The Salt Road (20 page)

Taïb translated, but his grandmother was having none of it. ‘
Oho, oho
,’ she said over and over. ‘
Aman, oho
.’ She waved a finger at me. Then, with her surprising, brutish strength, she seized my ankle and set about slathering the foul substance into it with long, firm strokes. After my horror of the smell wore off, I realized this was in fact quite a pleasurable sensation, a deep tissue massage that radiated heat out of the injury and up into my leg, where it proceeded to disperse. Perhaps she really did know what she was doing.

My ankle gave an involuntary galvanic jerk. It moved! Not broken then, after all, I thought with a sudden surge of hope, though it hurt like hell. Now she slathered on a thick layer of the warm green paste, set into this a handful of reeds for splints and bound it with strips torn from Taïb’s proffered white turban. ‘Two weeks,’ he translated for me. ‘You must stay off it for two weeks. You have damaged the ligaments and perhaps the tendon, but the bones are intact.’

This was good news compared to the lost-leg scenario; but not so great for a climbing holiday. I hadn’t even completed one route, I thought bleakly. I grimaced, then remembered the manners my French mother had beaten into me, and thanked her. ‘
Tanmirt
, Lalla Fatma.’ It was as much of the language as I’d picked up so far but the old woman seemed delighted. She beetled off to the sacks by the wall and came back with something of a deep, maroon red. Taïb suppressed a smile, like a magician allowing his audience a glimpse of the rabbit before making it vanish, poker-faced. I stared at him, but now the old woman was saying something to me and uncurling her fingers to make her offering. My hand reached out from a long habit of politeness, then retracted in horror.

‘Locusts,’ Taïb translated, trying to keep a straight face. ‘Locusts eat only the finest plants and they have great strength in their jumping limbs. If you eat them, their strength will pass into your ankle and it will heal quickly.’

‘I am
not
going to eat locusts,’ I said, pushing Lalla Fatma’s hand away gently but firmly.

‘But they’ve been dry-fried and coated in sugar. Delicious,’ Taïb went on. ‘We eat them like bonbons. See.’ He popped one into his mouth and crunched down on it and I watched him, aghast, then laughed aloud as he made an appalled face and palmed the pulpy remnants into his hand. ‘OK. They are quite revolting. Nana will be very disappointed in both of us.’

His grandmother looked from him to me, clucked her tongue and left the room. Had I mortally offended her? I had little way of knowing. But a couple of minutes later she was back with something shiny that she began to fasten around my ankle. ‘Baraka,’ she said, as if I should know what this meant. ‘Baraka.’

‘For good luck,’ Taïb translated. ‘To keep the evil eye at bay, and help you heal. Since you won’t eat the locusts, that will make you well.’

I bent forward. There, bound to the bandages with thin leather bindings, was a small square of silver. My heart jumped. Then I unzipped my pocket, took out my amulet and held it out on the palm of my hand for her to see. ‘Look.’

Taïb and his grandmother stared at the giant version of the thing that had been pinned to my ankle and started talking very fast, their heads bowed close together, hers swathed in the bright black and orange silk, his close-cropped black peppered with solitary grey hairs. He was older than I had at first thought.

‘It’s very similar, isn’t it?’ I asked conversationally.

Taïb looked up. ‘They’re from different regions. The small one belongs to our Mauretanian ancestors; this other is from further south, I think. They are both clearly Tuareg in origin. Where did you get it from?’

‘It was a … gift.’

‘An expensive gift. This is a very good piece. Do you know where it came from?’

‘I believe it was found near some grave in the desert,’ I said vaguely, unable now to remember the name of the woman mentioned in the archaeological paper. ‘Someone whose name meant “She of the Tents” or something similar.’

He started. ‘You don’t mean Tin Hinan?’

The name sent a little shock of recognition through me. ‘Yes. That was the name. But it may not have anything to do with her at all.’

Taïb was regarding the amulet very intently. Then he shook his head. ‘It cannot be that ancient: it must be a coincidence,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘Would you let me buy it from you?’

Was this some sort of polite code for making a gift of the amulet to the family for their rescue of me? I felt a sudden irrational fury: all they had done was brought me to this old witch with her smelly goo and peasant medicine. The amulet was mine and I would not part with it. I closed my fingers tight around it. ‘It’s not for sale.’

