The Map of Salt and Stars

by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

  Mennad and his men surrounded her. Swordsmen spun their blades, scimitars flashing, twin daggers drawn. Bowmen notched their arrows.

  Mennad threw down Rawiya’s lance, and it clattered to the ground.

  “Get up and fight, boy.” Holding the point of his spear at Rawiya’s throat, Mennad said, “Or has your courage fled?”

  Khaldun and al-Idrisi cut a path through the steppe toward her, but the tangle of warriors pressed them back.

  Rawiya knew she could not defeat Mennad on her own. As she picked up her lance, she reached for the half of the roc’s eye stone in the folds of her tunic. If the stone’s power was still strong enough, she thought, the dead could whisper to her of Mennad’s weaknesses.

  Sparrowling—

  Just as Rawiya touched the roc’s eye stone, the ground rumbled and shook.

  From the wooded cliffs, a flash of green streaked down. It was a giant serpent, faster than the strongest horse and ten times as long. The snake lifted its head, hissing, and snapped up Almohad warriors in its jaws.

  With a scream, the neat ranks shattered, flooding around the threat.

  “The stories are true,” Rawiya said. “The roc’s ancestral hunting grounds. The valley of the serpents. It exists.”

  Mennad turned his horse, breaking away from the snake, and clutched al-Idrisi’s book to his chest. A group of swordsmen took the distraction to rush at Rawiya and her friends. Khaldun parried with his scimitar, and Rawiya knocked a man from his saddle with the butt of her lance. Grabbing the reins of her horse—for the animal was well trained and had not wandered far—Rawiya swung herself up into the saddle.

  The shouts of the Norman army came closer. Blood ran in grooves of dust. Mennad escaped onto the open steppe, flanked by warriors. Rawiya signaled Khaldun and al-Idrisi, blocking an Almohad dagger with the pole of her lance.

  Rawiya, Khaldun, and al-Idrisi turned after Mennad and gave chase, screeching like eagles. They burst through his circle of warriors. Mennad raised his spear, al-Idrisi’s book tight to his ribs.

  The Norman army surged down the cliffs above Barneek. Behind them, both Almohad and Fatimid warriors screamed in terror as another green shape slashed through the armies, tossing men high into the air and swallowing them.

  Mennad waited in the clearing, his spear raised, chaos all around him.

  “Give us the book,” Rawiya called to Mennad. “By right, it is ours.”

  Mennad’s sweat and blood ran down his face. “Then come and take it,” he said.

  Rawiya raised her lance, and Mennad’s warriors lifted their blades.

  A shadow passed over them. A white figure glided overhead, blocking the sun.

  Al-Idrisi smiled, catlike. “Our doom,” he said, shielding his eyes, “or our salvation.”

  IN BENGHAZI, THE city that used to be called Barneek, the bus rumbles past hairy palmettos and boxy plaster apartments. The city is clumped up against the shore of the Gulf of Sidra, ringed by dry red steppe. Mama says the mountain plateau to the east is called Jebel Akhdar, which means “Green Mountain.” Even I know that.

  The bus turns right at a big mosque, and the wheels spin out dust and bits of red clay. We pass a park with empty picnic benches and buildings graffitied with flags in red, green, and black. The empty harbor shimmers where Mama says white cruise ships used to dock. The city is the color of dyed eggs, or at least it used to be. Mid-rise office buildings painted pistachio green, pastel blue, cream yellow, and rose are pockmarked by missing chunks of stone. Twisted holes have been blasted through the wrought-iron railings of balconies in flaking shades of peony. On the street, metal shop curtains coated with sage paint have been chipped by bullets.

  We stumble out at the terminal and stretch our legs. The hallways are caked in the brown-red stink of brakes. Huda and I clamber off the bus. She stumbles on the steps and almost knocks me down.

  I clutch Huda’s elbow, even though I know I’m not strong enough to keep her from falling. “Are you okay?”

  “I feel a little faint,” she says. She wobbles over to a bench and sinks down. Sitt Shadid wraps an arm around her shoulders and says something to Mama—Too warm. Umm Yusuf sits on Huda’s other side and lets her lean on her shoulder. Mama presses a hand to Huda’s forehead.

  “Huppy?”

