In her haste to escape the encampment and the wrath of Rhossi ag Bahedi, Mariata had been able to carry only one saddle with her to the camel enclosure: the one she had brought from her home in the Alhaggar. It was a beautiful thing passed down from her great-grandmother, made from leather and carved wood decorated with brass appliqué and copper nails. Sitting in it made her feel like the princess she considered herself to be. She didn’t want to offer it to the older woman, but forced herself, out of politeness.
Rahma took one look at it and laughed. ‘You think I need that unwieldy old thing?’ She clicked her tongue till the mehari folded its legs, attached her sandals to its hobble rope, caught hold of the creature by its lower lip, threw a leg over its neck and settled herself in front of its hump, over the withers. She kept one leg folded under her as if in place of a saddle. She looked down to catch Mariata’s fleeting gaze of admiration. ‘My father only had girls; when times were hard, I went with the caravan.’
Mariata looked at her own mehari dubiously. She had travelled all the way from the Alhaggar to the Aïr, but most of the time she had been sitting in a palanquin, as befitted a woman of her status.
‘Pull its head down,’ Rahma instructed her. Mariata did so and the well-trained beast sank to its knees. ‘Take your shoes off and keep them in your lap. Tap the right side of his neck to turn left and the left to turn right. Rest the soles of your feet against the curve of his neck so you can feel his movement. You can guide him like that as much as by using the reins. To make him trot, hit him on the rump – not too hard or he’ll bolt; or dig your heels into his neck; or both. If you want to stop, pull on his head rope. And if you want to make him sit down, just tap him smartly on the back of his head and hiss loudly. Ready?’
Mariata twitched her camel’s head rope, but all it did was give a low bellow. ‘How do you make it start?’
They rode all that night, down through steep river-cut gullies and rocky defiles, heading north and west. The moon shone out of a cloudless sky, outlining everything in silver. A jackal called and its mate responded, their cries shivering over the hills and down Mariata’s spine.
At every night sound she turned her head, seeking for pursuers, but there were none. The Bazgan range rose up at their back, rugged and imposing; down below they could see where watercourses – some iridescent, others apparently dry – snaked across the grasslands to the south.
‘Down there,’ said Rahma, waving her left hand vaguely, ‘half a day’s ride away, lies Agadez, the gateway to the Ténéré.’
The Ténéré: ‘the Emptiness’ in their tongue, or simply ‘the Desert’ – over a thousand miles of barren rock and sand. Even now Mariata’s father and brothers were tracking across it, moving along part of the ancient trade route between Fezzan and Egypt and the ancient Songhai Empire. For centuries caravans had ferried gold, ivory, cotton, leather and slaves through the Ténéré to the great civilizations at either end of the route, but the halcyon days were long gone: now the caravanners were reduced to trading dried vegetables and bags of millet for cones of salt and whatever meagre profit they could make once they had bargained hard with the Kanuri who ran the mines, and paid their fees to the men whose territory they crossed and from whose wells they drew water. Sometimes raiders attacked the traders; sometimes dust storms or treacherous quicksands – fesh-fesh – swallowed entire caravans, leaving only their bones to be found years later. Sometimes no trace was ever found of them at all.
‘Are we going into the Ténéré?’ Mariata asked. The idea filled her with a mixture of anticipation and disquiet. She realized for the first time now, out in the quiet night air, her body swaying to the rhythm of the camel’s strange gait, that she didn’t have the least idea where they were going. All she knew was what Rahma had told her: that she had walked for eight days to find her.
Rahma laughed softly. ‘Good heavens, no!’
She offered no more and they rode on in silence. Down out of the Aïr Plateau they came, into the wide oueds that gave out on to the floor of the valley below – shale-filled dried riverbeds in which the camels walked easily, their great pads crunching the loose stones underfoot. As the sun came up over the hills behind them, it cast long red rays across the landscape, filling the acacia trees with fire. But still there was no sign of Rhossi.
As the land flattened out into a broad plain, Rahma smacked her camel and immediately it picked up its pace. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Come on!’ she urged Mariata. ‘They are sure to be following us, given the value of the camels you stole; we must put as much distance between us and them as we can.’
