The Map of Salt and Stars: A Novel

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  “Its color?” Huda asks.

  “In shadow, the stone is purple as ripe beets,” Abu Sayeed says. “In sunlight, it glints a searing green, like an emerald.”

  I can tell by how Huda squints and Zahra sneaks a glance at her phone that they don’t believe him. I would never admit it, but I think I would have believed anything he said.

  I’ve been searching street and souq for Abu Sayeed’s nameless stone all summer, but I haven’t found it. I ask Huda to look for glints of purple and green when we climb to the top of the olive grove outside the city, but she hasn’t spotted anything yet. Sometimes she lets me sit on her shoulders, and then I can see everything—Homs below with its satellite dishes and mazes of concrete apartment buildings, the Orontes River west of the city center, and the white-haired Lebanon Mountains far away. Up there, I can see everything but what I’m looking for.

  We all go in together when Mama calls us. Abu Sayeed comes to dinner once a week, even though Mama invites him all the time. She says he doesn’t come more often because he’s lonely in that way that makes a person pace the space between the window and the door. I think Abu Sayeed is the kind of lonely that misses one specific person. Today I wonder: is he lonely for Baba, or his son?

  “We made a special dinner,” I say when we walk inside. I slip off my sandals so Mama doesn’t yell at me for wearing my shoes in the house, and Abu Sayeed does the same. Huda’s set the table with our best china, and Mama’s set a vase of blue wildflowers in the middle. The power’s still out, and the candles are already halfway down. Wax dots Mama’s good tablecloth, the white one with the gold embroidery.

  “A special dinner?” The skin around Abu Sayeed’s eyes crinkles when he smiles.

  But I can’t say more. I want to say I miss Baba like he misses his son, but I can’t. I want to ask if we’re both missing Baba, if we’re both missing the same person. But the words stay stoppered up inside, too heavy to come out.

  A dark-brown boom claps the house. I lift the curtain on the kitchen window, looking for clouds. Three days ago, a tiny speck dashed itself to the ground far off. After the boom, a plume of gray dust came up like ink in a glass of water. I felt scared then, but only in the way you feel when you watch a thunderstorm pass by; as long as it’s far away, you aren’t afraid of getting struck.

  Now I wait for the vibrations to fade. I try to convince myself that it’s not what I think, that I’m watching the purple sky through the curtains for rain. But it’s not thunder, and no rain comes. I don’t smell the cold green of thunderstorms, like we had in the city. I used to stick my head out the window and breathe in over and over, trying to hold it in my nose before it was gone, that clean smell of electricity and water. Today all I smell are green curls of sulfur, the stink of ash.

  I wish for the power to come back on, for the lights to flicker to life.

  My blood thumps in my shins. I grab an empty glass and go to the tap to fill it for Abu Sayeed. Nothing comes out.

  I twist the handle closed, then open again. The pipes hiss and clack, but the tap is dry as slate. I stick my head into the sink and peer up into the spigot. No water. A hundred tiny spiders crawl up the backs of my legs and my shoulders, the feeling that something is wrong.

  Mama comes in and sets the sfiha on a wide ceramic serving dish.

  “The water isn’t working,” I tell her. I twist the cold and the hot again to show her what I mean.

  She sets the dish down and creases her mouth shut, stomping over to the fridge. She opens it quick to not let the cold out and shoves a jug of water into my arms. “Don’t keep opening it,” she warns me, and turns back to the sfiha. “First the power, then the water. I had a feeling it might be like that today. Don’t drink too much. That jug is all we have.”

  I look from Abu Sayeed’s glass in my hand to the alley outside the window, the night coming on. I wonder if our neighbors felt the vibrations. “But Mama—”

  “But nothing. Fill that glass and sit down already, won’t you? You’re making me nervous, flitting around like that.”

  I set the glass on the table and try to lift the jug. It’s heavy and slippery with condensation. I set the jug down on the table, trying to get a better grip. A newspaper is hanging off the stack of mail, a big headline and a picture of a city sticking like an arm into the sea. I can make out some of the words in Arabic, the names of Morocco and Spain.