  She doesn’t answer me. Huda’s sneakers don’t quite reach the ground. I twist my fingers in her shoelaces, retying one that’s come undone. When I look up, Huda’s eyes are glassed over like someone who’s breathed in too much smoke, like someone trapped under something too heavy to lift. Sitt Shadid fans her, and Huda runs her tongue over her chapped lips.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “It’s just hot out,” Mama says.

  The rosy brown of Huda’s lips has gone ashy, and the thin skin under her eyes has turned gray. I ask, “Are you sure?”

  But Mama lays her hand on my head. “You and Zahra,” she says, “get some fresh air, and if anyone is open”—she rummages in her bag for a few coins—“buy something to eat.” She points her finger at me. “Something we can make last. All right? We have a ways to go, and our family does not beg. Now shoo, both of you.”

  I don’t want to go, but Zahra pulls me out of the terminal. We gulp in sea air. Cars whiz past off the highway, caked in dust up to their door handles. The tires spin tornadoes into the gutter. The sidewalks are littered with what look like bits of iron confetti, but when I pick one up, it’s a spent bullet.

  I drop the lumpy point of brass, and it clanks to the ground. I wipe soot onto my shorts. I lift my face like a person who’s been asleep for a long time and see the city for what it is: the few men walking the streets with their heads down aren’t kicking confetti aside. They’re wading through the husks of death itself.

  “Mama said when the rebels took the city,” Zahra says, “they shot off their guns into the air to celebrate.”

  I shuffle my feet in the clear spaces, trying not to touch the metal with my sneakers, but it can’t be done. Every tap of a brass bullet is a brush with a shark.

  “What happens when the bullets come down again?” I ask.

  To my surprise, Zahra takes my hand. Her bracelet clinks against my wrist. “You’d better not be standing there,” she says.

  We pass through the pool of scattered bullets and come to a bare stretch of sidewalk. The smell of soot and sulfur gives way to a sea breeze.

  I touch the delicate gold of Zahra’s bracelet. “I didn’t know Baba gave it to you.”

  “Oh.” Zahra lets go of my hand. “Honestly, I forgot I was wearing it.”

  I kick at dust and tingling jealousy. “I don’t have anything left of Baba.”

  “That’s not true,” she says.

  “You’re the one that said the house was gone.”

  “And whose room was Baba in every night,” Zahra snaps, “telling stories? Would you trade that for a bracelet?” Then she rubs the side of her head. “I shouldn’t say that,” she says. “These past few months, I haven’t really been there. Baba’s dying . . . it was like I crossed a bridge and couldn’t come back.”

  “I don’t want to change.”

  “But we can’t be the same without him.” Zahra tugs me down the sidewalk. “Come on. We might never come this way again, you know?”

  So we walk. Shop awnings and laundry lines block the sun. Satellite dishes crowd the tops of buildings. Taxis dot the streets. On the balcony of an apartment building, I spot a woman with an easel, delicately stroking watercolors across a canvas. She’s painting a cityscape. And I think to myself how many people have created beautiful things here, how many people go on creating beautiful things even when life is full of pain.

  “When did he give it to you?” I ask.

  “The bracelet? It was my birthday present last year.” Zahra cranes her neck to the sun. The wide, hazy horizon shudders in the heat. “After he was gone, I felt like I didn’t have anybody. Like I was alone.”

  What did Mama say? He found the ma
p he was looking for. “But I was here the whole time.”

  Zahra kicks at a stone. “That’s where I went wrong.”

  We come to a walkway by an open stretch of water that leads to even bigger water. Zahra and I sit down on the curb.

  “Did you know the Bedu call this place ‘Benghazi rabayit al-thayih’?” I roll the sharp edge of a pebble between my forefinger and my thumb. “It means, ‘Benghazi raises the lost.’ Immigrants have traveled from the western Maghreb, from al-Andalus—people have come from all over to be here.”

  Zahra crosses her ankles in the froth of dust. “People like us.”

  A car peels out of a street behind us, and I turn. On the corner, a shop wall has been covered in caricatures and graffiti so thick you can’t read the words.

