The Salt Road (35 page)

At this, Amastan’s head jerked towards her. ‘Rhossi?’ His knuckles whitened on the rifle.

Mariata put a hand on his arm. ‘Now is not the time.’ She turned back to Ousman. ‘Father, this is Amastan ag Moussa, who is the amenokal’s son and a fine, upstanding man, so I cannot understand why my aunt should be displeased about my choice, apart from the fact that I did not consult her about it. But we did send messengers out across the trade routes to try to make contact with you and my brothers, my nearest kin; no word came back, and so I made my own decision to marry Amastan, as was my right.’

Ousman nodded slowly. ‘That was always the old way, I know. But things are changing in our world too quickly for the old ways to adapt. Let me speak plainly, Mariata. I have nothing against the man you have chosen, but I wish you would put off your wedding and come with me: our people are in danger, more so here than elsewhere, and that is why I have come to take you away with me to a place where you will be settled and safe.’

Mariata stared at him. ‘Settled?’

‘I have taken a new wife. She lives in a town in the Tafilalt, in the south-east of Morocco. I am giving up the desert roads and settling there with her. Her father and I have established a business together. You and your brothers will come with me and make a new and better life.’

‘Morocco?’ Mariata stared at him in horror, but Amastan took a step forward. ‘I understand your concern for your daughter’s welfare, but I can assure you her safety is the dearest thing to my heart, now that we are wed.’

‘But this is the first night of your wedding?’ It was Rhossi who interrupted. He spoke smoothly enough, but the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and his gaze sparked fire.

Amastan acceded that this was indeed the case.

Rhossi turned to Ousman. ‘So it is not too late, then; for everyone knows it is only on the third night that a decent marriage can be consummated! Place the safety of your daughter in my hands, sir, and I will guard her life with the whole might of the Aïr when I am chief.’

Ousman shook his head. ‘It is a handsome offer, Rhossi, but I am determined that she shall come with me to the Tafilalt.’

‘I am going nowhere, Father, without my husband.’

Another man joined them now: the amghrar, Rhissa ag Zeyk. He and Ousman exchanged the proper greetings, and then the chief of the Kel Teggart said, ‘These two young people are properly wed, by a marabout and in the eyes of all the tribe. Amastan is a fine man: I have known him for most of his life and can vouch for him.’

‘I knew him for twelve years before he came to this rat-hole, and know him as a feeble worm!’ burst out Rhossi.

‘And you, you were a bully and a coward, as any child of the Bazgan younger or smaller than you were can testify!’ Amastan cried.

Rhossi pushed him then, hard in the chest with both hands; Amastan stumbled and almost fell. Mariata jumped between them. ‘Stop this! Shame on you, Rhossi ag Bahedi! This is my wedding, a time for celebration. Anyone who does not wish to share in our joy may leave, right now.’

The amghrar smiled, his wily old eyes glittering in the light of the fires, and, though he seemed to address her, his attention was all on Rhossi ag Bahedi. ‘We can hardly turn such weary travellers away without offering our hospitality, no matter that we are poorer in material goods than the mighty Kel Bazgan. I think you will find that our encampment is a place of warmth and comfort, especially on this joyful day. Put aside your differences, I beg you. Ousman ag Hamid, your daughter is lawfully married to this man, and of her own free will: be happy for her. Rhossi ag Bahedi, we will talk about your missing camels tomorrow; but I think you will find that we have no fine Tibesti camels in this “rat-hole”. We live on the edge of hardship, and our camels are plain and solid working beasts: we are unable to indulge ourselves with rich men’s playthings.’

Rhossi drew himself up. ‘My camels were not “playthings”: I bought them as breeding stock, with the finest Tibesti lineage. The income I have lost from the sale of the bull-calves sired by the stolen stock is incalculable.’

Amastan shrugged. ‘Ah, well, if it is incalculable, there is not much we can do to compensate you for their loss, even if they were stolen, which I very much doubt. Most likely you failed to hobble them properly and they wandered away to find a better home where they would not be kicked in a tantrum.’

