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 over-long explanation that the old trader was not fooled. His eyes bored into her. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said.
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!’
‘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. Mariata 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.
Have courage, she told herself. This was only the beginning of her journey: a few meagre hours out of the weeks that lay ahead. Could she survive such a journey, through terrain that would soon become far crueller and more hostile than the dull rock-strewn wastes they had thus far traversed? Was it mad to think she could make such a perilous journey? Was it dangerously selfish even to try? Already she was plagued with doubt and they had hardly made a start. Mariata touched her amulet to ward away these bad thoughts, and as she did so they crested a rocky rise and saw the green palms of Tahani in the distance.
Lying in the shade of the oasis trees while the hobbled camels methodically chewed their way through what vegetation they could find, and Atisi ag Baye sat on an outcrop keeping watch for bandits or rogue troops, Mariata dozed. And as she dozed she dreamt. She was back in the Adagh and the rhythmic sound of the breeze that rattled the palm fronds above her transformed itself magically into the distant tap of drums and the singing of wedding songs, and she was lying not on the hard ground wrapped in a smelly camel-hair blanket but on a soft bed in her own bridal tent, with fragrant incense burning in a dish, wrapped in the arms of her husband, breathing in his warm and vital scent as they lay skin to skin beneath a cover embroidered with rows of geometric red camels that marched across a background of gold. By the light of the candle-lantern she saw over Amastan’s burnished shoulder how the stylized flowers sewn into the coverlet’s borders made pretty star shapes just like one of the mosaic tileworks she had seen in the mosque at Tamanrassett, and she sighed contentedly. Could any person be so happy? She did not think so. They were married at last and no one could ever separate them now: they were one flesh; man and woman brought together to be each other’s eyes and ears and hearts. They would be together for ever; they would have a dozen children and establish a new dynasty, honouring the name of Tin Hinan. And with their flocks and their camels they would travel the salt road for the rest of their lives, moving from one fertile oasis to the next, free from constraints, living lightly on the land, at one with the spirits. Warmth cocooned her, hazing her thoughts. She drifted contentedly, half aware of the distant drumming and of the regularity of Amastan’s breathing as his chest rose and fell against her own.
After the longest time she heard a voice. Amastan was talking to her, whispering in her ear. She struggled up through the heavy waves of sleep that had engulfed her, trying to break the surface of consciousness. What was he saying? Something important, something crucial … She fought for clarity, strained to listen.
‘Lady …’
A hand on her shoulder. A chill on her face.
With a start, she jolted upright. But the hand that had touched her was not Amastan’s but an old man’s, his face seamed and weathered by passing decades, and the chill she had felt was his shadow falling across her. Who was he? For many seconds she did not know, could not think because of the panicked batter of her heart. Then the man withdrew and hot light fell on her once more, so that she blinked and squinted at the dazzle of sun through the palm branches overhead, branches that replaced the dark and comforting cocoon of her marriage tent. Bewildered, she closed her eyes and reached after the dream, trying to focus on the material details that would bring it back to her, wrap its alternative reality around her and comfort her. Tatters of its gorgeous imagery trailed away like mist burned off by the rising sun. The coverlet, she thought wildly, clutching to herself the marching camels and the star-like flowers. For a moment she could feel the cool cotton beneath her fingers and the raised texture of the stitching. And then she remembered where last she had seen that lush embroidery: in her Aunt Dassine’s tent in the Aïr Mountains, on the night Rhossi ag Bahedi had tried to force himself upon her. Where it likely still lay. She had never taken it with her to the Adagh, had hardly taken anything of her own on her flight through the Tamesna with Rahma, the mother of Amastan.
Amastan …
The loss of him struck her anew and she gave a ragged cry and then began to weep bitterly, broken once more by the loss of all hope.
Atisi ag Baye drew back. Despite the long years of his life, his experience with women was limited. Their volcanic emotions he found far stranger and more confusing than the simple exigencies of the desert. And so he walked a discreet distance away and set up his little brazier to make some tea. In his experience, a glass of sweet green tea made everyone feel better: it was one of Allah’s gifts to man.
By the time he came back, Mariata’s sobbing had quietened, though the tracks of her tears still stained her cheeks. He handed the glass to her without a word and she took it with a slight inclination of her head to indicate her appreciation of the gesture, then drank the contents while staring morosely at the ground. After a long while she said, ‘I have something to tell you. It is not pretty or pleasant, and my circumstances are such that you may reconsider your offer to guide me through the desert.’ Her voice was hoarse; she paused, gathering herself.
