The Salt Road (28 page)

She found Tana sewing leather in the shade of a huge tamarisk on the edge of the encampment. The colours of the thing she sewed gleamed as bright as fruit. Mariata wondered what it was, with its complex motifs and decorative fringes; but she had rarely seen anything so lovely and could hardly take her eyes from it.

Tana regarded her gravely. They had not exchanged a word since the night of Kheddou and Leïla’s wedding. ‘It is a travelling bag,’ the enad said without preamble, holding it aloft so that its fringes swayed and jounced. ‘You will need one.’

‘I will?’

‘You are going on a long journey.’

Mariata wondered about this. Was the smith trying to make her leave again? On the other hand, she herself had proposed to Amastan that after their marriage they should make the journey to the Hoggar to bring the news to her cousins, the last remnants of her revered mother’s family, and stay with them in the rampart of the hills beyond Abalessa in safety for the winter. She dearly wanted to show her beloved the mountains where she had grown up, the jutting pinnacles that turned to scarlet as the sun went down; the cool, shady gueltas in which water stood all year round. Amastan had been polite but non-committal on the subject. He would not speak them aloud, but she knew his thoughts turned on the conflict that edged ever nearer. Even so, she was sure she could persuade him once they were wed, so she did not press Tana for her meaning but instead asked the question she had come here to ask.

‘Will you make a divination for me and tell me if you see my father and brothers still amongst the living?’

Tana’s sharp eyes fixed upon her, boring into her so hard that Mariata felt as though her gaze was piercing her through like a lance. At last the enad sighed and put aside the leatherwork.

‘Come with me.’

In the gloom of the smithy, Tana brewed tea using
tehergelé
and
tinhert
and another herb Mariata did not recognize. She hammered fragments from a loaf of hard sugar and stirred them into the pot. Then she stood and poured it like a man, from a great height, so that the golden liquid fell foaming like a winter waterfall into the glass. ‘You must drink a glass from each of three pourings,’ she told Mariata sternly. ‘The first is as strong as life.’ She sat down opposite the girl and pushed the glass across the tray towards her, and Mariata drank it down, savouring the complex taste of the aromatic herbs.

Tana refilled her glass. ‘The second is as sweet as love,’ and with these words she regarded Mariata almost as if she hated her. Mariata tipped the glass to her lips; and indeed this second pouring did seem to taste more sugared than the first.

‘And one final glass –’ Tana pushed it towards her and waited.

Mariata took the tea glass up and watched the specks of tea and herb swirl in the amber liquid. It seemed cooler and darker than the previous two glasses: she supposed the tea had brewed for longer in the pot, but when she sipped it she almost choked. She set it down. ‘It tastes horrible.’

‘You must finish it.’ The enad sat back on her heels and regarded Mariata implacably until the girl had drained the glass. Then she smiled as though well satisfied and said, ‘The third glass is as bitter as death.’

Mariata felt the aftertaste on her tongue, and wondered for a chilling moment whether the smith had poisoned her, and was not at all reassured to see Tana closing the doorway with a long curtain of leather, and setting a series of gris-gris in the sand at the threshold. Gloom fell throughout the smithy: Mariata sat still, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe. The light of the fire flared, rendering her strong features suddenly grim and demonic. Then she marked out a space on the floor, smoothing down the sand into a rough square, at each corner of which she set an amulet. At last, the smith went to the pole that supported the roof and looked up. Pale daylight filtered down through the smoke-hole into the room, illuminating a plain leather pouch that hung from a hook overhead. The air around the bag shifted and shimmered; dust motes and ashes danced in the draughts that spiralled up past it and out into the world. They spun and writhed like dervishes so that, for a moment, Mariata thought she was seeing spirits that were trembling on the edge of incarnation, about to spring to life. Something in the tea had made her head swim. The enad reached up, took down the pouch and weighed it in her hands. Something inside chinked.

‘What is in the bag?’ Mariata asked, trying not to sound too frightened.

Tana tipped some of the contents into her large brown hand. Her thumb played over them, consideringly. Then she held out her hand so that Mariata could see. In her palm were pebbles, water-smoothed, such as you would find on the bed of a river. But out of the water they were dull and unimpressive: Mariata was disappointed, they seemed so ordinary.

