Blood & Ink

by Stephen Davies

  As the final kora notes of ‘Alla La Ke’ depart across the desert, I hear the sound of sobbing. By the light of the waning half-moon, I can make out a horse’s silhouette on the crest of a nearby dune. The man in the saddle wears a prayer hat and a wide-shouldered robe. Behind him sits a weeping girl.

  A bride always weeps when she arrives at her wedding. There will be joy later on, but for now she dwells on her sadness. She weeps for her mother and father. She weeps for her siblings. She weeps for her lost childhood. And if she has no real tears to shed, she fakes it. The tears of a bride are not the same as the tears of a hyena victim, goes the proverb.

  As the horse prances down the side of the dune, Tondi’s weeping gets louder. The drummer slows down the calabash and pounds deep thuds of joy which fill my chest until it wants to burst. I feel my phone vibrate against my thigh, but checking my messages is the last thing on my mind.

  Aisha adjusts the tuning rings along her kora’s neck, and plucks another ancient melody.

  ‘A word on the wind is gathering strength.

  The word is strong, the word is sweet,

  Much louder than the wolves of war,

  The word is khaira – peace.’

  The horse’s hooves have disturbed the dune. There comes an eerie rumbling sound that swells to a boom and then a roar, the perfect backing track.

  People throughout the crowd are opening up their throats and trilling their tongues against their palates. I press my back against the gnarled bark of the rosewood tree, brace my feet against the sand, and add my voice to the singing dunes and ululating girls.

  The horse arrives in our midst, prancing and capering, responding to the rhythm of the calabash and the gentle tweaks of its reins. Tondi’s father is one of the most skilful horsemen in Timbuktu and this is his moment. The crowd surges round the horse. The air is thick with dust and joy.

  Again my phone vibrates against my thigh. Again I ignore it. The drummer switches rhythm and the deep thuds of ‘Khaira’ give way to the lilting patter of ‘Jam Naati’. This is the song we have gathered to sing, the song so meaningful that it gives its name to the whole wedding ceremony.

  ‘Peace has entered, woman has come.

  Peace has entered, beauty has come.’

  The horse wheels and cavorts in the moonlight. Tondi is no longer weeping. She is grinning all over her face. The bridegroom’s aunties raise their arms, lift her off the back of the horse and bear her aloft towards the door of the wedding hut.

  The water calabash is thumping hard. The whole crowd is dancing. I spread my arms wide and stick my bottom out behind me. I will dance for Tondi and for Timbuktu. I will dance away my fear.

  Yusuf caresses the fishing-line strings of his ngoni. His fingers fly along the fretless neck. He is an enigma, this cousin of mine. In person he is painfully shy, the only tongue-tied minstrel in the whole of Mali. But underneath the shyness beats a powerful heart. Put a ngoni in his hands and he becomes a well of wild, mischievous harmony.

  ‘You and Yusuf are a perfect match,’ my aunties always say. My mother is more real. ‘You could do worse.’

  It’s true, I could do worse. I bend over double and shuffle my feet back and forth on the sand, faster and faster. My left hand brushes Yusuf’s shoulder as he plays.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Yusuf.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, turning away from him and wiggling my hips. ‘Don’t let me distract you.’

  ‘No, I mean, why is Alpha not playing?’

  Oh.

  It’s true. The blind balaphonist has stopped. His mallets hang in mid air.

  ‘Alpha, what’s wrong?’ I hiss. ‘Why aren’t you playing?’

  ‘Land Cruiser,’ he says.

  I strain my ears to listen. Yes, he’s right. Beneath the hollow thud of the water calabash sounds the faraway throb of a Land Cruiser engine.

  ‘It’s coming this way,’ says Alpha.

  ‘Is it them?’

  ‘It must be. They’ve commandeered all the Land Cruisers in town, haven’t they?’

  The bridegroom’s aunts are pushing Tondi through the doorway of the new grass hut, and she is pretending to resist. The official part of the ceremony is almost over, but a whole night of dancing lies before us.

  ‘Maybe it’s tourists,’ says Alpha.

  ‘You know it’s not tourists. There haven’t been tourists in Timbuktu since the kidnappings last year.’