Atisi sat quietly waiting. He had learnt his patience from his long dealing with camels, which after women were surely the most intractable creatures God ever made. Besides, he sensed a story in the air and he knew that all stories have their own way of being told and can never be hurried.
And so at last Mariata told the old trader her tale. When she described Amastan’s affliction being a sickness brought upon him by the Kel Asuf, Atisi ag Baye’s grizzled eyebrows rose high into the brim of his turban and one hand touched covertly the small leather amulets he wore on a string around his neck, and when she came to the ritual that had drawn the spirits out of him she was careful to assure him that she did not think it had been her doing, but more likely the magical intervention of the village enad.
‘An enad? Ah, the inadan are men of great power.’ Atisi nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is true that they can manipulate the spirits.’
‘Ah, the enad was not a man,’ Mariata said.
‘A female enad?’ He sounded incredulous. Women could not work with iron: it was taboo. To work with iron meant commanding the spirits that lived in fire, and that could cause irreparable damage to a woman’s ability to bear children. Besides, anything they touched would surely fail: a key would not turn in a lock, or would stick fast and never come free; a tool would crack in two, the head of an adze fly off and harm an animal or a child; a sword or spear-head break at the most crucial moment. Everyone knew that.
Mariata looked uncomfortable. ‘Not … really.’
‘Neither a man nor a woman?’ He sat back suddenly, comprehension dawning. ‘I recall an enad and his wife who had a child once, a child that was neither boy nor girl, but both at the same time. They travelled with the Kel Tedele. Is it possible, I wonder …’
‘She – I always called her “she” – was called Tana and was one of the most remarkable people I ever knew. But she lived amongst the Kel Teggart.’
Now the old trader gave her a direct look. ‘You lived amongst the Kel Teggart?’
She nodded.
‘I heard something … terrible had happened to that tribe.’
Mariata opened her mouth to speak; but her torrent of words had dried up. She felt as if there was a boulder in her throat and that her feelings battered themselves against it in an attempt to get out. Instead, water welled from her eyes again.
Atisi looked away. ‘I will go and see to the camels,’ he said gruffly.
At last as twilight obscured her face she went to find him. ‘You are a man of few words,’ she said, ‘and I am a proud woman, so do not ask me more than I tell you. The child I carry is no child of shame but the child of my husband, son of the amenokal of the Aïr, late of the Kel Teggart. His name was Amastan ag Moussa and he was my moon and stars.’ Her voice caught: it was the first time she had spoken his true name since she had seen him die and somehow saying it aloud made it all the more real. ‘I will not have his child raised in ignominy by a butcher. There, I have told you all there is to tell.’
Atisi said nothing for a very long time. Then he sighed. ‘Truly, you must have excited much envy for the evil eye to have been cast upon you thus. I hope that with every step into the desert you take the distance between you and your misfortunes will be lengthened. Insh’allah.’
As they waited for full night to fall, Mariata opened Amastan’s amulet for the first time since her wedding and shook the roll of paper it contained into the palm of her hand. By the light of the rising moon she read the charm that Tana had made for her, but the lighter downstrokes were hard to read and all she could make out was her own name and Amastan’s. At last she gave up: whatever magic it contained had failed to save Amastan’s life, and so was meaningless. Feeling more bereft than ever, she was about to throw the useless scroll away. Then she closed her fist over it: to do so, here, in the realm and the time of the Kel Asuf, was likely to attract even worse luck, so she rolled the parchment back into its hidden compartment and closed the central boss over it again.
With a thin crescent moon rising slowly overhead, they picked their way down through the rocky darkness towards the road that crossed the disputed territory. To Mariata it was just a dead strip of nothingness, slightly paler than the surrounding ground, artificially flattened and smoothed, an imposition on the face of the wild. Nothing moved upon it as far as she could see, but, as they reached the last tumble of rocks before the road, headlights showed in the distance. The sudden light caught the side of Atisi’s face, and she saw something unreadable flare in his eyes. Then he turned his camel’s head towards her. ‘Get behind the boulders, quickly. There is cover there for one animal but not for three. If they stop I will talk to them. Keep Moushi quiet and whatever happens do not show yourself.’
Moushi was unwilling to leave her master: it took all of Mariata’s strength to urge her into the cover of the rocks. And only just in time, for the vehicles came roaring over the rise and bore down upon them at terrifying speed. Peering out, Mariata saw how the old trader got down from his camel and loosened his veil. Was it out of disrespect for the soldiers that he did this, she wondered, or so that they would not fear him?