Mariata nervously tapped her camel on the rump, but all it did was to swing its great white head around and gaze at her with its huge, languid eyes, managing to look both bored and infinitely superior. ‘Please,’ she begged, digging her heels into it, ‘go faster.’
For a day and more the world was green and grey, an endless succession of vegetation and stones; but gradually the green gave way to brown, and soon the vegetation was no more than scrub-brush and yellowed grasses. They crossed open ground consisting of nothing more than bare rock and expanses of pitch-black gravel, punctuated by thorn and tiger-bush, with a scatter of tamarisk where the water-table was high. The next day came the sands, wave upon wave of them, tawny and wind-sculpted.
Mariata gazed out to where sand and sky merged in a shimmering haze and felt her mind drift wide as if it too were flowing into the vanishing point. A delicious peace spread through her, softening her muscles, soothing her bones. ‘Beautiful,’ she whispered. ‘It’s so beautiful.’
Rahma smiled. ‘And, like all beautiful things, quite deadly if you do not treat it with the respect it deserves.’
‘You came all this way on foot?’
‘I did.’
Mariata shook her head, astounded. ‘You must truly love your son.’
‘I do.’
‘Tell me about him. Is he handsome? Is he noble and a poet? Does he wear the blue? Is his skin stained with indigo from his veil? Does he travel the desert routes? Or perhaps he is a warrior, with a famous sword whose name he cries as he flourishes it in battle?’
The older woman clicked her tongue. ‘You young girls are all the same: silly romantic dreamers. And the boys are as bad: no, worse, with their dreams of war and foolishness. All I will say now is that he lies close to death. If he dies, you will need to know no more; if he lives, you can ask the rest yourself.’
Mariata was disappointed. ‘Will you not even tell me his name?’
‘His name is Amastan.’
‘But what is his full name?’
Rahma sighed. ‘So many questions.’
‘If I am to cross a desert, I should know something about the one I am making the journey for.’
For a long while the old woman was silent, gazing out into the wilderness, her eyes narrowed against the brilliance of the air. At last she said, ‘His name is Amastan ag Moussa.’
‘Like Moussa ag Iba, the amenokal, high chief of the Aïr drum-groups?’
‘Thanks be he does not take after his father.’
‘He is the son of the amenokal?’
The older woman tapped her camel smartly on the poll of its head and hissed loudly. Obediently, it came to a halt and sank to its knees and she slipped easily to the ground.
‘And therefore Rhossi’s cousin?’ Mariata pressed.
‘Do not think to judge my Amastan by what you know of that one. Until my boy was born, Rhossi had been Moussa’s chief delight. Rhossi had only to mention a thing and it was his – a pretty trinket, the best cut of meat, a play-sword fashioned from wood. But Amastan was Moussa’s firstborn, and his heir; from the moment he set eyes upon him he adored him, and that made Rhossi insanely jealous. As my lad grew up, all the time I found bruises and cuts upon him he could not have come by from simple play, and once he came to me with clear fingermarks upon his throat as if someone had tried to strangle him. He never said a word against Rhossi; but a mother knows.’
Rahma pressed her lips together tightly. ‘Now we walk,’ she told Mariata.
‘We walk?’ Mariata was horrified.
‘We must rest the camels.’ She took a long drink from the waterskin, then passed it to Mariata, after which she wound her headscarf up around her face in a semblance of a man’s tagelmust. Then, leading her beast by its head rope, she strode out briskly, her back arrow-straight.
Mariata half dismounted, half fell, from her own mount and followed suit, twisting the dark cotton of her headscarf around her face until only her eyes were visible. Unused to wearing a veil, she found it uncomfortable and stifling, but as soon as the first breath of wind came up off the dunes she understood why it was necessary. Particles of sand scoured her skin, stinging her eyes. Hot sand burned her feet through her thin sandals; her body moved stiffly and awkwardly after the hours on the camel’s back.
