The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  Mariata took a step back. ‘Do what?’

  ‘What I can see in your eyes.’

  ‘What can you see in my eyes?’

  ‘The desert.’

  ‘I … ah …’ She made to leave, but the man touched her arm.

  ‘Forgive me. Too much time spent in the empty place makes my senses too acute. With that complexion and those eyes you must be Kel Taitok, no? It is rare to see one of such lineage in this place.’

  Mariata was surprised to see him adjust his veil upwards to cover even more of his face than he had before. It was a gesture of great respect, one she had not seen for a long time.

  ‘I am travelling north from here and have no further need for this camel, or for my desert gear. Take it with my blessing.’

  She stared at him, lost for words. At last she said, ‘I cannot just … take it.’

  ‘Think about it overnight. I will still be here tomorrow.’

  Mariata ran back to the Saari house, filled with equal measures of terror and excitement. Was this the miracle she had hoped for, or was it too good to be true? But when she got there, it was to find that the hand of fate had made another intervention. Mama Erquia had fallen suddenly and gravely ill, so ill that Aicha was rushing around the house, gathering the necessary items they would need to take with them to the hospital in Meknes.

  ‘There you are!’ her stepmother exclaimed angrily. ‘Get your things: quickly!’

  Mariata stared at her. ‘Me?’

  ‘We will choose a dress for your wedding in Meknes.’

  It was the last thing Mariata wanted to do, but she tried not to make her panic too obvious. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Meknes is a big town: I would be frightened to go there. Surely you and Hafida would make a better decision when it comes to a dress for me.’ She waited, her heart banging.

  Aicha sucked her teeth. ‘You are right,’ she declared at last. ‘You must stay here and cook for the men: lunch every day, and a meal when they close the shop each night. We will be back in a week, insh’allah. Mama Erquia would hate to miss the wedding.’

  And indeed, though she could not speak, the old woman gave Mariata the evil eye when she walked past.

  The women left the next day on the dawn bus for Meknes with old Mama Erquia wrapped in blankets; and the men left the house not long afterwards to open their grocery, leaving Mariata on her own. It was the first time she had ever been alone in the house. The silence was strangely oppressive, as if something waited its moment to burst out of one of the empty rooms and prevent her escape. She fairly ran about the place, gathering the things she would need, which included a roll of notes she had one day found inside an ornamental jar when cleaning a high shelf in the guest salon. The roll had lost weight since the last time she had seen it, and from this she conjectured that Aicha had taken some money with her to the city, but there was still a considerable sum left. She tucked the notes into the fringed leather bag she had brought out of the Adagh, the one Tana had made for her, which contained a small knife, its haft inscribed with Tifinagh symbols; a whetstone; two flints; a skein of cord; three candles; several small bundles of herbs; a Cross of Agadez; a shiny metal cylinder for which she knew no use; and the scrap of Amastan’s indigo wedding robe, with his blood dried hard upon it.

  She arrived at the grocery just before noon, wearing her most distinctive robe. Azaz and Baye sat outside playing cards on the dusty pavement. Just inside, watched by three or four customers who were clearly in no hurry to go back out into the baking heat of the day, Ousman and his father-in-law, Brahim, were pouring rice from a sack into a rat-proof plastic drum. They all regarded her with curiosity as she had appeared so unexpectedly, bearing a large tajine between her hands and a bag of flatbreads over her arm. She beamed at them, placed the tajine and bread on the counter and drew off the lid with a flourish. A fragrant cloud of lamb-and-spice-flavoured steam at once enveloped everyone in range and all the customers craned their necks and sniffed appreciatively. Ousman stared at his daughter in wonder. ‘It seems you have been hiding your light under a barrel, Mariata. Or,’ he said, regarding her shrewdly, ‘perhaps you have been playing up your stepmother all this time on purpose?’

  Mariata returned his scrutiny with wide-eyed innocence, the very picture of daughterly duty, and then ran back to the house safe in the knowledge that no one was going to miss her for some time. There, she changed her clothes, retrieved her travelling gear and wrapped her head in a veil that hid her identity from all. She ran down through the souq into the warren of dusty streets that led to the funduq with her heart jumping. What if the trader and his camel had gone? What if he had not meant what he said?