For a moment it seemed that they had not seen the man and the two camels, or that they were not concerned by his presence. Then the leading jeep screamed to a halt.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ a man shouted, levelling a gun at Atisi. ‘Show me your papers!’
Atisi gaped. ‘Papers?’ he asked, thickening his accent to a raw peasant twang.
The man motioned two others out of the jeep. ‘Get his papers.’
The two soldiers approached, laughing. ‘He’s just an old man, lost in the desert.’
‘No one passes without papers. How do we know he’s not a Moroccan spy? And, while you’re at it, search his baggage. We don’t want a repeat of last week’s fiasco.’
The soldiers dutifully poked and prodded the bags. ‘No guns,’ one of them said at last.
‘Idiot,’ said the other, taking the rifle slung over the side of Atisi’s camel. ‘There’s this gun.’
Moonlight glinted on the antique stock, on the chased silver and the charms etched into it by an ancient smith. The soldiers passed it between each other, laughing. ‘That knackered old thing,’ one said, ‘hardly qualifies as a gun. It’d probably blow your head right off if you tried to fire it.’
A muscle twitched in Atisi’s jaw, but he said nothing and kept his eyes firmly on the ground.
‘So what about it, old man? Where are your documents?’
‘I have no documents.’ He stumbled over the word deliberately.
‘Everyone has documents.’
Atisi shrugged. ‘I don’t. I am just a poor old man separated from his caravan. One of my camels fell ill and they left me behind.’
‘On your own?’
Atisi met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘Alone.’
‘With friends like that!’ one soldier laughed.
‘Just let him go, Ibrahim. If you don’t we’ll have to file a report: it’ll take all night.’
‘What’s he got in those packs, anyway? Anything … useful?’
The other soldier grimaced. ‘Barley, bit of dried meat, dates and stuff. Miserable rations.’
‘No beer?’
Atisi shot him a contemptuous glance. ‘No beer.’
Ibrahim glared at him. ‘You’re a very lucky man. We don’t have time to waste on threadbare old nomads.’ He looked towards his two subordinates. ‘Take his gun, though.’
‘No!’ Atisi’s cry was fierce. ‘It was my grandfather’s.’
As he grabbed for the rifle the soldier who had hold of it swung it around with casual but deliberate force. It struck the old trader hard across the temple and he fell down with a groan.
At that moment Moushi let forth a bellow that split the night air: ‘A-wa-aaaagh!’ She lunged forward and Mariata was suddenly flung to the ground, catching her foot awkwardly in the saddlecloth and landing in a tangle of fabric, losing the reins. Thus freed, Moushi ran headlong towards her master, while the third camel, unnerved by this untoward turn of events, wrenched its head back and managed to free itself from the lead rope. Off it went across the road, lit garishly by the headlights of the jeeps, its legs splaying out at all angles.
Shots rang out.
For a moment she lay there, stunned, in the shadow of the rocks before a great fear gripped her. Images from the attack on her village, images that she had successfully fought down once that evening, now assailed her. She saw again the sudden invasion of the uniformed men, the flash of their gunfire ripping the night apart; Rahma with her robes on fire, the soldiers forcing Tana to the ground, lust and hatred painted on their dark faces by the leaping flames. Again and again she saw the dark stain spreading across Amastan’s beautiful wedding robe, and the mysterious wet darkness on her own hands as her father dragged her away from her husband’s body. Terror galvanized her. She crabbed sideways into a gap between the rocks, making herself impossibly small, and listened to the shouts of the soldiers and the bellowing of Atisi’s camels, the sounds melding into a single, incomprehensible noise that spoke only of violence and brutality. A scream began to well up inside her. Some part of her – the rational part that urged survival at all costs – knew she could not let it out; but another, wilder part was trying to prevail. Her eyes bulged with the effort not to cry out; she stuffed the corner of her headscarf into her mouth to stop the howl escaping. What was happening to the old man? Had they shot him? She did not dare look for fear of being seen. If they would do such a thing to a defenceless old man, what would they do to her?
Footsteps came closer, crunching on the loose stones; she heard voices just feet away.
‘What’s that over there?’
