The Map of Salt and Stars: A Novel

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  An old lady yanks the door fully open and exchanges cheek kisses with Umm Yusuf, then bends down to gather Rahila in her arms. The lady’s thick ankles peek out under a long cotton skirt, her knee-high nylons shimmering along her shins. She speaks in fast Arabic and birdsong vowels. I recognize a few words from the tangle: I’ve missed you and Where is he? Umm Yusuf looks around like she was expecting someone else, and the old lady scowls and shoos the air with her gnarled hands.

  “Nour.” Umm Yusuf bends toward me. “This is Ummi—my mother, Rahila’s grandmother. You can call her Sitt Shadid. She’s been waiting for us a long time.”

  Sitt Shadid holds up three crooked fingers and shakes them. “Three month,” she says, then opens her hand and waves it around like she’s sifting flour. Something in Arabic: out of days.

  Mama’s eyes dance between us. “She means she’s waited three months for Umm Yusuf and her daughter to arrive. The time was too long to wait much longer.”

  Umm Yusuf laughs. “She means if we had taken any longer, she’d be dead.”

  It’s the first joke anybody has told in days, and I’m not sure whether to laugh. I stick out my hand instead. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Sitt Shadid scoops me up in a bear hug, sweeping me into her round softness. I haven’t been hugged, really hugged, in so long. At first I forget what to do, and I stiffen up. I’m afraid that if I don’t, the last hug I got from Baba will seep out through my pores and be lost forever. But Sitt Shadid pats and rubs my back, and I relax. I reach across her wide arms, my cheek to her neck. She smells like jasmine flowers and olive soap.

  When she lets me go, I scoot over to Huda and grab her around the waist. Huda feels different—thin and angular from not eating, from sleeping all the time. She strokes the back of my neck under my hair, where my bones stick out like a bird’s. Her hand jerks and flinches against me, and I know her painkiller is wearing off.

  Mama introduces Zahra and Huda in Arabic. Umm Yusuf clicks her tongue. “My son Yusuf was supposed to be here,” she says. “I’m sorry, there is simply no controlling him—”

  “It’s all right,” Mama says.

  Umm Yusuf shakes her head and moves off toward the tiny kitchen in the corner of the room. “I never should have sent him ahead of us,” she says, lifting her hands, “but with Rahila in the hospital, and Ummi not traveling much, I felt at least some of us would get out of harm’s way.” Umm Yusuf is so tall I’m afraid she’ll hit the lightbulb if she doesn’t duck, but she passes right under it, grazing the bulb with the top of her scarf. It swings, reflecting light off the window into the dark outside.

  We take off our shoes and sit on the cushions while Umm Yusuf and Sitt Shadid fight over who will make dinner. We’ve come to the apartment just in time to eat the iftar, the dinner you eat during Ramadan after the sun has set.

  I sit on a flat pillow on the floor, wriggling my toes toward the anchusa in the soda can. I bite the inside of my cheek. But then Sitt Shadid comes over and sets a hand on the wall, shifting her weight back to sit down. For a second I’m afraid she’ll crash into the wall. I try to hold up her weight, but she just rocks back until she drops, and the pillow breaks her fall. When she smiles at me and holds out her palms, I crack a smile too, and it doesn’t matter that I can’t understand everything she says because I understand that.

  We eat tabbouleh with double the parsley and half the usual portion of cracked wheat, and Mama and Umm Yusuf and Abu Sayeed pass stories back and forth in Arabic sprinkled with English. I squint and listen. Zahra picks at her shredded jeans with a sour look on her face. Sitt Shadid sits next to me with Rahila on her knee, and Huda sits on my other side with her good arm around me. She holds her breath when she shifts her weight. I can tell the pain is rushing back into her shoulder. She smiles through it, though, letting Rahila sit in both our laps after we finish eating. Rahila nods off on my collarbone, her earmuffs fuzzy against my neck. She and Huda both smell like the gray green of cumin and iron. Sitt Shadid laughs and rocks back and forth. She sings old songs in Arabic, and Umm Yusuf sings harmony in her ruby-purple voice. Sitt Shadid’s notes are warm twirls of cinnamon and beech pink, and the corners of the room hum with them. My eyes droop shut, and my chin drops. I listen until I can’t hear the songs anymore, just see their colors, the way the notes plant themselves closer together than they do in Western music. I lift my eyelids just long enough to see Sitt Shadid’s cheeks and chin puffy with song, and I feel safe. Then I sleep too.

