Stone Kingdoms (31 page)

‘Perhaps your father will come back.'

‘No, he won't come back, Naomi.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Because he has told me he will never come back.'

‘Told you?'

‘When I spoke to you of my father, I didn't tell the whole truth. I didn't want you to know of our shame and so I didn't tell everything. I must tell you now. When my father left my family, my mother sent for me. He had been gone many months and the letters did not come any more.' She stopped combing her hair and set the comb down on the blanket. ‘It was decided that I should go to the capital and try to find what happened to him. When I got there, I stayed with the family of a girl I knew at university, who works for the government. But I did not tell them why I had come. I said I was looking for a new teaching job, a better position.' She hesitated.

‘
You don't have to tell me this if you don't want to. There's no need.'

‘I want to tell you, Naomi. We should only tell each other the truth now. You told me about your father, I must tell you about mine. There was an address on his letters and I went there. It was a place where people stay who travel to the city to look for jobs. Men come and go all the time but it was the only address I had so I went there each day, very early in the morning, and stood and watched as men went to work, but he was not there. I didn't know other places to look – the city is very big and has many people – but I didn't want to go back with no answer for my family and so I went on looking. I told the family I was staying with that I was taking a class in the University, so they did not suspect.'

Something in the heart of the fire sparked and crackled into a fleeting blue flame. The song had stopped, and outside the night seemed to have settled into a drowsy stillness.

‘One morning I was there very early, standing on the pavement, when a man spoke to me. Someone told him who I was looking for and he said he knew someone who had seen my father and I was to come back that evening and speak to him. All that day I sat in the bus station pretending I was waiting for relatives to arrive from the country. When I went back to the place the two men were there but at first they made jokes, did not tell me anything, and then I got angry and they told me he worked in a workshop that made radios, and the man told me an address where I could find my father. But it was getting late and it was difficult to find in a place which was strange to me. As I walked the women cursed me and men called after me so I couldn't ask for help. And then I found the place – an old man sitting in a doorway pointed it out. There was a courtyard and children playing and many open doors with steps up to them, and suddenly I was frightened. I almost ran away. But I spoke to the children and they showed me which door. Before I reached the top of the steps my father came out and saw me. He
greeted
me but in his eyes I saw something else. And as I sat in his home I heard someone in the other room, the room where he slept, but at first he said there was no one there but then he called out. It was a girl, maybe the same age as me, and he told me she was his wife and that she was going to have his child. When I asked him, will he come back, he said that his past life was dead to him, now he must have a new life. He had to leave the old world behind because it was no good and his future belonged in the new world. He said I could understand because I was part of the new world and that I could live with them, that I could be like a sister to his wife. He told me how much money he earned and the things he could buy with the money, and he showed me some of the things he had bought. But when I asked again about his family he said the past must be dead to him and that it was the will of Allah. Then I left and he called to me to stay but I kept walking and got lost in the dark streets, but I just kept walking and I never saw him again.'

She lifted the comb again and ran the tip of her finger along the teeth.

‘Did you tell your family?'

She shook her head. ‘When I went back I told them that I hadn't been able to find him. Maybe it was better to tell them that he was dead and then they would no longer wait for him, but I didn't tell them the truth.'

‘Am I the only person who knows?'

‘Yes, you are the only one I have told the truth to.'

I took the comb and knelt behind her, then carefully worked it through her hair in the rhythm I had watched her follow many times, using my fingers to tease out where it was turned and twisted, and soon it felt oiled and fluent, quickened into life. I let my hand touch my own hair and felt only a brittle dryness, a sun-baked lacquer of dust, dead as the lava bed we had just crossed.

‘If you wanted, you could go and see him again. If that's what you wanted.'

‘
He doesn't want us any more. He has his own life now. We are not part of it. I think I would only remind him of the world which is dead to him.'