  Below the headline is a photo of a man laughing, leaning against a doorjamb. He’s got a big round dumpling of a belly and brown pony’s eyes. I feel like I’ve seen him before, but I can’t place him. The name under the picture is circled in red ink, too small to read.

  “What are you doing over here? Give me that.” Mama takes the jug from me, hurrying into the dining room with the dish of sfiha in her other hand. “Yalla, sit and eat with your sisters.”

  Mama sets down the jug and the dish. She adjusts the candles before sitting down with her napkin in her lap. I push the glass to Abu Sayeed, and Mama fills it.

  “I can’t apologize enough for the power,” Mama says while she pours. Her face is flushed rose. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t mind.” Abu Sayeed waves her away. “The power was out at my house as well.”

  I think, Abu Sayeed’s house too? The spiders crawl up my collarbones.

  If Mama is surprised, she doesn’t show it. She flaps her fingers at us until we unfold our napkins in our laps. “I have to thank you,” she says. “Two professors were here today and bought several maps. They said they were friends of yours.”

  Abu Sayeed scoots his chair closer to the table, his shoulders sloping even farther down. He smiles. “Your husband, God rest him, was as close to me as my hand to my heart,” he says. “I’m happy to help spread the word.”

  We fill our plates in silence. Behind Abu Sayeed, in the kitchen, the breeze ruffles the pages of the newspaper. The picture of the city by the sea makes me think of Ceuta. I say to Mama, “Is it true Ceuta’s got a statue of al-Idrisi?”

  “Ah, yes. Ceuta.” She settles deeper into her chair, raising her hands to the ceiling. “Paradise on earth, habibti. A pinhole of wonder. Ceuta is where the shores of the Maghreb reach out for Europe.”

  I say, “And it’s where you first talked to Baba.” This story I know by heart.

  “We were studying at the University of Córdoba,” she says, passing the plate of sfiha. “I was in mapmaking, and your father was studying engineering. A group of our friends went on holiday to Ceuta. Your uncle went to live there, you know, years later.” Mama darts her eyes away, toward the kitchen, toward the mail pile with the newspaper folded on top.

  “Ceuta is a part of Spain,” I say, “but it’s in Africa, right? Like, on the actual continent of Africa.”

  “My little cloud,” Abu Sayeed says. “A quick learner, as always.”

  But I can’t imagine living between two worlds like that. I’ve gone so far from New York that sometimes I can’t imagine there are so many places out there, so many more than I’ve seen. They just go on and on, this big wide world, and tiny me, and Baba on the other side of it.

  I pick at my rice, studded with pine nuts. “You and Baba saw where Africa meets Europe.”

  “We and several others.” Mama sets her hand against her cheek. “I had been all over Europe and the Middle East by then, but there was more I wanted to see. Wherever Allah takes you, you always yearn for somewhere else.” She stares out at the skin-colored olive branches in the twilight. Then her eyes shift past them, toward the city center, and she doesn’t notice Huda handing her the bowl of fattoush. Zahra’s not listening, staring at her phone on the tablecloth.

  The booming comes, louder than ever, and that green sulfur smell. I stop picking at my sfiha. Mama stares out the window into the just-dark, worry folding her forehead. She doesn’t see the fear in my eyes.

  From my chair, I can just see out the kitchen window between the curtains. An oily mist hangs over the alley, and I can’t tell
if it’s twilight or dust. It’s gotten too dark to tell color. I breathe in through my nose again, desperately wishing for the scent of rain.

  Through the Iron Gate

  After several happy weeks at King Roger’s court, Rawiya, Bakr, al-Idrisi, and the expedition bid King Roger good-bye and boarded a ship bound for Asia Minor, where their journey would truly begin. Although Rawiya had to leave Bauza behind in King Roger’s stables, the expedition had been outfitted with a dozen servants, horses, and camels, as well as food and water to last several months. They departed from Sicily’s northern shore, gazing at the dark strip of the island of Ustica on the horizon. Phoenician peoples had once lived on the island, but its dark grottoes were now empty. Some called Ustica “the black pearl,” al-Idrisi said, because of the island’s volcanic rock.

  The ship turned east and then passed south through the narrow Strait of Messina. Safely beyond the strait’s strong currents, they passed by the Calabrian coast unharmed. Sailing southeast, they crossed the Ionian Sea and then the Sea of Crete until they reached the shores of Asia Minor and lowered anchor at the port city of al-Iskanderun.