  A FEW HOURS later, Mama wakes us up and shoos us across the hall to get a bath and get ready for bed. Abu Sayeed takes the room next to ours. “We are lucky,” Mama says after I dry off. “You must all thank Sitt Shadid when you see her. These rooms were for Umm Yusuf and her children. They gave us two of the three they rented so we don’t have to sleep on the street.”

  “And we can stay?” I ask.

  “For now.” Mama pulls out the dirty carpet she saved from the house. “Keep your shoes off. The carpet is clean. Soon we’ll get something more permanent.”

  The carpet isn’t that clean, but there’s no arguing with Mama. While I kick my slippers off, I realize we won’t have to sleep outside, that we might have if things had been different. That makes me feel like I love Sitt Shadid a lot, more than I let anybody know. And then the hot sting of shame comes over me, and I wish I had laughed at Sitt Shadid’s joke, that I had thanked her one more time in Arabic, that I hadn’t hesitated before I hugged the whole round pillar of her.

  “Four people in one room?” Zahra folds her arms across her chest, her bare feet sticking out under her ripped jeans.

  “Tch,” Mama says. “You think we can afford a hotel? What do you want me to do? You think we can just go and get our money from the bank, now that we’ve left the country?”

  “I just figured—”

  “Look, here, and see what is left.” Mama throws open the flap of the burlap bag, tugging it up from the corner where the torn strap is tied on with a knot. She pulls out a clump of bills and a palmful of coins. A stray US dollar is mixed in with the Syrian ones, and another is buried farther down, leftovers from before the move. “Take it and rent a hotel room,” Mama says. “Or would you rather eat tomorrow?”

  Zahra sulks and curves her shoulders into her elbows. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.” Mama snaps the bag shut. “Didn’t you see the children by the road, living in the old fish truck? The urchins in the alleys? Would you like to sleep in the van?”

  “We have to make do,” Huda says. No one has noticed her sit down under the window, her eyes glassy with pain. It’s the first thing Huda has said in days.

  In the corner of the room, we find an old blanket, maybe left by somebody who used to live here. We lay down on the carpet with the blanket over us, and it feels so soft and warm that I don’t care about the grime or not being in my own bed. Huda gives me her scarf for a pillow. It smells like her sweat. I wonder what Abu Sayeed is sleeping on.

  I lie awake for a long time, staring at nothing. The building creaks and groans. I toss back and forth until Zahra elbows me, hard, but I still can’t fall asleep. I close my eyes and count my breaths. Outside, traffic whines, making the floor tremble.

  I wriggle out from under the blanket. I tiptoe out and knock on Abu Sayeed’s door.

  He comes out barefoot, his shirt untucked. “Little cloud,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

  I put my finger to my lips. I don’t want to wake Mama. I hand Abu Sayeed Huda’s scarf so he has a pillow.

  He shakes his head. “I can’t take this.”

  “Please.”

  He disappears into the dark room and comes back with a dirty scrap of fabric. “I have my own,” he says, but it looks thin. “Why are you still up?”

  I shuffle my feet. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Then let’s walk awhile.” He shuts the door behind him, and we wander barefoot down the hall. “Sometimes, when sleep does not come,” Abu Sayeed says, “I go looking
for it.”

  At the end of the hall is a narrow door. Abu Sayeed and I step out onto a tiny second-floor ledge with an iron railing. The chill of the breeze surprises me after such a hot day. Below us, the sidewalk is empty. The city honks and blinks with life.

  “I don’t think we should be out here in the cold,” he says.

  “Can’t we stay a minute?” I grab the railing and scan the street down the hill, beyond the rooftops. A bus hisses by, its brake lights brighter than the stars. The constellations shiver.

