by Jane Johnson
22
Shawwāl 1088 AH
The taking of the Tafilalt was achieved without even a blade drawn. It appears the villagers who feasted us so well for the two days we spent with them were well paid to delay us, allowing Al-Harrani and Moulay al-Saghir to flee north towards Tlemcen. We enter the city of Sijilmassa to a great show of celebration by the inhabitants, who no doubt only days before had supported the rebel cause. Every householder brings the carpets out of their homes and lays them down on the streets for the sultan to ride over. Of course, we do not have the luxury of shitbags (gold-embroidered or otherwise) with us on this campaign; I fear the good wives of Sijilmassa are liable to have much work to do before their carpets can be rehabilitated.
The rebels have created their own barbaric, magpie splendour in this place. Evidently they have been receiving foreign backing for their insurrection, for amongst the items they have left behind in their haste are rich carpets from Turkey and Isfahan, new French furniture gaudily dressed in gold leaf and English cannon that make Ismail’s eyes gleam. A succession of local chieftains comes grovelling, laden with tribute and outpourings of loyalty, pledging their lives, their swords, their sons and daughters, most of whom are exceedingly unattractive. Ismail is delighted. As Ramadan comes to an end and we celebrate with a great feast, he indulges his weeks of abstinence by taking two or three of the girls to his bed each night, as if determined to repopulate his homeland single-handed.
The ‘courtiers’ who have stayed in Sijilmassa are a motley group: ruffians and ne’er-do-wells, chancers and speculators from a dozen different tribes and nationalities. There are two men who claim to be princes of the Asante; renegades from Portugal and Holland; and merchants from Egypt and Ethiopia who immediately start trying to peddle their wares to the new arrivals. Ismail has their goods confiscated and paws through them dismissively. ‘Here,’ he says, throwing to ben Hadou a little gold casket of frankincense. Any other man would be well pleased with such a rich trinket, but the Tinker’s smile is wry: he is not a great user of perfumes. The doctor gets their odd collection of dried beetles and scorpions, used in some charlatanry or other: I learn later than he has cast them in the privy and, from the cry that issues from the little room, given the next user quite a fright. Ismail gives to me a silver box, ornately decorated, for which I thank him profusely. When I open it, I find it contains some sort of fragrant dried leaf that smells woody and sweet and peppery, a little like nutmeg. Later that night, whilst the sultan is sleeping off his latest conquest, the Asante princes befriend me, bringing with them clay pipes and a pouch of dried leaves they call tobacco, which my master the doctor used to smoke. They suggest we mix some of the herb, which they refer to as kif, with the tobacco, to make it ‘sweeter’. I shrug. ‘If you like.’ I tried a pipe of tobacco once and did not much care for it. But it is true: the herb does improve the experience, and soon the three of us are chattering away like old companions, swathed in clouds of sweet-smelling smoke, laughing at each other’s stories, which become progressively disconnected and bizarre. After a while, a fierce hunger overtakes me and I go off to the kitchens to find something for us to eat.
I am just on my way back with a trayful of cakes and almond biscuits (which are delicious: I could not resist a handful even as I loaded the tray) when I am accosted in the corridor by a girl with heavily kohled eyes and a startling smile. An unveiled Ait Khabbashi nomad. She runs the tip of her tongue over her lips as she stands in my path, like a cat about to eat a bird.
‘Hello.’
She is exotic in her heavy triangular silver earrings and collars of cowrie-shell that glitter in the light of the sconces. She puts a hand on my arm and, looking at me rather than at the tray, says, ‘That looks good enough to eat.’
I remember my manners and offer her a cake. She laughs. ‘I did not mean that.’ Her hand brushes deliberately against my robe and comes to rest on my groin. Instead of being shocked, I find myself laughing. I am still laughing when she pulls my head down towards her and kisses me languorously. When we separate she says, ‘I have been watching you all day. Have you not noticed me?’
I have to admit, apologetically, that I have not. How so? She is extremely striking. But, she is not Alys.
