The Salt Road (51 page)

‘It was a terrible place: filthy, crowded, full of disease and brutal treatment. The military loved having the famous, feared Tuareg at their mercy at long last. There were many beatings, rapes and ritual humiliations: old men stripped naked in the streets, their veils removed for the first time in their lives; adolescents made to crawl like dogs for the amusement of the soldiers.’

He looked me in the eye. ‘When I hear the outcry in the West about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, I laugh. If the West had witnessed one tenth of what happened to us at Tchin-Tabaradène, it would have wept for shame that such a thing should happen in the so-called civilized world. But Africa is the forgotten continent, and we are amongst the forgotten people.’

I found myself clutching the amulet beneath my shirt, feeling as if I had stepped into some sort of minefield, words exploding around me with the power to kill and maim.

‘They would not let us leave the camp or school our children. At last, some of the younger men protested outside the police station. A soldier was killed with his own gun. It was just the excuse the authorities had been waiting for. We were unarmed, exhausted, dying of disease and malnutrition: but for the death of one soldier they called down the might of the entire army upon us, declared a national emergency, sent in battalions, tear gas, parachutists. Camps were annihilated; wells were poisoned or blocked up. They came in the night with machetes and cans of petrol …’

His voice hitched suddenly and I saw with a quick sideways glance that his eyes were glittering with anger. Taïb stood like a statue, waiting to hear what came next.

‘I escaped, along with some others. I feel guilty to this day that I did not stay; but I had seen such scenes before and I knew what was coming. Elaga stayed: he had a wife and three children. I had no one: it was easy for me to run. Fight like jackals: that was what Kaocen always said, and it was what I urged them to do. It is better to attack and run than to fight like lions, face to face; but some of our people have trouble with this concept. To them it represents cowardice, not pragmatism; but these were the men who revered those who rode their camels against the tanks of the Malian Army in 1963 and were cut down like corn. It was a magnificent gesture; but a gesture only: doomed and pointless. I was not thanked for saying as much. Those who stayed died or were grievously wounded. Elaga lost his family, his eye – and very nearly his life. Many were killed in the initial outbreak of violence; then the formal extermination began. They even talked of a final solution – yes, they used those very words – the need to cull the Tuareg, to expunge us from society. Hundreds of us were loaded on to trucks and driven into the desert towards Bilma. We knew this route well: in the old days we called it “the salt road”. Most of those who took the old caravan route as prisoners in their military vehicles were never seen again.’

‘My God,’ Taïb said in a whisper. ‘I never knew.’ He wiped a hand across his face and I saw the sun catch the sheen on his fingers as they came away wet.

‘We lost nearly two thousand people, but the authorities claimed the number was only sixty. Those of us who escaped formed a coalition. We made a formal protest to the old colonial powers, but France turned its face away from us. They were in too deep with the providers of oil and uranium to want to involve themselves in the mêlée, even when the UN took our part. Under some diplomatic pressure, the Niger government staged a trial, but it was no more than a sham. When the chief torturer at Tchin-Tabaradène took the stand he boasted of how he had strangled one old man to death with his bare hands, and the onlookers in the courthouse cheered. We have tried to use diplomacy but to no avail. Direct action became our last and final hope. For some years I led a rebel faction in the mountains, but our raids had no more effect on our enemies than mosquito bites.’ He took a long, deep breath. ‘Since then there have been uneasy truces and ceasefires, attempts at assimilation, but in essence nothing has changed. Now I try to do what little I can to aid my people and bring their plight to the attention of the world.’

He turned towards me again and gave me a steady look. ‘So perhaps now you will begin to understand why I do what I do, Isabelle Treslove-Fawcett, and forgive my rough methods a little.’

I burst into sudden tears, overwhelmed by a combination of what he had told me and the tensions that pulled me in different directions. By comparison with the grim recent history of the Tuareg people my own woes were tiny; but at the same time somehow they felt huge and world-swallowing, as if something inside me had risen up in a great tide of fellow-feeling.

