The Map of Salt and Stars

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  Mama slams a towel in the sink and ruffles her hair when we come in. When she sees me looking at the candles, she forces a smile.

  “Where’s the turpentine?” Zahra says.

  Mama smooths her hair. “Acrylics today.”

  “They smell a lot better.” I make like I’m plugging my nose. Huda pinches my ear. “Ow!”

  Mama half closes her eyes like she does when she’s enjoying something but she doesn’t want you to know she’s enjoying it. Huda sets the jar of cumin in the cabinet, and Zahra goes to wash up. I help Mama put away her brushes and wipe off her palette. I feel like I can hear bright Arabic vowels still floating around the room from Mama’s clients this morning. When I was little, she only ever used to talk to Baba in Arabic. Now she speaks Arabic to everyone and talks in English only to me. It makes me feel like I don’t belong.

  “What color is the letter E?” Mama asks.

  I roll my eyes. The color game again. “Yellow.”

  “And the letter A?”

  “Red. It’s been red ever since I learned how to read, Mama.”

  Mama always plays this game with me. She asks me what color is this letter or that number, like she’s testing me that they stay the same. Shouldn’t she know by now that they do? While I answer her questions, she glances at the map she’s been painting and then hangs a white sheet over it.

  I make a face. “That makes it look like a dead body.”

  Mama laughs, which means I’m not in trouble. “I painted something new,” she says. “A special map. I painted it one layer after another.”

  I look at her more closely. “Why would you paint something just to paint over it again?”

  “It has to be done that way,” Mama says. “Sometimes it’s not enough to put something down once. Sometimes it takes more than one try to get it right.”

  “Like that time Zahra put henna in Huda’s hair while she was sleeping.” I laugh. “And the next day we had to give her red highlights when it wouldn’t come out.”

  Mama laughs too. “Just because you add to something doesn’t mean it was broken. Maybe it just wasn’t finished.”

  Then something inside her cracks, and Mama sits down next to me at the table. She smiles, but she looks stretched and old, like she’s tugging the tangles out of a ball of yarn that’s buried inside her, like she’s searching for something she’s dropped in the dark.

  “Like the old tales you like,” she says, smiling with the good times in her eyes, the times when we had Baba. “You have to weave two stories together to tell them both right.” She presses her palms together, then opens them. “Like two hands.”

  Zahra comes in and opens the cabinet, looking for something. Her gold bracelet glints in the afternoon light. The jar of cumin rests just inside the cabinet door, still warm from Huda’s hands, its bronze powder shuddering when Zahra jostles the shelf.

  The Lion’s Request

  For another week, the bow of Rawiya’s ship sliced the sculpted waves. After a monthlong journey, they came at last to a rocky coastline with palm trees running down to the sea. Rounding the coast with Monte Gallo to their right, they entered a calm bay, where Palermo unfolded below the shadow of the green mountains. Rawiya stood on the deck and listened to the flurry of languages from the dock—Italian, Greek, Arabic, Norman French.

  The city of Palermo lay on the northwestern shore of Sicily, a flourishing and cultured island shared by Arabs and Greeks, Christians and Muslims alike. Gold-green palms clustered around white marble churches and dome-capped mosques. To the north of the city stood the limestone peak of Monte Pellegrino, curved like the hump of a whale.

  “Welcome,” al-Idrisi said as they stepped off the ship, “to Palermo, seat of the Norman king, Roger the Second.”

  Al-Idrisi’s second apprentice, Bakr ibn al-Thurayya, emerged from belowdecks. A lanky, black-haired boy dressed in a rich olive cloak, he was the son of Mahmoud al-Thurayya, a famous merchant whose family name was the Arabic word for the constellation the Greeks called the Pleiades—the Seven Sisters.

  Al-Idrisi clapped a hand on Bakr’s back. “I met Bakr’s father in Córdoba many years before,” he said. “I promised to teach Bakr everything I knew.”

