Blood & Ink

by Stephen Davies

  Written in Ephesus, copied in Damascus, sold to the

  Sultan Al-Mansur of Marrakesh, and brought to Timbuktu

  by Ahmad Baba on his return from exile.

  My shoulders and back are throbbing painfully. I’ll read the manuscript, and then I’ll try to sleep.

  Manuscript 9576: the tariq of Isa ibn Maryam

  Isa ibn Maryam was a prophet great in word and deed. Yahya of Ephesus recorded many of the prophet’s miracles and wise judgements.

  One morning, Isa ibn Maryam was preaching in the temple courts, when the teachers of the law brought in a woman caught in adultery. They stood her in front of everyone and said to Isa, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Prophet Musa commanded us to stone such women to death. What do you say?’

  Isa ibn Maryam bent down and wrote in the sand with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped and wrote in the sand.

  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first and then the younger ones. Finally, only Isa was left, with the woman still standing there.

  Isa straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

  ‘No one, master,’ she said.

  ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Isa said. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’

  May the blessing of Isa ibn Maryam be upon us.

  A hundred lashes. This very afternoon. A hundred lashes.

  I am alone and staring at the four walls of my cell, drab and windowless, a dismal scene. The only things in the cell are this short wooden bench I’m sitting on, and the stinking bucket in the corner.

  A hundred lashes. My stomach heaves every time I think about it.

  Mama came to see me earlier on. I spent ten minutes crying on her neck, and then she had to go.

  She tried to give me strength, of course. She told me Baba is out of the cleaning cupboard and in a proper ward. And she got a call from Aisha on the manuscript flotilla. They are well out of the danger zone and on their way to Mopti.

  When Mama was here, my fears withdrew, but now she’s gone they crowd back with a vengeance.

  A hundred lashes. If I had not seen what twenty lashes does to a girl, I might not be so terrified. But I have, and I am. Faint cold fear is thrilling through my veins.

  Hasbi rabijal Allah. Hasbi rabijal Allah. Hasbi rabijal Allah.

  It’s no use. Not even dhikr can repel the terror.

  She gave me clothes, Mama did, and a copy of the Book, and a vial of oleander perfume sewn into the hem of a veil. I thought she would refuse me the perfume, but she didn’t. Dear Mama. She has no idea what I need it for.

  I run my hand over the bottle’s neck and hips, uncork it, run my finger round the rim. There is peace in this bottle, and freedom, and an end to pain.

  I am crying now. Madness is coming on me and there is nothing I can do. I feel it invading, capturing, occupying me.

  ‘Be careful with that perfume of yours,’ Uncle Abdel used to tell me. Uncle Abdel owns an Ahmad Baba treatise on the subject of oleander, and he has told me what it can do to a person.

  At first, of course, you will feel nothing out of the ordinary, but then your heart will start to speed up. After five minutes it will be pounding in your chest like the hooves of a cantering horse. Your skin will go waxy. Your fingers and toes will grow cold. After fifteen minutes you will begin to shake violently like an old woman at a djinni possession ceremony. And after thirty minutes you will be dead.

  It is a wondrous thing, oleander extract. Dab a little on your wrists and neck and breasts and it transports your mind to the luscious rose gardens of Paradise itself. Drink it, and it takes your body there.

  A Yamaha motorbike roars into earshot, and suddenly I hear the voice of Uncle Abdel at the door of the police station. He is arguing with the jailer, demanding to come in. Mama told him that I asked for perfume. He is afraid I might hurt myself.

  Too right I might.

  Blinking through tears, I carry the wooden bench to the door of my cell, and stand it on end, jamming the door handle so that it will not budge a millimetre. Nothing short of a grenade could open that door now.

  It’s good of Uncle Abdel to worry, but he is too late. He does not understand. He has never felt this darkness, or this depth of fear.

  I raise the bottle to my lips.

  What’s that?

  On the bottom of the bench, someone has scratched five words.

  Ko jemma boni fu, weetan.

  Underneath the proverb is a single letter K.

  Kamisa.

