The Salt Road

by Jane Johnson

  ‘It’s hard on those left behind,’ I said, watching as she tipped the first glass she had poured back into the pot and swirled the ingredients around. ‘Especially the women.’

  ‘It’s hard on everyone. Sometimes they don’t come back.’

  ‘Like Taïb?’

  She shot me a hard look. ‘Taïb and I were promised to each other when we were children.’

  ‘That’s a very long engagement.’

  ‘We put off the wedding until we had the means to set up house. I went to Agadir to continue my education and to train as a teacher; Taïb went to France. And, well, he stayed there. He likes the … lifestyle, I think.’

  The way she said the word ‘lifestyle’ carried such a weight of disapproval that I could hear all the contempt of the Islamic world for the wayward, selfish, loose-moralled ways of the West in it. Needled, I asked, ‘So, you’re a qualified teacher now, and he’s made enough money to be driving around in a brand-new car, so when are you getting married, then?’

  She pressed her lips together, as if holding back a retort, and with a furious flourish poured out a stream of bubbling golden liquid into the first of the decorated glasses on the tray. ‘Who do you think you are to judge us? It’s not always about money,’ she said scathingly. ‘I lay no claim to Taïb now beyond the bounds of kinship. You’re perfectly free to sleep with him if you want to.’

  Actually, ‘sleep with’ is my euphemism. Her use of the French verb baiser struck me as hard as a slap in the face. I saw the flash of triumph in her eye as I registered the word; then she turned, swept up the tea tray and marched off to the salon, where the crow-like women awaited their refreshments, leaving me to stumble along behind her, bemused, astounded and not a little outraged.

  I wanted to grab her by the shoulder and spin her around so that that lethally sweet tea flew everywhere and demand what she meant by that remark. Of course, I did nothing of the sort, but sat meekly on the edge of one of the couches and sipped the horrible tea and did not meet her eye or say a word to her, or to anyone. I did not need to: they jabbered away in their hellish language without a thought for my presence; but every so often I found the unseeing gaze of the dying woman upon me, peculiarly intent, unblinking and unsettling. I was relieved when, long hours later, we left.

  18

  ‘You looked uncomfortable in there,’ Taïb said to me in the car.

  I shrugged. ‘Things to think about.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I know what that is like. I too have much to think about.’ But he did not say what.

  Habiba’s attack had shaken me, though my initial anger at the insult had long since subsided. She was, I had decided, a jealous woman who saw me as a threat and I wondered whether she and Taïb were still formally linked, whatever she had said. Their warmth towards one another had seemed genuine, but it was difficult for me to judge how much emotion their kissed greeting masked, or contained. And had she read into his gestures towards me something that simply did not exist? Or did her hostility spring from feeling that she had lost him to France and its women? Given her straitened circumstances, buried away in that dusty little village, in that gloomy house with its contingent of beady-eyed old women and its dying guest, I could understand her frustration. How easy it would be to envy a modern European woman who waltzed (well, hobbled) in on the arm of the man you had expected to marry, her hair immodestly uncovered, a Longines watch on her tanned wrist and a Prada handbag over her shoulder, a woman who could (if she chose) take her pleasures where she would, with no social censure or other unwanted consequences, and move on. But a thought nagged at me: that it had not been jealousy, or not only jealousy, that I sensed in the tenor of her attack but a deep-seated and haughty contempt. What was it that Habiba had seen in me that had triggered such disgust? I had, I thought, been polite and respectful, for all my Western trappings and bare head. True, I did not speak her language, and it is common to regard foreigners who cannot understand or communicate with you as ignorant. But there was more to it than that: her attitude had not been merely dismissive but pointed. It had involved a judgement, as if she perceived in me someone who had made the wrong choice in life, someone who had stepped from the true path into a moral morass.

