by Joelle Stolz
As Abdelkarim says this, he can't help glancing at my mother, who is sitting by her loom, impassive. They have agreed that she will be present at each lesson, sitting not too far away, but not too close either, so as not to disturb us. She looks our way very infrequently, but we hear the dry, reassuring sound of the curved reed she uses to space the warp yarns evenly.
First my teacher prepares the ink, mixing black powder and water in a glass flask. Then he carefully writes out the twenty-eight Arabic letters from right to left, pronouncing each one of them clearly and making me repeat them. The letters have strange shapes. Some resemble reeds bending in the wind; others, birds with flexible necks and folded wings; still others, gondolas, those flat, lightweight, cradle-like boats I once saw when my father took me to a small lake a halfday's walk from Ghadames. Some of the letters are very easy; one line is enough. Others require such complicated squiggles that I would be afraid of getting muddled recopying them.
But on that first day, Abdelkarim teaches me only one word: bâ-boun, the door, until I can write it perfectly. He is pleased with me; his eyes are twinkling.
“That's enough for today,” he says, propping the board, ink and stylus against the wall.
I feel so happy that I start singing as I go down the stairway. Ladi, who is in the large room busily polishing our brass vases, looks up with a mocking air.
“No one thought of teaching me how to read,” she says. “Ladi, once I've learned, I'll teach you.” “That's what you say now, because you're happy, but you'll always have better things to do than to bother about me.”
She is right. I am already obsessed with just one thing— looking at my father's books. He doesn't have very many, only about four or five, but he truly values them. “They allow me to see other things,” he always says when I ask him what he finds in these yellowed pages.
I wonder if I will find things in them that I never saw before. I touch their bindings, their rounded backs, the faded gold lettering stamped on dark leather, but I don't dare open them. They have a distinctive smell that I've always liked, a smell of dusty leather and cooled sand that reminds me of my father's smell. Isn't that letter on the cover a bâ, and that other one a boun? I remember Bilkisu going over my brother's lessons with him, and my despair at not being able to understand a thing.
I also remember feeling that a door was forever closed within me. Perhaps now it is finally opening….
e, dress up as a woman? What about my dignity? It's out of the question, I'll never agree! I'd rather die.”
Abdelkarim has become livid. By contrast, the barely healed scar on his forehead looks darker. Bilkisu and I exchange glances in dismay.
As always when she is in Abdelkarim's presence, my mother stands back, her profile impassive. Not Bilkisu. I see her nostrils quiver and the upturned corner of her mouth. I know she is dying to make a caustic remark in reply. But it would be dangerous. It is wiser to try to convince the obstinate young man while there is still time.
“But there's really no other solution,” she pleads, containing her anger. “You can't stay here any longer. We were told by a traveler that Mahmud's caravan would be returning within two or three days. Have you thought of the consequences for us, who saved your life? Believe me, you won't lose your dignity just from covering your head with a woman's veil for a few hours.”
It was Aïshatou's idea and it was probably mixed with a bit of malice. The plan was to make the fugitive leave the city during one of the night ceremonies from which men are excluded. These are ceremonies that occasionaly take place in the palm grove. On those nights, no one is surprised to see female silhouettes sneak outside the city walls— certainly not the guardians posted at the city gates. Who would ever bother to count the women returning at daybreak from a festival celebrated since time immemorial far from the eyes of the indiscreet?
“And what if he refuses?” objected Bilkisu. I strained to follow their discussion, pressed against my mother's side. Their dark veils, turned down over their lowered foreheads, formed a dark little hiding place, muffling their whispered words.
“He'd better accept,” mumbled Aïshatou. “If he doesn't …”
She fell silent, alerted by Bilkisu's frown. I felt my mother shudder, and I looked at Aïshatou's hands and the heavy bracelets clasped around her wrists.
If he doesn't? Not one of us completed the sentence out loud, but my stomach was tied in knots from fear.
They leave me with him. Though they do not say anything, I know they are counting on me to make him change his mind. But I can't speak at all. I am too choked up.
When Abdelkarim first started giving me lessons, he did not foresee that we would progress so rapidly. We work in the morning, when it's still cool, and again in the afternoon, reviewing the morning lesson. Every day he is surprised at my resolve, and every day I am determined to forge ahead as I race toward a still invisible goal. When I reach it I will be saved. From what? All I know is I must keep racing ahead, which constantly reminds me of my footrace with Jasim. That evening, poised on the edge of the roof, I felt in less danger than now, when I am terrified of falling into a bottomless pit if I take just one step back …
Jasim often complained about his schoolmasters, who corrected students' mistakes by hitting them on their shaved heads with a stick. But Abdelkarim, with his great contempt for ignorant women, never gets annoyed when I forget to put in the accents, or when I mix up the forms of the letters at the beginning of a word with those that go in the middle or at the end. Oh, those letters that change completely with their position in a word, like dunes in the wind!
Once, he looked up from the writing board and smiled. “Before coming here, I saw myself inspiring crowds with the beauties of religion, and in my mind I saw crowds of men, only men,” he said. “But God tests our pride. It could be that I was sent to this city to teach the alphabet to a girl. Your perseverance is a sign.”
