Blood & Ink Read online

  The ferry is moored by one rope at the bow and another at the stern. A gangplank leads from the grassy shallows onto the deck of the boat. In the middle of the plank stands Kadija, arms folded, feet apart, gazing out across the marshy riverbank.

  ‘What’s she waiting for?’ I whisper to Yusuf.

  ‘Me,’ he says. ‘This is the last trunk.’

  ‘Where are the rest?’

  ‘Bottom deck.’

  Yes, he’s telling the truth. I can make out the stacks of metal trunks from here – hundreds of them.

  ‘How many people on board?’

  ‘Just Kadi and the driver.’

  Just Kadi and the driver. I can finish this on my own.

  Yusuf’s phone begins to buzz. He takes the call and a grin spreads across his face.

  ‘Alhamdulillah,’ he whispers. ‘That was my father. Kamisa has been freed!’

  ‘Good.’

  Good for jihad is what I mean. The very soul of Timbuktu in return for one little girl. Of course my master agreed to the exchange.

  ‘Give me your veil and your outer robe,’ I say. ‘And drop your phone in the water.’

  He does as he is told.

  I wave my rifle towards the north. ‘Go home,’ I whisper. ‘And don’t make any noise, or I will shoot you in the back.’

  He turns and starts to wade away, skinnier than ever in his T-shirt and shorts. I watch him every step of the way, disappearing silently into the night.

  As soon as he is gone, I don his outer robe and the diamanté veil, hoist the metal trunk onto my head and wade towards the ferry. My eyes are fixed on Kadi all the way.

  Thirty paces from the gangplank, she sees me coming. I half expect her to cry out in alarm – I am stronger than her cousin and a little taller – but the robe and veil and manuscript trunk are doing their job, for now.

  ‘You took your time!’ she calls to me. ‘Is that the last one?’

  I nod.

  ‘No sign of the Ninjas?’

  I shake my head. I am fifteen paces from the gangplank now, and Kadija has gone very still.

  Ten paces.

  Her posture stiffens, then she turns on her heel and runs aboard.

  She knows.

  I lunge forward, splashing through the marsh grass to the foot of the gangplank.

  ‘Crank the engine!’ she yells.

  Down in the bowels of the boat, a massive diesel engine throbs into life, and the colossal paddle wheel behind the boat begins to turn.

  I clatter up the gangplank with the trunk still on my head. The engine growls. The ferry tugs against its mooring ropes, jolting the gangplank so that I lurch and stagger. The trunk slips off my head into the water down below.

  Kadija runs to the bow with a machete and severs the mooring rope with a single swipe. The ferry’s nose swings out into the river, the gangplank shifts and slides, and now I am down on my hands and knees, crawling up the plank towards the deck.

  ‘More throttle!’ cries Kadija, sprinting along the gangway to the sternward mooring rope.

  The engine roars, the rope pulls taut, and although I do not see the second swing of the knife I hear a sound like the twang of an enormous kora. The ferry lurches forward. The gangplank slides off the edge of the gunwale, and plummets, with me, into the murky water.

  I reach out and touch the ferry’s hull, but there is nothing to hold onto and it slides away from me, accelerating towards the middle of the river.

  ‘Goodbye, Ali!’ Kadija calls. ‘I love you!’

  Insolent, sarcastic, godless girl! She thinks she’s won. She thinks I’ll hang my head in shame and wade on up to solid land.

  She’s wrong. Water holds no terror for me, or for any son of Goundam. As a child I used to swim in Lake Débo every day, playing Waterdog and Eel Tag with my friends. Now that I am a man, it’s time to play Eel Tag for real. I tear the veil from my face, kick the flip-flops off my feet, and start to swim.

  When I came to Kabara as a child, I witnessed something extraordinary. I saw a tigerfish leap out of the river and catch a bronze-winged mannikin in flight.

  Tonight, inshallah, that tigerfish is me. My eyes are good. My fins are powerful. My jaws are razor sharp. My body lifts out of the water, I take a gulp of air, my shoulders swing forward like twin pistons and my arms plunge down into the roiling river. Up and down, up and down, I power through the ferry’s seething wake.

  When the ferry reaches the middle of the river, the driver opens the throttle as far as it will go. The paddle wheel rotates faster and faster, churning the river into boiling ink.

  I am swimming downriver with the current but the ferry is too fast. My arms are burning, my shoulder blades tightening, and the boat is a shrinking silhouette against the moonlit sky.

  I swim on all the same.

  I swim on because I am a tigerfish and my prey is still in sight.

  I swim on because the treasure aboard that boat belongs to Timbuktu, and Timbuktu belongs to us.

  I swim on because no paddle wheel in the world can out-propel a warrior of God.

  I swim on because I know this stretch of river. Just beneath the surface, mudflats lurk.