  Yusuf stands up and removes the jingle plate from the neck of his ngoni. ‘Let’s go,’ he says.

  He is right, of course. We have no choice.

  The guests groan when I announce the end of the party, but they, too, understand the danger. Everyone has heard what happened to Calypso and La Détente. No one wants to be caught within a mile of a kora. They surge forward and help us pack up our instruments. One helps Alpha with the balaphone, another takes the amplifier, another disconnects the lorry battery and hoists it onto his shoulders.

  Tondi the bride emerges from the wedding hut and runs to join us.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, hugging her.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Tondi smiles, and clambers up into the back of the lorry. ‘God is always good.’

  We can see the headlights of the Land Cruiser now, coming at us from the south a mile or two away. There are about fifteen of us in the back of the lorry: the band, the bride and some kids who came on foot. We are fully loaded but the engine is silent. Hulking and immobile the lorry waits on the sand, a mass of slumbering steel.

  Most of the wedding guests came on their own motorbikes or camel carts. As soon as they finished loading our lorry, they rode off fast into the dunes, assuming we would follow close behind. So why are we still here?

  I peer round the side of the lorry. The driver is down on the ground, leaning against the door of his cab.

  ‘Get in and drive!’ I yell at him. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  He stares back at me. ‘Battery,’ he says. ‘We’re still waiting for the battery.’

  My skin prickles.

  ‘Aisha!’ I cry. ‘The battery is missing! Who disconnected it from the amp?’

  ‘I didn’t see. It was too dark.’

  We jump down to the sand and gaze at the desert. The desert gazes back. Undulant sand, acacia trees and rocky moonlit crags deride us with their emptiness. ‘Battery? What battery?’ they cry.

  ‘Someone’s taken it,’ I say. ‘Quick, spread out and search!’

  Yusuf and the others jump down from the lorry and scatter in all directions, scanning the horizon for a fugitive with a massive battery.

  The Land Cruiser is less than a mile away now, careering towards us with its headlights on full beam, its engine screaming as it ploughs the sand.

  As I watch, the lights slew to the left and halt suddenly. A jolt of unexpected hope. They’re swamped in sand! They’ll have to dig the wheels out.

  The race is on for us to find that battery. I loosen my wraparound skirt and start to run.

  Calm down, Kadi, I tell myself. You’re Fulani. You don’t go haring off into the desert without first examining the tracks.

  I hurry to the rosewood tree and shine the backlight of my phone across the sand. There it is, the deep rectangular print where the lorry battery lay. A flurry of footprints lead from the spot, mostly towards the lorry.

  Most but not all. One set of prints leads off into the dunes.

  ‘Over here!’ I yell. ‘Come with me!’ I start to follow the tracks. Yusuf and the others will soon catch me up. Away from the shade of the rosewood tree, the fugitive’s footprints show up in the moonlight, the print of the right foot deeper than the left. It seems whoever stole our battery has a limp.

  It’s him. It has to be.

  The footprints lead to the edge of a wadi, a dry river bed. I jump down into the soft sand, and look for where the tracks pick up.

  I sense a sudden movement underneath the overhanging bank. A figure dressed in black darts from the shadows into the moonlight, heave
s his load – our battery! – onto his shoulder, and starts to run.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ I stagger after him across the sand.

  With his bad ankle and his heavy load, the mujahid is no match for me. I tackle him round the waist and yank him to the ground.

  Yusuf and the others are coming. I can hear them up on the bank, yelling their heads off. ‘Where are they?’ they are asking. ‘Can you see them?’

  ‘Help!’ I shout.

  I try to wrestle the battery out of the mujahid’s arms but he’s holding on too tight. I cannot get it free.

  Our drummer Raoul is the first to spot us. He leaps down into the wadi and runs at the mujahid, braids a-flying. The boy dodges Raoul’s flailing fists and unleashes a punch of his own, a strong blow to the bottom of Raoul’s chin. Our hothead drummer hits the sand like a hundred-kilo sack of yams.

  Yusuf and the other boys arrive. They spread out to surround the mujahid and close in slowly, cautiously.

  He stands his ground, stock-still, and waits until they’re near. He knocks down Yusuf with a well-timed elbow, another boy with a head butt, another with a spinning kick. He is well-trained, this boy, and brave as well.

