the marriage offer. He sent his uncle to make his apologies to Ousman. ‘Omar regrets very much having placed the young lady in a false position, but it seems he is not in a situation to marry at this precise moment after all.’ The uncle, a dapper man in his fifties who worked for the caïd in the local administration, had a firm manner. He shook Ousman by the hand, turned on his heel and left.

  Aicha, who had been listening on the other side of the door, flew into a rage. At last, unable to bear her tears and fury and screeching voice, Ousman gave up his daughter’s right to choose. The next day Aicha sold her to the butcher.

  27

  That night Mariata dreamt.

  She dreamt of another woman, in another time. Even in profile the woman was tall and imposing, long-nosed and with an imperious air. She was dressed in a long dark robe, but her head was uncovered: long black braids streamed down her back to her waist. Emerald earrings dangled from her lobes. Nine gold bracelets decorated one slim arm; eight silver bracelets the other. Great strings of beads were draped around her neck and waist, beads of carnelian, agate and amazonite. Then she turned. Her bright black gaze, vivid in the luminous paleness of her skin, drilled into Mariata.

  ‘They tried to sell me too,’ she said. Her Tamacheq was oddly accented, lilting, but it was still clearly recognizable as the language of the People of the Veil. ‘They tried to make me marry against my will. To a son of the Roman governor: can you imagine? They wanted me to take a foreigner to my bed: it would be an honour for our family, they said, to ally themselves with the Romans. With the oppressors!’ She tossed her head and her black hair flew out like snakes. ‘I refused: they punished me. They locked me away until I told them I would marry him. I made it seem as if they had finally worn me down and won the argument.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Mariata in her dream; but she knew the answer already. The stranger’s face was blurring now, fading in and out of focus. One moment the brow became more pronounced and she saw her mother’s features imposed over those of the woman; then the nose and chin lengthened and wrinkles wreathed the skin, and there was her grandmother, with her eagle’s beak and her sharp eyes. A succession of other women’s features flowed across the stranger’s face, one after another, faster and faster, young and old; and yet always there remained certain constants: the imperious eyes, the fierce brows, the strong bones that Mariata also shared.

  ‘I walked away from Imteghren,’ said Tin Hinan. ‘I walked into the wilds. I walked through the fields and into the savannah and across the desert, until I came to the mountains. It took me months but I made the journey, and at the end of that journey, in the foothills of the great Hoggar, I set down my tent. And where I stopped, I founded a people: the Imazighen, the Free People. Your people. Our people. Stay free, Mariata: do not let them sell you into a shameful marriage, do not give your child into their hands. Be proud; be strong. You are my kin, my blood. I am in you; you carry me within you, as do all the women of our line – my words, my power, my strength. It is time for you to follow in my footsteps, to make the same journey I once made. It will be harder now, for you. The desert has spread her robes out far and wide; and the child you carry will sometimes feel more like a burden than a blessing. But I will be with you every step of the way.’

  The dream of Tin Hinan hung around Mariata like a nagging grandmother. For days it wagged its finger at her, reminding her constantly of her dire situation, goading her to action. In truth, Mariata needed no goad. She knew well enough that she would have to leave the Saari house, Imteghren, and the whole civilized world; and that she would have to do it before they married her to the butcher. But, while her instinct was to pack up her few possessions and simply walk out early one morning before the family was awake, she knew this would not do. She had made that mistake the first time she had headed for the desert and she would not make the same mistake again. This time there would be stealth; there would be planning.

  The decision – huge and immanent – sat sturdy and reassuring inside her like an invisible twin to Amastan’s amulet: it acted as a prophylactic against the horror of the future that awaited her with the butcher in the same way that the amulet warded off the negative influences of the universe.

  A date was set for the wedding, and in this Mariata had an initial small gift of luck, for the butcher’s cousins had to travel from Casablanca, and his aunt from Marseilles. She would not fly (it was not natural) and boats took time. Aicha was angry and tried to persuade the butcher to have the wedding first, followed by a separate celebration for the relatives, but he was surprised and affronted by the suggestion.

  ‘Why would you say such a thing?’ He puffed out his cheeks, then let the air out in a rush. ‘Is there some reason for the haste?’

  Aicha assured him there was not, only that the weather was so fine at this time of year that it would surely be more conducive to those relatives, especially the elderly, who would find the sudden drop in night temperatures the next month a severe shock to the system; then she marched straight down to the souq in search of cotton bark root. The old medicine trader she found there pretended not to hear her request and tried instead to sell her snakeskins – to guard against disease – dried chameleons and
lizard’s feet to combat the evil eye, hawk root and wolf onion. When she pressed him again for the cotton bark root, he sent her away angrily. ‘Such things are against the will of God!’

  For her part, whenever Mariata had a chance to visit the souq she searched out travellers in the funduq, telling them her brothers were about to make a desert crossing and that she was worried for them and listened attentively to their stories of drifted-in wells and sick camels, storms and swallowing sands. Another woman might have been daunted by these tales of doom, but Mariata was fierce in her determination and the confidence of her ancestry and kept asking questions and taking careful note of their answers. From one she found out the points to look for in a riding camel; from another the likely price she would have to pay for a good example. It was, of course, more than she could possibly lay hands on; but she refused to give up on that account. Something would turn up. She walked from camel to camel, looking them up and down, comparing them; and one day one of the veiled men came up to her as she was examining his beast. ‘Do you like her?’ he asked.

  Mariata was taken aback. ‘She seems … nice.’

  ‘She has a filthy temperament and hates all humankind. She has a hideous bellow and a poisonous bite and will take little or no instruction. In short, she is just like every woman I have ever known.’

  Mariata laughed. ‘A fine independent creature she sounds.’

  There was a pause. Then the trader said, ‘I’ve seen you in the funduq before. Why do you come here?’

  Mariata reeled off the usual story about her brothers’ planned long journey, but the man’s regard was sceptical. ‘You must care very deeply for your brothers,’ he said at last.

  ‘I do.’ Mariata felt herself colouring. Quickly she embroidered her tale, adding that her brothers might be in need of another riding camel for their caravan, but she could tell halfway through her overlong explanation that the old trader was not fooled. His eyes bored into her. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said.