  Zahra stretches herself over her knees, widening the tears in her jeans. “You needed me this summer,” she says, “but I hid where nobody could follow.” Her sneakers are coated with grime, the white rubber on the bottom black with walking. “I’m sad for what you missed,” she says. “You should have seen the things Baba showed me when I was little. You should have seen Syria—how it used to be. We used to get fresh green beans and make loubieh bi zeit and rice. We would take out our plates and some folding chairs into the driveway under the chestnut tree. Sitto used to come over, Mama’s clients, everybody. That was Syria to me. The green beans, the sagging folding chairs, the oil on people’s hands.”

  I bury my face in my elbow. “Now it’s gone.”

  “But not from us.” Zahra rubs her thumb across the back of her hand like she’s spreading an invisible oil stain. “The Syria I knew is in me somewhere. And I guess it’s in you too, in its own way.”

  Down the street behind us, two men argue in a dialect I can’t understand. I twist my head and lay my cheek on my forearm, and the tiny hairs that have sprouted there this summer are wet. I focus my eyes on Zahra’s bracelet. “I wish I knew where.”

  Zahra says, “Some places are hard to get to.”

  Dust settles in the holes in her jeans, and she kicks away a spent bullet.

  “For what it’s worth,” she says, “I’m sorry.”

  ON THE WALK back, Zahra buys dates, apricots, and bread. I smell the brown-red brakes before we see the bus terminal.

  Inside, Mama has her hand on Huda’s forehead again. Huda tosses her head on Mama’s shoulder, her eyelids shut and red. I hold her hand, and it’s hot like a pan on the gas stove we had in the city.

  “She’s running a high fever,” Mama says.

  I bore holes into Mama’s head with my eyes, but she doesn’t look at me. Why did she let Zahra and me go, if Huda was sick like this?

  Huda crinkles her nose in her sleep. “I left it on the table,” she says. When Mama lifts her hand, the shadow of her fingers makes Huda open her eyes. She cracks her lips, and a dried paste of saliva sticks to the corners of her mouth. “The fattoush,” Huda says. “I made a whole bowl. Where is it?”

  “You were dreaming, little one.” Umm Yusuf opens her purse. “Take this.” She shakes out two pills from a plastic bottle. It looks similar to Tylenol, so it must be something for fevers. Huda struggles with a bottle of water. Umm Yusuf opens it for her, and Huda drinks.

  “Habibti. You feel better?” Mama rubs the small of Huda’s back.

  “When the medicine kicks in,” Umm Yusuf says, “we will see about a car.”

  “We don’t have time.” Mama tugs down the sleeves of her blouse, a tiny automatic thing she used to do before clients came over. “On the bus, I overheard the women talking. Even with the National Transitional Council in place, the fighting in Libya has still not stopped. Violence and weapons are spilling over the border into Algeria. There are rumors that Algeria will close its border with Libya soon. We might have a few days, no more. The only way to get through Libya in time is to go over the Gulf of Sidra. We don’t have time to go around it.”

  Yusuf steps toward us, his hands in his pockets, his eyes cast down. “It’s over a hundred miles from here to Misrata on the other side of the gulf.”

  My fear is a cluster of beetles scaling my bones. “I don’t want to go on the water again.”

  “There are no ferries anyway,” Zahra says. “Not with the war on.”

  “There are no passenger ferries.” Yusuf leans his elbows on the back of the bench and motions for us to come closer. “But there are aid ferries. They cross the gulf every two or three days. We could sneak you on—”

  “Please.” Umm Yusuf clutches the bench behind Huda’s shoulders. “No more ferries. No more chances.”

  “And that is exactly my point.” Mama tucks a strand of Huda’s hair back into her hijab before turning to Umm Yusuf. She launches into Arabic. I watch her mouth moving, and each word lights up like a new bulb. The fighting spreads like fire around the gulf. Sirte sits between Benghazi and Misrata. It will be under siege within a week.

  Umm Yusuf leans toward Mama from Huda’s other side. We’ll drive quickly. We’ll avoid the fighting.

  There’s no avoiding it, Mama shoots back.

  The last time Mama fought with anybody like this was the last two weeks Baba was alive. They did most of their arguing in Arabic, but I knew it was about the chemo. Baba had hurt enough, but Mama wasn’t ready to let him go. There are some things you don’t need words to say.

  I can tell from Umm Yusuf’s face that she’s not giving in, but Mama is frantic. The roads are lawless, she says. I think of the city streets, of the pockmarked buildings, of how the carpets of bullets and shell casings would roll and scatter in a strong wind.

