The Map of Salt and Stars: A Novel

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  WHEN I WAS seven, Baba took me to the carousel in Central Park for the first time. My sitto had just died, and he didn’t tell me where we were going; he said it was a surprise.

  I remember we stumbled out of the trees, and the music was all sunbursts and pink ribbons and the horses were spinning. It was magic.

  We stayed until after dark. We walked around crunching the last of our ice cream cones. It got so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your nose. Baba said he didn’t want to go home yet. Neither did I.

  The thought of going home to our apartment where Sitto’s old letters were stacked up inside my dresser drawers was unbearable. I couldn’t stand thinking she would never write me again, that I would lie on my bed with my legs up the wall, waiting for a phone call that would never come.

  So I licked my fingers and ran off the path into the trees. And I stood in the trees real silent, not even breathing, waiting for Baba to come find me. But I was too far in, and I was real small, and I hid real well.

  Baba looked and looked for me while I giggled under my breath. But then he stopped looking and went back to the path, and he called my name. I heard him calling for a long time. Then he came out half a block down under a streetlight, and he put his face in his hands and cried and cried. He bent over and poured tears out like a broken water fountain while I stood there in the bushes.

  And I don’t know why, but I didn’t move or run out. I knew I should have, that Baba was upset, that he was scared he had lost me. But I just stood there. I think part of me wanted to stay like that, under the upside-down basket of the dark, lodged in the stickers and the beer cans and the dead leaves, feeling small and scared and sacred at the same time. There was something about seeing Baba with his head in his hands, something new. It was a side of him I hadn’t ever seen. He wasn’t my baba anymore. He was just a person, lost and bent over like everybody else.

  And then there was a moment I remembered where I was, only I couldn’t see my hands or my feet. I had become the dark and the bushes, and my body had evaporated. The me I knew had disappeared. And for a minute, I liked it.

  I feel like that now, watching the sun come up over Benghazi with my back to the harbor where the night hangs, waiting to see my arms and my legs. Huda and Mama sleep rabbit-curled on the carpet. Zahra and I are each glued to half of Yusuf’s ribs, his knife in my one pocket and the half-stone in the other.

  Yusuf untangles himself while it’s still dark, after the sky has turned gray but before the sun drinks up the stars. Zahra lays her forehead on his belly, gripping his elbows. He pulls away with a disk of wet on his gray shirt like the center of him is leaking out through his belly button.

  “I can’t explain in English,” he says.

  Zahra’s palms slip out of his hands. “Me either.”

  I watch Yusuf slink away from the harbor and disappear down the street, turning the corner where a construction crew is just arriving to work. Zahra’s shadow shudders on the cargo boxes.

  “That game,” Zahra says to me, “with the levels.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are there levels under this one?” Her fingers trail on the pavement. “Are there levels with real things, happy things? Or is it broken all the way through?”

  The light hits my outstretched legs, my worn sneakers, my knobby knees. Was there a time things were different? Did I ever really lie on my bed at home with my legs up the wall?

  I breathe in and taste yellow pinpricks of salt. “I’m not sure.”

  The workers come for the ferry while the day is still new, one man opening up the gangplank, another drinking his coffee. They walk along the length of the dock, checking cargo crates and whistling.

  Zahra shakes Mama awake and touches Huda’s arm, but Huda doesn’t move. Sticky red stains the carpet under her cheek.

  “Huda?” Mama’s voice is rough like sugar marble, her blouse heavy with the chicken-soup smell of her sweat. She draws out her vowels like a grief song: “Habibti?”

  But Huda doesn’t respond. When Mama touches her forehead, she pulls her hand back like she’s been burned. In the light, Huda’s face is pulled thin, like all the juice has drained out of her. Her wrists are wishbones, her ribs raised stripes through her shirt. How did nobody know the fever would eat her up inside?

  “She won’t wake up.” Zahra raises her voice, and Mama clutches her arm. We freeze. The ferry workers walk by, then pass out of earshot.

  I start to panic. “Mama,” I whisper. “What’s happening?”