  And, indeed, when she arrived at the reed-roofed place in which all the passing travellers stabled their animals and slept rolled in their blankets in the little walled enclosures around the sides, there was no sign of the man. She walked around in a daze, staring at one prone figure after another as they took their afternoon naps, trying to remember what had made the trader so distinctive. She did not even know his name …

  ‘Daughter of the Hoggar, are you looking for me?’

  The relief almost made her buckle at the knees. There he was, tall and straight despite his age, his canny eyes taking in her thick travelling robes, sturdy footwear and the fringed bag slung across her back.

  ‘I have come to take you up on your word.’

  He could tell that she wanted to be on her way, but he made her sit and take tea with him anyway in a quiet corner of the funduq where they would not be overheard. There, he boiled water over a small brazier and brewed, slowly and meticulously and with full Tuareg ceremony, a small silver pot of terghele tea, while Mariata fizzed and bubbled with impatience. At last, over the second glass, he said solemnly, ‘If I give you my Moushi, it must be as a loan.’

  Mariata was affronted. ‘You said it was a gift!’

  ‘Moushi is a she, not an it.’ He leant closer. ‘Do you have a route planned out? Do you know where the hidden wells are, and where you will find enough pasturage to keep my camel alive? It is a long way from here to your ancestral home: over a thousand miles as the crow flies, and you are no crow. The terrain you must cross is amongst the cruellest on earth. She is not a young animal, and has already endured much: I would not have her expire on her way.’

  ‘You sound more concerned about your camel’s welfare than mine.’

  The old trader’s eyes crinkled. ‘She and I have passed five good years together and I am very fond of her. I have spent more time in her company than that of my wife.’ He paused. ‘In addition, she does not answer back.’

  Mariata reminded him of the hard words he had given her about his camel when they had last met.

  He thought about this for a long moment. ‘Ah, well, it is true that I said that about her. We had just finished a taxing journey and she was being … recalcitrant. Again, I believe I may have misspoken myself. Now, the fear of losing her reminds me of her good qualities …’

  Mariata glared at him. ‘I know what you are doing!’ she burst out. ‘You lead me to believe one thing, then introduce a problem in order to bargain up your price, just like all the faithless people in this place.’ She had just experienced the same situation with the neighbour who had cooked the tajine for her and ended up having to double her price.

  The trader did not seem to take offence at this diatribe but merely continued mildly, ‘Also, in the time we have been here she appears to have formed a tender attachment to two other camels in the funduq, and it seems to me it would be cruel to separate them.’

  This beggared belief. Mariata scrambled to her feet, reaching into her robe as she did so. A moment later the roll of notes lay in the dust on the ground between them. ‘There! Take that for your wretched, ugly, bad-tempered, moth-eaten animal!’

  The old man’s shoulders shook and a peculiar wheezing sound escaped his tagelmust. He made no move to pick up the money. Instead, he said, ‘Wait here.’

  Half an hour passed. Ma
riata paced. Forty minutes went by. She watched the sun creep gradually across the reed-roof, the striped shadows subtly elongating themselves across the courtyard like tabby cats stretching. She left the funduq and stared up and down the streets surrounding it, but there was no sign of the trader, or the camels. She went back in again and sat in the shadows once more and waited, brooding. He must have left her, embarrassed by his change of mind, shamed that he had broken his word. More likely he had never meant a word of it in the first place. Gloom settled over her, weighted her to the ground, sapped her resolution. The idea of returning to spend yet another night in the house while maintaining an apparent equanimity was horrible, but soon she would have no choice but to admit defeat, go back, stash her collection and meet the suspicious eyes of her family as she failed to produce a meal that matched her noon tour de force. And then the next day she would have to steel herself once more to repeat the ruse, return to the souq to find, haggle for and buy another camel and equip herself for the journey and start out once more. Sighing, she levered herself to her feet. And just at that moment the man reappeared in the doorway. Not caring now that she drew attention to herself, Mariata ran across the funduq to meet him.