I lifted a thick bunch of her hair and gently pulled it back from her head, cupping it like water in the palms of my hands then letting it spill again over her shoulders. ‘I didn't tell you all the truth about my father either, Nadra.' She turned her head sideways and I smoothed some hair behind her ear, but it sprang free again and fell across her cheek. ‘I've never spoken all the truth to anyone, not even my mother.' I hesitated, but she turned round to face me. ‘My father was an unhappy man for longer than I knew or understood, and I think he came to feel that there was no other life than the one that had been given to him. And slowly he felt frightened by that life, like it was crushing him, and he grew tired of struggling with it. My father was a good swimmer.... I think he just stopped struggling, let himself be carried out to sea. It was what he wanted and he knew it would look like an accident. I think my mother knows too. But she won't say it because she loved him and it would hurt too many people.' I heard my voice shake, the little echoes that trembled into the corners of the cave. ‘I think he loved us but in the end that love wasn't enough.'

‘But your father was a holy man. A holy man would not take his own life.'

‘He was a holy man, but somewhere, somehow, he must have lost his closeness to God and couldn't find it again. Maybe it just slipped away year by year, I don't know.'

‘And you are angry with him for what he did?'

‘Once I was, but not now, not any more. I just feel sorry that it had to be like that, that he couldn't tell anyone. I think he must have been very lonely for a long time, but because he spoke for God he felt he had to hide it, even from those he loved.' I looked at her and didn't try to stop the words. ‘Once I too thought it would be good to let go, to stop struggling and just let go . . . ‘

‘
What stopped you?' Her voice was a whisper, as if she was suddenly frightened by what she heard.

Too late for lies. ‘Love. The bruising on your cheek where they beat you. The sound of your breathing, the touch of your hair.'

She sat still and silent and I turned my eyes away from her gaze to where a current of air fanned smoke from the fire. Then she was kneeling beside me and I felt her hand on my hair and the slow movement of the comb as it broke open the dryness and separated the strands. There was no sound but the crackle and rustle of my hair and the little clucks she made when the comb caught. She lifted and straightened, moving the comb the full length of each strand, and when the wooden teeth touched my scalp it made me shiver. When she had finished she went to the canister of water and, using a little cloth, she washed my hair and face and then she opened my robe and when it fell free she washed my shoulders, the hollow of my back, and the water felt cool and clean against my skin. After it was done I did the same for her and her body was beautiful, and as I touched it my hand shook a little and she smiled and guided it with her own hand. But my touch felt clumsy and heavy, as if it might break the moment into pieces. When she stood up I thought I had destroyed it but she came back with the phial of scent the child had given us and pressed it to the tip of her finger and smoothed it on my eyelids, the nape of my neck, between my breasts, and I closed my eyes as the cold sweetness of its scent filled my senses. Then in this place that felt balanced between the earth and the sky we lay down together on the blanket and watched the fire's slow slide into darkness.

23

We
stayed with the people of the caves for three days. To have stayed longer would have made too many demands on their generosity. They had been good to us, sharing the little they had without expectation of payment, without question. If they felt relief when we told them that we were going to try to reach the coast, none showed it. Instead, some of the children tugged at our clothes and tried to persuade us to stay. The older woman told us that two of the older boys would lead us through the mountains and show us where there was a road which led to the next town, and before we set off they filled our canister with water and gave us a little package of dried meat and rice. We left just after dawn, before the fires had been lit, when the caves were still silent pockets of darkness and dreams.

They led us through a mountain pass which burrowed into steep-sided rocks. Sometimes we were watched by gazelles perched on narrow ledges or precarious vantage points, their thin, bony legs propelling them to new ground. The journey was shorter than we expected, and after two or three hours we had worked our way out of the mountains and were in sight of a brown dirt road which curled into the distance. We passed other people walking and sometimes greetings were exchanged. At other times people glided across our path like ghosts, never turning their eyes towards us or showing any consciousness of our existence. One of them was an old man, naked apart from a ripped pair of trousers, his brown papery skin creased and wrinkled like a tied-up parcel. In his hand he
carried
a branch broken from a bush, and he shook it in front of him as if he were sprinkling incense. There was a family – father, mother, grandparents, five children – all weighted with an equal share of possessions and walking in single file, disappearing one after the other into a screen of bush.