The smith dropped them back into the pouch with a clatter. ‘Each one contains a spirit,’ she said, and watched with satisfaction as Mariata recoiled. ‘That’s how I chose them: the spirit in each one called to me as I searched along the oued in the dry season. It is too dangerous to select stones when the river is flowing: everyone knows that water is where the spirits meet. They are not so strong when they are dry, but when they are dry I can control them. I will read for you the Roads of Life and the Roads of Death and we will see what we will see.’

She touched Mariata’s amulet, tapping it three times, then touched her forehead, her shoulders, feet and hands. Apparently satisfied by whatever protection this afforded, she drew out a handful of the stones from the pouch, tossed them into the air with her left hand and caught some of them again in her right. Some she caught in pairs; others singly. She laid the caught stones out in a vertical line, like the engraved lines of Tifinagh on the boulders outside the encampment: one; a pair; another pair; one. Then she threw another set of pebbles up into the air, caught them and examined the contents, her lips moving as if she were counting. From time to time her eyebrows rose as if she were surprised; or she pursed her mouth, or frowned.

Two pairs and two singles followed in a different configuration. It looked almost random, but with the smith investing the divination with great concentration and attention, Mariata could tell there was a system involved in the selection and display that she simply did not understand.

More stones rose and fell, and the remaining pebbles were laid out alongside the first two lines: three pairs, a single solitary red stone. The smith hissed and made a face: she did not seem best pleased.

‘What do you see?’ Mariata asked, unable to bear the tension any longer, but Tana shook her head. ‘Do not interrupt the spirits while they do their work,’ she said sharply.

The final line took shape: two pairs; a single stone, black this time; a final pair. The enad sat back and regarded her handiwork thoughtfully. She picked up the single red pebble, turned it over and replaced it. Now its upmost side was a dark brown: it seemed less ominous. Or was it more so?

‘Your father and brothers walk the Road of Life still, but death trails in their wake,’ she said at last. ‘Blood will be spilt.’

Mariata did not know what to make of this cryptic pronouncement. ‘They are alive?’

‘They are.’

The enad ran her hand over the configuration of four lines, making marks with her fingertips in the sand, moving stones around at great speed as if playing some frantic game of strategy such as the old men played sometimes with stones, capturing an enemy line with just two jumps of a pebble. ‘Journeys, journeys, journeys,’ she said crossly. ‘Well, we knew that.’ She appeared to be talking to herself. ‘From the unknown to the known; from the known to the unknown. A sacrifice; a betrayal; an ineluctable sequence of events.’ She picked up a white pebble, examined it closely. ‘What are you doing there, on the Road to Death, if you represent new life?’ she interrogated it angrily, as if it might somehow find a mouth and respond. Of course, it said nothing. She put it back in its place in the sequence, picked up a black one, frowning. ‘The spirit that inhabits this pebble is contrary,’ she pronounced. ‘It loves to try to lead my divinations astray.’

Mariata waited. Then she asked, ‘What does the black one represent?’

Tana sighed. ‘Chance. It throws off the entire reading.’

‘Then they might be dead? My father and brothers?’

‘No, no: I see no member of your family dead.’ She folded her lips, and added under her breath, ‘Just a lot of other people.’

‘What?’ Mariata leant closer. ‘What did you say?’

The enad pushed herself to her feet, threw open the leather door-flap and let the sunlight come streaming in. ‘It does not matter. It is already written, and there is nothing I can do to avert it: I cannot see the time or place, just the blood and the eyes. Death is the door through which we all must go; we just pray we do not reach it too soon,
insh’allah
.’

20

No one seemed to think it at all odd when we turned up at Habiba’s house at three in the morning to collect Lallawa for her visit to the desert. Instead there was much smiling and agreement from the crow-women that an early start was a good idea. The old woman was beside herself with joy at the news. She caught Taïb’s hands and kissed them over and over, mumbling all the while. I kept hearing the word baraka.