The Fennec half turned away from me, embarrassed by my outburst. Then he turned back, staring. Not at my face, but lower down. I realized suddenly that the button of my shirt had come undone beneath the compulsive working of my fingers. Just as I was about to do the button up again to maintain my modesty, he caught me by the shoulder with one hand and caught hold of the amulet with the other.

‘Where did you get this?’ His eyes blazed at me; then he turned to Taïb. ‘Did you take this from the old woman you buried?’

‘No, no, of course not!’ Taïb looked horrified at the suggestion, as well he might. ‘It is Isabelle’s own. Tell him, Izzy.’

The Fennec pulled the necklace out into full view just as I took a step backwards. In an instant, the leather thong – the thong that had held a huge fall and saved my life on the Lion’s Head – snapped and the amulet tumbled into the dust at our feet. Despite his age, the Tuareg chief was faster than me. Like a striking snake he was upon it, flipping it up into his hand, where he turned it over and over. Then he flicked open the hidden compartment behind the central boss as if he had some magical prior knowledge of its workings. The little roll of parchment fell out into his hand.

‘Tell me how you came by this thing!’ he demanded hoarsely.

‘My … my father,’ I stuttered. ‘My father left it to me in his will.’ And I told him about the box in the attic and its strange contents. ‘He was an archaeologist, my father, you see. In my handbag you’ll find the papers he left in the box for me.’

He glowered at me but only briefly: it was as if now he had seen the amulet and its contents he could not take his eyes off them. After a long moment of contemplation he started to walk away from us with long, urgent strides. ‘Come with me,’ he called back over his shoulder, as if it was an afterthought.

I trotted after him, feeling oddly naked without the amulet; light too, as if I might float away like a seedhead.

Inside the Fennec’s tent – the same one that I had been in the morning before, miraculously re-erected in this place as if teleported there in exact and minute detail – he gestured for us to sit down while he rooted through a box, at last emerging with my handbag. He thrust it at me. ‘Show me,’ he said. He seemed almost feverish, frequently rubbing his hand across his face, all composure lost.

I dug out the folded papers and handed them to him. When he opened them out, the illegible green form fell to the floor. He snatched it up and scrutinized it. ‘What is this?’

‘I’ve really no idea,’ I said truthfully.

The Fennec tossed it away and turned his attention to the typed foolscap page, which he pored over for an interminable amount of time. At last he thrust it at me, pointing to two words with an accusatory finger. ‘Tin Hinan! What does it say here about Tin Hinan?’

I realized these were the only words he’d recognized, and these with difficulty, so I translated my father’s paper roughly for him, stumbling over my lack of French for the words ‘bier’ and ‘carnelian’ and ‘amazonite’, which remarkably Taïb appeared to know.

‘So the amulet was found at the tomb of Tin Hinan?’

‘That’s what it says here.’ I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable now. My father had evidently stolen an important historical artefact from the tomb of the Tuareg queen. He was no more than a grave-robber, and I a grave-robber’s daughter. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I have no idea why he left it for me. He loved puzzles, my father; he loved to mystify people, tease them with his superior knowledge.’ And I told them about the letter he had written to me, the final bullying manipulation. ‘He knew I would never be able to simply let it lie.’ I paused, then leant forward. ‘Can you read the inscription? Do you read Tifinagh?’