  As al-Idrisi greeted King Roger’s servants, Bakr turned to Rawiya. “You’re sure to learn much as al-Idrisi’s apprentice, Rami,” he said. “Did you know he traveled to Anatolia at sixteen? Al-Idrisi comes from a line of nobles and holy men. They say he is descended from the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

  Rawiya nodded and held her tongue, anxious not to give herself away. But Bakr, who was a curious sort of boy, asked, “Did you come to Fes with a caravan? I came with a company of spice merchants. My father arranged for me to meet al-Idrisi in Fes. He said a few years apprenticing would be good for me.”

  Rawiya smiled in spite of herself. “I came alone,” she said, “on horseback.”

  “From Ceuta?” Bakr said. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed by bandits.”

  Now al-Idrisi, who had been listening to this conversation, gave his catlike smile and said, “I chose Rami for the wit and courage God gave him. Remember that, Bakr. You would do well to borrow some of that nerve yourself.”

  King Roger’s servants met Rawiya, Bakr, and al-Idrisi at the docks and led them to the palace. They passed under cream-colored arches, crowds of palmettos, and the church of St. John of the Hermits with its decorative stonework and red domes in the Arab style. The palace lay not far from the harbor, its windows embellished with carvings of roses and vines, its wooden gates decorated with gold filigree. Servants took their mounts to the stables. Rawiya kissed Bauza good-bye, slipping him some date sugar as he nuzzled her neck.

  “So this,” Bakr said, “is the horse that brought you safely to Fes.”

  Rawiya patted Bauza’s mane. “I’ve had him since he was a foal,” she said. Bauza was in the prime of his years, with the better part of a decade of good health left in him. “He’s a good, strong horse,” Rawiya said, “and braver than most.”

  They marched three abreast into the gilded hall of the Royal Palace of Palermo. Servants in gold and white silk stood at attention beneath the frescoed ceilings. The king came forward, dressed in the riches of his kingdom. His indigo robe was hemmed with red velvet and clasped with gold brooches. His red silk gloves were embroidered with golden eagles, and his red mantle was embroidered with a rearing lion, its muscles detailed with rubies. Its mane and haunches were decorated with rosettes indicating the stars of the constellation Leo, for in those days, people believed that the king was granted his power by the heavens.

  “My friend.” King Roger clasped al-Idrisi’s hands, refusing to let him bow. “You have returned at last.” Long ago, King Roger had heard of al-Idrisi’s knowledge of mapmaking and his study of the measurement of the earth and had asked him to his court. Since then, al-Idrisi had only left Palermo to find suitable apprentices for the task King Roger had given him.

  “Wise king,” replied al-Idrisi, “dear friend who has protected me from my enemies. I am at Your Majesty’s service. I have returned as I promised—to create for you at last, God willing, a true wonder of mapmaking.”

  “It is I,” said King Roger, “who am at your service.”

  They left for the king’s study, talking of their plans. A servant with hair light as the moon led Rawiya and Bakr out of the hall, across a wide courtyard where birds sang from the balconies.

  On the other side of the courtyard, the servant pushed aside a wooden statue, revealing a damp passage. He instructed Rawiya and Bakr to tell no one of the secret door, for it was a hidden tunnel used only by the servants to deliver food to the king’s guests.

  They passed through the sandy-floored tunnel. The servant opened a door on the other side, and they stepped into the servants’ kitchen. Men in white linens bustled about, bowls and pots in their thick arms.

  The servant seated them at a wide table, away from the chaos of the kitchens, and presented them with steaming bow
ls of lentil stew and hard-crusted bread. Fresh winged peas were brought in from the garden and roasted with whole fish and eggplant. Rawiya and Bakr dipped their bread in ricotta and butter drawn from long-necked earthenware vessels. The palace kitchen throbbed with the heat of roasting fat, the burnished scent of eggplant skin, and the glow of orange zest.

  After supper, the servant returned with a tray of oblong pastries armored with almond slivers. Rawiya, who had just had the richest meal of her life, took a delicate loop of dough in her hand and asked what it was.

  “These delicacies are made from a dough called pasta reale,” the servant said. This was a type of almond paste, a Sicilian specialty made by the nuns of Martorana in the convent beside the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio.

