The Salt Road (7 page)

‘I won’t be going with you.’

‘Oh, I think you will. Look around. Can you condone what is happening here?’

Mariata was bemused. ‘What do you mean?’ It was just a normal harratin village, shabby and poorly put together.

‘Look: really look. Can’t you see they are starving?’

Mariata looked around, focusing on the details of the harratin life for the first time. The children were huge-eyed, their bellies bulging, their arms and legs like sticks. The adults looked exhausted, as if they had worked themselves half to death, the bright patterns of their robes mocking the dullness of their eyes, sunken cheeks and desperate expressions.

Rahma gestured to the rug the women were weaving. ‘Even that will be taken by Moussa’s people. They will have been given the wool and the design: the Kel Bazgan will sell it for profit and the harratin will get practically nothing for it.’ She walked over to the old women and said something to them in their own language, and they jabbered back. She gestured for Mariata to join her. ‘You see that? They have only the spoiled grain from which to make their flour, the ears they have garnered from amongst the chaff – not even the fifth part of the crop their contract stipulates. And see the children playing over there –’

Between the huts two lighter-skinned toddlers squatted in the mud, while a pair of older children, leaning against the wall of a hut, watched them wearily.

Mariata nodded. Rahma clicked her tongue. ‘Do the little ones look like true harratin children? I think not, with skin so fair. I think young Rhossi has been sowing his seed far and wide. The first child was made by force, they tell me; the second girl learnt enough from the first to make a bargain.’

On the way back to the encampment, Mariata once more passed Naïma with the tribe’s goats and for the first time noticed how very many of them there were – black and brown, piebald and skewbald, white and gingery orange – all milling around amongst the valley trees, stripping whatever foliage they could find. On the outskirts of the camp she passed the flock of sheep, the ewes hobbled, the youngsters left to run free, since they never wandered far from their dams. They looked plump and lively, and there were so many that she could not count them. Now the tents came into view, and beside them were the precious camels – the sturdy Maghrabis and the long-haired Berabish camels, the short grey Adrars and the
mehari
, the prized white camels from the Tibesti uplands of Chad. The mehari were a great luxury, expensive playthings for rich young men, who rarely used them for what they had been bred for: to travel at speed through the deep desert to raid other tribes or caravans. Instead they just raced them, placing wagers on the outcome. She knew that two of the great white camels, with their haughty heads and skittish ways, belonged to Rhossi.

The Kel Bazgan’s low-lying hide tents looked to be plain and simple dwellings from the outside, but inside the women kept their treasures: bright rugs, soft sheepskins, carved chairs and beds, boxes of silver jewellery, woollen robes, slippers and sandals decorated with studs of brass, gorgeously coloured and fringed leather bags. On the east side of the women’s tents their husbands stored their most precious belongings: swords that had been forged from Toledo steel three centuries before and passed down the generations;
tcherots
and
gris-gris
; thick silver armlets and richly adorned saddles. There were boxes of rice, sacks of millet, bags of flour; jars of oil and olives, pots of spices brought from northern markets. The women were plump; the children fat. Even the dogs were well fed. Only the poor were thin. The Bazgan tribe might not enjoy the legendary standing of the Kel Taitok, but it was a wealthy clan nevertheless. As Mariata looked around, it was as if she were seeing it all for the first time; and for the first time she felt ashamed. She had never once given a thought to the polarity between the lives of her people and those of the harratin on whom they depended, having always considered their relative estates the natural order of things. They were the aristocrats and the harratin were their retainers, paid to provide their services. That they were not paid well, or possibly even fairly, had never occurred to her before.

As she sat around the campfire that night with the other women eating spicy mutton with the fragrant flatbread the slaves had made that afternoon, the thought suddenly occurred to her that she had seen no livestock at all in the harratin village. She was quite certain none of them would be eating meat that night, or indeed that month, and the realization made the lamb stick in her throat until she coughed and coughed.

‘Are you unwell, Mariata?’ her Aunt Dassine asked. She was a sharp-eyed woman, sharp-tongued too.

‘I have lost my appetite,’ Mariata replied a little stiffly.

