The Map of Salt and Stars: A Novel

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  I ask, “What day is it?”

  She blinks, stopping to think as she hands Zahra a green CETI card. “The first of October.”

  We are taken to a room with ten cots. I claim one, and Zahra takes the one next to me. She spreads out Mama’s prayer rug between our beds, against the wall. It feels like saying a prayer.

  Other families have decorated the walls around their beds, hung their laundry on the windowsills as if this is their home.

  Who will come for us?

  I think of the first idea of eternity I ever had. I had asked Baba about heaven and what it was like, and he said it went on forever. And I asked, What’s forever?

  At the time, we were standing in the bank at East Eighty-Sixth Street and York Avenue, and Baba was waiting to deposit a check. It felt like we had been waiting a long time, even though we probably weren’t.

  Baba said, Forever never stops.

  So I imagined going into the bank and waiting all that time, and then leaving—only to come back in and do it all again. And again. And again.

  And that, I figured, was forever.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER we eat spaghetti in the canteen, I rip off my broken sneakers. I throw them down and slump over my cot. Pigeons peck and waddle outside, and children chase them. Security guards stroll by the window, their belts and badges jangling. The little gray noises of the room make me nervous, the other families rustling and whispering like at the smugglers’ house. There seem to be so many families in the world with no place to go, so many people tired of hurting but with no place to sleep.

  Mama’s burlap bag lies heavy in my lap, crinkled dry by desert air, still crusted with salt. If I strain my neck at the window, I can see past the walls of the CETI to the nose of Gibraltar. I imagine yellow daisies by the beach.

  I open my burlap bag and try not to remember Mama’s hands on it, tying the strap to make a backpack. I take out Mama’s plastic shopping bag, the one I retied with the map inside. I unroll the limp canvas. The water didn’t get in, so I must have tied the plastic tight.

  I trace my finger backward along our route, back through Morocco, over the Sahara through Algeria, under Tunisia to Misrata. I skip the bowl of the Gulf of Sidra to Benghazi. I drag my fingernail along the sea to Alexandria, then Cairo. I rewind through Jordan to the hills of Amman where I got lost. Farther north, I pass the border crossing, then Damascus and the street called Straight. My finger stops in Homs.

  I bore holes into the map with my eyes. I am the hawk who expected green where Manhattan was. I am the sea’s onyx black, the dark hole through the middle of me. Without Mama, without Baba, without Huda.

  It’s living that hurts us.

  “She said to follow the map, but it didn’t work,” I say to myself while Zahra sleeps. “We came all this way to be trapped behind a fence.”

  I take my fingernail and scratch out the color code for HOMS: brown square, white square, black, and red. I scratch it out and move on to the thick layer of green paint covering the whole of Syria, the layer that seems too fat and thick to belong there.

  My hurt is a glob of red, slabs of bad colors throbbing inside me like a swollen kidney.

  I scratch out whole sections of Syria, erasing Homs and the countryside. Maybe then the map will match how I feel, the way Baba felt: like I’ve lost a whole city in the pit of me, a whole country whose air I used to breathe.

  I scratch until my fingernail hits ink.

  Something is written underneath the paint—Arabic letters. I recognize the swooping waw, the sharp kaaf. It’s Mama’s handwriting, and I can read it.

  After all this time, I can read Arabic at last.

  I start at the first line, cracking my tongue on the consonants. “O beloved—” I sound out each syllable, translating from the Arabic. “O beloved, you are dying of a broken heart.”

  “What is that?” Zahra comes awake, rubbing her eyes.

  “It was never just a map.” I show Zahra Mama’s words. “We’ve been running with ghosts.”

  I scratch at other countries, places we passed, places Mama pulled out her paints and colored inside the lines. More poems peek out from under thick paint.

  Jordan and Egypt: Beloved, I am blind.

  When we passed through Libya: This ache has a thousand faces, this hunger two thousand eyes.

  I scratch out places Mama must have dreamed of seeing with us: Algeria. Morocco. Ceuta.

  My name is a song I sing myself to remind me of my mother’s voice.