He shrugged. ‘Even if we cannot prove the provenance it would fetch a good price, you know. In Paris. There are a lot of collectors for this sort of artefact: an original
inadan
piece, not a modern nickel copy.’

I looked at him askance. ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘You mean for a poor backward Berber?’ He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘The truth is I am only back in the region to visit my sister Hasna here’ – he nodded to the girl, who smiled back – ‘and Nana and the family. The rest of the time I deal in North African antiquities, in Paris, for the most part.’

And suddenly I knew who he was, and felt a fool. The cousin the restaurateur had mentioned. ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You’re
that
Taïb.’

When it became clear I was not going to explain this odd remark any further he said, ‘Could I take a closer look? It really is a fine example.’

Reluctantly, I made to hand my amulet over to him, but, as I did so, something inside it seemed to shift. I turned it over and stared at it. ‘Oh! I think it’s broken. It must have happened when I fell.’ Abruptly, I felt nauseous. The amulet had saved my life; and now it was broken.

Taïb craned his neck. ‘It’s not broken: look.’

The central boss was out of place, pushed sideways by the impact of the fall. Behind it lay a second level, a hidden compartment. I had forgotten all about my injury now, for inside the hidden compartment nestled a tiny roll of what looked like paper, or was it parchment; or even papyrus, or whatever the ancient peoples wrote upon? With trembling fingers, I tried to winkle it out, but it had been in there a long time: it was recalcitrant.

‘You try.’ I held it out to Taïb, but his grandmother laid a hand on his shoulder and said something very loud and very fast that drew from him a look of consternation.

‘Nana is superstitious. She says it’s best to let the dead rest.’

‘The dead?’

‘It’s just a saying. Not to disturb the past. She’s worried it may contain bad magic, a curse, and she doesn’t want it to pass to her family.’

Let sleeping beasts lie
. All of a sudden I remembered the words of my father’s letter. No chance of that! I fiddled determinedly with the narrow opening until the curl of paper fell out into my hand and waited for the weird tingling sensation I had had when I first touched the amulet, but there was nothing. The paper just felt very fragile, very brittle: I was afraid it might disintegrate as soon as I tried to open it, but I had to know what it contained. Carefully, I smoothed it out. What had I been expecting to find inside? Something like a message in a bottle spelling out ‘Help me!’? I stared uncomprehendingly at the arcane glyphs: amongst them a circle with a horizontal line across it, like a no-entry sign; a triangle with a line sticking out of it like a dropped umbrella; a stick-figure man, arms upraised; an X with the top and bottom closed; a symbol like an overturned picnic table; two tiny circles, one on top of the other. The writing seemed to go from side to side and from top to bottom, intricately interwoven as if to ward off interference from an interloper like myself. I looked to Taïb. ‘Do you know what it is: can you read it?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s Tifinagh, the written form of the language of the desert tribes, kept alive by the women of the Tuareg, the Kel Tamacheq. But can I read it?’ He shook his head. ‘My family has Tuareg roots, but those who could read the Tifinagh are long since buried.’

‘Not even your grandmother?’ I saw the old woman craning her neck to see what we had found; her eyes were wide, as if she knew something but was keeping it to herself. Then she put up her hands as if to ward off evil influences, turned and walked away. We both watched her duck under the low doorway into the courtyard outside and disappear from view.

15

Mariata avoided Amastan’s company after his hard confession. She could think of nothing to say to him. Why could she not find the right words? Why could she not respond to the huge sacrifice he had made in opening up to her? What sort of poet was she; more, what sort of woman? Her failure to speak was causing him a new order of pain: she could see it in the way he gazed at her, then glanced quickly away; always the shade of Manta shimmered between them. Mariata imagined her as she must have been, vital and full of confidence; prettier than most, a bit of a rebel, not afraid to kiss a young man she liked, willing to trust her heart to him even though she hardly knew him. In other words, a girl rather like herself. And making this connection made it even more difficult to go to Amastan: in some strange way to do so seemed a betrayal of the dead woman and the tragic love she and he had shared.