On another occasion, just once, he said to me, “You look like your mother.”
Yet he never looks at her. Well, hardly ever. I know because I always watch him out of the corner of my eye when she is near us, sitting at her loom— or grinding barley grains with a millstone until her hands are completely covered with a feathery, white dust that forms light-colored circles on her black veil.
Today Abdelkarim remains silent for a long time. Standing against the door, I wait for him to make up his mind.
“So, you think I should leave the city too?” he asks.
“What other solution is there? It's a great stroke of luck that the ceremony is taking place,” I answer. “That way you'll be able to leave without anyone noticing you. It will be better for us.”
“Have you ever been to this women's festival?” “Me? No. Until now, they never wanted to include me. All I know is, when they return, they always look happy. My father says it purges them of all their demons, and that men ought to find a way of doing the same!”
But soon something else worries him. “Those Tuaregs that Bilkisu mentioned, can they be trusted?” he asks.
I nod. “They are Iforhas. Their encampment is next to those tall stones that I am sure you know, stones so old that it is a mystery who put them there. Aïshatou sometimes goes there at daybreak and stretches out on the stones. She says they tell her secrets about the future. The Iforhas' blacksmiths have the same abilities as her. They know the language of the stones and formulas for curing people. And they respect Aïshatou as one of their own. If she asks them to take you to a safe place, they won't betray you.”
He sighs. “When will we have to leave?”
“That depends on the moon. It could be tomorrow night.”
“So this will be our last lesson.”
With a heavy heart, I pick up the board propped against the wall and sit down next to him. We work nonstop, until the little room becomes dark and our eyes are so tired the lines blur. Then my teacher stands up and stretches his fingers. Mine are numb from so much writing. But we've gone through the en
tire alphabet.
“You've made enormous progress in a very short period of time. It's a shame we have to stop now. I hope you won't let your mind lie fallow.”
I am reminded of a family garden in the palm grove, left abandoned by the two brothers who owned it, because they did not get along anymore. Dry grass covers the land, the dates disintegrate into dust, the lower branches of the fruit trees droop to the ground. Even the birds have stopped singing. Is that what my poor brain will look like soon?
But I don't dare tell him about my fears, or mention the pit that haunts my dreams and that I am terrified of falling into. I say the first thing that comes to mind, just so I can stay with him a bit longer:
“Abdelkarim, does your family own much land in the palm grove?”
“They used to, but now I don't know. I am not very interested in agriculture. Does your father own much land?”
I shake my head. “Just enough to give us some fruit. My father prefers to put his money into his business, with associates whom he trusts in Kano and Istanbul. He says trade brings in more money. And also …”
I feel embarrassed.
“And also?” Abdelkarim prompts. “My father doesn't like the idea of owning slaves. Here, if you own a lot of land, you have to have slaves, for farming, for repairing the irrigation ditches which bring the springwater into the gardens, for picking up fertilizer, for performing all those tasks that the people of Ghadames consider beneath their dignity.”
Abdelkarim seems surprised. “So your father doesn't own slaves, unlike all the great families here?”
“No, he doesn't. Even my mother couldn't make him change his mind.” I feel I should explain. “He has often told us how he resolved never to own slaves during his first trip across the Sahara with his uncle. They found two skeletons at the edge of the road, whitened by the sun, two women whose hands were tied with rope. You could still see their earrings and their dresses in tatters. They must have been very young when they died because their teeth were in perfect condition, absolutely intact.
“My father was horrified. As a child he had become accustomed to seeing slaves in the streets and the gardens of Ghadames. But now, for the first time, he realized what it was like to be torn away from one's family, thrown on the roads, and taken to unknown lands with no hope of returning. He vowed to himself never to be the cause of such misfortune and he has kept his word. He has never bought or sold a human being.”
Abdelkarim looks at me pensively. “You admire your father a lot.”
“Oh, yes! He has ideas that my uncles don't have. He is always interested in new things. And he talks to me as though I were a grown-up.”
Abdelkarim smiles. “But you'll soon be a grown-up.” Then his gaze darkens. “I wish I could meet your father. It's a pity I have to leave.”
The following day, they give me the task of bringing Abdelkarim a large, neatly folded piece of black cloth.
“This is an armor that will protect you from your enemies,” I say solemnly.
Abdelkarim looks at me, frowning. Is he already angry? Bilkisu lectured me at length: “Whatever you do, don't use the word veil. Avoid it like the plague! He must not feel insulted or think that you're making fun of him!” Bilkisu repeated this advice over and over again. I am doing my best. My jaws are aching from suppressing any semblance of a smile.
But to my astonishment, in the space of a night he has gotten used to an idea that infuriated him a day ago, and this morning he is as gentle as a lamb.
“You'll have to help me,” he says simply.
Today is a special day for me too, because my mother gave me my first young girl's veil, a dark blue fabric that I've draped over my malafa. I show Abdelkarim how to keep the veil drawn shut, with the edge wedged between one's teeth, and how to walk so as to outwit our vigilant city guards. For, as everyone knows, men and women walk differently.