Mariata closed her eyes. But there was no escape inside her head. She saw Tana’s robe being torn apart by the soldiers, their hands grabbing at her breasts … Perhaps they would kill her, if she was lucky. The amulet pulsed between her fingers, hot in her palms, as if the little discs of red were burning into her skin. Don’t let them see me …
A leg came into view, then a hand and a head with a cap on it. The figure bent and a hand reached out and picked something up. ‘An old leather bag. Must have fallen off the camel that ran away.’ The sound of objects falling to the ground. The boot pushed them around.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Just the usual worthless old rubbish these people carry with them. Some candles, a bit of string, a couple of stones, a filthy old rag, a cigarette lighter and an old knife.’
‘A knife? Any good to us?’
‘It’s covered in their magical symbols.’
‘It’s just words, you superstitious fool. Words aren’t magic.’
‘Even so, I’m not picking it up. I’ve heard about Tuareg knives with curses carved on them. Knives that have come alive in an enemy’s hand and slit his throat before he could even blink.’
‘For God’s sake. Here, let me see.’ A second figure came into view. He bent, his back to Mariata. There was a pause as he examined the spoils. ‘It’s blunt. What a piece of shit.’ The knife clattered to the ground again. ‘Seems he was alone, after all.’
‘Why’d the second camel have a saddle on it, then? Tell me that if you’re so clever.’
A pause. ‘You’ve seen how these camels behave. How’d you like to be left in the desert without another saddled mount if your own got spooked and bolted?’
His companion’s acknowledgement of this logic was grudging. ‘Let’s get back. This place is enough to spook anyone. Could have sworn I heard something breathing a minute ago.’
Mariata held her breath.
‘Everyone knows the desert makes odd noises. Rocks get hot during the day and cold at night: they break apart, shed their skins. That’s probably what you heard.’
The other man contested the point, but the voices were moving away, and soon she could not make out their words. A few minutes later the jeeps roared to life again, the beams of their headlights slid away, and an eerie silence descended. After a very long time Mariata extracted herself from her hiding place and crawled out into the open, dreading what she might find.
Moushi lay bloodstained and unmoving by the side of the road, but there was no trace at all of Atisi ag Baye, nor of the other two camels. It was as if the djenoun had swallowed them whole. Mariata stared around, but in every direction she saw the same thing: emptiness. Empty darkness, barely touched by a moon that had drifted behind a curtain of cloud.
Why had she done nothing to help the old man? Now he was gone, possibly dead, and she had done nothing but hide herself like a craven coward. He told you to stay hidden, a voice reminded her, but still she felt ashamed. Numbly, she picked up the fringed leather bag that Tana had given her, the last vestige of her previous life. It was empty, its contents thoughtlessly scattered by the soldiers, but after a few moments of frenzied search she retrieved the whetstones, the skein of cord, the three candles and the knife that had placed such superstitious fear in the heart of the soldier. A glint of moonlight a little way away led her to the Cross of Agadez. She found the bundles of herbs scattered here and there, and at last what she thought might be the flints: but how to tell, amidst a million other sharp-edged stones? She was mildly surprised to find the silver cylinder the soldiers had called a cigarette lighter lying in the dirt. She dropped it back into the bag and it fell with an audible clunk that sounded unnaturally loud in the silent darkness. But where was the scrap of indigo cloth? Suddenly it became vitally important that she find it. She ran her hands through the dust, amongst the stones, without a thought for the creeping scorpions that lurked there, as if her whole life, and that of the life growing inside her, depended on her finding it. It took many long minutes, but at last she found it impaled on a thorn bush. She pressed it to her face, taking in its faint, musty, unmistakable scent, and then she kissed it and stowed it carefully away.
Then, sitting back on her heels, she stared bleakly out over the road towards the south. Out there lay the Tinariwen, the many deserts, a thousand miles of the primal unknown: a wilderness of rock and dust offering neither shelter nor sustenance; sands studded with the bones of the long-dead – the lost legions, the ancestors, the unwary invaders; wave upon wave of dune-seas and mighty ergs; wells known only to the expert madugus who led the caravans; rivers that ran so far below the surface that no trace of their waters showed themselves to men. And all this belonged to no one but the demons of the wastes: the Kel Asuf. There was now nothing to act as a buffer between her and the desolation: she had no guide, no camel, no supplies. Out there lay only madness and despair.
Behind her, however, lay the known. Even on foot and alone it would be relatively easy to retrace the journey she had made thus far with Atisi from Imteghren. Once back there in the hands of her stepmother she would be forced to marry the damned butcher, be his second wife and slave; but she would live and so would her child. There was no choice.
Mariata stood up and slung the leather bag over her shoulder. Then she set her face resolutely to the south and started to walk into the unknown.