  ‘I thought you had gone …’ she started, but the trader put a finger to the cloth that veiled his mouth and motioned for her to follow him outside into the hot, unshaded street.

  There she found not one camel, or even two, but three: his Moushi, another animal of fair appearance and a third scruffy Mauretanian. With a clicking of his tongue he brought the leading two camels to their knees, mounted up on the one he had called Moushi and waited expectantly. Mariata stared at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Moushi will not go into the desert without me or her beloveds. So it seems that you will have company on your journey to the Hoggar.’

  This was not at all what she had planned and she could not understand his motive in offering to accompany her. It could not be to rob her, since he had spurned the offer of the money. Would he sell her to slavers or, worse, to the French? It was easy to conjure any number of lurid possibilities. She looked at him closely. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘If you are going to spend all that remains of the day asking questions, perhaps I will reconsider.’

  But Mariata stood her ground, chin tilted pugnaciously. ‘I need to know your reasons.’

  The trader said nothing, but his eyes dropped eloquently to her belly. ‘I am no expert in the world of women, but to cross the desert alone in your … condition … would surely result in not one death but two.’ He paused.

  Mariata flushed. ‘I see that you have an eagle’s gaze.’ She bit her lip, caught between her pride and her need. At last she said, ‘My father has remarried with a settled woman; she has been trying to rid herself of the embarrassment of a pregnant stepdaughter ever since. At last she managed to sell me to a butcher.’

  The old trader sucked in his breath. ‘And your father allows this?’

  ‘He is in thrall to his new wife.’

  ‘Will they come after you?’

  Mariata had not even considered this possibility. Would they? She could not imagine that her father would do so, for Aicha would be delighted by her disappearance, but what about the butcher? Having his soon-to-be wife run away would surely make a fool of him, and she could not imagine he would bear that lightly. ‘Someone might.’

  The old man thought for a while, then gave a nod. ‘The women of our people are proud and hardy, but even for Tin Hinan herself the journey would be arduous and fraught with unusual dangers. A vicious border dispute has broken out between Morocco and Algeria: they are calling it the War of the Sands. You will need to know where best to cross between the two territories if you want to avoid soldiers, and in my opinion soldiers are always best avoided, especially for a woman travelling alone. And unfortunately they are not confined only to the border region: their vehicles are to be found along all the main routes to Tindouf. It is necessary to know the less-well-travelled roads and the hidden wells if one is to travel with any degree of safety.’

  Mariata digested this silently, remembering: she had heard people talking about the conflict these past weeks but simply hadn’t paid any attention to their chatter. ‘It seems much to ask of one who has only just finished a long journey out of the desert, to accompany an unknown woman back into that wilderness again.’

  ‘To let you go alone into the Sah’ra would weigh heavy on my conscience till Allah calls me home.’

  ‘But why would you do such a thing for a stranger?’ Mariata persisted.

  The old man smiled. ‘The People of the Veil are one people, for all their age-old tribal rivalries. Besides, if you were to tell me your name, and I were to tell you mine, we would be strangers no longer. I am Atisi ag Baye, of the Kel Rela.’

  The Kel Rela. Some called them the People of the Goats and looked down on them because of their lowly descent. Mariata pressed a palm against her heart. ‘I am Mariata ult Yemma, daughter of Tofenat, thousandth daughter of the Mother of Us All. I have heard tell in one version of my ancestor’s history that Tin Hinan made her journey to the Hoggar with her servant Takama, from whom the Kel Rela trace their ancestry. I have also heard that history may repeat itself in unlooked for ways. And that the hand of fate has sleight and craft to match that of any magician.’

  For a moment a glint lit the old trader’s eye. Then he nodded his head slowly as if considering the all-confounding mysteries of the universe.

  Night falls swiftly in the south of Morocco. One moment the landscape is filled with scarlet light, each rock, bush and undulation bathed by its lambent fire; the next the sun’s baleful eye blinks and is gone, leaching all colour from the scene, leaving it bleak and grey.