  “Her fever is very high.” Mama looks frantic, lost. She lapses into Arabic, her hands fluttering over Huda’s face. “There must be an infection, something in the wound. Ya Rabb,” she whispers. Oh Lord.

  Chocolate-brown and gray voices skitter along the harbor. They belong to men. I peek out from behind the crates. Two men in what pass for uniforms stroll toward us, their guns slung over their backs like bookbags. They don’t look like policemen, with their nervy eyes and their scuffed cargo pants, but I guess they must be. I remember Zahra’s story about the rebels shooting off their guns into the air.

  “Shit,” Zahra says. And she never curses in front of Mama, not ever.

  “Don’t curse.” Mama turns to me, and her face is a map of fear.

  “Mama?”

  “Here.” Mama takes out the plastic shopping bag, the one we bought the apricots in yesterday. She slips the map inside and ties the bag shut, making a sort of bubble. Then she slips the bubble into the burlap bag. “Waterproof,” she says and smiles. She puts the strap of the bag around my chest, like a makeshift backpack.

  I look up at her. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t lose it,” she says. “The last of the food is in there, and a little money. And the map.” She takes me by both hands, and her eyes blaze in mine. “Don’t you dare forget, habibti. Use the map. Remember what’s important.”

  “But you’re going with us.”

  “No.” Mama presses my two hands together between both of hers. “Your sister needs a hospital.”

  “But the hospitals are overcrowded with the fighting,” Zahra whispers. “Yusuf said they’re running out of supplies, that there aren’t enough doctors—”

  “Listen to me.” Mama puts a hand on my cheek and the other on Zahra’s forearm. “Get down behind these crates when you go,” she says. “Run straight to the boat. Hide below deck. Do you hear?”

  Zahra grips her fingers. “Mama, you can’t leave us.”

  “We can’t take chances.” Mama’s voice is sharp. “Algeria will close its border with Libya any day now. Get out. I’ll find you.”

  Something between us lifts up and breaks, something soft and old like a breath held a long time. Mama smiles. The blue-and-white tile is hot on my chest. Mama’s eyes are dark brown with little flecks of amber in them, a calmness underneath. I wonder why I never saw it before. I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever see it.

  The two men pass us by, fingering their guns.

  “But Mama—” I scramble to my feet, tripping over a stray shell casing. “How will we find you?”

  “The map, habibti.” Mama squeezes my arm and keeps her voice low. “Use the map.”

  We hold our breath. The men pause in front of the crates, shifting from foot to foot. One of them uses the rubber sole of his boot to scratch his ankle. We can’t see much, just the hems of their pant legs.

  I shut my eyes. Time stops, air stops.

  Then there’s the shck, shck of a lighter and the sizzle of a cigarette. One of the men laughs, and their feet shuffle away again. We let out our breath as they pass by us, talking, leaving the sweet smell of cigarette smoke stuck to the hairs in my nose.

  Mama strains to lift Huda up, unbending her knees.

  “Yalla,” she whispers. “Go.”

  Mama darts down the street from behind the cargo crates with Huda in her arms. And for a second, the world just hangs there, suspended. Mama’s papery skirt flutters behind her, the navy one she was w
earing at dinner with Abu Sayeed the night the house fell down. I freeze the picture in my mind: Mama carrying Huda, her crooked pumps clicking, the bare studs in the heels striking the cobblestones. Her woody perfume hanging in the air.

  Zahra takes me by the hand, and we duck behind the boxes and skirt toward the boat. The men don’t turn, just take another drag on their cigarettes. I look back as Mama and Huda swing out of view, the line of her calf and the heel of her pump vanishing around the corner.

  Zahra squeezes my arm so hard it hurts. We tiptoe up the ramp and scurry across the deck, then duck down a set of steps into the dark, away from the ferry workers’ voices.

  We end up in the hold of the ferry, the ceiling low over our heads, the space stacked with boxes. We jam ourselves into a three-foot square as far back as we can and hunch down between crates. The only shard of dawn light comes from a crack in the floorboards of the deck. I take off my makeshift backpack, the burlap rough in my hands.