  But he ignores me at his peril. I wriggle over to where he stands and lash out hard at his weaker ankle.

  The mujahid drops to the sand, and my friends fall on him with savage blows and kicks. He is curled up with his arms round his head.

  ‘God!’ he gasps, and then goes quiet.

  ‘Enough!’ I tell the others. ‘It’s the battery we need!’

  The battery is back in its compartment and connected to the engine, but we are not safe yet. The Land Cruiser is out of the sand and back in the chase. Its headlights are on full beam, shining straight at us like furious twin suns.

  The lorry rumbles into life and moves off. We all wrap cotton scarves round our heads, leaving narrow slots for the eyes. We’re outlaws and we know it.

  A man with a megaphone leans out of the window of the Land Cruiser. ‘This is the Defenders of the Faith,’ he cries. ‘Stop your vehicle and turn off the engine.’

  Our lorry gathers speed, its massive tyres churning the fine Saharan sand. We’re not stopping now, not for all the salt in Taoudenni.

  Raoul the drummer is shouting in French. ‘Potato truck! Get the potato truck!’

  ‘Shush.’ I lay a hand on his shoulder. ‘Try and rest. You got hit on the head.’

  The Land Cruiser is still gaining on us. It is less than twenty metres away, its wheels moving smoothly in our ruts. The machine gun on the back of the Land Cruiser is pointing our way, and it’s manned.

  ‘Find the canvas bag!’ shouts Raoul. ‘There’s a potato truck inside!’

  ‘Be quiet, Raoul!’

  ‘No, wait,’ says Alpha in my ear. ‘He’s not saying camion, he’s saying canon!’

  I realise Raoul’s plan. Our crazy drummer brought a potato canon with him, just in case.

  Right now it’s all we have.

  We are too squashed to move, but the message gets passed round the truck and soon the odd-shaped canvas bag is found. Inside are two lengths of PVC tubing, a can of hairspray and a load of sweet potatoes. One of the PVC tubes is short and fat, with a cap on the end and some sort of ignition mechanism built in. The other tube is narrower.

  ‘Who’s going to fire it?’ asks Alpha.

  Silence.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I hear myself say. ‘I saw one fired once. I think I can remember how it’s done.’

  I take the tubes, connect them end to end and shove a sweet potato in the top. The barrel’s sharpened rim slices off the excess potato so that it fits perfectly.

  Yusuf puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you sure, Kadi? That’s a machine gun on the back of their truck.’

  ‘The gun is just for show,’ I say. ‘They’re trying to scare us.’

  ‘They’re succeeding,’ mutters Yusuf.

  Alpha passes me his dark glasses and a balaphone mallet. I put the glasses on and use the slender mallet to push the potato as far down the tube as it will go. Then I take the cap off the larger tube and spray hairspray into the chamber. I replace the cap, hoist the cannon to my shoulder, and flip Alpha’s shades down over my eyes to protect them from the glare.

  ‘Yusuf, hold me steady,’ I tell him.

  Aiming at a spot just above the headlights, I flick my thumb against the ignition. A blaze of light shoots from the cannon’s barrel and a deafening bang assaults my ears. Yusuf and I sprawl on the floor of the lorry.

  ‘I heard breaking glass!’ cries Alpha. ‘Good shot, Kadi.’

  ‘The headlights are getting further away!’ Aisha shouts. ‘You did it, Kadi. You stopped a Land Cruiser with a potato!’

  I am lying on my back on top of Yusuf. ‘Are you OK, cousin?’ I whisper.

  ‘No,’ he croaks. ‘You shouldn’t wear so much wire in your hair.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have pulled me down on top of you.’

  ‘It was the recoil!’

  I roll off him, giggling.

  As we travel back to Timbuktu, I take out my phone and glance at it. Two missed calls and four new messages, all from the same number. Now that I think about it, I do remember my phone vibrating while I sang.

  Stop the party, Kadija. Music is against God’s law.

  Stop right now, Kadija, or I’m calling for backup.

  Kadija, they know about the party. Run.

  Kadi, run. I don’t want to see you get hurt.