‘You are a very beautiful man.’
This sets me laughing again. ‘Women are beautiful; not men.’
‘Let us go somewhere more private and examine that proposition at our leisure.’ She takes the tray from me and leads me, as compliant as a lamb to the Eid slaughter, to a little room carpeted with deep-pile rugs of sheep’s skins.
I am so light-headed it is as if I am witnessing some other pair of lovers in hallucinatory flashes. Her pale fingers trace my scars. She murmurs, ‘Well, you certainly are a rare one,’ before climbing on top of me. In my dream-state I am not surprised to find myself hard. My two hands, balancing her on the fulcrum of my cock, almost entirely encircle her waist, around which she wears a silver chain hung with magic charms. Whatever magic she possesses is powerful: on we strive, and on. She is long-limbed and flexible, high-breasted and narrow at the hip. Her skin is luminous and her dark eyes are wickedly knowing. A change of position, and I see that her buttocks are as round as the moon in her fullest phase. There are inked patterns on her hands and feet; the pale soles of the latter are presented to me as I kneel above her, like a gift.
When daylight fills the chamber, I find I am alone. But the long pile of the sheepskin beside me bears the unmistakable imprint of a woman’s haunch.
Images present themselves one after another, crude pictures too vibrant and strange to be long-held memories. My God, what djinn has possessed me? I am a eunuch, a cut man: none of this is possible. I lie there, parched and exhausted, havering between disbelief and certainty, elation and shame. It must have been the kif; or the woman’s exotic magic. But now, like a lodestone, my heart yearns towards Alys, and a small, triumphant voice whispers that, although I may not be able to give a woman children, it seems I can still give pleasure, and is that not a gift in itself?
Our time in Sijilmassa is only a brief respite, for word reaches us that the rebels’ allies, the Ait Atta Berbers, rather than swear fealty to the emperor, have abandoned their great castles in the Draa Valley and retreated into the Atlas Mountains. And shortly after this defiant messages arrive from these renegade chieftains, goading Ismail to attack them. Spies are sent out into the mountains; days later one wounded man returns, and before expiring reports that they have taken refuge in a series of caves high up in the steep limestone cliffs of the Djebel Saghro.
We march again, even though it is the depth of winter and the High Atlas is perilous territory. But Ismail is determined to bring these troublesome tribesmen to heel, or to destroy them for ever. The vistas are spectacular; but the cold is paralysing and many of the passes are snow-blocked. Even the toughest of the bukhari are suffering: raised in tropical regions, we are not used to such desperate conditions. One by one we fall, or are crippled by numbness, then gangrene of the hands and feet. Still Ismail is undeterred and drives us on.
At our approach three chieftains come down out of the mountains to make parley. They are gnarly-looking men, hard of face and eye, and, though they smile and offer gifts and extravagant compliments, their smiling does not reach their eyes, especially when Ismail offers them a gift of cotton tunics, useless for winter wear and of poor quality, as if suggesting they are no better than beggars.
‘I do not trust them,’ I say quietly to ben Hadou, who is standing beside me, watching this charade.
He does not move a muscle, and his eyes do not waver from the sultan. ‘It hardly matters if you or I mistrust them. They will do what they will do, and Ismail will do what he will do. They are the players in this game, and we are mere onlookers.’
‘Onlookers who may die at a whim.’
He turns to me then, impassive. ‘Life and death both turn on a whim, Nus-Nus. Surprised you’ve survived this long at court without learning that lesson.
’
The chieftains take their leave, their stated intent to return shortly with the rest of the Ait Atta tribe to lay down their arms before their emperor. And so we wait in the freezing cold, eating through our already meagre supplies.
When a month has passed and they have still not surrendered, it becomes clear that they never intended to, and have instead spent the time they won shoring up their defences and mustering their forces. Ismail is furious. Ignoring all advice to the contrary, he orders us to attack. ‘The Prophet tells us that a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer! Whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the Day of Judgement his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim! For the glory of Allah, and our great kingdom, charge!’