  I was used to being treated with a certain level of respect, I realized. I moved in a world in which I was viewed within a social spectrum, a professional hierarchy. At work, I was defined by my role within the company, by the authority I carried, by the important clients I dealt with and the superior salary I earned. Even outside work, on the streets of the capital, I was used to people reading the signifiers of my appearance – my well-groomed hair, my manicured hands, my expensive clothes, my discreet but high-quality accessories, my manner and my confidence – and deducing from those my social standing. Even I derived my sense of self-worth, I realized, from these shallow trappings. But just who was Isabelle Treslove-Fawcett? Who was I really? When examined closely the successful edifice seemed fragile and behind it I felt insubstantial, like a dream of myself. The money was all very well, but money in itself means nothing: it represents only a covenant with the future, and what was my future? I had no family, few friends and no faith, in any god, or in anything much beyond my own experience. I had, I realized, closed myself off from the world all my life, had kept its difficult and random elements at bay so that it could not damage me, had walled around myself with financial independence and a job that involved no emotional input. There were good reasons behind the defensive position I had so painstakingly erected to protect myself, I knew, and the strategy I had chosen had got me thus far in life apparently unscathed; but Habiba had rocked its foundations.

  And then there was the old woman expiring slowly on the living-room floor. The way Lallawa accepted her lot with such good grace moved me greatly, the way she warmly grasped the hands of her visitors, all the while smiling lopsidedly out of that gentle, careworn face. I thought of how her face had turned itself unerringly towards me on and off for those many uncomfortable hours in that little room, as if she too questioned my identity, and maybe even my worth. How must she feel, uprooted from her desert home and set down in a place like Tiouada? To lie there, yearning to see the bleak beauty of the desert dunes once more before she died, to ease her soul in a wide open space like the ones she remembered in her prime, but instead having her senses robbed from her one by one, and being imprisoned within four gloomy walls and a low ceiling, peered at by the crow-women, tended by the sharp-tongued Habiba?

  Taïb and Azaz were uncharacteristically silent as we made our way along dusty roads rendered violet by the sinking sun, lost in their own thoughts. In the stillness, above the low rumble of the tyres on the uneven ground, I heard our destination before I saw it: a deep thrum of drumbeats pulsing through the twilit air, accompanied by some high-pitched stringed instrument, or a woman’s voice strained to breaking point. We pulled to a halt outside a tall adobe wall; when Azaz opened the door for me, the noise was deafening.

  Taïb put his mouth close to my ear; I felt his breath hot against my neck as he said, ‘Welcome to a proper Berber fichta!’ And a moment later he had swept me up into his arms and into an extraordinary scene. Dozens of lanterns hung from trees already decked with pomegranates and oranges, their candle flames flickering with the movement of the dancing figures below them: men in turbans and whirling robes; women with kohl-rimmed eyes and glittering silver earrings, their henna-patterned hands waving rhythmically above their heads. Children ran amongst the throng in their best clothes: boys in white tunics and bright yellow slippers; girls in coloured kaftans, toddlers with huge black eyes and gap teeth, their fists twisted in their mothers’ black robes and embroidered veils. A group of stripe-robed men wearing white turbans and ceremonial daggers beat a variety of drums, sending a powerful, complex rhythm out into the night, one that threatened to swallow every trace of individuality in the vicinity, and to swallow it whole. Feeling overwhelmed, I stared around for some comforting point of reference, but I wa
s not to be reassured.

  Around the edges of the garden, arranged along low couches and perched on little wooden stools, were the same crow-like old women as those who had been gathered in the salon at Habiba’s house, waiting for death to claim the old woman – black-clad from top to toe, their faces as brown and wrinkled as walnut shells, their hands clasped like claws around little glasses of tea.

  Taïb swung me down on to a vacant cushion beside a group of laughing girls tending to their younger siblings and abandoned me there. ‘Stay here,’ he told me, as if I had any choice. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  When I looked up to watch him pass through the crowd, I felt the bright black eyes of the old women upon me, piercing and inquisitive. They caught me watching them and held my gaze implacably; then they began chattering again like magpies, shooting sharp looks at me, waggling their fingers. I knew what they were thinking: I had had a privileged insight into the minds of the women of the region now. Feeling acutely uncomfortable under their damning scrutiny, I dug in my handbag for my mobile phone in order to try to text Eve again – anything for a bit of friendly contact in my own language – but it was the amulet that fell into my hand.