  At long last, I hear ahead of me the sounds I have been longing for: a watery slap, a grinding of gravel and gears, a mechanical whine and a clunk. And then no sound at all, apart from the splash of my own arms in the water and the whirr of insects on the riverbank.

  My strength is spent, my calves are cramping, my fingers are clawed with cold, but my heart rejoices. The ferry has run aground.

  Spurred on by hope of victory, I press on through the dark until I reach the ferry. I grab the severed mooring rope and haul myself over the gunwale. Alhamdulillah! I lie on my side on the edge of the cargo deck, panting and dry-retching and praising God, sodden clothes clinging to my body.

  Kadija is standing over me with the knife she used to cut the mooring ropes. She could kill me right now if she wanted to. She won’t, of course. I know her, and she won’t.

  ‘Foofo,’ I pant.

  ‘Foofo,’ she says.

  Another minute passes, then I gesture towards the stacks of manuscript trunks. ‘Smuggling national treasures is against the law.’

  ‘Only if they leave the country,’ she replies. ‘There is nothing illegal about moving private property within Mali’s borders.’

  I can think of a hundred clever retorts, but I am much too out of breath to carry on talking. I sit up and reach for my toes to try to ease the cramping in my calves. The river is still and silent, and the full moon hangs low in the west, glinting on Kadija’s knife.

  Hurrying footsteps sound from the engine room below, and a moment later a man appears behind Kadija. It is Tijani Traoré, the swarthy ferryman from Niafunké. Everybody knows Tijani. He has driven the Comanav ferry for more than thirty years.

  I get to my feet and shrug the rifle off my back. AK-47s work perfectly even when they’re waterlogged.

  ‘Kadi, throw the knife overboard,’ I say.

  She does as she is told, swinging her arm to lob the machete high into the air. It turns over and over and lands in the river with a plop.

  ‘Now listen, both of you,’ I say. ‘These manuscripts of yours are not good for Timbuktu. Apart from that one Al-Fatiha, what use are they? Childish fairy tales, senseless superstitions, outdated astronomy, irrelevant laws, the ramblings of senile old men. Half of them are unreadable, anyway – the termites have seen to that.’

  Kadija shrugs. ‘If a man can’t see the sun at noon, don’t try to show him.’

  The ferryman sniggers at the proverb.

  ‘Shut up!’ I shout at him, pointing the muzzle of my gun at his midriff. ‘I’m not the blind one, Traoré, you are! You should have known that the river from here to Gao is full of mudflats. If you had gone west towards Mopti, you would have avoided the mudflats, and I would have been swimming against the current. I could never have caught up with you.’

  ‘True, very true.’

 
‘And Mopti is still government-controlled, so you would have been safe there, whereas Gao—’ I break off, amazed at their stupidity.

  ‘Whereas Gao is controlled by Al Qaeda,’ says the ferryman. ‘He’s right, Kadija. Even if we had reached Gao, we would not have lasted five minutes.’

  ‘This is your fault, Tijani!’ cries Kadija. ‘You told me you knew the river like your own arm.’

  ‘It’s not my fault, it’s yours!’ the ferryman yells back. ‘It was you who insisted that your cousin wear that stupid veil. Those diamanté panels stand out a mile, even in the dark, you know they do! If he hadn’t worn that veil, none of this would have happened!’

  They are pretending to argue, but their teeth are shining in the moonlight. They are grinning their heads off.

  Why are they so happy? What have I missed?

  The morning prayer call blares from the minaret of a faraway mosque. I grasp my rifle in both hands and force my tired brain to think. Why head downriver towards Gao, when they knew it wasn’t deep enough? Why strand themselves deliberately? And why choose such a conspicuous veil? It’s almost like they wanted me to find Yusuf.

  A dreadful thought occurs to me. I stumble to my feet. ‘Give me the keys, Kadija!’ I cry. ‘Give me the keys to the padlocks!’

  ‘What padlocks? The trunks aren’t locked.’

  My heart is galloping as I walk to the manuscript stacks. The dark river pulsates at the edges of my vision. She’s right, there are no padlocks. I lift down a trunk from the nearest stack, drag it into the moonlight, lift the lid.

  Carrots.

  I open another.

  Cabbages.

  There is charcoal in the third and fourth, and salt in the fifth.

  ‘Where are they?’ I cry. ‘Kadija, where are the manuscripts?’

  ‘Heading west,’ she smiles. ‘Like you just said, Mopti is definitely the best place for them.’

  I think of the rafts at Kabara, and the porters with their bundles, crates and sacks. Bundles of salt tablets with manuscripts interspersed. Crates of manuscripts with vegetables on top. Sacks of manuscripts with coal on top. They have smuggled twelve thousand manuscripts out of Timbuktu right under my nose.

  I take my waterlogged phone out of my pocket and try to switch it on. It’s dead, of course.

  ‘Your phones,’ I tell them. ‘Give me your phones right now.’

  Kadija and the ferryman exchange a glance, take out their phones and lob them in the river.