  From the Anatolian coast, the expedition proceeded southeast through the Belen Pass and entered Bilad ash-Sham—the Levant—and the Syrian province of the Seljuq Empire. Below them lay a lush valley, the hillsides green with pines. As they rested, al-Idrisi sketched in a leather-bound book and described the route of their journey. They would wind south through the Syrian province, passing through the cities of Halab, Hama, Homs, and ash-Sham, the lovely City of Jasmine. They would skirt the Crusader County of Tripoli and Kingdom of Jerusalem on the coast and continue west over the Gulf of Aila to Cairo, Alexandria, and the Maghreb beyond. Their goal was to map the lands between Anatolia and King Roger’s outposts in Ifriqiya, which lay beyond the Gulf of Sidra and the city of Barneek. From there, a ship would return them to Palermo.

  Following the trade routes south and then east, the expedition arrived days later in the city of Halab, called Alep by the Franks, Aleppo in Italian. Halab, nicknamed Al-Baida, “the White,” for its pale soil, was an ancient city that stood at the western end of the Silk Road. After resting and recording descriptions of Halab’s covered souq, fortified citadel, and Great Mosque, al-Idrisi’s expedition continued south across a flat plain into the heart of Bilad ash-Sham, following the Orontes River toward Hama. Each night they stopped at a khan, a roadside castle for housing travelers.

  Since they had left Palermo, Rawiya had been getting up before anyone else. The khan was full of travelers, and she was afraid of being caught dressing or being invited to the baths and being discovered. It was hard enough to find an empty room to cut her hair with a stone.

  At each khan, she had taken to walking the courtyards, watching the merchants set up their displays of oils and spices, circling the mosques and the fountains. Every khan was essentially the same: a wide, arched entrance, a pair of wrought-iron doors, walls of hewn limestone or basalt. Travelers’ leather packs and supplies lined the archways of the summer rooms, and dark passages led to the inner winter rooms. The dusty central courtyards were crammed with money changers, and a square mosque stood in the middle.

  One morning, in the last khan on the road to Hama, Rawiya had just risen and prayed when she heard a thud from the central courtyard. Wrapping her turban, she stepped off the expedition’s sleeping platform and into the light. At dawn, the khan should have been silent. Rawiya listened to date palms swaying their branches like dervishes in the breeze. What was the thud she had heard?

  “You get up so early, Rami.” Bakr appeared, yawning. “Even the sun is still asleep.”

  “I heard a noise,” Rawiya said. “Like someone dropping a sack of lentils.”

  But Bakr only yawned and started to pack his things. Rawiya studied the courtyard again. The upper walk was walled, and she could not see over the heads of the men in dusty sirwal who strode across it, gazing at the coming sun. The sun speckled the horizon green and pink. Around them, merchants unrolled their rugs and hung their wares in the archways. Through the gate of the khan, a breeze drew the scent of water from the Orontes River valley.

  Bakr spoke of the merchants he had met in the khan, but Rawiya was only half listening. “The province of Syria is rich with trade,” he said. “Nur ad-Din is strict with his market inspectors. The taxes bring in great wealth.”

  Al-Idrisi came out, stretching, and checked the camels. “I hope you slept well,” he said. “We have a long journey ahead of us, and we won’t find a khan on the road tonight. No, tonight we push for Hama.”

  “We won’t be setting up camp on the road, will we?” Bakr asked.

  Al-Idrisi raised his eyebrows and frowned. “If that isn’t acceptable to you, perhaps you should have thought harder about this expedition.” Then he smiled, slowly. “But you are young,” he said, “and when you see the stars glittering, you will thank me. No, Bakr, not tonight—we will camp soon enough.”

  This conversation was the first time al-Idrisi had spoken in many days. He was usually deep in thought, buried in his leather-bound book of notes, sketching maps. Only Bakr had sought out the travelers at each khan, hunting after tales. Al-Idrisi had noted all but said nothing, like Rawiya’s father had when he had listened to the tales of the Berber travelers when she was young. Looking beyond the gates to the river, Rawiya wondered if the Orontes changed its shape in the night, like the sea.