  My cheerful beautiful young cousin spent three days and three nights in this very cell, battling demons of her own.

  Ko jemma boni fu, weetan. Even if the night is bad, morning will come.

  I hurl the vial at the far wall of my cell. I cannot see for tears, but I hear the clay vial shatter into a million shards, and oh, the fragrance! The fragrance! The fragrance!

  Late afternoon prayer is finished, and though there is no window in my cell, I can hear the people gathering in Independence Square. They are coming to tut and to stare and to shake their heads in sorrow. Coming to see whether a fifteen-year-old girl can survive a hundred lashes, and to grieve for Timbuktu.

  I arrange my hair, put my veil on and slide the bench out from under the door handle. If I resist them now, I will only make it worse.

  A sudden hush comes over the crowd, and I hear the hum of an approaching Land Cruiser. It stops, the engine cuts and car doors slam.

  ‘The city of Timbuktu is built on Islam and only Islamic law applies in it. Bring out the evildoer!’

  Evildoer. That’s me.

  A key clicks in the lock and the door opens. My jailer steps aside to let me pass, then follows me along the silent corridor towards the light. There is the crowd, six deep around the edges of the square, men on one side and women on the other. Five turbaned boys with AK-47s are perching on the back of the Land Cruiser trailer. Muhammad Zaarib is somewhere nearby, with a whip. If I look at him I will collapse, I know I will.

  ‘Kadija Diallo,’ calls Redbeard through a megaphone. ‘Fornication. One hundred lashes.’

  The crowd gasps.

  One hundred. They are actually going to do it.

  My jailer kneels me down gently on the warm sand, and I hear Zaarib’s footsteps behind me. Try as I might I can’t stop myself shivering.

  Ya Rabbu rham. Lord, have mercy on me.

  For one insane moment I am thrilled to be the centre of attention, with the whole of Timbuktu looking at me.

  Then the first lash falls across my back.

  The thrill is gone and all that’s left is pain. I just have time to suck in a mouthful of air before the second lash falls. It hurts even more than the first one, more than I could have believed possible. I should have drunk the perfume when I had the chance.

  ‘Shame on you, you brutes!’ shrieks a woman in the front row.

  Three. I’m not brave like Halimatu or Ramata. I live in a nice villa and I sing songs and wear perfume and read books, but I’m no good at pain. Aisha used to laugh at me and call me soft. Sweet and soft, like fresh-baked bread.

  Four. Groans from the crowd, and anger.

  I reach down, pick up a handful of sand and squeeze it in my palm. What worked for Ramata can work for me as well. As soon as the sand turns to oil, my dear, then you can cry out.

  It doesn’t work for me. The fifth lash lands, my hands fly open into startled claws, and all the sand falls out.

  It didn’t turn to oil – it never does – but I will cry out anyway. I will cry out louder than a megaphone, louder than a Kalashnikov rifle, louder than the desert’s singing dunes. I will cry out more savagely than any girl has ever cried, and the grim facades of Independence Square will crumble into dust. Saharan fennecs will plug their furry ears and every mosque in Timbu
ktu will melt.

  I never wanted this. It’s hideous. I perch on the edge of the Land Cruiser trailer, my stomach heaving.

  On the fourth lash she reaches down, and scoops up a palmful of sand. On the fifth lash, she drops it with a whimper.

  This is going to kill her. I know that now without a trace of doubt.

  On the sixth lash she lifts her head and straightens her back, and through the veil comes a cry so loud it makes me jump.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’

  Zaarib’s whip arm stops. The crowd goes silent. They know the song, and so do I. I used to play it on the flute.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’

  Zaarib scowls and swings his arm a seventh time and Kadi is sobbing fiercely through her veil, and then she lifts her head and sings again.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’

  Once upon a time in the land of Tumana there lived two princes. Eight. When the chieftaincy was being passed down, one prince stole it from the other and banished him from Tumana. Nine. Eventually the rightful heir returned and had the chieftaincy given to him. Ten.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’

  Eleven. Instead of taking revenge on his brother, the new king forgave him all that he had done.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’ she sings, and pain lends power to her voice.