Seated at Dassine’s side, Yallawa stared coldly at Mariata, then turned to her neighbour. ‘The Kel Taitok eat only the most tender of gazelles: clearly our poor sheep are not sufficiently palatable for our regal kinswoman.’

Mariata pushed the rest of her meal away from her. ‘I am not hungry, though I passed many today who were.’

Curious eyes turned to her. ‘Beggars, maybe?’ Dassine asked.

‘Your own harratin,’ Mariata replied shortly. ‘Their children’s bellies are swollen with hunger. Even the adults are thin as sticks.’

People began to murmur. Mariata could catch only a word here or there, but the glances the women gave her were hostile. At last Yallawa said, ‘This is not a subject suitable for discussion by ignorant young women.’ She fixed Mariata with her cold regard. ‘And it is especially unsuitable for a young woman who is dependent on the charity of others for her well-being to voice such foolish and unwanted opinions.’

‘It is not my fault that my mother is dead and that my father treads the salt road. I would hardly have chosen to come here, but I wasn’t given the choice.’

Dassine thrust her face at Mariata. ‘When my brother took your mother to wife, the Kel Taitok treated those of us who travelled all the way to the wedding as if we were vassals bringing them tribute. The women laughed behind their hands at our darker skin and made fun of our best clothes, our jewellery and the way our men wear their veils. You may give yourself airs and boast of your elevated ancestry; but your bloodline does not impress me. You are lucky to be pretty enough to have attracted the eye of Awa’s fine son: at least such a match will temper your arrogance.’

Mariata pushed herself to her feet and without a word walked away, not trusting herself to respond in a civil manner.

She gave the men’s campfire as wide a berth as possible as she made her way to the tents; but even so she saw out of the corner of her eye how Rhossi ag Bahedi detached himself from the group. She increased her pace, but he soon caught her up and stood in front of her, his dark eyes blazing.

‘Walk with me.’

‘I will go nowhere willingly with you.’

‘You should do what I say, if you know what’s good for you.’

‘Since when did any man have the right to tell a woman what to do?’

‘You will regret it if you don’t.’

‘I am sure I would regret it if I did.’

He caught her by the arm. ‘I hope you haven’t said anything to anyone you should not have said.’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean.’

He gave her a little shake. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

‘Oh, like telling everyone how you so bravely threw rocks at a defenceless old woman?’

‘Is she dead?’ he asked, a little too avidly.

Mariata regarded him curiously. ‘Why should the high chieftain’s heir care so much about the fate of a poor wandering baggara?’

Rhossi glared at her. ‘A baggara, yes, that’s all she is. But did she live? Tell me at once.’

‘I am happy to report that her death does not lie on your conscience.’

Rhossi let her go and drew back. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He did not sound sincere. ‘Where is she now?’

Mariata hesitated. ‘She went on her way,’ she said at last, and watched as relief flooded his face. ‘And now I shall be on mine.’ She yawned hugely. ‘Today events have tired me out.’

‘I will see you to your aunt’s tent.’

Mariata laughed. ‘I hardly need a companion to see me safely home over such a short distance.’

‘Even so.’ He took her elbow and walked her away from the campfires. ‘Do not ever mention that woman to anyone, do you hear me?’

‘Who is she, that you’re so concerned that no one knows who she is?’

His jaw tightened. ‘No one special.’

At the entrance to Dassine’s tent, Mariata stopped. ‘Good night, Rhossi.’ Detaching herself from his grasp, she ducked inside. She bent, lit the candle-lantern and knelt to arrange her bed. She had brought the embroidered bedcovering that lay on top of the frame with her: it had come from the south of Morocco and she loved it. Rows of embroidered red camels, unrecognizable to any who did not understand the geometric abstraction, marched across a background of gold; around the edges stylized flowers made star-shapes like the mosaic tilework she had once seen in Tamanrassett. This item, more than any other, reminded her of home. They had left in such haste. ‘Bring only those things you can carry,’ her father had told her brusquely. ‘Your Aunt Dassine will have everything you need and I don’t want the caravan to be held up by having to cart your possessions all over the desert.’