  “I wish I knew all the names of the stars.” I sit down, sticking my legs through the railing and swinging them. I tilt my neck back to see the Milky Way. The streetlamps and the bright hotels downtown gray out the sky, leaving just pinpricks of light. I look for the blocks of Ursa Major and the bull, scan the sky for Polaris and Thurayya—the Pleiades. “Did you know the Bedu saw a camel in Cassiopeia? For a long time, that’s all anybody saw.”

  “Is that so?” Abu Sayeed looks skyward. “What else do you know?”

  I point out the three mourning daughters, the two calves at the mill, and the gazelles running from the lion. But then I stop talking. I know where the gazelles are running. I know, no matter what the season, that they never stop their sprinting across the sky.

  “What else did you find up there?” Abu Sayeed asks.

  “I found us,” I say. Then I start to cry. “I can’t remember Baba’s voice. I can’t even remember it.”

  “Little cloud.” He kneels next to me on the rough concrete, the night wind making ice out of his fingers. “Of course you do. You don’t forget a thing like that.”

  “It looked like caramels and oak bark,” I say. “Those were Baba’s colors. But then he died, and they buried his voice. Now I’ve got the color but not the sound of it. All I’ve got is a brown streak on the wall.” I hiccup and set my forehead on the railing. It makes long dents in my skin. “I should remember. But I don’t.”

  “You didn’t forget him,” Abu Sayeed says. “You have a picture of your baba in your mind. You just see him differently than other people.”

  I pull my head back, touching the grooves in my cheek. “I want to be like everybody else.”

  “No one is like everybody else.” Abu Sayeed taps the tips of his fingers to the railing. “All the stars are different, but when you look up, you see them just the same.”

  I lean over and hug Abu Sayeed, but a cold feeling cuts through the middle of me, like I’ve lost something I can’t get back. My feet dangle through the railing, numb from the wind. Abu Sayeed wraps his arm around my shoulders, smelling of parsley and rock dust.

  Beyond the city limits, the steppe is night. I think of Rawiya and al-Idrisi sleeping under the stars. The bulb of a streetlamp erases Leo Minor. I lean toward it without meaning to, separating from Abu Sayeed’s warmth like acrylic paint peeling, like a gazelle who knows only how to run.

  Stories You Tell Yourself

  From Qasr Amra, the expedition returned to the trade road. They continued south toward the Red Sea, toward the end of Bilad ash-Sham and Nur ad-Din’s protection. They found themselves on a high plateau with mountains to their west. Al-Idrisi sketched maps and checked his notes. He pointed away over the mountains, where caravans of merchants had described to him a salt-choked inland sea. “South of those dead waters,” he said, showing them what he had written, “a great valley runs, the one called Wadi Araba. It runs south as far as the Gulf of Aila, where it empties.” No one in the expedition had seen these things themselves, for at the foot of the western mountains lay the forts of the Franj that marked the border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and they could go no farther west in safety.

  But al-Idrisi lifted his finger to his friends and smiled. “Soon,” he said, “we will turn west and cross the Gulf of Aila, which leads to the Red Sea. We will enter the Fatimid Empire, the lands of Egypt and the Nile Delta, and the Maghreb beyond. We will see God’s wonders with our own eyes.”

  Now, news of Nur ad-Din’s victory in ash-Sham and the roc’s retreat had quickly reached the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Fatimid Empire. The news had set nerves on edge, for as al-Idrisi himself knew, Fatimid power in Cairo was beginning to weaken. Corruption and intrigue whispered in every hillside village. Bandits had grown bolder, putting caravans at risk. This only added to the dangers the expedition would have to face before they cleared the Nile Delta and approached the Gulf of Sidra, where King Roger had set up his coastal outposts in Ifriqiya. Until then, al-Idrisi and his friends would have to avoid Franj fortresses, high mountain cliffs, and Fatimid suspicions.

  The Fatimids had much to be suspicious about. Nur ad-Din had long hoped to gain a foothold in Cairo. And in those days, the Fatimid Empire feared not only the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Nur ad-Din’s new stronghold in ash-Sham, but also Berber forces massing in the west near Barneek and the Gulf of Sidra—the mighty Almohads.

  “Why this fighting?” Rawiya asked. “They are all followers of God.”