  I felt its square edges, and then it was in my palm, resting there, sturdy and familiar and comforting. A sudden small wave of warmth washed up my arm, suffusing my skin, and abruptly I felt that maybe things were not so bad after all, that I was not an enemy intruding into this private celebration, a stranger in a foreign land, surrounded by the inimical Other, but a welcome guest here. No, more: that I was somehow a part of it, one amongst many; that the drums that beat so loudly that they reverberated in the marrow of my breastbone were a part of me and the beat of my heart was a counterpart to that rhythm. By the time Taïb finally made his way back to me I was sitting there cheerfully with one little girl in my lap and another happily braiding my hair, clapping my hands and nodding away to the music as if I had been doing this all my life.

  He grinned at me and subsided gracefully to the floor beside me bearing a heaped plateful of food. Behind him came Azaz with a silver jug and ewer and a white towel draped over his arm. He knelt at my side and poured water for me to wash my hands in. How courtly! I smiled at him as I washed and dried my hands and he smiled back, restored to his merry self, then whisked the ewer away. The children disappeared, but not before Taïb had pulled handfuls of almonds out of his ears for them, making them giggle delightedly.

  ‘Clever trick,’ I observed into a lull in the music.

  ‘Many nieces and nephews. A lot of practice.’

  ‘You’ve never wanted children of your own?’

  He passed me a plate of steaming lamb and vegetables with a large piece of baked flatbread balancing precariously beside it. The fragrance of spices and fruit rose from the dish, and my nose practically twitched like a dog’s. He watched me eat without answering, and I was so absorbed by the delicious food, so rich and well balanced – the juicy meatiness of the lamb complemented by the soft, sweet prunes, the chilli and garlic mixing with flavours I couldn’t quite place, flavours that hinted somehow of rose petals and sandalwood, or spices that had no name except for those given them by the Berber people who used them – that I failed to remember that he hadn’t answered my question until I was halfway through demolishing the meal. I looked up guiltily and found him watching me with a mixture of amusement and intensity.

  I swallowed the mouthful I held. ‘No children?’ I repeated.

  ‘That’s quite a personal question.’

  ‘Is it? I’ve had a personal sort of day. Your cousin Habiba was quite rude to me.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘She was?’

  I wasn’t going to divulge exactly what she had said: it was too crude, too uncomfortable, as if I were somehow trying to shock him, making some sort of advance upon him by a rather contrary route. ‘And she told me you and she were engaged.’

  His face went very still, close and remote, as if a set of shutters had come down. ‘We were,’ he said after a long pause. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘That is a matter between her and me and our family, not a subject for discussion with strangers.’

  Well, that told me. I sat back, affronted, while Taïb applied himself to finishing the plate of food. After a while, he got to his feet, took the empty plate and without a word disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later he was back with a drum like a huge tambourine under his arm and another, consisting of two clay pots covered with skins, in his hands. He passed the larger one to Azaz, and then sat down cross-legged on the matting in the middle of the party and started tapping out a lively syncopated beat. Soon a dozen or more men had made a wide circle around them, augmenting and elaborating on the rhythm with instruments of their own, or by simply clapping their hands. A tall young man with what looked a lot like a banjo came and sat with them, adding his jazzy strings to the melody that now threaded its way through the gathering.

  I watched as Taïb sang and played, his eyes shut, lost in the music. He had a pleasant light tenor voice, soulful and haunting, and he sang with a passion and lack of inhibition that made the tendons stand out on his neck. For some reason I was surprised by this: he had not to this point struck me as a passionate man, nor as one charismatic enough to lead a room in song. People were dancing now, the men shuffling sideways a pace or two, clapping their hands together, stepping back again. The younger women shimmied in a sort of chaste and fully clothed belly dance, their hands flicking here and there, while the older women swayed and bobbed and laughed and looked a lot less crow-like than they had before. The song went on and on, merged into another, and another. Someone brought around glasses of mint tea, little almond-flavoured cakes, dates and something that I thought looked like fudge and to which I helped myself enthusiastically. Unfortunately, it turned out to resemble nothing so much as balsa wood, instantly removing every drop of saliva in my mouth, shocking me out of my pleasant reverie.