  Zahra slides out of bed. “She talks about everything that happened,” she says. “The sad things. All the things she wished for.”

  We were carrying the weight of everything this whole time. “The words were on our backs,” I say. I scan the map, picking at other borders. “It’s a map of us.”

  Zahra says, “And all those cryptic stories our parents used to tell—Mama was right. The map was important.”

  I clench my hands at the corners of the map. “Then why isn’t she here to see it?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Zahra says. “This isn’t just a map of where we were going. It’s a map of where we came from.”

  A bulb sparks on outside the window. The acrylic sucks up the dull yellow light. The glare blotches out the poem Mama wrote for Syria. For the first time in years, I think of something Mama told me when I was little: that when you make a map, you don’t just paint the world the way it is. You paint your own.

  I say, “It’s a map of all the awful things that happened.”

  “But we’re still here.”

  Anger spasms in my guts, the cramping ache of all my words that were buried with Baba, the words I can’t get back. “But Mama’s not here,” I say, raising my voice, my own words straining orange and ruby with rage. “Huppy’s not here. They never even got out of Libya. They’re not coming, Zahra. I wish Mama’s map sank with the boat and Mama were here instead. I want my family back.”

  “I know it’s not enough,” Zahra says. “Nothing can be how it was. But we did what we had to do.” She touches her face as though she’s trying to smooth away the scabby scar down her jaw, an automatic movement like something Mama would have done. “Maybe we’re marked,” she says, “but we made it.”

  I lower my eyes to the missing city on Mama’s map. “Poems aren’t enough.”

  “I know.” Zahra takes my face in her hands. Dust has collected in the cracks in her lips and over the bruised, delicate skin under her eyes. She draws us together, so close I can see tracks in the dust. In the dark, she has been crying. “But as long as you’re alive,” she says, “you have a voice. You’re the one who has to hear it.”

  The cramping in my belly gets worse, a full, aching sensation. I say, “I don’t know what happens next.”

  “We keep going,” Zahra says. “We can still look for Uncle Ma’mun.”

  I run my hands over the bag. I carried our memories all this way, the story of what happened to us. It was heavy on my shoulder this whole time, but I didn’t fall down.

  I lift my hands and touch my back, the wings of my shoulder blades. I’m still in one piece, but my body isn’t the same as when I left Syria. It’s not the same as when I left New York. My skin is different, the patterns of my goose bumps, the cliffs of my ribs. I’ve got longer legs. I’ve got carved-out bones.

  I press my hands to my face. I am someone I don’t recognize. My nose is a sharp hill, my lips thicker. These miles have carved me. Time has a sculptor’s hands. You don’t even notice them.

  The pain in my belly grows, a dull speck of heat. I press my hands into skin and muscle, wanting to scoop out the red pulp of myself. My neck is a narrow highway. My sternum is as hard as crab shell. I think about putting my hand into my pocket where I keep the half-stone. Is there magic left in the world? If I touch that stone, could I hear Baba’s voice again? Or is he more in my bones than the earth?

  My hand brushes the cord around my neck. Mama’s shard of blue-and-white tile warms the skin under my shirt. I’ve roun
ded the tile by rubbing, smoothing out the sharpness of memory.

  The fountain.

  “I know where we have to go.” I grasp the tile and pull the necklace out for Zahra to see. “I know how to find Uncle Ma’mun.”

  But Zahra looks down. “Nour—you’re bleeding.”

  I look down. My shorts are stained red-brown between my legs, a dark, sticky blotch.

  I say the first thing I think of: “I guess you were right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “About being grown-up.” I tap my chest. My heart, that lopsided muscle, clenches and sighs. “You bleed.”

  PART V

  * * *

  CEUTA

  Homecoming

  From the Strait of Gibraltar, Ceuta was a dark, narrow strip of land on the horizon.

  The ship groaned around Punta Almina and entered the Bay of Ceuta, where the harbor lay. It had been a month since they left Palermo. Al-Idrisi clapped his hand to his breast at the sight of Mount Abyla, which overlooked the harbor. The city stretched out thin and white before them, the houses shining in the afternoon light.