Despite her age and the attack Rhossi had made upon her, Rahma moved easily, as if she made such journeys every day of her life. She walked, Mariata thought, like a man, like a caravanner or a hunter, and she could not help a welling admiration for the older woman, who was so hardy and so determined. As the wind whipped up, Rahma moved to the lee side of her camel so that it sheltered her as she walked; Mariata did the same. They walked in this way till the sun was high in the sky, and still there was no sign of pursuit.
Mariata walked until she thought she could walk no more; then she walked some more. She walked as if in a trance, or a dream, her legs moving automatically, her arm attached to the camel by its braided head rope; she walked until she was no longer aware of the discomforts that had infuriated her at the beginning of the day. Freed by the demands of her body, Mariata’s mind ranged far and wide. Why was she making this mad journey with a woman she had just met, and in such bizarre circumstances? Was staying with the tribe really so terrible? If she had called out, surely someone would have come to her aid, whatever Rhossi had said. The protection of women was sacred to her people; women were respected above all things. Her fear of Moussa’s nephew had twisted her logic out of shape, driven her to make mad decisions. But then she remembered the starving harratin, and the furious temper of the high chief whom everyone said was dying. And when he died, Rhossi would be chief and then no one could protect her from him. He had even tried to strangle the son of the amenokal!
She mused about that. Whatever had happened between Rahma and Moussa must have been serious: for an amenokal to divorce his wife, or worse, for her to divorce him, was uncommon. She sensed a scandal.
All these thoughts moved through her head like moths around a fire, sometimes vanishing into the darkness, sometimes catching light and zigzagging crazily about.
At last Rahma turned to her and said something inaudible.
Mariata’s head came up. In front of them were palm trees, shivering in the heat haze. Was it a mirage, she wondered. She had heard that the desert played tricks on the mind, and especially on novice travellers.
‘Oasis,’ Rahma said again, more distinctly. ‘The oasis of Doum. We are more than halfway there now.’
They watered the camels, and let them graze. They refilled the waterskins, and while Rahma lay down in the shadows to sleep Mariata sat with her feet in the cool water of the guelta and gazed at the reflections of the date palms and the dazzling sky beyond. Such peace! She had never felt such peace. Before, there had always been the coming and going of family and neighbours, the noise of children, goats and dogs, the endless procession of the chores of daily life. She had been Mariata ult Yemma, daughter of Tofenat, daughter of Ousman, sister and cousin and tribe member. After that, she had been the niece of Dassine, outsider from the Taitok tribe suddenly displaced amongst the people of the Bazgan; taken from her homeland and set down amongst strangers, and somehow because the Kel Bazgan were strangers there seemed to be so many more of them, with names and patrimonies and stories she did not yet know, all milling about the camping ground, talking, shouting, going about business she knew nothing about. But now, in this moment, there was just herself – Mariata – and Rahma, fast asleep, a woman she had met only a day ago and to whom she was bound by neither tribal loyalty nor family ties; and the desert, beautiful, serene and eternal.
This moment of freedom, of perfect being, swelled inside her until she felt light-headed, as if she might float off into the gilded air like a gossamer seedhead …
How much time passed like this she had no idea, but she was shocked out of the moment by a sudden sharp report, like two rocks struck together close by the ear.
At once, like a cat that appears asleep but is napping with one eye open, Rahma was on her feet. ‘Mariata, get your camel. Now, hurry!’
‘Why?’
‘No time for questions. Quickly!’
Mariata ran and took the hobble off her mehari, then stood there with the head rope in her hand, indecisive, not knowing what to do.
‘Get on, get on! Head for the high dunes there and wait for me: they will not go there, the sand is too deep. Go!’
‘But what about you?’
‘Just do what I say, girl, or we’re both dead.’
At last Mariata managed to get her camel to its knees and, as soon as she was on it, took off as if it had intuited the required action. She slapped its rump and it increased its pace, the sand flying up from the great pads of its feet. The dunes reared up, great sweeping hills of sand. She headed the animal towards the intersection of two of the biggest ones and by sheer will urged the camel up and over the other side. Then she hurled herself down from its back without waiting for it to couch, and crawled forward to look over the crest. The oasis seemed miles away, much further than the distance she had just covered in that short time, and for a moment she could not see Rahma and her camel at all. Panic rising, she scanned the landscape desperately: if she lost Rahma she was surely doomed. Then suddenly she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye –
Rahma, far to her right, her camel at a gallop, its ungainly limbs flying out at all angles. Mariata watched as their course veered towards the eastern edge of the long bank of dunes on which she lay, then disappeared from view.