  “Look around you,” Khaldun said. “In the last several weeks, we have seen the forts of the Franj, provincial quarrels, thirst for gold and water. Refugees expelled from their homes by the invading armies crowd into the cities of Bilad ash-Sham. Ruler plots against ruler. The world is changing.”

  “But must innocent lives be lost,” Rawiya said, “over such thirsts for land and gold? And we are explorers, not spies.”

  “As any poet knows,” Khaldun said, “the story often matters less than the telling.”

  Rawiya spurred her camel forward. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Our purpose matters less,” al-Idrisi said, snapping his book shut, “than what our enemies believe.”

  They spoke little that day and the next, brooding on bad luck. The road was long, and the paths that led from the northern plateau through the valleys had not yet been mapped. Al-Idrisi often checked his notes and astrolabe, but they lost the path several times and had to go back the way they came.

  The expedition soon entered rocky country. They wound into a narrow canyon of red cliffs, hoping their path was true. But that afternoon, a sandstorm whipped up from the east, throwing them off the southbound road. Their camels picked their way along the rubble-covered path and clamped their noses shut. Rawiya and her friends wrapped their faces in their turbans. Sand tangled in their eyelashes and filled their mouths with grit. The winds screamed past the cliffs, and the air thickened until they could not see the wind-cut walls.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Bakr cried. “We’ve turned around.”

  “We will be crushed by the winds,” al-Idrisi called.

  “I see an opening in the rock—” But Rawiya’s voice was lost. The storm beat the canyon, the sand grinding at gashes in the walls. The wind yanked up a stone and smacked it into the cliff, and the canyon rang with echoes.

  Rawiya groped for her sling. “Give me a stone,” she cried. “A coin. Anything.”

  They could see nothing. Bakr called out, and she followed his voice until she grabbed his camel’s reigns. The servants clutched each other, their camels tossing their heads. The canyon walls couldn’t be more than a stone’s throw away, but they were blind. The sandstorm cut like a dagger.

  Bakr, Khaldun, and al-Idrisi emptied their packs. They handed Rawiya Nur ad-Din’s dinars, filling her palms. She set the coins in her sling and fired them, waiting to hear the ping of gold on stone.

  Nothing.

  Rawiya turned in her saddle, firing again. Still nothing. She aimed through the wind, her fingers cramping, the wind driving sand under her nails.

  At last, the metal cracked on the canyon wall.

  “This way!” Rawiya pushed her camel toward the opening in the rock. The animal picked its way across sharp stones. Feeling their way along the wall, they came to a small cave cut into the rock, enough to shelter their camels and the servants.

  Someone shrieked. Rawiya turned back. Bakr’s face emerged from the sand, only his eyes peeking out from his turban. “On
e of the servants’ camels caught a hoof on the rock,” he shouted. “The animal is all right, but the rider fell.” Bakr pulled the injured man out of the wind, limping.

  Rawiya led them into the cave, and they laid the man down. “He’s broken his shin,” she said. “He needs more help than we can give. For now—” She tore a strip of cloth from her cloak and wrapped it around the man’s leg, tying it with a strong knot.

  They waited for the storm to settle. Though no one said so, they knew they were in danger. The sandstorm had forced them onto a westward road, and they now stood on the border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—the lands of the Franj Crusaders.

  The storm died down near dusk. Rawiya left the cave first, raising her head and a finger to the wind. The rest of the expedition followed, the camels still shaking sand out of the clefts in their hooves.

  Only when they turned around did they see it. All around them, cut into the rose-red cliff walls, were majestic dwellings decorated with high pillars, statues, and carvings of flowers. The cliffs on either side had been clawed by wind and time in long stripes. Sand and debris had settled over some of the openings, but others yawned deep into the rock.

  “The Nabataean city of Raqmu—Petra. Incredible.” Al-Idrisi opened his book and began to sketch and scribble. Rawiya, Bakr, and Khaldun watched over his shoulder. “I had heard stories,” he said, his voice rising, “but the paths were never clearly described. I never thought I would see it for myself. Do you understand?” He shook his book in front of him, grinning. “We will map this lost city for the first time.”

  The expedition followed the canyon paths between the rock dwellings, afraid to speak. By nightfall, they had climbed out of the red mountains. Bedu herders with their flocks hid their faces, watching from a distance.