He was outraged. ‘Of course. All children raised as true Tuaregs learn the Tifinagh at their mother’s knee.’ He and Taïb exchanged a combative glance. Then the Fennec went outside and squatted down in front of the tent, brushing a square of sand smooth with his hand. With a car key he inscribed a series of symbols, checking them back and forth against the parchment. Then he shook his head, muttered something to himself and erased what he had written. He turned the scrap of paper on its side, examined it carefully and began again. After several false starts he gave an exclamation full of frustration, sprang to his feet and kicked over the sand. ‘Follow me!’ he ordered us imperiously and once more we trailed him across the encampment like dogs walking to heel. In the shade of a tree he found the crone who had been in the tent in which I had slept the night before. They went through a prolonged series of ritual greetings until I felt like wrenching the necklace and the parchment from him and thrusting it in her face. Luckily, English reserve and good manners prevailed, and I managed to confine myself to shifting impatiently from foot to foot. At last the Fennec got around to the matter of the amulet and we then had to endure a long pantomime as the old woman examined in minute detail its etched designs and discs of red, the raised central boss and intricately knotted leather thong, now broken in two. When the Fennec showed her the workings of the hidden compartment she chattered like a child, held it close to her eye and moved the boss back and forth with gleeful delight. They then started to share a discussion of its artful craftsmanship and the amulet’s provenance, and then at long last he flattened the inscription on the palm of his hand and held it out for her inspection. She clicked her tongue and swivelled her head to one side, then another, all the while muttering away. She poked a finger at one of the lines of symbols that ran from bottom to top of the paper. There were three of these lines, but another three lines ran across them.

‘Mariata,’ she said; and the Fennec gave out a great sigh of air, as if he had been holding his breath for an eternity. She touched the second line. ‘Amastan,’ she said.

Neither of these words meant anything to me, but the air was so charged with emotional electricity that I felt the hairs prickle and stir on the back of my neck, and suddenly I knew what the third vertical line signified. ‘Lallawa,’ I whispered; and they all stared at me. I went hot, then cold; I began to sway.

‘
Ey-yey
,’ said the old woman, her voice sounding as if it came from a long, long way away. ‘Lallawa.’

Taïb steadied me with an arm around the waist and I felt his breath warm against my neck, which very nearly had the opposite effect. ‘Did you just read that? Lallawa? Or did you guess it?’

I shook my head, wordless. I had no idea.

The Fennec was trembling now. I could see his hand shaking as the old woman turned the parchment ninety degrees. But no matter which way she looked at it, it seemed to fox her. At last she threw her hands up in the universal gesture of defeat and rattled out a long complaint. The Fennec tried to roll the parchment up again, but his hands were shaking too much. In the end, the crone took it from him and neatly folded it back into its nest, then slid the central boss over its abiding mystery.

We went back across the camp at such speed that I was out of breath by the time we got back to the Fennec’s tent. ‘What, or who, is Mariata?’ I asked.

I watched the older man’s grizzled brows knit hard over his eyes as if to shut out the question, then he turned away from us and put his head in his hands. And then this man – trabandiste, rebel leader, veteran fighter, Tuareg chief, whatever he was, who had just related the most harrowing stories of persecution and atrocity to me without a trace of emotion in his voice – broke into racking sobs. Awful sounds escaped his splayed fingers, filling the small space of the tent with an immensity of pain.

I was appalled, frightened even, to be trapped in this claustrophobic place with such raw feelings. I wanted to run outside and keep on running, but something kept me rooted there. I remembered how he had told me that his people were raised never to complain or to show weakness, and I wondered how on earth a pretty tribal necklace and its hidden charm could have had such an effect on this tough, fierce man. But even as I wondered this, I knew what I had always known: that my amulet was a powerful object, charged with magic and freighted with its own deep and tragic history.

33

The skin of my beloved shines like rain on high rocks

Like rain on high rocks

When the swollen clouds open themselves

Amongst lightning and the roar of thunder

The skin of my beloved is as bright as copper

As bright as copper

Beaten by the inadan over the fire

Ah! I love the sheen of his cheekbone

Sharp as a knife’s edge in the evening light

When he unveils himself, only for me.

Mariata’s voice caught on the last line, remembering, and tears threatened.
A waste of water
, she told herself fiercely, and started it again. Besides, she must not show weakness to her son. He was always with her now: she could feel him moving all the time, as if he were eager to escape the annoying prison of her womb. She sang the verse over and over, at first at a whisper, then like a chant, until it lulled them both almost to a trance. Beside her, the camel’s feet beat out the rhythm, slow and stately: The
skin
of my
beloved
shines like
rain
on high
rocks
.