  I glanced at my watch. Good grief! It was almost midnight. During a lull in the music I caught Taïb’s eye and he came over. ‘When were you thinking of heading back?’ I asked. ‘I should let Eve know.’

  He looked distant, preoccupied. ‘Of course.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Look, I need to go and see someone. Give me a few minutes. Call your friend and let her know you’re OK and will be back soon. There should be a good signal here.’

  There should? In the middle of nowhere it seemed unlikely, but when I took out my phone the reception bars were almost full. I retrieved Eve’s number from the contacts list and waited as it rang. And rang. Oh, Eve, I sighed to myself. Where the hell are you? A moment later, as if she heard my chiding, she picked up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Eve? It’s me?’

  Some sort of rustling as if she were shifting the mobile from one ear to the other. ‘Oh, hi, Iz.’

  She sounded a bit out of it: vague and displaced, as if she’d been asleep. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up. Just to say don’t lock the door, I’ll be back, though it’ll be really late.’

  In the background I heard her say something but it was muffled, as if she had put her hand over the phone. I tried to focus, but there was too much chatter and laughter around me. ‘Is that OK, Eve? Are you OK? Did you have a good day?’

  ‘What? Er, oh, yes. Great, thanks, really good actually.’ And then, as if ambushed, she gave out a shriek that turned into a loud and unmistakable giggle. There was another failed attempt to muffle the phone and then I heard her say, quite distinctly, ‘Get off, Jez. No, get off! Ssh, quiet, it’s Izzy.’

  I gazed bleakly at the phone as if I could see projected on to its opaque little screen our unimpressive hotel room with its dull brown tiles and dun curtains. Had they lit one of the scented candles Eve had brought with her, rather than given themselves up as hostages to the unforgiving sixty-watt bulb that swung unshaded from the centre of the ceiling? Had they pushed the two single beds together,
I wondered, or were they jammed on to Eve’s narrow mattress, bare limbs entwined, the sweat sheening their well-exercised skin?

  ‘Oh, Eve.’ Suddenly I felt exhausted, emptied out.

  ‘What? Are you OK? Where are you?’

  ‘Look, it’s nothing: I’m fine. I’m with Taïb, at a sort of party-thing, in a village to the south. Not sure how long it’ll take us to get back from here, but don’t worry about me, OK?’

  I cut the connection, feeling suddenly very alone, and looked around at the sea of humanity in which I was a still, small island. Some of the drummers were warming the skins of their drums over the fires and a group of women were now playing stringed instruments like small, oddly shaped violas; the children at their feet were sucking on dates. Taïb returned hand in hand with an older man with greying hair and a heavy moustache.

  ‘Mustapha will drive you back to Tafraout,’ he said without preamble. He looked weary, as if he’d had a hard job of persuading Mustapha of the efficacy of this arrangement.

  I stared at him, feeling ever more isolated. ‘You must be joking! I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘He’s my uncle. You’ll be perfectly safe with him. Besides, there’ll be my aunt and her three daughters travelling with you.’

  ‘And you’re just going to hang around here, party till dawn?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to drive Lallawa to the desert. It’s her last wish, and I have both the time and the vehicle to do this thing for her.’

  My jaw must have dropped. ‘Oh.’

  He squatted down beside me. ‘You know, I was going to ask you if you’d like to see the Sahara since we’re only a few hours away from it here; but then I thought that would be a crazy thing to do. You hardly know me; and Lallawa, for all her stoicism and courage, will require some looking after, and that’s not really something your culture prepares you for, so then I thought I’d better ask Mustapha to take you back to your hotel. But if you won’t go with him …’ He sighed, spread his hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry. I promised to get you back to Tafraout, and I gave you my word on that. We’ll leave now and I’ll come back for Lallawa tomorrow –’