  We don’t talk. The boat groans. The workers shout. The crates squeak. The floor shifts. Every sound is a footstep on the stairs leading into the hold. Every voice belongs to someone who’s looking for us, someone who might steal a couple of sodas from a mini-mart if no one was looking.

  It seems like forever until the ramp snaps back. The ferry lurches toward the big water, blowing its horn. I open the burlap backpack and unroll Mama’s map, and my tears and snot crinkle the corners.

  I wish Huda were with us, wish I could hear her call out to me: Ya Nouri! I wish for Baba. Abu Sayeed. Mama. I tuck a hand into my pocket and bump into Yusuf’s pocketknife, grimy, still wet with last night’s chill. Did I ever wish for a big brother?

  Mama’s words rattle in my head: Don’t you dare forget.

  Mama’s map is thick with acrylic paint, like it’s an actual thing, a sculpture, a mold. It’s as heavy as two or three canvases, full of colors instead of names, little blocks of paint. I study Mama’s brushstrokes under the single shaft of light.

  Zahra crawls over to me in the dark. Things jostle up and down, the waves cradling us. Light shuffles down with dust.

  “I’ve never seen a map like that,” she says.

  “Me either.” I stare at the map until the colors blur. A thin slice of light stabs them. I run my hands over the borders of the colors. I feel an utter sort of sadness, like holding on to the frayed end of a rope.

  I turn the map from side to side, then upside down like al-Idrisi did with his. I hold south at the top. A row of colors sits above each country, each sea and ocean, each desert.

  It’s the color game.

  “My colors.” A tingle starts at the base of my spine and climbs up, each bone a knot. “It’s a code. Mama coded the map with my colors.”

  Each square of color reads like a letter, just like Mama used to quiz me about: brown for H, red for S. Something drops into place like jiggling a key in a locked door: the game she used to play, why she had to ask for my colors to get it right, why she made it seem so important.

  Zahra crumples her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mama used my colors,” I say. “See here? It says HOMS—brown, white, black, red.”

  “It doesn’t say Homs. There’s no label there.”

  I point out the squares of color for the name—a brown square for H, then a white one for O, black for M, and red—the letter S is red.

  “So all the colors are letters,” I say. “They all mean something.” But then I squint at the coast of North Africa. “Something is wrong.”

  “What, did she get one of the names wrong?”

  “No. One of them is missing.”

  Above us, the world bursts with sounds: the thudding of rope hitting the deck, the slapping of sailcloth.

  “Mama put all the cities on the map,” I say in a whisper. “All the cities from the story.”

  Zahra rubs her forehead. “Slow down.”

  “Rawiya and al-Idrisi. All the cities they went to are here.” I call out their names, translating from my colors. “Homs and Damascus and Aqabat Aila and Cairo and Barneek—that’s what they used to call Benghazi.”

  Zahra waves her hand in front of her face like she’s clearing smoke. “But what’s missing?”

  I squint at the borders on the map. Each country is painted in a different blob of color. Some are thicker and some thin, like certain countries have an extra layer of paint on top.

  I say, “Ceuta is gone.”

  “Ceuta?” Zahra squints through the dark. “So what?”

  “So, all the other cities from the story are here. See?” I tap the canvas. “Ceuta is the only city that isn’t labeled.”

  Zahra broods in the dark. “But Ceuta?”

  “Ceuta is where al-Idrisi was born. It’s where Mama first talked to Baba, where she told him to jump into the strait. Ceuta is where Uncle Ma’mun bought the house.”

  Remember what’s important.

  And I play it all back: Mama gripping the blue-and-white tile on the necklace. Uncle Ma’mun fixing the fountain. He was looking for himself, but there aren’t any maps for that. The newspaper burning, the name circled in red. The potbellied man laughing in his doorway. The kind, familiar eyes.

  “He’s the one in the newspaper,” I whisper. “It was Uncle Ma’mun.”

  “What newspaper?”

  I grab Zahra’s hands. “That’s where we have to go. Mama was taking us to Uncle Ma’mun.”

  Zahra stops breathing. “Wait. Where are we going?”

  The ferry rolls. The knife of light falls across my face.

  “We’re going to Ceuta.”