When we reached the road the two boys left us and headed back towards the mountains, and we started along the road in the direction of the town. It was a long time before we heard the sound of an engine. We stood on either side of the road watching as it churned up a fan-tail of dust in the distance, the waver of heat making it difficult to see what it was. For a second I was frightened that it might be the soldiers, but as it came closer I saw that it was a car – a black saloon-type car that looked as if it belonged in an old film. We stepped into the road and tried to wave it down, but our frantic gestures were met only by a burst of horn and a spray of dust as it sped past us and into the distance. We walked on. As the day got hotter we were passed by few other vehicles – a couple of trucks, one other car, a man on a motorbike wearing a yoke of bamboo cages filled with hens. No one showed any sign of stopping. We had rationed the water with scrupulous meanness, but already half of it was gone and we had no idea of the distance to the next town. We left the road to find shade and ate some of the dried meat, pulling and gnawing at its stringy toughness, listening all the time for the sound of an engine. But all we saw was a man herding a couple of camels, his long cane pushed in syncopated rhythm against the creatures' necks as he steered them.

We walked on again, exposed to the constant pulse of the sun and the spumes of dust kicked up by our feet. Gradually the credit our bodies had accrued from three days' rest began to drain away, and our pace slackened. I don't think Nadra heard it at first because she walked on, locked in her own thoughts, and as I stopped to stare back down the road I had to call out to her. It was another truck, slowly forming out of the melting
tremble
of distance. It came closer. A blue-fronted truck with slatted wooden sides and a green canopy billowing up like a sail, bouncing over the bumps and ruts of the road. It wasn't going to stop. No one was going to stop for two women walking along a road when every road was filled with walkers, whole families of them crossing the country, their destinations and motives often uncertain. The truck was about a hundred metres away, filling the whole width of the road, its windscreen a jagged frazzle of light, blanking out the driver's face and making any kind of personal contact impossible. We stood facing it with our arms extended as if we were signalling a bus to pull in but I knew it wasn't going to stop, and then about fifty metres from us it slowed a little to cross a patchwork of potholes and with Nadra's screams in my ears I stepped into the middle of the road and let my head covering fall to my shoulders. I held up both hands in the air. There was a fierce stamp of brakes and the truck shuddered and skidded to the side of the road as its locked wheels gouged through the dirt. Spitting stones and dirt it slithered to a halt, half on the road and half off it, and then for a few seconds there was nothing but the sizzle of heat from its engine and the slow fall of dust.

He got out of the cab with a heavy spanner in his hand. A small man, smaller still as he stood against the side of the truck, wearing a ragged red shirt and a cotton macawis but it was clear from his eyes and the way he held on to the driver's door that the weapon was for defence rather than attack. Nadra called to him and gradually the tension drained out of his body and a little swirl of relief washed over him. He threw the spanner into the cab, his eyes and mouth creased into a smile, and surrendering with a shrug of his shoulders, he gestured us to climb into the cab. He had a crop of bananas to take to the capital. He could take us there too. He didn't speak or respond much to what Nadra said to him as he drove, but glanced constantly at me, the mirror angled slightly so he could see me. But when our eyes met I saw only curiosity. Holding the wheel
with
one hand he stretched behind and handed us some bananas which we ate greedily, our feet resting on what looked like a box of engine parts. Sometimes he would reach for a leather swat on the dashboard and use it to squash insects that fluttered against the glass. He would lean across to our side, holding the wheel with one skinny arm, and then the truck would veer to the side of the road, straightening out again only after the smack of leather on glass.