The Map of Salt and Stars: A Novel

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  “Bad stuff?” I sniffle. “It’s just stuff.”

  Yusuf pulls out his pocketknife and does that thing again, the one where he flicks it open and snaps it shut. “We left after my father was killed on the way to work,” he says. “He was half a kilometer to the office building, and it was over. The shell came from nowhere.”

  “It hit him?”

  Yusuf flicks the knife open again. “It hit the building across the street. The ground level collapsed. A stone flew across—” He clicks his tongue and taps his temple with his forefinger. “They say he died right away. No pain.”

  “They always say that.” The night creeps up on us, standing the little hairs on my arm on end. “They always say nothing hurt, and it went fast,” I say. “But you’ve seen it, so you know it isn’t true.”

  “People say lots of things to feel better.”

  I pick at the hard concrete. Huda and Mama toss on the carpet, and two pigeons sitting on a cargo box startle and fly off, cooing. In the distance, a car peels away, and someone fires a machine gun into the night.

  “I bet you’ve been back,” I say, “to the street where it happened.”

  “Before we left, I went,” Yusuf says. “I used to walk by that corner on my way home once a week, even though it was out of my way.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “We always go back,” I say. “We go back to death-places. It’s like somebody dying opens a door, and we have to look in.”

  “Maybe what isn’t there is more important than what is,” Yusuf says.

  “Maybe.”

  He snaps his pocketknife shut. “I used to like meeting people and listening to their stories. But now I keep forgetting who I am.” He holds out his pocketknife to me. “This was my father’s.”

  I take it. A name used to be hand-carved into the wooden side, but it’s been rubbed so much over the years that you can’t read it anymore. The knife is warm from Yusuf’s hand.

  I say, “It’s pretty.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “What?” I can’t tell what face Yusuf is making in the dark.

  “No one should travel without a pocketknife,” he says. “I want you and your family to get where you’re going. I want you to be safe.”

  “Thanks.” In my head, I think, Will we ever be safe again? I tuck the pocketknife into my left pocket because the right one is still heavy with the green-and-purple half-stone. “Sometimes I feel like all the people I’ve ever met are still with me. Like they’re right around the corner and they’ll pop out any second.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “You know it’s not.” The sea crinkles like a dryer sheet. “Does it ever stop feeling like the earth is one big nerve? Like everywhere you step, dead people feel it?”

  Out in the harbor, the water crunches and pops, gray and black, like a person chewing ice.

  “I don’t know if it ever stops hurting,” Yusuf says.

  He pats the space next to him, and I sit by him with my head on his shoulder. We stay like that, Zahra leaning on Yusuf’s one side and me leaning on the other, until the pigeons stop cooing. I fall asleep.

  I DREAM I’M floating in the Red Sea. I dive down and look for Abu Sayeed. He’s somewhere in the kelpy green where I can’t find him. I search and search, my eyes burning with salt water, until my chest burns and shudders and I have to come up and take a breath.

  I gulp air and start to think that maybe I was wrong, and not just about Yusuf. Maybe I was wrong about Homs and Syria, and about the city too. Maybe home was never where I thought it was.

  The water is onyx black. I lie in the dark with the stars over me and the sun edging into green. I remember the olive grove outside Homs, the leaves like green and silver toothpicks. I remember how the fig tree smelled, the purple oil on the roots, the must of bark sweating.

  Would things have been different if I had told my story to more than just the earth? If I had told my story on the road, on the bus, in the butcher shop, to the old storyteller man, to the oboe player washing blood off her hands, to the one-legged man who used to play soccer—if I had told my story to them, would I know how to tell it to myself?

  And that’s when I start thinking about God. I wonder, how is God not torn up about the terrible things in the world? If he or she or they see every single one, then how is God not so sad that he can’t watch anymore? If life is one long newsreel, why does she still read the headlines?

  Why doesn’t God look away?

  Mama says God feels everything. But to bear every single awful thing, every scraped knee, every blown-up house? Bad men jerking up a pleated skirt? The clank of a belt buckle on pavement? Drowning with stone-filled pockets? The red screaming of shells? Plastic backpacks under bricks? Leaving without good-byes? Bullets worming into bones? Broken buildings, broken bodies, broken tongues? The awful weight of everything?