About a week later Amastan left with a group of hunters heading north to look for game for the wedding feast for Leïla and Kheddou. For the first few days she was relieved not to bear the constant reminder of his presence, but soon after that she began to miss him so badly she felt as if her heart would calcify if she did not set eyes on him again soon. As if by way of revenge for this yearning, Manta insinuated herself into Mariata’s dreams night by night, waking her in a sweat. She heard a disembodied voice; saw the decapitated body moving of its own accord; the head rolling to her feet, opening its mouth to reveal within the bloodied amulet Mariata now wore around her neck …

One morning Rahma came to sit beside her as she pummelled the dough for the day’s tagella.

‘You look tired, daughter.’

Mariata had to admit she was not sleeping well.

‘It has been hotter than usual,’ Rahma conceded with a half-smile that told Mariata she knew very well there was more to it than that. When once more she raised the matter of her son taking the salt road, Mariata smacked the dough down hard. ‘I do not think your son is ever going back to the caravans.’

Rahma stopped brushing the dust and sand from the proving stone and looked intently at Mariata. ‘What has he said to you? Has he told you what happened to Manta yet?’

Even the name was like a knife to her, but she said nothing. It was not her tale to tell, even if she could bear to tell it.

Rahma pressed on. ‘I think we must find out; but it is you who will need to ask him; he has always kept secrets from me, even as a child. When his uncle gave him a knife when he was five, he concealed it in the sand behind the tent, lest I found it and took it from him. When he hurt his knee playing with the older boys he was too proud to tell me about it in case I stopped him from playing with them any more: the congealed blood stuck to his breeches and he hid it from me for a week, until the cotton had grown into the wound. He bears the scar still.’ She looked sad. ‘Promise me, Mariata, that you will find out. Promise me, for both our sakes.’

Mariata regarded her curiously. ‘Why do you ask this of me?’

‘I have seen the way you look at him –’ She waved a hand to flick away the girl’s denial. ‘We both love him. When he returns to us, I will do what I can to help you in this, and you will do what you can to help me, and between us Amastan shall have what he needs.’

‘And that is what?’

Rahma watched her with hooded eyes. ‘He will stay here with us both and raise the family that will be the making of him and give him the hope he needs to remake his world.’

‘I do not think he is ready to do this,’ Mariata said warily. ‘In fact, I am quite sure he is not, with me or anyone else.’

‘Then we shall have to make sure that events overtake him,’ Rahma said, and folded her lips.

Guests began to arrive for the marriage from the surrounding area, from as far away as Tafadek and Iferouane: aunts and cousins, brothers and uncles and old friends. Resources were stretched to feed and accommodate them: some of the precious goats were slaughtered, chickens too, though the older people would not eat them, regarding them as taboo. As sweetmeats, a dish of locusts cooked and coated in sugar was prepared – a special treat.

Some days later the hunters returned with a number of rabbits, many of the pretty speckled fowl that ran wild in the hills and two gazelles they had chased down on the plateau above the village. The elderly ram that had that day been earmarked for slaughter if the hunters returned empty-handed was reprieved. The men of the village joked about this and one of them hung a leather amulet around its neck to ensure it was blessed with baraka, and everyone was in fine spirits. Everyone, that is, except for Rahma and Mariata, for Amastan had not returned with the group. He had, the hunters said, gone his own way, but they did not know where.

Mariata tried to throw herself into the preparations for the marriage celebration, but her heart was not in it. She spent the morning baking loaf after loaf of bread: pummelling the dough, proving it on the sun-warmed bread-stones, keeping fire after fire alight till the embers were glowing, laying the embers of each fire aside and placing the dough into the hot sand beneath the fires to cook with the glowing charcoal replaced on top; then turning the loaves halfway through the cooking time. It was a process that required concentration, and, even though Amastan’s absence had left an unfillable hollow within her, she was meticulous in the bread-making and won praise even from the wizened old women who had been preparing bridal loaves for half a century.

In the afternoon, when it was too hot to prepare food or move around in the burning sun, the women took to the tents, to sleep and gossip and select their clothing and jewellery for the night ahead, and to apply their kohl and henna; while the men took themselves off to the shade of the trees on the other side of the encampment.