The Salt Road (26 page)

And then there was the old woman expiring slowly on the living-room floor. The way Lallawa accepted her lot with such good grace moved me greatly, the way she warmly grasped the hands of her visitors, all the while smiling lopsidedly out of that gentle, careworn face. I thought of how her face had turned itself unerringly towards me on and off for those many uncomfortable hours in that little room, as if she too questioned my identity, and maybe even my worth. How must she feel, uprooted from her desert home and set down in a place like Tiouada? To lie there, yearning to see the bleak beauty of the desert dunes once more before she died, to ease her soul in a wide open space like the ones she remembered in her prime, but instead having her senses robbed from her one by one, and being imprisoned within four gloomy walls and a low ceiling, peered at by the crow-women, tended by the sharp-tongued Habiba?

Taïb and Azaz were uncharacteristically silent as we made our way along dusty roads rendered violet by the sinking sun, lost in their own thoughts. In the stillness, above the low rumble of the tyres on the uneven ground, I heard our destination before I saw it: a deep thrum of drumbeats pulsing through the twilit air, accompanied by some high-pitched stringed instrument, or a woman’s voice strained to breaking point. We pulled to a halt outside a tall adobe wall; when Azaz opened the door for me, the noise was deafening.

Taïb put his mouth close to my ear; I felt his breath hot against my neck as he said, ‘Welcome to a proper Berber
fichta
!’ And a moment later he had swept me up into his arms and into an extraordinary scene. Dozens of lanterns hung from trees already decked with pomegranates and oranges, their candle flames flickering with the movement of the dancing figures below them: men in turbans and whirling robes; women with kohl-rimmed eyes and glittering silver earrings, their henna-patterned hands waving rhythmically above their heads. Children ran amongst the throng in their best clothes: boys in white tunics and bright yellow slippers; girls in coloured kaftans, toddlers with huge black eyes and gap teeth, their fists twisted in their mothers’ black robes and embroidered veils. A group of stripe-robed men wearing white turbans and ceremonial daggers beat a variety of drums, sending a powerful, complex rhythm out into the night, one that threatened to swallow every trace of individuality in the vicinity, and to swallow it whole. Feeling overwhelmed, I stared around for some comforting point of reference, but I was not to be reassured.

Around the edges of the garden, arranged along low couches and perched on little wooden stools, were the same crow-like old women as those who had been gathered in the salon at Habiba’s house, waiting for death to claim the old woman – black-clad from top to toe, their faces as brown and wrinkled as walnut shells, their hands clasped like claws around little glasses of tea.

Taïb swung me down on to a vacant cushion beside a group of laughing girls tending to their younger siblings and abandoned me there. ‘Stay here,’ he told me, as if I had any choice. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

When I looked up to watch him pass through the crowd, I felt the bright black eyes of the old women upon me, piercing and inquisitive. They caught me watching them and held my gaze implacably; then they began chattering again like magpies, shooting sharp looks at me, waggling their fingers. I knew what they were thinking: I had had a privileged insight into the minds of the women of the region now. Feeling acutely uncomfortable under their damning scrutiny, I dug in my handbag for my mobile phone in order to try to text Eve again – anything for a bit of friendly contact in my own language – but it was the amulet that fell into my hand.

I felt its square edges, and then it was in my palm, resting there, sturdy and familiar and comforting. A sudden small wave of warmth washed up my arm, suffusing my skin, and abruptly I felt that maybe things were not so bad after all, that I was not an enemy intruding into this private celebration, a stranger in a foreign land, surrounded by the inimical Other, but a welcome guest here. No, more: that I was somehow a part of it, one amongst many; that the drums that beat so loudly that they reverberated in the marrow of my breastbone were a part of me and the beat of my heart was a counterpart to that rhythm. By the time Taïb finally made his way back to me I was sitting there cheerfully with one little girl in my lap and another happily braiding my hair, clapping my hands and nodding away to the music as if I had been doing this all my life.