  Can a sadness be too heavy for God? Maybe God can bear it all, but I don’t know if I can. The world is a stone in me, heavy with Baba’s voice and the old clock tower and the man selling tea in the street. I want to believe things are supposed to be better, but I don’t have the words to say how.

  So I picture a big heart under everything, beating under the weight of expecting better. I picture this big heart under the sea, pumping compassion like thick blood, draining anger and hurt.

  That heart fills up the water with warmth. It lifts me like a mustard seed in the yawning mouth of a whale. The water bleeds black under me, and God smiles through the cracks in broken things. I am a crumb of porcelain. I am a lost tooth. I am a shard of lapis.

  Morning comes. Yusuf watches the dark. I hold on to that hugeness under me, that big kindness. I keep my eyes shut and imagine I am still that small blue stone asleep in the earth, waiting for God to polish the salt from my skin.

  The Green Deep

  The white belly of a great bird passed overhead, the flash of its silver talons menacing. But Rawiya, Khaldun, and al-Idrisi were surrounded by Mennad and his men, who stood their ground. They could not run.

  Mennad held up al-Idrisi’s book of notes and maps. “You will have to pry it from my hands.”

  Above them, the great bird glided past, attracted to the battlefield by the stench of blood.

  Mennad ignored it. “With this knowledge of our enemies,” he went on, “their outposts and their trade routes, we will liberate the Maghreb from the Almoravids and the Normans. Can you imagine how many years I have waited to see my people rise?” His voice grew thick with an ancient pain that crossed his face like a shadow. “I would rather see the book burned than in someone else’s hands.”

  But as he spoke, a rumbling rose from the earth, spitting flakes of red clay and dust into the air.

  “Watch out!” Rawiya pulled on the reins of Khaldun’s horse. A bowl of ground sagged in the spot where he had been standing. Pebbles slid down into the dent until it yawned into a hole, draining loose sand and the roots of shrubs. Soon the pit swallowed juniper bushes and boulders. The gaping hole became a cavern, puffing steam and hissing.

  Mennad’s men whispered and shook, gripping their terrified horses’ reins.

  From the hole squirmed an enormous emerald snake, its body as wide as a palm trunk. Its scales were jeweled mirrors, its eyes amber globes. It reared its head and thrashed from the earth, roiling the sand. It stretched out its pink tongue, wriggling like an eel.

  “Don’t move,” Rawiya whispered.

  One of Mennad’s men broke from the circle, but the serpent was too fast. It lashed out its head and lifted the screaming man from his saddle, swallowing him whole. Next it moved through what was left of the Almohad ranks, scattering them and searing them with acid venom.

  Khaldun cried, “The armies!”

  All three armies were retreating. Dozens of giant snakes burst from the ground, and the great white bird dove at them, carrying off warriors and serpents in his talons. The Fatimids and Almohads broke in terror, t
heir horses squealing. The ranks fled in all directions, running for the steppe or Jebel Akhdar. The Normans retreated toward Barneek, where a ship waited.

  “We must not lose sight of Roger’s army,” al-Idrisi said, for he knew if they did not recover his book and board the Norman ship, they would never make it across Almohad territory to the Norman outposts in Ifriqiya.

  Now Mennad was a brave warrior, but he was no fool. As the snake laid waste to the Almohad army and drove off his men, Mennad turned his horse and escaped across the steppe, burying al-Idrisi’s book in his robe.

  Rawiya turned and chased after him, her red tunic unfurling in the wind.

  There was a flash of green. A giant snake, its belly a white rope unspooling from the earth, curved in front of Mennad and lunged at him.

  Mennad raised his spear against its fangs. It hissed and dripped venom, searing the ground. Pulling back, it leapt again, grazing his arm with a tooth as long as a dagger.

  Mennad gave a cry and lurched in his saddle, gripping his wounded arm. The snake coiled around him, offering him no escape.

  “Help me,” Mennad cried to Rawiya and her friends. “I beg you.”

  “We will,” Rawiya said, “if you give us our property and our freedom. The book is ours.”