  Rawiya bit into her pastry. The warmth of almond and the tang of citrus bloomed on her tongue. She thought with longing of her mother’s date cookies and remembered with guilt the barley porridge her mother was probably eating. For the first time, the full weight of having left her behind lay heavy on Rawiya’s shoulders. She vowed that one day her mother too would taste this pasta reale—a dough fit for a king.

  THAT NIGHT, THE slivered moon held Rawiya’s eyelids open. Rising from her bed, she went out into the courtyard and looked up through the pistachio trees at the seven pinpricks of the Pleiades—Thurayya. She thought of Bakr’s father. How like the rich, she thought, to name themselves for the stars.

  On the other side of the silent courtyard, Rawiya noticed the dark shadow of a door that had been left ajar. Curious, she ducked inside—into utter darkness.

  Blinking in the blackness, Rawiya froze at the sound of shuffling coming from farther in the room. She stubbed her toe and whispered curses. When she groped for a candle, she felt rows of something soft and powdery, like folds of animal skin.

  She shrank back. Could these be elephants? She had heard tales in the markets, where merchants sold ivory by the tusk and mothers told wild stories to frighten children. She whispered, “I’ve wandered into the elephant stables.”

  A low voice said, “No, you are not in the elephant stables, if such things even exist.” A man emerged from the dark, silhouetted against a window.

  Rawiya approached, embarrassed. “I was lost—”

  The man said, “You will always have wakeful companions in this hall.”

  A torch was lit. Rawiya stood in a vast four-story library, face-to-face with King Roger himself, dressed in a white sleeping gown.

  Rawiya scrambled into a bow. “Forgive me, Your Majesty—”

  King Roger laughed. “There is no need for apologies. Your master is a dear friend.” He explained that he often came to the library at night. He motioned to the shelves of books, their spines polished gold, tawny brown, and russet leather. “Anyone who wants companionship and knowledge will find what they seek here,” he said. “We are among friends.”

  “Pardon me for saying so,” Rawiya said, “but isn’t it strange for a king to wander his palace at night, reading?”

  “Perhaps,” King Roger said. “But I love running my fingers along the spines of old friends, poring over volumes of mathematics. I love botany and philosophy, geography and myth. So I wait until all is quiet and the moon is shining, and then I wander as I please.”

  “Forgive me for interrupting you,” Rawiya said.

  King Roger waved her apology away. “Come now, my boy,” he said, “you are a guest in my house. You may wander these avenues with me whenever you like.” He pulled a volume down from the shelf and held it out to her.

  Rawiya touched the gilded pages. Ptolemy’s Geography. “This place must hold the knowledge of all the world,” she said.

  King Roger smiled. “If your master completes his quest, it will. This is the task al-Idrisi and I have undertaken: not only to map the Mediterranean, but to create a map of the entire world, a map grander and more accurate than any the world has ever seen.”

  WE CAN’T EAT until after the sun has gone down because Huda and Abu Sayeed are fasting for Ramadan. The low sun hums in my neck. While we wait for Abu Sayeed, the red shadows get longer. I pick pebbles from in between the fig’s roots and choose slices of old granite stiff as floor slats from the rocky soil in the garden. I pull my treasures from my pockets, the ones I collected on our walk to the spice shop for Abu Sayeed—a few domes of pink rock, a shard of turquoise embedded in concrete, small white stones from apartment driveways. Across the alley, our neighbors light candles and check their fuse boxes. I’m glad the buildings block out the shouting from the square.

  I think Abu Sayeed has loved every stone he ever saw, even the ones with rough edges, even the ones that get shiny when they’re wet but dry dull and disappointing in the sun. Over a summer’s worth of afternoons, I’ve found out Abu Sayeed knows all about stones: boulders, salt crystals, big black slabs with veins of quartz in them, slender pebbles flat as coins. I wonder how much Abu Sayeed knows, and how come. I think back to the time Baba crouched next to me on a wrinkled sheet of rock in Central Park and told me what a glacier was, and I imagine Abu Sayeed telling Baba the same thing.

  I hear his voice before I see him.

  “Little cloud?”

  I spin around, my hands full, my hair swaying like the fig leaves.