‘You know full well she stole them!’ Rhossi raged. ‘She may be your wife in name, but she lay with me first!’ And while a horrified silence fell at this outrageous claim, he named a truly extortionate sum for the price of the stolen camels, one he knew could never be paid by any except such as the sultans of the ancient Songhai Empire whose palace walls shone with powdered gold, and everyone who heard it gasped. Rhossi surveyed their appalled faces with satisfaction. ‘And if you cannot pay that, I will take no compensation for them other than the woman, married or not!’

Mariata could stand it no longer. ‘You are mad! First of all, I never lay with you, as well you know: you tried to force me, and that was one very good reason for leaving the Kel Bazgan as swiftly and secretly as I did. Secondly, when I fought back, I caught you a glancing blow in the face and you cried like a baby. Thirdly, we come to the matter of the camels. It is true that I made use of a pair of animals that I knew to be your own; but I took them in payment for your insult towards my honour, and, by my calculation, for that and the second and worse insult you have just added in public you owe me three camels more! Those I took are no longer here: they were sold at the market at Goulemime. I have the money still: they did not fetch much, by your inflated standards. I think perhaps they were not even male, or had perhaps been gelded, at the very least did not function as an entire bull should function. There are many creatures in the world that look very fine and proud of bearing and boast the finest lineage; but they often turn out to be sadly deficient when it comes to the matter of coupling!’

By now a crowd had gathered; someone burst out laughing and soon all the men of the Kel Teggart were jeering. It did not take much for them to dislike one of the Kel Bazgan: Rahma’s ill treatment by the Aïr chieftain had been widely regarded as an insult to the whole tribe.

Infuriated, Rhossi caught Mariata by the arm and twisted viciously. ‘Tell the truth, you little bitch. You spread your legs for me and loved every minute of it! You came back for it night after night!’

The next moment, Mariata felt her other hand caught in a hard grip, and then the sword was torn from her grasp and there was a wild scuffle and suddenly she was free and Rhossi was on the ground with Amastan astride him, Azelouane’s antique blade pressed hard against his throat.

What happened next was sheer confusion. A shot rang out, splitting the night. No one knew what to do, how to react. They stopped what they were doing and stared around, bemused. Was it just a rock shattering, or had a gun gone off by mistake? A second shot whistled through the air and a man cried out; and then there came a vast wave of noise, a terrifying, unbreakable wall of sound as automatic gunfire took over from the single rifle shots. As if in a nightmare, Mariata saw Amastan hurled backwards, spinning suddenly away from Rhossi’s chest. The front of his robe – the lovely, costly indigo fabric with its magpie-sheen – now gave back a different quality of glimmer to the moonlight, as a new black patch of wetness spread slowly across it. He lay unmoving on the ground behind Rhossi ag Bahedi, his hands flung back and the useless antique sword relinquished. Against the hard, dark, dusty surface, the palms of his hands were pale and tender-looking, as light and as soft as oleander blossoms.

A woman screamed his name, over and over and over –
Amastan, Amastan, Amastan!
– and the word reverberated through Mariata’s head till it sounded like a nonsense word in a child’s rhyme, and only after the longest time did she realize it was her own voice she heard, demented and forlorn.

Then it was swallowed by a great barrage of noise – shouting and wailing and the whine and beat of rapid gunfire, and people were falling down all around them, clutching at themselves, shrieking in agony and shock as if blown by a great wind, their arms cartwheeling, feet scrabbling for stability.

Camels bellowed; someone ran past with their clothes on fire; it was Leïla, Mariata saw in horror. And then there was a man – no, many men, scores of them, hundreds it seemed, swarming like ants around the campground, their faces unveiled and bare, open to the night. She propelled herself forward to the space on the ground where Rhossi had been (where was he now? the question whispered at her but she had no answer for it, and did not care) and caught at Amastan’s arm. ‘Get up! Get up! We are being attacked!’ But the arm was limp between her hands. It lay as limp as the lamb she had delivered stillborn from a dying ewe that spring, shockingly limp and loose and clammy, as if it owned no fibre of working will or muscle. Even so, she shook it hysterically. ‘Amastan!’

He was just unconscious: she knew it. Lying there with his eyes tight shut, asleep in the midst of the mayhem. ‘Amastan! Get up!’ She managed to get an arm beneath his shoulders and tried to heave him upright, but he was so heavy. So heavy! He was a lightly built man, wiry and quick on his feet: how could he be so hard to move? Her wits felt dulled: she could not understand it. ‘Amastan!’ she bellowed at him, filled with a fury that was now tinged with terror.