It is fine oratory, but even now the cavalry general continues to remonstrate. He is swiftly silenced: his tongue is still wagging even as his head hits the ground.
That puts an end to all hesitation: up the scree slopes we charge, brandishing weapons, yelling our defiance. But of course the dead cavalryman had the right of it: horses are worse than useless in such a place. They cannot negotiate the narrow goat-tracks or the treacherous rolling rubble these mountains produce; all around us horses are stumbling and falling, becoming as much a hazard as the Berber arrows that arc down from the skies. There is a renegade European soldier next to me who swears mightily when an arrow whistles past him. ‘Christ’s eyes! Who are these fucking people? Fucking savages! No one uses fucking arrows any more!’
The sound a wounded horse makes is horrible to hear: it shakes even the most battle-hardened. I, who am as far from battle-hardened as it is possible to be, can feel my knees grow weak and my grip on my scimitar slacken. Poor beasts, I think. Will I also scream like that, at the end?
Encouraged by the hellish noises below, the Berbers have come out on to ledges and, now that we are moving into range, are taking shots at us with their muskets. A bullet pings off a boulder a little distance away from me and a chip of rock strikes me on the shin. The pain is so sharp and unexpected that I cannot help but cry out, and am at once ashamed even though the sound is lost in the general din: the cut is oozing, but it is barely a wound. Keep climbing, Nus-Nus, I tell myself, though your lungs burn and you barely know how to shoot the pistol at your hip. Take no notice of the dead and dying. Don’t look up. For God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t look down …
As the ground steepens sharply, the cavalry must give way. Those horses that have survived are led off by their riders down the side of the mountain that is out of the sultan’s line of sight. As for the rest of us, as the muskets take their toll, the kaids marshal us into a more sheltered gully, and we keep on climbing, weapons sheathed now, since we need both hands to grab for holds. No point in waving a weapon around here in any case: the enemy are far above and the emperor, who loves to see the show of swords shining as his army attacks, far below. Our feet, unsure on this chancy terrain, dislodge rocks and stones that shower down on the fellows below us: I think we are more dangerous to them even than the enemy. I risk a look behind me and wish I had not: the ground falls away precipitously on one side. It is like climbing over an abyss. My heart thuds so hard I cannot breathe; for a moment my head spins and I think I may vomit.
And I have only myself to blame! I could have stayed in some comfort with the harem in the low green valleys of the Melwiya and had only the grand vizier to hold at bay, rather than doing battle with a thousand wily tribesmen on their crumbling mountainside. Though, thank the Lord, it must be said they are poor shots! Hardly a man amongst us has thus far been cleanly taken down by a bullet, though many have been winged and lost their footing. Barely have I consoled myself with this thought than I look up and see the ledges above us are bristling with Berbers, the long barrels of their guns pointing down, as if the mountain is spawning them, moment by moment.
With certain death above and below, I freeze, my forehead pressed against the cold rock, the blood beating in my ears.
God help me. My whole body is shaking now, the muscles gone into an automatic tremor that is worsening by the second. Even my teeth are chattering. Much more of this and I will shake myself off the mountain without the help of any other soul.
‘Move on!’
The voice is familiar, but right now it could belong to God himself and I wouldn’t care.
A face appears beside me: thin, dark, intent, the eyes filled with some burning inner light. Teeth grin at me. It is ben Hadou. ‘Courage, Nus-Nus! Onward to glory. Or Paradise, depending on how your page has been written.’
I had not thought the man a zealot, but it really looks as if he is enjoying this. For a moment I hate him more even than the mad sultan who sent me up here.
‘Come on, lad, get on. And stop thinking: thinking is a fighting man’s undoing.’
On with my warrior face, on with the kponyungu. I force my traitor limbs to some form of obedience and keep on climbing, blindly, idiotically, towards my doom.