  Mariata rocked and swayed on the back of her docile mount, her back aching from the unaccustomed motion, her tailbone jolting against the hard pack on which she was perched, her knuckles white from gripping the crosspiece of the old-fashioned wooden saddle tree. Ahead of her Atisi ag Baye sat tall and straight, at one with his camel and the rest of the world. But every time the discomfort assaulted her she reminded herself of the fate that lay behind her back in Imteghren, and as if by magic her spine would straighten and the aches would disappear, for a while at least.

  They had been riding like this, slowly and methodically, without pause, for five hours through the low sandy hills, dusty palmeraies and scrubby vegetation that lay south of the Tafilalt plateau. Eventually they moved into a valley through which caravans had passed for a thousand years on their way from the desert to the sea. The corridor cut through the surrounding limestone was wide and deep; moonlight glimmered on the pockets of water in the bottom of the valley and was glimpsed through the waving fronds of the palms. They passed a myriad of little settlements whose golden lights punctuated the gloom, and saw huddled beneath the walls of a ruined kasbah a group of men who had lit a small brazier and were cooking their evening’s meal. The scent of it drifted up to Mariata, reminding her of her own hunger. Atisi made a quiet greeting to the men, who returned the greeting and watched them pass, their eyes scanning the pale oval of Mariata’s uncovered face with interest, before turning back to their tajine.

  She heard her own voice, plaintive as an owl’s call: ‘Can we not rest for a while?’

  There was a long pause in which the silence hung heavy. Then the old trader said, ‘Information has a way of finding those who seek it; and if you would not be found and returned to Imteghren, we must put as much distance between ourselves and the Tafilalt as we can.’

  When at last they made camp for the night, Mariata found it hard to sleep, though she was bone-weary. She lay on her back on a coarse camel-hair blanket and stared at the sky. Somewhere up there, Amastan was looking down on her, his spirit wandering the distant black sky. She searched each cluster of stars for some sign of him, but they gave nothing back but a cold and pitiless regard. She must have slept a little, for when she was aware of herself again, the stars had moved
position and a portion of sky was paling. A short distance away the camels shifted and snorted; one of them lumbered to its feet as the sun showed its gold rim over the eastern horizon, as if it knew there would be no more rest, that the journey must be continued.

  Atisi surprised her by making porridge over a small fire and bringing a bowl of it to her and then moving away so that she could eat in privacy. Even on the road it did not do for men and women to eat together or to see one another eating. It tasted far better than she had expected, hot and savoury with the aroma of pepper, and she ate quickly, her hunger sharpened by the chilly dawn air.

  Vehicles passed them early in the morning on the road to Merzouga. They were commercial lorries, painted in red and blue, hugely overloaded and festooned with charms and plastic flowers, and with amulets and Qur’anic verses dangling from their rear-view mirrors. Their drivers regarded the pair with greater than usual curiosity, and after the third of these passed them Atisi drew the camels off the road. ‘Now we must deviate from the usual route. There is an oasis at Tahani. We will make our way towards it and take a pause there till darkness comes. It will be easier to cross the border when night falls. Then we will head into the Hamada du Guir and let the camels graze there overnight. It’ll be the last good pasturage they get before the sands. And after that’ – he spread his hands – ‘our lives will be in God’s hands.’

  In the heat of midday Mariata swayed with the gait of her camel, oblivious to the monotony of dried watercourses and parched hills through which they moved. The sun was like a hammer on the top of her head, beating incessantly, making her temples throb. Trickles of sweat ran from the nape of her neck and down her back. The weight of her growing belly dragged at her spine, making it ache, but she did not have the energy to shift position in the hard saddle and rode as if in a stupor, mesmerized by the motion of the animal beneath her. They saw no one but a herder tending a flock of scrawny-looking black goats that scavenged for the last morsels of vegetation in the unpromising landscape. The herd’s ram was thin and wild-looking; it turned its yellow slotted eyes upon them balefully as they passed, as if it knew that its herd was on a doomed journey to death by starvation. She could not help but wonder whether her own journey was equally doomed.