Someone caught hold of her and wrenched her away. ‘There is nothing you can do for him!’

She dug her heels in and tightened her grip on her husband’s sleeve, her fingers as hard as claws, knowing that if she let go now she would never see him again. ‘No!’ she wailed. ‘No!’

The costly indigo cloth held, rooting the struggling figures in a bizarre tableau; then, with a ripping sound that was audible even amidst the chaos, it suddenly tore apart, leaving only a bloody fragment in her hand. Released at last, Mariata was spun around and bodily lifted, slung over a shoulder and borne away.

From her strange inverted vantage point she saw Rhossi ag Bahedi drag her brother Azaz from his camel so that the boy fell in a crumpled heap on the hard ground, saw her enemy scramble up into the saddle and kick the beast viciously till it took to its heels and fled. She saw Baye lean down and haul Azaz on to his mount; and all she could think was that she did not care, though she knew she should, about the fates of others, even if they were her brothers. None of it seemed real, especially seen upside-down. All that did seem real to her was the still figure lying on the ground behind her, dwindling further and further with each step until, no matter how she twisted her head and craned her neck, she could see it no longer.

She saw Tana flung to the ground by one man while another ripped at her robe; saw the amghrar casually cut down by a pair of dark-faced boys. She saw Azelouane stride through the mêlée, a glinting black Kalashnikov grasped in his hands, the fierce grimace of his face lit by the bright flashes of light that issued from its muzzle. She saw kindly Tadla yelling like a demon as a uniformed man tried to slash at the child that hid behind her. Her last sight was of Rahma bravely wielding a flaming branch against the attacker, who turned and almost negligently rested his black, scorpion-like gun upon his hip and calmly shot her in the face with a burst of gunfire that lit up the night air; then, as she spun and fell, another man caught her by her long braids and decapitated her with one exultant stroke of his moon-bright machete.

24

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’

It was the second time the question had been asked: this time it was in French.

Taïb had his hands in the air. The men who had exited the dusty SUVs were turbaned and veiled, their eyes hidden behind gleaming sunglasses; and they were heavily armed. There were seven of them. The man who had spoken – tall and wiry, his skin weathered to a rich, deep brown – had a semi-automatic rifle levelled at Taïb. Another had his weapon trained on me. I had never seen a gun before: not a real, live, deadly gun held by someone who looked as if he knew exactly how to use it and would have no compunction in putting not one but a dozen rounds in me and leaving me to bleed my life into the sand. Curiously, I felt nothing at all about this prospect, neither fear nor anger: just a sort of detached numbness, as if my brain had slipped into some neutral default gear.

‘We just came out to see the desert,’ Taïb told him. ‘My friend is a tourist: English.’

‘No one comes out here! You’ve crossed the border illegally: that’s not something a tourist guide would do. Who are you? Show me her passport, and your identity card.’

His air of easy authority, even without the tangible reinforcement of the weapon, was unquestionable. Taïb complied quickly, rooting out my handbag and handing over his own document. The man turned my bag upside-down: pens, make-up, a hairbrush, notebook, ChapStick, wallet, folded papers, passport – they all tumbled to the ground, sending up little puffs of dust.

The man bent and extracted the passport, flicked through it and then tucked it into his shirt. He picked up my wallet and opened it up, grinned at his companions. ‘Plenty euros, and some dirham.’ He tossed the wallet to another man, who spirited it away into a pocket. I opened my mouth to complain, then thought better of it. Who were these men? Did policemen steal so blatantly? I had heard many tales about police taking bribes, but had thought that was just
baksheesh
, petty corruption. These men didn’t look much like police to me, or any other form of officialdom. In fact, they looked a lot more like the guys from whom Taïb had bought his illicit fuel, with their fatigues and desert boots, to say nothing of their studied anonymity.

A third man was walking towards me. He swaggered from the hip, a loose-limbed confident strut. He walked as if he owned the place – if anyone could own the desert. If he had a weapon I could not see it. ‘What’s all this?’ he gestured towards the scuffed mound of sand topped by the seven flat stones. ‘What have you buried here?’