  I look up at the black standard flying from the roof of the town hall. Someone should silence her, or that flag will rend itself from top to bottom.

  Zaarib is doing his best, grunting with the exertion of each lash. ‘Shut up,’ he hisses. ‘Shut up, shut up!’

  Twelve. You cannot force God’s hand. Thirteen. Be patient, and the reign of the dark prince will pass. Fourteen. Hold fast, people. A dark regime cannot last.

  She sang this song at her friend’s wedding. That night I lurked at the back of the crowd disguised in beggar’s clothes, tormented by the beauty of her singing and the wrongness of it. This afternoon I sit up front with my AK-47, tormented by the beauty of her singing and the rightness of it.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’

  That wasn’t her. That was a boy’s voice.

  I turn towards the men’s side of the square. A boy in dark glasses has stepped forward out of line, as bold as a balaphone.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’ he sings.

  A girl in a pink veil on the other side of the square steps forward. Her hands are shaking but her voice is strong and pure.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’ she sings.

  An old man steps forward too. He is leaning heavily on his stick and his beard is as white as the Prophet Ibrahim’s.

  ‘Alla La Ke!’ His voice is quavery, discordant, but it imparts strange courage to his neighbours.

  ‘Alla La Ke! Alla La Ke!’ All over the crowd now, people are singing.

  Redbeard turns to me and the other Ninjas. ‘Control them,’ he mouths.

  Hamza and the others spread out around the square. They storm and scold and jab their rifles into people’s chests, but the singing continues, swelling to a crescendo in the rose-red square.

  I hop down from the trailer and stoop in the shadow of the truck.

  Isa ibn Maryam bent down and wrote in the sand with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped and wrote in the sand.

  I stretch out my finger and write. In the name of God, the Compassionate and Merciful.

  As I write the holy words, a flicker of movement catches my eye. A small black scorpion is scuttling towards me in the shadow of the truck. It looks just like the one that Redbeard killed last night.

  Perhaps, after all, it’s not too late.

  When you pick up a scorpion, confidence is the thing. You have to reach out smoothly and grasp it by the sting in one quick motion. Don’t hesitate. Just do it.

  Adrenalin clears my mind and hones my reactions. I reach out, pinch the scorpion’s sting and lift it up. It squirms in mid-air, furious.

  I walk round behind Redbeard and drop it down the back of his neck. He flinches and reaches over his shoulder to pat his back. The scorpion delivers its sting.

  The sting won’t kill him, I know that much. I just need to get his gun.

  Redbeard’s reactions are lightning quick. He shrugs his AK-47 off his shoulder, grasps his robe by the corners, whips it off over his head and launches into a bare-chested dance, trying to locate his attacker. He whirls and stomps like the pilgrims at the tomb of Sidi Ahmed.

  Nervous laughter mingles with the singing in the crowd.

  I pick up Redbeard’s gun and sling it across my body. Now I have two.

  Zaarib has not noticed his comrade dancing. He is concentrating on the lash. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. I wait until the whip is at its highest point, then grab the handle tight with my left hand.

  As Zaarib turns to look at me, I hit out hard with the heel of my right hand, hitting him in the forehead and following through until my arm is perfectly straight.

  The fake qadi falls backwards unconscious on the sand.

  A heel strike to the forehead is a useful weapon, Redbeard always says. It rocks your opponent’s brain inside the skull and lays him out for half an hour or more.

  I grab Kadi’s wrist and the knot of her wraparound skirt and drape her across my shoulders like a lamb.

  At last, Redbeard has realised what is going on. His finger moves for the trigger of his AK-47.

  And finds nothing there but his own protruding navel.

  I kick off my flip-flops and run.

  The crowd parts to let me through and closes up after me. I am running up Toumani Avenue, keeping close to the ornate mud-brick wall on my right. As I arrive at the Sidi Yahya Mosque, I hear a voice behind me.

  ‘Stop right there, Konana!’

  Hamza.

  There is no way I can outrun him, not with Kadi on my back. The main front doors of the compound are closed and bolted from inside.