  But Umm Yusuf slices her palm out in front of her. They say aid ferries have been mistaken for rebels, she says. The fighting is still fierce from Misrata to Tripoli. You could be rocketed.

  Rocketed?

  They both sigh and turn away for a second, their eyes falling to me. In their faces, I can tell they think I haven’t understood. They think I don’t know what a rocket or a shell can do to wood and metal and stone. They think I can’t still see the height of the waves on the Gulf of Aqaba if I close my eyes.

  But the top of my head is pulsing, and my fingers are trembling, and in my head I am counting up the broken families I have seen. I am counting the missing fathers and the buried brothers, giving form and breath to those who were left behind, asking myself how many times you can lose everything before you open yourself to nothing.

  Mama shakes her head and says, “Where there is no order, people will take advantage.”

  Umm Yusuf darts her eyes to Sitt Shadid. “I will not take chances.”

  Zahra tugs on her thumbs again. “How long will we have to stay hidden, if we sneak onto one of these boats?”

  “You should arrive in Misrata within a day,” Yusuf says. “If you hide among the cargo, you’ll have a good chance.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you’?” Zahra seizes his elbow. “You’re coming with us.”

  “Sitti won’t cross the water,” Yusuf says. Sitt Shadid watches him, squinting at his English. “She won’t cross water again in her life. She says it was enough to lose one person. She wants no more death.”

  Zahra white-knuckles his arm. “Please, I don’t—” She tilts her face down, her hair catching on the buttons on her sleeves. “Haven’t we lost enough?”

  Yusuf looks away, the skin under his eyes red with sleeplessness and salt. “I won’t leave Sitti. Don’t ask me to.”

  Huda shivers between Umm Yusuf and Mama, pressing her face into Mama’s arm.

  “And if they close the borders?” Mama takes hold of Umm Yusuf’s shoulder. “If you drive hundreds of miles out of your way and can’t go on, what then?”

  “The future will unfold as it must.” Umm Yusuf takes Mama by the hand and touches her forehead to hers, and Mama’s hair clings to the static in the folds of Umm Yusuf’s scarf. “Maktoub,” she says: It is written. “We have to take our chances.”

  I only realize I’ve been holding my breath when I get dizzy. I sit
down on the bench near Huda. The choppy waters of the gulf pound against the inside of my skull. Is Abu Sayeed waiting for me in the green?

  I touch Huda’s scarf. Umm Yusuf’s pills must not be working, because the dust on my fingers slicks into a paste with her sweat.

  THAT NIGHT, WE camp out behind the ferry depot, hidden by boxes of aid cargo that are supposed to go on the ferry. Mama gives Umm Yusuf a few coins to help them pay for a place to spend the night. Then we say good-bye to Umm Yusuf and her family and wish them luck.

  Mama spreads out the dirty rug behind the cargo boxes. She and Huda sleep on it side by side, their bare ankles on the ground. Zahra leans her head back on a box. By the time I spot Yusuf darting back toward us, I’m the only one left awake behind the ferry depot. He arrives as a shadow between buildings, ducking behind boxes and balconies.

  “You came back,” I say.

  “I promised I would help you get on that boat,” Yusuf says, “and I will.” He sits down next to Zahra, who leans into his warmth without opening her eyes. He stiffens his shoulders and lowers his voice. He’s trying not to wake her up.

  “I have to apologize.” I lower my face and wiggle my feet, my legs bent up crisscross applesauce.

  “For what?” Yusuf asks.

  “For being wrong about you.”

  Huda and Mama snore on the dirty rug. The designs are gone, messed up by the fire and the dust and the dirt. It was pretty, years ago, when Sitto gave it as a prayer rug to Mama and it sat in a place of honor in our house.

  I rub my scratchy head. I’m not so pretty anymore, either.

  “I thought bad things about you,” I say to Yusuf. “I thought you were like the other bad men.”

  “What bad men?”

  “The ones that took Huda,” I say. “The ones that pulled up her skirt. I kicked and scratched, and I bit one of them and made him bleed. But I wasn’t big enough to stop him. He just kept unbuckling his belt.” My eyes burn like wet fire, my throat full of acid.

  “She never said a thing.” Yusuf dries my face with his sleeve. “You and your sisters have been through things no one should have to go through,” he says. “You couldn’t come through all this bad stuff and be the same.”