  Abu Sayeed comes up through the alley. His honey-yellow voice gets louder, laughing and singing in Arabic. The color is brighter and clearer than over the phone. When we first got to Homs three months ago, Abu Sayeed’s voice was the only thing that felt familiar.

  I run to him when he swings open our iron gate. “Abu Sayeed!”

  He steps over canvases and around drying maps, dodging wet paint with the hems of his linen pants. He’s changed from the way he looked in Baba’s old Polaroids: his mustache has wrapped around his chin and formed a beard, his forehead has wrinkled in the sun, his shoulders have sloped down like he’s carried something heavy too long. But Abu Sayeed still has the same web of laugh lines around his gray eyes, and his leathery cheeks are always scooped up into a grin.

  He reaches out his hands to me. I meet him between the gateposts, jostling my treasures in my pockets and my fists. I bounce and shuffle and pull out the stones I’ve collected, beaming and breathless. “I’ve got more for our collection.”

  Abu Sayeed opens the bowls of his palms. I hand him the stones I collected on the dusty streets of the Old City, by the side of the road and behind vegetable shops. I’ve tried all summer to show him something he hasn’t seen before. I haven’t managed to stump him yet, not even when I brought him slices of mica in glittering layers, not even when I brought him a chunk of black basalt like porous cheese, not even when I brought him gypsum roses and spears of sandstone, scratchy as Baba’s cheeks.

  Abu Sayeed knows all the stones by heart. They speak to him, he says. They speak to him, and he tells me their secrets. I don’t know if I believe him, but in the pockets of my heart without any words, I want to believe.

  Every stone is different. Some stones come from a few towns away, but some are whole continents removed. I once brought Abu Sayeed, not knowing it, a handful of green marble from China, teal lumps of copper from Turkey, thick spears of granite from Africa. Every stone is different and every stone’s the same: glittering and ready to whisper its secrets, if I listen.

  Today, Abu Sayeed holds my offerings to his eyes and his ears. Zahra and Huda come out and stand close by, waiting, hiding their smiles. Zahra stands barefoot and taps her painted toenails to her ankle, adjusting her phone in the pocket of her jeans.

  Abu Sayeed pulls the stories from the stones. He rattles them, and dust comes unsettled from their cracks. He strokes the rough skin of the rock, closing his eyes. Finally, he nods and blinks and closes his fingers around the stones.

  “So?” I look up from the treasures in Abu Sayeed’s hands. “Did I find it?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.” Abu Sayeed sits down in the garden with his legs crossed under him. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve never seen it either.”


  I point at a dagger of calcite in his palm. “That’s not it?”

  Abu Sayeed laughs. “No, little cloud,” he says. “You must keep looking.”

  I draw close to his knees. “You must have seen it. You’ve seen every stone in the whole world.” I can’t believe there’s a rock on the planet that hasn’t gotten warm in Abu Sayeed’s palm.

  “Ah, but this stone is unique in all the earth.” Abu Sayeed motions for us to come close. “The rarest and most precious gem, so incredible it lacks a name.”

  I frown, trying to look like I’m not convinced, but it only half works. “How do you know it exists if it’s got no name?”

  “My little cloud,” he says, “always the skeptic. Jinn have told men many things they found hard to believe.”

  Zahra crosses her arms. “Kids’ stories.”

  Abu Sayeed’s eyes get round and white. “Oh no, little one. The jinn are as real as you or me. But most of them were sealed in cramped prisons long ago. They wait there to be freed, guarding the knowledge of the ancient world.”

  “What about the stone?” I ask.

  Abu Sayeed laughs and throws up his hands. “Impatient!

  “Hundreds of years ago, a group of travelers came upon an old brass bottle stoppered up with lead. When they opened the bottle to polish it, green fog emerged in terrifying shapes—giant birds, lions, serpents. In the center of the fog was a strange man with a face like a thunderbolt. It was a jinni, locked away for centuries. In return for his freedom, the jinni told the travelers of a mysterious stone and charged them with finding it. Though the stone’s name had been lost to time, he said, they would know it by its color in the light.”