  Even at night there are checkpoints on all the roads into Timbuktu. Al Haji’s lorry drops us off on the outskirts of town and we walk home through the backstreets. Aisha is singing under her breath.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re so happy about,’ I say to her. ‘You know they can have us lashed for what we did tonight?’

  ‘They can’t,’ she says. ‘Sharia says you need two witnesses to prosecute a crime. Your Fulani friend was on his own.’

  ‘Oi! Stop calling him my friend.’

  Some of the younger boys are walking in front of us, boasting about the fight. ‘Look how bruised my knuckles are!’ says one. ‘I had him on the ground and I was punching him on the side of his head.’

  ‘I was kicking him,’ pipes up another. ‘Did you see me? I was kicking him in the ribs.’

  ‘And I nicked this off him,’ says a third, holding up a phone.

  ‘Give me that!’ I snatch the phone out of his hand. ‘Don’t you realise there’s a war going on for the soul of Timbuktu? Do you think that nicking phones is the way to fight that war?’

  I pocket the phone and walk on.

  My parents are already asleep and snoring loudly. I fill a bucket from the water barrel and climb the tree-trunk staircase with the bucket on my head.

  On the roof I get undressed and rinse the sand from between my toes. Midnight water is too cold for a full-bucket shower – I will bathe properly tomorrow.

  I lie down under the stars, my mind whirling from the night’s excitement. I count to a thousand, I even pray Tahajjud, but still I cannot sleep.

  So instead I look at the mujahid’s phone.

  There are eight clips in the Videos folder.

  The first two clips show an angry grizzled man standing on the back of a truck, preaching his beard off. Boring.

  The third clip shows a group of boys playing high jump in the desert. One by one they fling themselves over a wooden bar and land on the sand with a forward roll. One boy lands on his head by mistake and the frame shakes wildly as the cameraman laughs. The boy jumps up and scowls into the lens in mock indignation.

  The fourth is taken in low light and shows two fennec cubs play-fighting in the desert. They circle each other, bounce from side to side and nibble on each other’s ears.

  The fifth shows the Fulani boy lying on his front on the crest of a dune. ‘Go with God, Ali,’ whispers a voice. ‘Think of your namesake at the Battle of Badr.’

  Ali. So that’s his name.

  The video z
ooms to focus on Ali as he sprints down the dune, leaps across a dry river bed and drops to a crouch at the foot of a concrete wall that rises incongruously out of the desert. He takes a grappling hook out of his satchel and – it’s him! I’m sure of it! That Ninja Baba shot, it was Ali!

  He must never find out, I swear to myself. He must never find out who shot at him that night.

  I flick to the sixth video: Ali grinning stupidly next to a roasting goat.

  The seventh clip shows two girls in the market, haggling for prawn crackers. Purity of God, he’s been filming me and Aisha!

  ‘How much for a bag of white men’s ears?’ my screen-self asks the owner of the stall.

  ‘Two hundred francs,’ comes the reply.

  My screen-self totters, gasps and clutches Aisha’s arm. ‘Two hundred francs?’ I cry. ‘We could get a bag of real white men’s ears for that!’

  I watch the video through three times. At first I am laughing, then I start to get annoyed. Judging by the swathes of printed cotton framing the video, the cameraman was hiding in a haberdasher’s shack. How dare he film me secretly!

  The last video is also me. It is too dark to see much, but my voice is as clear as amber. ‘Alla La Ke,’ I’m howling to the moon. ‘You can’t change his laws, you simple mortal.’

  I drag my sleeping mat to the edge of the roof beside the balustrade. It’s cooler there.

  Sleep comes at last, but my dreams are laced with horror. During the night I wake four times and raise my head to look across the street, expecting to see Ali sitting on his tyre.

  It’s empty every time.

  Perhaps he’s dead in the desert and vultures are feasting on his heart. That would be a sort of justice, I suppose. Those who try to rip out the desert’s heart should expect the desert to rip out theirs.

  Do I want him dead?

  I don’t know. He burned our instruments, but he also filmed those fennecs frolicking.

  The jihadist loves animals. I suppose it’s a start.

  The sun rises over Timbuktu.

  I lift my head, and there he is, praise to the Lord of worlds, trying to do a sit-up on his tyre. His broad chest is covered with dark bruises.