  Shouting erupted above them. “Dead!” a man wailed. “Murdered. Mutilated!”

  The proprietor of the khan, a short, heavy man in a striped robe, hurried to the gate. “A body was found,” he huffed, “on the upper walk. Dropped by some awful flying beast, the flesh torn out by talons.”

  Rawiya thought of the thud—like a sack of lentils. She felt afraid and far from home in a way she hadn’t before. It had been months since she had watched Bauza scatter the gulls in Benzú with sways of his neck. The pods would be thick on the carob trees this time of year, the figs still green. In the shade of the olive grove, the gliding ibises would cast slivers of shadows.

  “Talons, you say?” al-Idrisi asked.

  The plain beckoned from beyond the gate, the road to Hama shadeless and exposed.

  “MAMA?”

  The booming is thunder in my bones. The room gets real still, only the beetles twitching at the cracks in the windows. My pulse pops in my wrist. On the table, my knife shakes against my napkin. The lines on Abu Sayeed’s forehead are thick and deep as tree roots.

  “It must be coming from another neighborhood,” Mama says, but she stops eating. She holds her fork in the air, a bite of cucumber salad dripping yogurt sauce. The light falls across the triangle of her nose, as straight as Baba’s T-square.

  “Are you sure?” Abu Sayeed says something in Arabic. I strain forward to listen, but it’s too fast for me to understand. Huda and Zahra look at each other. Now I know for sure that something is wrong.

  Zahra’s phone buzzes on the table, searching for a signal.

  Mama snaps back at Abu Sayeed: “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her cucumber salad just hangs there, like she’s not sure whether to eat it or put it down, like she’s not sure which language to use. “We just got here,” she says, huffing out the words. “I was born here. I moved my family. Business will be good again. We’ve been through too much already.”

  “It would only be for a week, two at most,” Abu Sayeed says.

  “This will pass.” Mama lifts and lowers her fork. She purses her mouth, curling her lips between her teeth like she’s trying to trap the words. “We have no part in this. I want to buy bread. I don’t want to worry about my girls walking to the market. I keep my head down. I work. I have three children to feed. Where should I go?”

  Abu Sayeed dips his head at that, lets his shoulders sag down. Outside, the whumping of a helicopter fills the street, and a cat yowls.

  “Eat your dinner.” Mama gets up, her long skirt swishing when she dips across the room. Baba used to say Mama was alw
ays a lady, that she could run a marathon in high heels and wrestle a lion without ripping her pantyhose.

  She stands at the window now, peeling back the yellow curtains, and the helicopter blades pop black and purple over our heads before they move on. Something is happening outside, people starting up cars, babies shrieking. The neighborhood crackles and hums with electricity, like a nest of wires. The fear is a knot in my thighs, my elbows, my thumbs.

  Abu Sayeed clears his throat and smiles, but his mouth is crooked, his gray eyes all wrong. He says to me, “Tell me. Why did you say today was special?”

  I stare at him, trying to make sense of the words. Somewhere down the alley there are voices, shoes pounding the road. The wind rises, and it pours through the open window, cracking ceiling paint onto Abu Sayeed’s plate, dusting his sfiha with gray.

  A new sound comes, whirring high as a broken fan. It drowns out everything, even the sounds of car horns and shouting. It reminds me of the day they buried Baba in the earth, the day I lost my voice.

  Another boom, closer. The house shakes like a car going over a highway rumble strip, rattling my jaw.

  “Why today?” Abu Sayeed is trying to smile, distracting me from the lump in my throat, hot and hard as a coal.

  I know I shouldn’t tell him, not on a day like this. I know there are some things you can’t forget, no matter how long it’s been.

  Mama stiffens at the window. The beetles rush out and over the windowsill, running on their eyelash-thin legs.

  “Get your things,” she says, and Huda and Zahra push back their chairs, half-up, half-down, knocking their crumpled napkins and Zahra’s phone to the floor.

  Mama shakes hard, yanking on the yellow curtains. The rod rattles. “We have to leave. We have to get out now.”

  I turn back to Abu Sayeed. His smile has slipped, what’s left of it locked on like there’s not enough time to take it off.