Blood & Ink Read online

  Ali sighs and scans the page. ‘Think about your people … yakka-yakka … put aside your differences … yakka-yakka … Muslims should live together in peace … yakka-yakka … the end.’

  ‘You hardly looked at it,’ I say.

  ‘I’m a fast reader,’ he says. ‘It’s very nice.’

  ‘Very nice?’ I stare at him. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘What else can I say? Peace between Muslims is good.’

  ‘Yet you attacked Timbuktu with guns and grenades?’

  ‘It was full of idols.’

  ‘Killing is wrong, Ali.’

  ‘Did your father tell you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ali pushes back his chair. ‘Was that before or after he shot me in the back?’

  I swallow drily.

  ‘Kabyle muskets are very rare,’ drawls Ali. ‘You certainly never see them in Mali. Oh, wait, I’m wrong. There’s one, on the wall.’

  ‘That’s just a decoration,’ I say quickly.

  He takes the musket down, opens the chamber and sniffs. ‘Like I thought,’ he says. ‘Your father shot me.’

  ‘It wasn’t Baba. It was me.’

  He holds me with a glittering eye. ‘Take off your veil, just for a moment.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I can see if you are lying.’

  ‘It would be improper,’ I tell him. ‘Anyway, if you were shot in the back, then how come you’re not—’

  ‘Dead?’ Ali fishes in his pocket and pulls out the lemon-shaped ball I’ve seen him playing with at night.

  It’s not a ball. It’s a grenade.

  ‘My kit was in a leather bag on my back,’ he says. ‘Your musket ball went through the bag and into this.’ He rattles it and grins.

  ‘If that’s true, you’re a very lucky boy.’

  ‘And you’re a very brave girl.’ He replaces the musket on the wall. ‘Come on, let’s see another manuscript.’

  I walk down the central aisle of the vault. The trunks tower above me to my left and right like walls of standing water. We do not have much time. Baba and Mama could come back any minute.

  If Baba finds me in the vault with a Defender, my life is over. He will never let me take the Guardian’s Oath. Not ever.

  At the end of the aisle are the writings of Ahmad Baba. Ahmad Baba taught for twenty years in Timbuktu, then fourteen years in Marrakesh as captive-guest of Sultan Al-Mansur. He returned to Mali, practised law and wrote a load of books. He was a humble man, Ahmad Baba, and the greatest scholar in the history of Timbuktu. If anyone can rescue Ali from the clutches of his henna-bearded Pharaoh, Ahmad Baba can.

  ‘This one’s good,’ I tell him, hurrying back to the table. ‘It’s called The Virtues of Scholarship.’ I lay the manuscript before him and hover as he reads.

  ‘Yakka-yakka,’ murmurs Ali. ‘The quest for knowledge is better than the waging of war … yakka-yakka … and on the Day of—’

  There is a sudden catch in his voice. He stops abruptly.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Ali takes a deep breath. ‘He says that on the Day of Judgement the in—’

  He halts again, and a tear rolls down his cheek.

  Fulani boys don’t cry.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ali.’ I lay a hand on his shoulder. ‘Tears are a gift from God. Let them come.’

  He takes a shallow breath and reads aloud. ‘On the Day of Judgement the ink of the scholars will be measured against the blood of the martyrs, and found to be weightier.’

  He is desperate not to cry but the tears insist.

  ‘Let them come,’ I repeat. ‘Repentance is a holy thing, Ali.’

  He tries to speak, but his torso is racked by a sudden violent sob. I hug him from behind and he surrenders to his anguish. His face is buried in his arms, my arms are round his neck, and intertwined we ride the pain of his despair.

  ‘If anyone repents after his wrongdoing and puts things right,’ I quote, ‘then God will turn towards him, for God is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful.’

  ‘Shut up,’ snarls Ali.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is not repentance. It’s anger.’ He thumps The Virtues of Scholarship, billowing dust. ‘What does this scribbling whitebeard know about the blood of martyrs? How dare he compare himself to them? What does he know about passion or sacrifice? Nothing at all! One drop of Hilal or Omar’s blood weighs more than all the manuscripts in Timbuktu.’

  Ali yanks the metal lever on the lamp to raise the clear glass chimney and expose the orange flame.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I gasp. ‘Ali, no!’