  Al-Idrisi leaned on the rail, swallowing sea air. It had been more than two decades since he had crossed this stretch of water in the opposite direction, headed away from home.

  “At last,” he said, “I return.”

  Beyond the peninsula lay rolling fields and olive groves, the rising mountains Rawiya knew from her childhood. The hills would be painted with eucalyptus and pine and the dots of mud-plaster houses. One of them, nestled in the tiny coastal village of Benzú, was the house she had been born in. Beyond that, the desert stretched its fingers to the south, and Ifriqiya watched the sun drown its fire in the sea.

  They stepped off the ship, leading their horses. Rawiya stroked Bauza’s neck. “Is everything here?” she asked. “The books, the maps? Your research and notes?”

  Al-Idrisi smiled. “O Lady Rawiya, always with an eye to detail.” He rubbed his bent back and his silver chin, studying the bags and tapping each one. “Yes,” he said at last, “everything is here.”

  “And what of your family?” Rawiya asked. “Where will you go?”

  “I cannot rightly say,” al-Idrisi said. “My parents are long dead. The family home may remain. I, however, am the last of my line.”

  They led the horses past rows of white, yellow, and rose-colored homes and stands of eucalyptus and orange trees. Ships appeared between the harbor and the Rock of Gibraltar, their sails white and full as feathers. Hills rose green before them, and they trudged upward.

  It was autumn, and the heat had broken. The sky threatened rain, swollen with gray-faced storm clouds. They crested a hill and stood at the side of the road, resting their horses. Ceuta surged with merchants crossing the peninsula. The road narrowed to a thin strip, a rocky neck of land not wider than fifty men laid head to toe. Dusty travelers scrambled for shelter before the rain, and here and there, women shooed their children toward home. The setting sun turned the western clouds pink over the Sea of Darkness.

  “I once heard of a group of brothers, intrepid adventurers who set out to cross those waters,” al-Idrisi said, pointing west. “They came back raving of fantastic creatures, strange islands, sheep with bitter meat, and a sea of foggy, foul-smelling waters. A storm turned them back, and they were returned to the Maghreb by way of an uncharted island. No one has yet succeeded in crossing the Sea of Darkness. Someday, I am sure. As with everything, someday we will see what lies beyond.”

  They dropped into a valley and began to climb again. The homes grew larger and more elegant, and the noise of the city fell away. They passed stately gardens thick with palms not unlike the ones in the palace garden at Palermo, the ones Rawiya and al-Idrisi had hidden under while the palace burned. Remembering the bitter taste of palm ash, Rawiya slipped her hand into Khaldun’s.

  They led their horses up a winding path toward a large estate. “Just as I left it,” al-Idrisi said at the gates, “if a bit dusty at the windows.”

  They entered the riad’s gardens as it began to rain, ducking under the lazy branches of white poplars. A fountain stood, empty and unused, in a central courtyard. Rainwater pooled inside, rippling over blue-and-white tiles.

  They dismounted. Behind them, the Rock of Gibraltar lined up perfectly with the cobblestone street.

  Al-Idrisi pushed open the front door, blowing dust and cobwebs from the engraved wood. Within the house, all was quiet. The floor tiles echoed under their footsteps. The walls sighed with years. Al-Idrisi curled his hand around a thick layer of dust on a long table, and gray stuck to the side of his palm.

  Rawiya drifted to the corners of the rooms where decorative caligraphy and textiles hung. Wooden boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl lined a single shelf.

  She opened one. It creaked open at its hinges, revealing a string of thirty-three lapis lazuli prayer beads with a silver tassel.

  “My mother’s misbaha.” Al-Idrisi slipped the prayer beads from the box and shut the lid. “I wanted to take them with me when I left, but I knew we would face dangers and bandits.”

  He pulled a second string of beads from his pocket, dull tan husks strung on a cord. “Olive seeds,” he said. “These are more economical. They were a gift from my mother before I traveled to Anatolia.” His hand cast a long shadow over the couches, the table, the wall.