He grinned at me and subsided gracefully to the floor beside me bearing a heaped plateful of food. Behind him came Azaz with a silver jug and ewer and a white towel draped over his arm. He knelt at my side and poured water for me to wash my hands in. How courtly! I smiled at him as I washed and dried my hands and he smiled back, restored to his merry self, then whisked the ewer away. The children disappeared, but not before Taïb had pulled handfuls of almonds out of his ears for them, making them giggle delightedly.

‘Clever trick,’ I observed into a lull in the music.

‘Many nieces and nephews. A lot of practice.’

‘You’ve never wanted children of your own?’

He passed me a plate of steaming lamb and vegetables with a large piece of baked flatbread balancing precariously beside it. The fragrance of spices and fruit rose from the dish, and my nose practically twitched like a dog’s. He watched me eat without answering, and I was so absorbed by the delicious food, so rich and well balanced – the juicy meatiness of the lamb complemented by the soft, sweet prunes, the chilli and garlic mixing with flavours I couldn’t quite place, flavours that hinted somehow of rose petals and sandalwood, or spices that had no name except for those given them by the Berber people who used them – that I failed to remember that he hadn’t answered my question until I was halfway through demolishing the meal. I looked up guiltily and found him watching me with a mixture of amusement and intensity.

I swallowed the mouthful I held. ‘No children?’ I repeated.

‘That’s quite a personal question.’

‘Is it? I’ve had a personal sort of day. Your cousin Habiba was quite rude to me.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘She was?’

I wasn’t going to divulge exactly what she had said: it was too crude, too uncomfortable, as if I were somehow trying to shock him, making some sort of advance upon him by a rather contrary route. ‘And she told me you and she were engaged.’

His face went very still, close and remote, as if a set of shutters had come down. ‘We were,’ he said after a long pause. ‘A long time ago.’

‘So what happened?’

‘That is a matter between her and me and our family, not a subject for discussion with strangers.’

Well, that told me. I sat back, affronted, while Taïb applied himself to finishing the plate of food. After a while, he got to his feet, took the empty plate and without a word disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later he was back with a drum like a huge tambourine under his arm and another, consisting of two clay pots covered with skins, in his hands. He passed the larger one to Azaz, and then sat down cross-legged on the matting in the middle of the party and started tapping out a lively syncopated beat. Soon a dozen or more men had made a wide circle around them, augmenting and elaborating on the rhythm with instruments of their own, or by simply clapping their hands. A tall young man with what looked a lot like a banjo came and sat with them, adding his jazzy strings to the melody that now threaded its way through the gathering.

I watched as Taïb sang and played, his eyes shut, lost in the music. He had a pleasant light tenor voice, soulful and haunting, and he sang with a passion and lack of inhibition that made the tendons stand out on his neck. For some reason I was surprised by this: he had not to this point struck me as a passionate man, nor as one charismatic enough to lead a room in song. People were dancing now, the men shuffling sideways a pace or two, clapping their hands together, stepping back again. The younger women shimmied in a sort of chaste and fully clothed belly dance, their hands flicking here and there, while the older women swayed and bobbed and laughed and looked a lot less crow-like than they had before. The song went on and on, merged into another, and another. Someone brought around glasses of mint tea, little almond-flavoured cakes, dates and something that I thought looked like fudge and to which I helped myself enthusiastically. Unfortunately, it turned out to resemble nothing so much as balsa wood, instantly removing every drop of saliva in my mouth, shocking me out of my pleasant reverie.

I glanced at my watch. Good grief! It was almost midnight. During a lull in the music I caught Taïb’s eye and he came over. ‘When were you thinking of heading back?’ I asked. ‘I should let Eve know.’

He looked distant, preoccupied. ‘Of course.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Look, I need to go and see someone. Give me a few minutes. Call your friend and let her know you’re OK and will be back soon. There should be a good signal here.’

There should? In the middle of nowhere it seemed unlikely, but when I took out my phone the reception bars were almost full. I retrieved Eve’s number from the contacts list and waited as it rang. And rang.
Oh, Eve
, I sighed to myself.
Where the hell are you
? A moment later, as if she heard my chiding, she picked up.

‘Hello?’

‘Eve? It’s me?’

Some sort of rustling as if she were shifting the mobile from one ear to the other. ‘Oh, hi, Iz.’