An hour later I find myself amongst the survivors. We have prevailed; or at least the Berbers have withdrawn, leaving us in charge of the first line of their defences, supplies, and a lot of livestock. Those who made the direct assault fared less well: a trail of broken bodies testifies to the recklessness of the attack. Hundreds of men dead, and for what? To gain an inaccessible rocky peak, a few sacks of grain and a herd of mangy sheep. Even so, those of us who have made it this far are filled with fiery energy, an elation that consumes all our doubts and fears. We make our victorious way down a wide col, driving the sheep before us, propelled by visions of roast mutton.
No one is prepared for what happens next. The Berbers come at us from all sides, howling like djinns. The air is thick with musket smoke and the cries of the dying – both men and sheep. I do what ben Hadou bade me: I stop thinking. That is, I let my body think for me, for it seems to have a far greater understanding of what is required than my mind. The first man I kill is armed with a long knife – but my reach is longer. The second comes at me with a club: I stumble and his blow comes whooshing past and, failing to compensate, he overbalances and my sword (more by accident than intention) catches him in the neck. Abruptly, I am drenched in his blood. I remember the body my master the doctor dissected, and, even as I parry blows from a man in a stained turban, the words carotid artery come and go like a pulse beating in my head. The next man I stick in the ribs as he is struggling to reload, and after that I lose count, but simply hack and scream as if possessed by demons, or terror; and am not even aware of the knife that scorches across my back and leaves a wound from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.
At some point our adversaries must have melted away again, retreating swiftly into the fastness of the mountains, for mayhem and slaughter are gradually replaced by an eerie quiet, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the cries of carrion birds that suddenly appear, circling overhead to survey the feast to come.
We lost four thousand men that day, the flower of the Meknassi troops, the best of the bukhari. Fighting in unfamiliar terrain against seasoned mountain-men: what chance did they have?
When he sees me, the sultan thinks I am a dead man walking. ‘Ah, Nus-Nus, am I to lose you too?’ When he realizes the blood is (largely) not my own, he escorts me to a stream and helps me to wash it off with his own hands, and when I am clean he embraces me like a father. I do not know what to say or do: I fear his mind is disturbed. Later, it occurs to me that maybe I represent for him all the poor, faithful bukhari he has lost that day, all those loyal soldiers from the plains and jungles of my own region, and that this is his way of seeking some form of atonement for sending them to their deaths.
Ismail is forced to sue for peace: even he can see we cannot beat the Ait Atta on their own ground. Some of their chieftains come down out of the hills, and the sultan slaughters a camel with his own hands to h
onour the pledge that henceforth the Berbers shall live independent, and free of taxation. In exchange, the tribal chiefs swear allegiance against the common enemy: the Christians. It is an empty exchange, as we all know, one designed for the saving of face, since the Berbers are already wily enough to avoid their taxes, and no Christian army is ever likely to threaten this remote part of the kingdom. However, with the agreement comes a promise of safe conduct through the Atlas valleys. It is a bitter thing to the sultan – a sharp humiliation. I am quite sure we all know he will never forget or forgive it.
23
Alys
I have a son! It is hard to believe that such a perfect little being could come from such a union, let alone the bloody business of birthing him. I spend hours every day just staring at him, as if he might at any moment disappear like a figment from a dream. I gaze at his wide eyes and floss of curls, his tiny feet, each toe a toe in miniature, complete with joint and nail. His skin is a colour I cannot adequately describe: it is a rich cream touched with coffee; the delicate interior of an almond nut; the hue of a hen’s egg, or the down of her under-feathers – all, and none of these things. And in this pale olive-brown, eyes of the most striking cornflower-blue. He has a cry on him like a banshee, and the appetite of a lion. What a miracle of nature he is, my magical hybrid child! Has any woman ever produced such a remarkable baby?
I know even as these feelings gush out of me that this is what motherhood must do to all women and that I have lost all objectivity. But I do not care. He is a miracle, this baby, and I adore him with such intensity it is as if my heart lies there before me, curled in sleep. And then, sometimes, those hot waves turn chill, and fear engulfs me that any bad thing should overtake my boy. I hardly dare to sleep when such terror has me in its grip.