“Look, men step putting their heels down first, in manly, self-confident fashion, whereas women put their toes down first, timidly, in a way that befits an inferior creature. That's how we're taught to walk by our mothers when we're very little, and heaven help us if we forget it!”
Abdelkarim stares at me, wide-eyed. “Do you mean to say that women have to learn to walk like women, and that if their mothers did not correct them, they would tread on the ground as men do?”
Now, it's my turn to be troubled. This had never occurred to me.
But I am even more embarrassed at suddenly being the teacher, and at Abdelkarim being the student, a strange student with a beard and mustache. I bite my lip painfully several times so as not to burst out laughing. We certainly make an odd couple, tangled up in our veils, taking cautious, little steps as though the room were carpeted with fragile eggs or feathers. I only hope the guards will not be looking our way when we go through the city gate.
Silence now. The time has come to weave our way through the streets next to my mother and Bilkisu, both as snugly wrapped as we are. Whispering figures file ahead of us and we are joined by more and more of them, as the discreet but repetitive scraping of dozens — no, hundreds—of leather soles tread on the hardened mud—toes first!
Each time a door opens, we see the oil lamp in the cavity of the entryway conforming to the immutable code: the master is at home. He may be home, but his wife and the women next door are all making their way through the dark torchlit alleyways. This female procession in a flickering half-light is a rather bizarre sight.
We cross the small Mulberry Square, where the slave market is located. I have always found the dark arcades sinister, as if tragedy were permanently ingrained in the walls in spite of the purifying layers of whitewash regularly applied to them.
The procession must then cross Gâddous Square. This is the name we give to the iron cup that is held by a child seated in a cement niche. Under the niche is a seguia, one of the narrow ditches that brings water to the palm grove. For centuries this is the way we have been measuring the outflow of our spring so that we can divide it equitably.
Day and night the child fills the cup with water and hangs it above the ditch. From a small hole at the bottom of the cup, the water slowly empties out. Each time the cup is filled, the child ties a knot in a long palm-leaf filament. The Amine el Mâ, the water controller appointed by the city residents, must be able to check the outflow at any given moment. So the cup serves as the measuring unit for irrigation. This is accomplished by blocking the openings of the seguias with earth, or unblocking them, depending on the time and the size of the gardens.
Filling and tying, day and night. The children take turns in the niche but they all end up looking the same, with sad, prematurely aged faces, worn out by the monotonous work. Whenever I see clear, fresh water flowing through the seguias in the palm grove, I think of the child sitting in the Gâddous niche.
When we reach the city walls, on the eastern side, we find that the guards posted under the archway have left the palm-trunk gate open. No greetings are exchanged. These men don't even seem to see us. Tonight the rules governing our lives are mysteriously suspended. Tonight the women of Ghadames belong to another world that will vanish with the first glimmer of dawn.
The moon, already high in the sky, can be seen through the branches of the palm grove, round and white, like a basin of curdled milk.
Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
We hear the throbbing of the bendirs and derbukas being struck by the women musicians with their callused palms.
Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
We finally stop near the half-crumbled ruins. I have never been in this faraway corner of the palm grove and am surprised to see a kind of vessel covered with a tall earthen vault. The musicians are seated all around it, beating on the resonant skins of the drums.
“This is the other spring, our spring,” whispers my mother, taking me firmly by the hand. “There has to be water for the jinn to visit human beings. Water always attracts them.”
“Mama, aren't you afraid of the jinn?” “I a
m afraid of them when I am alone. Tonight, everything is different.”
A dozen women are undressing hurriedly. They leave their clothes hanging on the trunk of a tilted palm tree at the edge of the vessel and wade into the water up to their waists, twisting their damp hair. Two oil lamps project enormous, monstrous shadows under the vault. I squeeze my mother's hand very tightly, and press my face against the side of her body. But she raises my head.
“You have no reason to be frightened,” she says gently.
Some other women start dancing and soon they are nearly all swaying at the shoulders and hips, their necks very straight and their heads held high, almost motionless. The musicians play with increasing vigor. A very powerful music is required to summon the jinn and to make the dancers gyrate until they collapse, exhausted. There are lamps placed in a circle and scented resin burning on small burners.
Zam-zam!
The musicians are old. Gold coins from Timbuktu shine on their black foreheads. They laugh as they strike the skin tambourines faster and faster, staining them with droplets of sweat. It is impossible to resist this music. It flows into the shoulders, chest and legs, making the whole body vibrate with a long, painful trembling. I join the dance, submerged, jostled, swept up by an invisible force.
Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
Then some women around me start saying mad, incomprehensible things in loud voices. Who are they talking about? One invokes a king out loud. Another, the red minister, but who is this minister? Yet another falls onto the ground, yelling “He slapped me!” I open my eyes wide, but I don't see anyone. The woman grasps her cheek and moans, then is immediately surrounded by a buzzing wave of women who console her and sweep her far away from me.
I want to be safely near my mother, whom I see sitting at Aïshatou's feet with other women from noble families. Aïshatou is enthroned in their midst, like a king at court, and they call her “Princess.” How strange. The world seems upside down.