  Rawiya steadied her trembling hands and fingered her own prayer beads in her pocket, the wooden misbaha her mother had given her when she had first left home more than seven years before. Even the familiar scent of the air called to mind her mother’s face now. Outside in the courtyard, shearwaters and petrels whistled and preened themselves in the rain.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen a home so lovely in all my life,” Rawiya said.

  Al-Idrisi laughed. “You’ve seen Roger’s palace and Nur ad-Din’s. Someday this dusty house will be rubble. They will build again on this hill, but my home will be long gone. How could my modest treasures be more lasting, more lovely than those of emirs and kings?”

  “Wealth is no substitute for belonging.” Rawiya bowed her head, closing her fingers around the misbaha in her pocket. “Excuse me,” she said. “There is something I have to do.”

  Al-Idrisi looked away down empty corridors toward jewel-crusted windows, their red velvet curtains dulled by age. His eyes roamed the wooden doors engraved with Qur’anic calligraphy, now warped by sea air.

  “If I had someone to come home to,” al-Idrisi said quietly, “I would go too.” He gently shut the box he held, releasing loops of dust and cobwebs. “I will await your return.”

  RAWIYA AND KHALDUN mounted their horses and descended the hill. The rain stopped, the thunderheads lumbering off over the cliffs of Jebel Musa. Bauza flicked his mane and swung his neck, breaking up clouds of sparrows. It was as though being back in Ceuta again had returned some of his youth to him. Though it had finally come to pass that Bauza had grown old while Rawiya was still young, she took comfort in the thought that he would soon be, at long last, home.

  They rode out along the coastal road toward red-tinged Gibraltar until night had nearly fallen. The rocky coast yielded to mountains of red clay and pines hugged by low clouds. Everything was hushed.

  Colorful houses in the distance marked the approach to the village of Benzú. Rawiya sat back in her saddle and ran her fingers over the thirty-three wooden beads of her mother’s misbaha. The closer she drew to her mother’s house, the more deeply sadness and guilt burrowed into the center of her.

  “My mother has had no news of me for years,” Rawiya said. “She must think I am dead. Why did I lie to her about my trip to the market in Fes? I should have told her of my plans. I never knew so much would happen, that my journey would take me so far away for so long.”

  “You were still a child,” Khaldun said. “You are grown now, a warrior. Everything has changed.”

  Rawiya patted Bauza’s neck. He picked up his pace as they approached the familiar hill that led to he
r mother’s house. Breathing deep of the salt air, Rawiya gave Khaldun a sly grin. “Not everything.”

  She laughed and urged Bauza on. Though he had grown old in the years they had spent in Palermo, he had more strength left in him than some foals. “Yalla, dear friend,” she whispered in his ear. “Let’s run this hill one last time.”

  Bauza raced down the familiar road, pounding the earth with his hooves. Khaldun followed her, laughing. They galloped into the village nestled at the foot of the mountains until Bauza came to a stop in front of a tiny stone and plaster house, its front walk shaded by a fig tree.

  Rawiya lowered herself from the saddle, feeding Bauza a bit of date sugar from her pocket. The village houses faced Gibraltar, looking out over the olive grove. She gazed up at the first stars appearing and then out at the bay, empty of ships.

  Khaldun dismounted and tied his horse to the fig tree. “Is this the place?” When Rawiya said nothing, he came over to her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I tried to do only good.” A sea breeze ruffled her red turban and billowed her sirwal. “But it leaves so much mending to be done.”

  “We rarely know,” Khaldun said, “when we try to do good, if the outcomes of our actions will actually be good.” He laughed to himself. “Perhaps God plans it that way, to teach us that the planning is best left to him.”

  The first constellations waggled their heads like shy children. Rawiya patted Bauza’s neck. “The calves are still turning the gristmill,” she said.

  Khaldun lifted his hand. “And whatever men do, they will go on turning it, and always, always, the broken world goes on.”

  “We should go in.” Rawiya glanced at the red tile roof, the gnarled fig. She let out her breath. “It’s so strange to see things the same. My mother once visited Fes as a child, when my grandfather sold olives in the market. She never forgot.” She ran her fingers over the cracked wooden door. “She understood more than I knew.”