Now there came another noise entirely, a rough growl of a sound, low and rumbling. Travelling towards the oasis at speed was a dusty vehicle: a truck with several dark-clad men sitting in the back, their rifles pointing towards the sky. Mariata froze. Had Rhossi brought in government authorities to ensure the return of the camels? To bring her back to the tribe? A chill shivered her stomach.
Surely not even Rhossi would involve the police? Their people lived beyond national boundaries and jurisdictions, and had done so for a thousand years. Mariata lay there, suspended in time, waiting for something to happen, for something to determine her fate. Don’t let them see me, she mouthed silently, then swiftly amended her prayer to: don’t let them see us. Let them leave and not see us …
Several heartbeats passed and all was silent, except for the rush of blood in her ears. Even her camel seemed to sense the need for quiet: it had knelt down on the cool lee side of the dune, where the sun had not yet reached, with its head up and its long-lashed gaze fixed on nothing in particular, the strange, clear membrane of its third eyelid flicking back and forth to dislodge grains of sand.
Then the jeep reappeared, accelerating out of the oasis along the well-beaten track to the east, which it followed for several hundred yards. Then suddenly it veered off, where Rahma and her camel had veered off just minutes before. Mariata stopped breathing; then her heart began to thump as if it wanted to escape her ribcage. She watched as the jeep began to climb the dune, then became bogged down in the softer, deeper sand of the flank. Two of the men vaulted out, guns slung across their backs, and began to search the ground. She saw them touch the surface, talk animatedly, then move upwards, leaving the rest to push the vehicle out of the sand. The two men wore trousers, not robes – a Western style of dress; and caps instead of a veil or turban. They looked like spiders, Mariata thought, thin and dark and fast and dangerous, as they picked their way up the dune. Soon the swell of the sand obscured their progress.
What should she do? Should she leap on her camel and flee before they saw her, or wait and hope they passed by? She had just about made up her mind to remount the camel and make a run for it when something hissed. Mariata scrambled to her feet intuitively, for the bite of a horned viper could kill -
It was Rahma, leading her camel by a length of cloth she had tied around the creature’s jaw.
Obediently, Mariata flattened herself against the hot sand. ‘Who are they?’ she whispered.
‘Soldiers.’
‘Soldiers? What soldiers?’
‘There are soldiers everywhere now. On that side’ – she gestured to her left – ‘the newly independent country of Mali; to the other’ – waving to the right – ‘Niger. To the north, Algeria. They all have soldiers swarming around this quarter. They have found precious ores beneath these sands: all their governments will be wanting to get their hands on it. Ripping out the guts of the earth, destroying our ancestral lands; shooting us if we get in their way.’ She took another length of fabric and briskly bound the second camel’s jaw shut. It wouldn’t render the beast silent, but it would stifle a bellow that might betray their presence. ‘Now, if you don’t want to die, follow me quickly.’
She led Mariata down the side of the dune, keeping the curving crest between them and any sight-line the two soldiers might have, and as they went Rahma used a palm frond to smooth over the marks of their passage. It wouldn’t fool a nomad scout; but at a distance the dune would look relatively untouched.
Down through the soft sand they ran into a deep valley between sandhills, then Rahma led them into another intersection where the dunes towered up on either side.
Rahma shoved the head rope into Mariata’s hand. ‘Wait here.’
And with that she was gone, scuttling sideways up a tall dune to look for their pursuers. Mariata hugged her knees to her chest. Soldiers. Men armed with guns. Enemies. She had never even considered the possibility of having an enemy before, someone who might actually want to kill her. There were tribal rivalries, of course, duels and raids; but these were things between men. No one ever threatened a woman with violence – except for Rhossi. But even Rhossi did not scare her as much as these anonymous, uniform-clad men. For the first time since they had entered the desert, she felt truly afraid.