  “You are free, then.” Mennad tossed his spear to his good arm. “But the book is mine.”

  Mennad thrust his spear at the snake, but it bounced off its hard scales. The snake shot out its neck, its jaw gaping. Mennad ducked, but the serpent’s bulk knocked him half off his saddle. He wrapped an arm around his horse’s neck and swung himself upright, the sleeve of his tunic matted with blood.

  “Return what is rightfully ours,” Rawiya called out, “and we will gladly help you.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” al-Idrisi cried.

  But Mennad had spent half a lifetime fighting for his people, and he had spent months searching for this book of Fatimid secrets. He would not give in.

  The serpent tightened its length around him and waited to strike, for its prey was almost out of strength.

  Mennad lunged with his spear one last time, aiming for the snake’s open mouth. But with a spray of venom, the beast clamped its jaw down on the spear and rolled its great neck, crushing the weapon and ripping it from Mennad’s hands.

  The spray of the snake’s acid venom hit Mennad across his face, deepening his ancient scar. He screamed out and slumped over his horse’s neck. The serpent hissed and spat out the broken spear, rearing up again.

  Mennad, knowing he was defeated, reached into his tunic. “You are free,” he said. “I give you my word.” And he tossed al-Idrisi his leather book.

  As al-Idrisi caught it, the flash of movement caught the serpent’s eye. It sprang for Khaldun, who was nearest. He scrambled to block the fangs with his scimitar.

  “Khaldun!” Rawiya notched a stone in her sling and released it. It hit the snake on the neck, bouncing off its scales. Rawiya cursed.

  The snake pulled back and lunged again, this time toward al-Idrisi.

  “Use this.” Rawiya tossed him her spear. Al-Idrisi thrust it into the snake’s mouth. The serpent screeched, blood dripping from its fangs, and lunged again.

  Al-Idrisi blocked the snake with his Almohad shield, then dropped the shield hastily to the ground. The metal sizzled and steamed as the venom burned through it, leaving a gaping hole.

  Rawiya had only one stone left in her pouch. Positioning herself in front of her friends, she notched the stone into her sling and squinted against the sun, steadying her breath.

  The snake reared at this new threat and opened its jaws.

  Rawiya let the stone fly. It hit the serpent in the back of the throat, bursting in a spray of blood. The beast cried out like thunder. The great, thick body hung in the air, its eyes clouding, before it hurtled to the earth. It crashed down, snapping bushes and juniper trees, shaking the ground.

  Mennad, who was a man of his word, had watched all this, bleeding in his saddle. Now he raised his hand to Rawiya, Khaldun, and al-Idrisi. His face and palms were scarred with venom and blood.

  After a moment, Mennad’s horse limped after his men. In the distance, the great snakes chased the last of the Almohad and Fatimid warriors into the steppe.

  Al-Idrisi threw down the Almohad spear, the serpent’s blood sticky in the sand. “This is not the last I will see of battle, I expect,” he said, “though I wish it was.”

  While they had fought the giant snakes, the Norman forces had been steadily retreating toward Barneek and the shore of the Gulf of Sidra, where the harbor lay. Rawiya signaled to her friends and turned her horse toward the pearl-sized dots of riders in the distance. Al-Idrisi called out to the servants, who followed.

  The expedition made for the thin line of King Roger’s men, their hooves throwing up red dust, the gulf shimmering violet beyond.

  Now Rawiya had seen the great white bird carry off dozens of men in his talons, but still the beast was not satisfied. He had slid over the battlefield, making long passes, searching for something.

  In truth, the monstrous bird was not interested in the slightest in Mennad and his men. He had seen the flash of a stone in a sling, and if his memory served him, he knew very well whose sling it was.

  As the expedition fled across the steppe, the great bird soared over them. He rolled as he reached them, revealing one side of his face and then the other.

  The remaining eye appeared first, pale yellow and bigger than a fist. Then the bird turned, and Rawiya saw the scar. A great gash had sealed itself shut where the other eye should have been, a pink, raw scar devoid of white feathers.

  The one-eyed beast beat his wings and lifted up, preparing to dive. And Rawiya’s belly filled with dread, remembering how the one-eyed roc had promised revenge on the expedition before he had fled ash-Sham.