She had left a dozen fine robes, boots for the winter, jewelled sandals and belts, many coloured headscarves and shawls, her sheepskins and the fine goat-leather her mother had been keeping for her so that she could make her own tent when she married. All she had brought with her was contained in the wooden box beside her bed: her jewellery, cosmetics, a little knife and a spare robe. The clothes on her back and this bedcovering represented all she had left in the world – or at least in this place. She ran her hands over the embroidery, feeling homesick and lonely.

‘Very pretty.’

She turned but before she could cry out there was a hand over her mouth. She could smell the stink of mutton-fat on it, and the char of the fire.

‘Who are you going to call for? Your father and brothers are halfway across the Sahara, loading up their camels with cones of salt like the common traders they are. Your aunt? She can’t stand the sight of you. Your cousins, Ana and Nofa? They’ve both been chasing after me for years: not that I’ve any interest in them – the hulking great oxen. All the men live in fear of my uncle, and I am his chosen successor. You’re an outsider in this tribe, Mariata, while I am the heir of its high chief. No one is going to lift a hand to stop me. And afterwards, whose word are people going to believe?’

Rhossi pushed her face down on the bed and held her there, straddling her body, his weight suffocating her. She couldn’t call out, could hardly breathe. The next thing she knew there was cold air on the back of her bare thighs and a hand trying to prise her legs apart, fingernails digging into her delicate flesh. ‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her. ‘You’ll enjoy it: girls always do when they get used to the idea. Just stay still, damn you.’

Her cries of outrage were swallowed by the bedding.

‘You don’t need to worry about the baby: you won’t need to kill it – you’ll be my wife. There’ll be no shame.’

There came a moment when his hold on her lessened and in that moment Mariata felt herself filled by a spirit, a vengeful, ravening thing possessed of supernatural strength. An animal noise came out of her, rough and guttural as she bucked and twisted. Her right arm came free and she shot out a wild elbow that caught Rhossi full in the mouth. Everything stopped.

Mariata fought herself upright, dragging her robe back around her ankles. From her treasure chest beside the bed she took the little dagger and held it out in front of her breathing hard, ready to use it.

Rhossi’s eyes were huge. He touched his face. The hand came away from his mouth covered in blood and he stared at it as if both hand and blood belonged to someone else. When he spat, a tooth fell out on to the beautiful bedcover, spotting it with a different shade of red. He looked at it in disbelief, then transferred his gaze to Mariata. A little whimper escaped him, and then he started to cry. He hurled himself to his feet and ran from the tent.

Mariata stared after him. Then she moved methodically around the tent, collecting the things she would need.

She arrived at the harratin village an hour later.

‘Tell no one that you have seen either Rahma or myself,’ she instructed the headman carefully. ‘And make sure everyone in the village – even the children – say the same thing. They will punish you if they know you have helped us.’

She gave him the rice and flour and tea she had stolen from Dassine’s tent. Then she took Rahma by the arm and led her out to where two of the fine white, fully laden mehari camels that had once belonged to Rhossi ag Bahedi stood waiting complaisantly for them under the light of the three-quarters moon.

6

Had I forgotten to take off the amulet when I went to bed that night? You’d think it’d be a hard thing to forget, as massive as it was. But I was wearing it when I woke up the next morning.

As I swung my legs out of bed, I had the sense that I was in two places at once, but never fully present in either. And when I threw back the curtains it seemed to me that the London sun that shone in on me was dull, as if someone had changed a hundred-watt lightbulb for a low-energy equivalent.

On the tube as I travelled in to work I was aware for the first time in years that millions of tons of stone and earth and sewers and buildings were pressing down upon the tunnel through which we passed at unnatural speed. Trying to divert my attention from this uncomfortable thought, I cast my gaze around the carriage. An advert for holidays in Egypt, a line of camels silhouetted against dunes and pyramids; cheap flights to Marrakech … A knot of foreign women got on at Knightsbridge and stood swaying with the movement of the train, only their heavily kohled eyes visible in the slit black fabric of their niqabs. One of them looked right at me, said something to her companions and they all stared at me.