  He picks up the manuscript and shoves one corner into the flame. It curls and blackens.

  I seize his wrists and pull with all my strength, inching the precious paper away from the fire. Ali stands up, knocking over the chair, and lunges forward again, determined to burn the manuscript. The next thing I know, I’m on his back with my legs round his waist, one hand over his eyes and the other reaching for the manuscript. He staggers away from the lamp, leans slightly to one side, swings a leg and lets the priceless sheaf fall onto the arch of his foot as if punting a ball. The Virtues of Scholarship connects with the ex-goalkeeper’s foot and explodes in a shower of paper fragments, dust and termites.

  ‘A hanyan!’ I scream.

  I kick his supporting leg just behind the knee, and he crumples face-down to the floor. My legs straddle his waist and my forearm is across the back of his neck, pinning him to the ground. I cannot call for help because my phone is on the table. With my free hand I reach for the chair to hit him with. My animal sobs echo off the trunks and earthen walls.

  The chair is beyond my reach, and now I am off balance. Ali bucks his hips, then twists and rolls me over so I’m lying on the ground and he is on top of me.

  My hands are on his back, raking his lash wounds with my nails. He gasps in pain, slumps forward and bites me on the neck to make me stop.

  I do stop. So does he. His body stiffens. The taste of my blood has shocked him. We lie interlocked on the earth floor, and the only sound in the vault is our breathing, and the only thing between us is my veil.

  I look up at him. The cuts on his face and chin from Tondi’s wedding night are healing well, and the hardness in his gaze is gone. My abdomen is full of tuning rings that tighten more and more the longer we lie like this.

  ‘Kadi,’ he whispers.

  ‘Abdullai.’ I lift my head and kiss him through my cotton veil.

  I can feel his cantering heartbeat through my dress. His lips respond to mine, uncertainly at first and then with confidence. Fragments of Ahmad Baba rustle and crunch beneath us.

  One of his hands is under my head and the other moves down to unclasp my hijab pin but even when the veil is cast aside my face still burns for he is kissing my lips and my cheeks and the curls on my temples and the bite marks on my neck. We are no longer Jihadist or Sufi or invader or invaded, for those barriers have gone. He is Abdullai the herder boy and I am Kadija the almost beautiful and Timbuktu is any far-off place and by the time we hear my cousin’s footsteps we are inextricable.

  A quavery voice from the steps: ‘Kadi, are you all right?’

  I know how it must look, this awful scene – the chair knocked over, the manuscript scattered to the four corners of the vault, the terrified librarian flailing underneath the warrior.

  ‘Yusuf! Help me! Get him off me!’

  Abdullai stares at me. The confusion in his eyes gives way to hurt, the agony of betrayal. Kadi, what did you just say? What have you done to me? And then his features harden, and Abdullai is gone, perhaps for ever.

  Cousin Yusuf strides across the vault, grabs the fallen chair and smashes it on Ali’s back. The warrior grunts in pain and rolls off onto the floor. Yusuf reaches down and pulls the knife from Ali’s belt – a slender blade glinting orange in the lamplight.

  The Defender stumbles to his feet, wild-eyed, unarmed. He staggers to the end
of the aisle where deep blue trunks loom sternly on both sides to hem him in. Like Pharaoh’s soldiers in the Sea of Reeds, Ali is trapped.

  Yusuf advances on him slowly with the knife.

  ‘Yusuf, don’t,’ I say. ‘If you hurt him, Redbeard and the others will kill you.’

  ‘I’ll take that chance,’ Yusuf snarls.

  Casting around for a weapon, Ali spots the iron padlock on the top of Trunk Sixteen. He lifts it, feels its weight and flings it hard. By a single span it misses Yusuf’s head.

  Yusuf grins. ‘Ninja, you’re losing your touch.’

  But Yusuf was not the Ninja’s target. There comes a clang of metal and a splintering of glass, and all goes dark.

  I can hear Yusuf’s footsteps running up the aisle and the clang of his fists against the metal trunks. ‘Come here, coward!’ he shouts, but his own voice, too, is tight with fear. ‘Where are you? Where’ve you gone?’

  ‘Yusuf, your phone!’ I shout, whilst feeling on the table for my own.

  ‘Got it,’ he says, and his backlight comes on.

  The aisle is empty, and so is the rest of the vault. I hear the creak of the ancient door above, and the quiet clunk of the key in the lock.