  ‘Imam Cissé!’ I call. ‘Open up.’

  No answer.

  ‘Stop!’ shouts Hamza again. ‘Don’t think I won’t kill you, Konana!’

  The mosque is set into the compound wall, and its sloping sides are decorated with bundles of horizontal rodier palm. Once a year, on Timbuktu Replastering Day, these bristles serve as scaffolding. The boys of Timbuktu climb round from rung to rung and slap new mud onto the ancient walls.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ I whisper to Kadi, and I hop up onto the rung nearest the door. Higher and higher I climb, until I am level with the top of the wall.

  A burst of gunfire crackles from below, pulverizing the wall around my head.

  I stop climbing.

  ‘It was your fault, Konana!’ shouts Hamza. ‘If you had not fallen off that rope, my brother would still be here!’

  ‘I know!’ I shout. ‘I’m sorry, Hamza.’

  ‘Not good enough!’ he yells. ‘It should have been you on the top of that wall, Konana. It should have been you the sentry shot!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, and it’s the truth.

  ‘Throw me both those guns, Konana. And if you put your fingers anywhere near a trigger, I will shoot you both.’

  I let the AK-47s fall. They clatter on the sand.

  ‘Good,’ says Hamza. ‘Now drop the girl, as well.’

  He’s mad, I think. His grief and guilt has sent him mad.

  ‘Drop the girl,’ he repeats slowly, ‘or I will kill you both.’

  ‘If I drop her from this height, she’ll break her bones. You know she will.’

  ‘And if you don’t,’ drawls Hamza, ‘she will be shot.’

  ‘She’s innocent,’ I say. ‘Redbeard lied about last night. This girl’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘The sentence has been passed, Konana. Can’t undo it now!’

  He’s right, of course, but here’s the thing. I’m tired of sharia. I’m tired of lashing and being lashed. I’m tired of Timbuktu. I want to go home.

  Hamza raises his gun to shoot. ‘Sala
am alaikum, Konana,’ he says. ‘Peace be with you.’

  I feel a slender hand plunge into the pocket of my robe and out again. It takes a second for me to realise what Kadi is doing.

  Hamza squints, then frowns as he spots an object falling towards him. He sees it land and roll between his feet – a hand grenade!

  The fisherboy knows he has no more than three seconds till detonation. He sprints ten paces and throws himself to ground, burying his head between his elbows.

  The deadly fruit lies motionless on the sand.

  Kadi, you genius. You remembered my lucky grenade.

  Five seconds are all it takes to pick my way across the rodier rungs onto the shaded eastern buttress of the mosque.

  Hamza is up and on his feet again, but by the time his furious gunfire strafes the northern wall, Kadi and I are out of his line of fire and clambering down into the courtyard of the mosque.

  That crazy heaven-blessed grenade has saved my life a second time.

  Tethered to a pillar in a corner of the courtyard stands Imam Cissé’s chestnut stallion. I lay Kadija across its back and fumble with the knot round its fetlock.

  ‘Please, no,’ Kadija groans. ‘You know I hate horses.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘It’s not for long.’

  We canter out the south gate of the mosque and into the maze-like streets of Timbuktu’s old town. Left and right, and right again, we ride the dusty streets, and the sounds of gunfire and shouting recede into the distance. My rescuer handles the stallion well, taking the straights at Harmattan speed but treading cautiously round blind corners.

  We pass the Tamasheq charcoal stalls and the Well of Old Bouctou. We pass the house of the explorer Heinrich Barth, the bakery and the potters’ yard. We canter under the balanites trees to the plain where the Timbuktu butchers dance.

  The sun dips below the mud-brick roofs, and darkness comes upon us like a friend. The stallion slows to a stately walk, and we are out of the city at last, travelling east across a sandy plain. One day I will return to Timbuktu, but for now my place is with my manuscripts.

  ‘You must be thirsty,’ my rescuer says. ‘There’s a natural spring in those dunes over there, that only we shepherds know about. And maybe we’ll find a hollow baobab tree and some honey for your wounds.’