She sounded a bit out of it: vague and displaced, as if she’d been asleep. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up. Just to say don’t lock the door, I’ll be back, though it’ll be really late.’

In the background I heard her say something but it was muffled, as if she had put her hand over the phone. I tried to focus, but there was too much chatter and laughter around me. ‘Is that OK, Eve? Are you OK? Did you have a good day?’

‘What? Er, oh, yes. Great, thanks, really good actually.’ And then, as if ambushed, she gave out a shriek that turned into a loud and unmistakable giggle. There was another failed attempt to muffle the phone and then I heard her say, quite distinctly, ‘Get off, Jez. No, get
off
! Ssh, quiet, it’s Izzy.’

I gazed bleakly at the phone as if I could see projected on to its opaque little screen our unimpressive hotel room with its dull brown tiles and dun curtains. Had they lit one of the scented candles Eve had brought with her, rather than given themselves up as hostages to the unforgiving sixty-watt bulb that swung unshaded from the centre of the ceiling? Had they pushed the two single beds together, I wondered, or were they jammed on to Eve’s narrow mattress, bare limbs entwined, the sweat sheening their well-exercised skin?

‘Oh, Eve.’ Suddenly I felt exhausted, emptied out.

‘What? Are you OK? Where are you?’

‘Look, it’s nothing: I’m fine. I’m with Taïb, at a sort of party-thing, in a village to the south. Not sure how long it’ll take us to get back from here, but don’t worry about me, OK?’

I cut the connection, feeling suddenly very alone, and looked around at the sea of humanity in which I was a still, small island. Some of the drummers were warming the skins of their drums over the fires and a group of women were now playing stringed instruments like small, oddly shaped violas; the children at their feet were sucking on dates. Taïb returned hand in hand with an older man with greying hair and a heavy moustache.

‘Mustapha will drive you back to Tafraout,’ he said without preamble. He looked weary, as if he’d had a hard job of persuading Mustapha of the efficacy of this arrangement.

I stared at him, feeling ever more isolated. ‘You must be joking! I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him.’

‘He’s my uncle. You’ll be perfectly safe with him. Besides, there’ll be my aunt and her three daughters travelling with you.’

‘And you’re just going to hang around here, party till dawn?’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to drive Lallawa to the desert. It’s her last wish, and I have both the time and the vehicle to do this thing for her.’

My jaw must have dropped. ‘Oh.’

He squatted down beside me. ‘You know, I was going to ask you if you’d like to see the Sahara since we’re only a few hours away from it here; but then I thought that would be a crazy thing to do. You hardly know me; and Lallawa, for all her stoicism and courage, will require some looking after, and that’s not really something your culture prepares you for, so then I thought I’d better ask Mustapha to take you back to your hotel. But if you won’t go with him …’ He sighed, spread his hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry. I promised to get you back to Tafraout, and I gave you my word on that. We’ll leave now and I’ll come back for Lallawa tomorrow –’

‘No.’ It was as if someone else was acting through me; someone reckless. I saw, as if from another place, how my hand reached out and touched his mouth to stop his words. ‘No, I want to go with you. I want to see the desert too. With you and Lallawa. Take me with you, into the Sahara.’

It was just like starting out on a lead, or making the first step out into the void on an abseil. Just like that, it was done, and my life would never be the same.

19

Over the days and weeks that followed, Mariata’s thoughts spun constantly around her awakening into the new sensual world Amastan had introduced her to. She thought about it so often that sometimes she wondered whether her personal demon had access to these thoughts and was using them to haunt her in a new and inventive way. She remembered every detail of their time together in an hallucinatory fashion, as if she were reliving it again from within and without. She could recall how as they lay beneath the oleanders, with their heavy perfume filling the air above them, Amastan unwound his tagelmust with slow and deliberate calm; how hungrily she had gazed at the planes of his face, revealed to her for only the second time and in such different circumstances to the first. How he had laid his naked cheek against hers and she had held her breath until it seemed she might pass out. How his breath had been hot on her neck, then her breast. The memory of it still made her shiver with rapture and anticipation for the next time he touched her.