  Yusuf charges up the steps.

  ‘He’s locked us in!’ he cries.

  And that is that.

  The Virtues of Scholarship is broken beyond repair, and so is Baba’s office chair, and so am I.

  I pocket the key to the secret door and storm into the street, wiping my sleeve across my stupid lips, while Redbeard’s warnings echo in my head. Put a man in the desert with only his Book and his gun, and he will easily master himself. But make that man a ruler of one of the greatest cities on earth and his worldly self will rise again. In the coming days and weeks, you will be tempted in every way, but you must not give in.

  He warned us to be careful, yet still I fell for her. I fell for the radiance of her Al-Fatiha, her come-hither texts and her haram perfume. I fell for her impudence, her lazy eyelids and her part-time veil.

  I fell in flame like Lucifer from heaven.

  I stride along Askia Avenue. The midday glare assaults my eyes. No shadows at this time of day, not even from the lofty turrets of the Djinguereber Mosque. No relief.

  I’m furious at the Sufi for seducing and betraying me. Furious at myself for letting it happen. Furious at the so-called saints of Timbuktu, the shrines, the manuscripts, the superstitions, and every other nonsense that distracts a city from its God.

  A Somali mujahid with a scar along one cheek is guarding the gate of the camp today. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks as I approach. ‘You look like a rhino on bleu-bleu tablets.’

  I ignore him and storm into the camp. Off-duty fighters lounge and loll, clipping their nails, sleeping, brewing ginger tea.

  Jabir is stripping his rifle. As soon as he sees my face, his eyes widen in surprise and sympathy. ‘What happened?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ I snap. ‘Where are the pickaxes?’

  He points with his chin.

  I grab a pickaxe and cross the compound to the tomb of Tamba-Tamba. We should have done this long ago.

  ‘God is great!’ I cry, and swing the axe.

  The head of the pickaxe buries itself in the wall right up to the handle.

  That’s for you, Kadija.

  I lock my elbows and pull the axe towards me. The tomb wall bulges and cracks. A slab of earth falls at my feet.

  That’s for you, old women. Now where will you go to chant your detestable chants?

  I swing the pickaxe again, a few metres to the left of my first hole. The axe lodges in the bricks and emerges with a dry crunch, bringing with it another large section of the wall.

  That’s for flabby-minded Sufis everywhere.

  The two holes in the wall of the tomb gape at me like the eye sockets of a skull. A phrase from my childhood comes into my mind:

  Do not disturb the spirits in their eternal rest, for the spirits never forgive.

  I shoo the thought away. This is Tamba-Tamba, after all, the man of righteous anger, who in his fury stamped a foot-shaped hole one furlong deep. Imagine his wrath at six centuries of idolatry committed in his name. Unless I desecrate his resting place, he’ll get no rest at all.

  I drop the pickaxe and launch a flying kick at the wall between the two holes. It crumbles, and the section above it drops as well.

  I spring back from the tumbling masonry.

  ‘Alhamdulillah!’ The voice behind me is Redbeard’s. ‘That’s right, brave Ali, rage against the idols!’

  Again I lift the axe and drive its unforgiving nose into the brickwork of the tomb. My fury gives me supernatural strength. I could demolish this abominable tomb with my bare hands if I needed to.

  Redbeard is beside me now, to aid the demolition. He swings his axe with savage elation, working his way round the shrine, slicing it open like a tin of fish.

  Warriors from all over the world converge upon the tomb with axes, shovels, rifle butts, hoes and hands and feet.

  Tamba-Tamba is his name, and that is how we smash his tomb. Fast-fast.

  I have started something extraordinary, something holy and frightening, something that could not now be stopped even if I wanted to.

  Out of the gates of the camp we burst and into Independence Square. Al Farouk, the city’s failed protector, regards us from his saddle with a gimlet eye. We stream towards him, furious.

  For today is Judgement Day in Timbuktu.

  For there is no god but God.

  For Al Farouk must die.

  Muhammad Zaarib wins the race and mounts the pedestal, swings high his bifurcated sword and smites the djinni’s throat. Our ferocious cheer echoes off the prim facades of the town hall, the police station and the Sidi Yahya Mosque.

  Zaarib picks up the wooden head and raises it aloft. ‘God is great!’ he cries.