  Blood and Water

  In those days, it was well known that the roc, though he was the most powerful and deadly of all beasts, was also a trickster and a cunning liar. With his keen eyesight, he saw everything: the pinprick of each hair on every head, the paws of every cat, the buzzing wings of every insect. The roc had used this power to spread chaos through all the lands he inhabited.

  And he never forgot a face.

  The roc circled the ship. The beating of his wings grew to a roar, and the sky grew dark with his shadow. He watched the expedition and the crew with his one remaining eye, his breath stinking with blood.

  “Have you forgotten?” the roc said, his voice like mountains crumbling. “Have the treacherous sons of men forgotten my promise? I swore to you once that I would have my revenge. I have come to collect it.”

  The crew whispered and drew their swords. The roc glided past the bow of the ship and passed along its starboard side.

  “We have no business with you,” Rawiya called out.

  “You!” The roc’s huge shadow drifted over them, as wide as an island. “It is I who have business with you, stone thrower,” he said. “And I would know who dares attack the lord of the wind and the stone.”

  “I am the one who threw the stone in ash-Sham,” Rawiya said. “I am the poet’s friend, the mapmaker’s apprentice. I am the one who put out the eye of the great white eagle of Bilad ash-Sham.”

  The roc twisted his wings and rolled onto his back as easily as if he were floating on water, showing the crew the long scar on his face. “Look upon me, then, stone thrower,” he said, “and prepare for death. Poet friend indeed!” The roc spat. “Tell your poet, if he lives, that I hear all, see all, know all. I remember him—him and his band of troublemakers.”

  The roc beat his wings and rose for a final pass. “No more words,” he said. “I have come to destroy you and leave you for the waves to devour.”

  The roc turned and thundered down on them. He swept over the bow of the ship like a great wind, overturning crates of cargo. The expedition’s servants and the terrified Normans scattered, but the roc was too fast. He crushed men in his talons and dropped them into the sea.

  Rawiya fumbled with her sling, but the roc’s eyes were sharp. He knocked her down with the wind from his wings and closed his claws around her. Rawiya struggled and beat her fists against his talons, but his hard s
cales were impossible to break.

  The roc lifted her into the air and dropped her.

  Rawiya crashed onto the wooden deck. She saw blackness, then bursts of light. Shock came before the pain: a stabbing, searing agony in her ribs.

  Khaldun, in his panic, cried out: “Rawiya!”

  Hearing this, al-Idrisi narrowed his eyes. “Who is Rawiya?”

  Rawiya forced herself up on one elbow and grabbed the ropes tied around the mast. Hauling herself to her knees, she spat blood on the deck. “I am Rawiya,” she said. Her arm shaking with effort, she pulled off her turban and shook out her black curls. She tossed the ends of the red cloth over her shoulders, and the wind and the sun filled it with light, like a sail. “I am the daughter of a poor farmer from the village of Benzú, in the district of Ceuta.”

  The roc circled the mast, his bulk casting shadows over the deck.

  Al-Idrisi shot his eyes from Rawiya to Khaldun. “You knew of this?”

  “Not until yesterday.” Khaldun lowered his eyes.

  Al-Idrisi studied Rawiya’s hair and her smooth face. “I assumed you were young,” he said, “not yet grown into a man, but this—”

  “Forgive me.” Rawiya struggled to her feet. The Almohad chain mail had protected her from the roc’s sharp talons, but the fall had crushed three ribs. She fought for breath, touching her side. Her fingers came away sticky with blood. “I joined your expedition to seek my fortune so I could return and feed my family. My mother is a widow, sir. By now, she probably thinks I’m dead. You already know of my father’s death.”

  “A woman?” Al-Idrisi held out his hands. “You, whom I trusted,” he said, “whom I trained. You lied to me?”

  And the roc, who had heard all of this, rumbled a laugh from above. “Lying stone thrower,” he said, “deceitful daughter of men. My revenge will be more delicious than I imagined.”

  The roc dove again, his talons grazing the deck. Rawiya and her friends flattened themselves to the boards. Rawiya ground her teeth against the pain and reached for a coil of rope near the foot of the mast.