  “Break apart!” she cried, urging on her horse as the roc dove for them. “He can’t chase us all.”

  So they separated into zigzagging lines, and al-Idrisi broke away from Khaldun and Rawiya. They turned their horses to the right and to the left, dodging the roc’s snapping beak.

  The shore swung into view, the red steppe tumbling into white sand. The one-eyed roc shrieked at the water. He turned, beating his wings and circling, giving the expedition a temporary rest.

  The Normans were preparing to board their ship and raise anchor. But when they saw the expedition’s chain mail and Almohad tunics, they shouted and raised their swords. The Norman Sicilians and the Almohads were bitter enemies, and they would not listen to al-Idrisi’s explanations. Soon, the expedition was surrounded.

  A Norman came forward carrying the shield of King Roger’s court, painted ruby with the symbol of a rearing golden lion. He drew his sword. “Your last words,” he said, “before you return to the dust?”

  But al-Idrisi pulled his book of notes from his satchel. Using his dagger, he cut away the book’s dusty leather wrapping and held its cover high.

  The Normans gasped and stepped back. Under the leather wrapping, the cover of al-Idrisi’s book was embossed in royal magenta red, a color used only by the Sicilian king himself. It bore King Roger’s personal seal, the same one Rawiya had seen on his mantle when he had greeted them in Palermo: a camel and a golden lion, with red rosettes indicating the stars of the constellation Leo, the symbol of King Roger’s power. The Normans did not have to read the Arabic inscription to know it was made in the royal workshop, that its bearer was under King Roger’s personal protection.

  The Norman warrior tipped his chin and touched his forehead. “Sir,” he said, “do you bear a message for the king?”

  Al-Idrisi lifted his helmet. “Only a message of the wonders of God’s hand.”

  “You are the mapmaker, friend to King Roger!”

  “The same,” al-Idrisi said. “And my servants—no, no longer my servants or apprentices. These are my friends: Khaldun, the poet of Bilad ash-Sham, and the young warrior Rami.” He spoke quickly of their task: to map t
he lands of Anatolia, Bilad ash-Sham, and the eastern Maghreb. To the west of the Gulf of Sidra, where they stood, lay King Roger’s outposts in Ifriqiya, a well-mapped stretch of territory.

  Al-Idrisi held up his book, embossed with King Roger’s lion. “We have all we need to complete our quest.”

  The Norman bowed. “The king’s servants,” he said, “are at your service.”

  The expedition boarded the ship with the Normans. The one-eyed roc circled back. The great beast rose toward the sun, and the ship listed from the beating of his wings.

  The anchor groaned up from the depths, bursting the surface of the sea. The sails swelled, carrying the ship toward open water. The ship was sturdy and fast and ready to sail, for it had brought reinforcements and supplies from Palermo to Ifriqiya several weeks ago. “We were given orders to wait at Barneek,” the Norman said, “and to return you and your expedition to Palermo, if we could.”

  But Rawiya squinted toward the shore. As the one-eyed roc neared the ship, he carried something in his talons: a boulder the size of a camel. He shrieked in anger.

  “Turn to starboard,” al-Idrisi cried.

  The ship heaved to the side. The one-eyed roc soared above them and dropped the stone, missing the ship by inches.

  Khaldun gripped the rail, his face a mask of fear. “We will all be dead long before we get to Palermo.”

  The roc dove away again, retrieving another stone from the shore and beating his wings hard against the weight.

  “Port,” al-Idrisi cried. “Turn!”

  The ship cut the waves as the roc released the stone. The boulder grazed the ship, smashing the railing and narrowly missing the deck. The Norman sailors scattered. The stone dropped into the green deep with a terrific splash, churning the sea and sending everyone sprawling across the deck.

  As the one-eyed roc glided past the ship, he caught Rawiya’s gaze in his one remaining eye.

  Rawiya reached into her pouch of stones—empty. But in the folds of her tunic sat the half-stone of the roc’s eye, wrapped in cloth. Rawiya slid her fingers over it. The stone’s warmth pulsed in her palm.