  We leave the headless horseman in the square and swarm up Askia Avenue, drunk with holy passion, through the nomad camp towards the Cemetery of the Three where stand the famous tombs of Muhammad Mahmoud, Sidi Mohamed al Miky and Sidi Ahmed ben Amar.

  Before the tomb of ben Amar, a group of pilgrims whirl.

  ‘We entreat your blessing, Sidi Ahmed ben Amar,

  Son of Sidi el Wafi, son of Sidi el Moctar,

  For daily salt we beg thee, Sidi Ahmed ben Amar,

  Let the heavens rain down on us.’

  The stupid Sufis open their eyes and find themselves surrounded. The whirling and the singing stop.

  ‘Leave,’ I tell them.

  The tomb of Sidi Ahmed ben Amar is covered with pieces of white cloth to represent the slabs of heavenly salt. Aghast, the pilgrims watch us as we tear the cloths to shreds and attack the shrine with hoes and axes.

  Jabir climbs onto my shoulders and onto the roof of the tomb. I throw him a pickaxe and he smashes a hole in the roof, starting in the middle and working outwards. For the first time in six hundred years, a ray of sunlight shines into the tomb of Sidi Ahmed ben Amar.

  A crowd is gathering. All of Timbuktu, it seems, is arriving at the Cemetery of the Three. Young men pour through the gates with football shirts and fists clenched tight. Clouds of veiled women billow in behind them. Even the whitebeards are gathering up their robes and running.

  The mayor is also on the scene, as fat and impotent as ever. Jowls wobbling, prayer beads clicking, he picks his way through the rubble to where Redbeard stands.

  ‘This is a crime!’ yells the mayor. ‘It is a crime against the city, a crime against culture, a crime against humanity!’

  ‘But not against God,’ replies Redbeard. ‘Stand back, Monsieur le Maire, or you are going to get hurt.’

  The mayor does not budge. He is livid, and so are the crowd. I do not expect them to understand. We are loosing their chains and setting free their souls, but they cannot see it. Their eyes are blinded by the Evil One.

  A young man in a Rasta hat bends down, picks up a stone and flings it hard at Jabir on
the roof. Redbeard tuts and shrugs his AK-47 off his shoulder. He fires into the air on full auto and watches the petrified crowd shrink back. He discards the old magazine, inserts a fresh one and yanks the bolt handle to the rear in readiness. There he stands, Akka the Great of Mauritania, so skilful with an AK that they named him after it. Nobody in Timbuktu is going to save this tomb.

  At last, the fatal blow is struck. The east wall of the tomb collapses outwards and the roof caves in.

  ‘Jabir!’ I cry. ‘Are you OK?’

  He rises dusty-faced from the rubble and gives me two thumbs up.

  We surge into the tomb, clear the fallen earth off Sidi Ahmed’s grave and start to dig.

  The mayor emits a leonine roar. ‘Not the body!’ he yells. ‘Don’t you dare bring up the body!’

  We bring the body up into the light, first a dirty ribcage dangling from a shovel and then the real prize, the grinning skull, which Zaarib holds up high for all to see.

  ‘Behold your saint!’ he shouts.

  The men of Timbuktu surge forward to avenge the desecration, but Redbeard lifts his AK-47 again and fires over their heads – another hail of bullets and another quick reload.

  ‘Can a carcass answer prayer?’ cries Redbeard. ‘Can a skull give salt? Oh look, here comes a pelvis on a spade, a sorry sight indeed – I half expected it to glow with the noor of God himself, but look how dark it is, and rotten – even the wildest dog in Timbuktu would wrinkle up its nose at such a bone!’

  The veiled women caterwaul and weep, a wretched backing track to Redbeard’s rant. And all the while, shoulder to shoulder with my brothers, giddy with iconoclastic joy, I swing my axe. When we are done here, we will destroy the tomb of Alpha Moya, protector of the east, then Sidi el Moctar, protector of the north, then all the other saints of Timbuktu. And finally, with the eyes of the whole world upon us, we will visit the tomb of that inky blinky weak-chinned scribbler, Ahmad Baba himself. On behalf of Hilal and Omar I will grind his tomb to dust, and prove that passion, sweat and blood can accomplish what the watery ink of scholars never could – the worship of the one true God in Timbuktu.