‘It means “blessings”,’ Habiba told me. Our earlier falling-out appeared to have been put aside. She seemed pleased that we were taking Lallawa into the desert; but the uncharitable thought did cross my mind that she was relieved that Taïb and I would not be on our own, that the old lady would be acting as a sort of chaperone, a ghost at our feast. Or maybe she was just happy at the prospect of a break from nursing for a little while.

The crow-women took Taïb away with them to prepare some breakfast and essentials for the journey, but as I turned to follow Habiba caught me by the arm. ‘Come help me with Lallawa.’

It took an age to get the old woman dressed, and not simply because of my unfamiliarity with such a process. Lallawa was determined that she be arrayed in her best finery for the journey, and it was this determination that caused the delay. I had thought she would wear the ubiquitous black robe worn by the crow-women: but oh, no. Habiba was dispatched to bring an endless list of items, the old woman clutching her forearm exigently, punctuating each demand with an emphatic finger. The idea of visiting her desert again seemed to have filled her with energy, like a magical fuel.

Left alone with Lallawa, I couldn’t think of anything to say to her, since we shared barely a word of language. Instead, I found myself grinning inanely, because she unnerved me so. Suddenly animated, she patted me on the hand and gabbled at me and touched her neck, moving her hand to mime a square. The amulet. I fished it out of my bag, guided it into her fingers and watched as she held it close to her eyes and turned it over and over as if examining every aspect of it. What could she actually see, I wondered? Could she make out the shape of the necklace, or any of the etched markings? Or was she just feeling its dimensions, the glass discs and the raised boss? It did not seem to matter, for the smile she gave me was one of pure joy, and when she handed the amulet back to me, she unerringly cupped my cheek with a gesture of such unwarranted affection that I almost choked.

Habiba returned with an armful of fabric and a bag of other items, and Lallawa gave herself up to our attentions, as compliant as a child. We changed her out of the nightclothes she’d been wearing and Habiba took out a great bundle of dark blue cloth with a faint metallic sheen. ‘It’s a
tamelhaft
,’ she said, folding the fabric lengthwise and draping it around the old woman as I held her up. ‘Very traditional; old-fashioned nowadays.’ Fastening the result with two big ornamental silver pins at the shoulders, she smoothed out the pleating and stood back. ‘Beautiful.’

Lallawa smiled beatifically, then patted one of the silver pieces with pride. ‘They’re very old,’ Habiba told me. ‘It’s hard to come by such good quality fibulae now.’

More jewellery went on: a pair of heavy silver earrings; dozens of bangles, some as thin as a sliver of light, others sturdy with chunky geometric designs; two heavy strings of cowrie shells; and three small amulets that Habiba pinned at various places on the dress. Last of all came an embroidered shawl, which she draped over the old woman’s head.

I was curious about the motifs that were repeated in all of these items. ‘So many triangles.’

Habiba laughed. ‘The sharp point wards off the evil eye, maybe is even designed to puncture it.’

‘How gruesome!’

She shrugged. ‘The old folk swear by such things: they say there are evil influences everywhere. Not just the evil eye but also evil spirits – the djenoun.’ I must have looked clueless, for she leant towards me. ‘You’ve not heard of the
djinn
?’

I shook my head. Then a thought struck me. ‘Unless you mean “genie”, like in Aladdin?’ And I gave her a swift explanation of the story in the
Arabian Nights
that I’d last read as a child.

She frowned, then laughed. ‘Ah, you mean Ala al-Din and the lamp the sorcerous Moor sent him to retrieve in
Alf
Layla Wa-Layla
. Yes, your “genie” is a djinn, a great and powerful spirit, though he’s rather more biddable than the wicked creatures the old people believe in, which lie constantly in wait to lead the weak and foolish astray, to confound plans and spoil food and addle people’s wits. Almost everything Lallawa wears is designed to ward off such spirits: from the dye in her robe to the kohl around her eyes; even the henna on her fingers.’ She said something to the old woman, who nodded vigorously and replied at length. ‘She says she will need such protection for going into the desert, for the desert is not only her home, but is home also to a legion of evil spirits. She’s very glad that you have your own amulet to protect you. But she insists that you wear it.’

‘Really?’ I took it out of my bag and weighed it in my hand.

‘It would please her.’