  ‘No!’ I shout.

  These last two weeks I have been shot by Kadija’s musket, beaten up by her friends, lashed by Muhammad Zaarib, tripped up on the vault stairs, mocked and lied to more times than I can count, but this is the greatest humiliation of them all. This will be talked about in Timbuktu for years to come. For centuries, perhaps.

  ‘I broke your cousin’s nose,’ I tell her. It is small comfort, but it is all I have.

  Kadija shrugs. ‘I will kiss it better for him.’

  I stand there impotent, clicking my knuckles. The ferryman sits down on a trunk of cabbages and folds his arms. It is too dark to see his expression, but I can feel his contempt. It comes at me in waves, like the lapping of the river on the ferry’s hull.

  Kadi walks up close to me, close enough to speak without being overheard.

  ‘Abdullai,’ she whispers, looking up at me. ‘I’m sorry for pretending you attacked me. When my cousin turned up, I got scared. If my parents found out what really happened, they would never let me be a Guardian.’

  I turn my back on her, dig the butt of my rifle into my right shoulder and fire thirty rounds into the air on full automatic.

  ‘Master!’ I yell. ‘I’m here! Come quickly, master!’

  An hour later, with the sky beginning to lighten in the east, Redbeard arrives in a fishing boat with an outboard motor. Jabir and Hamza are with him.

  ‘Well done, Ali Konana!’ he cries, climbing up and hauling himself over the rail. ‘You’ve caught them red-handed.’

  ‘No,’ I mutter miserably. ‘They’ve tricked us, master.’

  I show him the trunks of vegetables and he glowers at them silently, shaking his head as if trying to wake from a nightmare. Redbeard is not used to losing. He doesn’t know how.

  At last, he finds his voice. ‘Stupid boy,’ he hisses, and it hurts.

  ‘Sorry, master.’

  ‘These are the tricksters, are they?’ Redbeard gestures at Kadi and the ferryman. ‘What are their names?’

  I tell him.

  Redbeard walks up close to them and folds his arms. ‘Well done, Ali Konana,’ he says. ‘You’ve caught them red-handed.’

  ‘No, master, I told you—’

  ‘Kadija Diallo and Tijani Traoré,’ says Redbeard. ‘You are both under arrest.’

  Kadi giggles. ‘For what? For smuggling cabbages?’

  ‘No,’ says Redbeard slowly. ‘For fornication.’

  Surely not. He must be joking.

  But Kadi is no longer giggling. ‘On what evidence?’

  ‘You know very well, Kadija. A young unmarried girl cavorting alone with a ferryman in the middle of the Niger river before the call to prayer has even sounded from the mosque?’

  ‘We weren’t cavorting!’

  ‘Let Al-Qadi Zaarib be the judge of that.’

  ‘He’s not a qadi!’ She stamps her foot. ‘And he hates women, you know he does. I won’t have a chance.’

  ‘No,’ says Redbeard, considering her point. ‘No, I suppose you won’t.’

  Kadija slumps down on a metal trunk and puts her face in her hands.

  ‘Hamza, start the motor!’ calls Redbeard. ‘Ali, guard the prisoners!’

  I stand over Kadi with my gun, and the scent of oleander makes me want to cry.

  ‘Abdullai,’ she whispers. ‘Are you going to let them punish me for a lie?’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘The real you has a choice,’ she whispers. ‘The real you loves football and music and—’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And me.’

  We bundle our prisoners into the boat and motor back towards Kabara Port. The sun is rising in the east. Fat-necked jacana birds tiptoe across water lilies. Silhouetted fishermen stand tall in dugout canoes, casting their nets to fall in perfect circles on the river top.

  Hamza is more cheerful than I have ever seen him. ‘In the name of God,’ he keeps saying, ‘this night will be numbered among the most glorious raiding expeditions in Muslim history.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I tell him.

  Shutting up is the last thing on his mind. ‘From this night on,’ he declares, ‘the troubadours of Timbuktu will no longer speak of Nedj, where Zayd Haritha seized a hundred thousand dirhams of gold. They will speak no longer of the thousand silver camels of Al-Is, or the fifty thousand dinars at the oasis of Badr. No, they will speak of Kabara, where the great Ali Konana seized’ – he pauses for effect – ‘five thousand shining cabbages!’

  Back in Timbuktu, Muhammad Zaarib meets us at the entrance to the police station.

  ‘Fornication on a ferry,’ he says, rubbing his hands. ‘Were there witnesses?’

  ‘Me,’ says Redbeard, ‘and Ali Konana here.’

  ‘They are lying!’ Kadi shouts. ‘They’re upset because I smuggled my manuscripts out of Timbuktu and made them look stupid.’

  Zaarib doesn’t even look at her. ‘One hundred lashes,’ he says. ‘That’s a first for Timbuktu. Put her in the cell and we will punish her this afternoon, inshallah.’

  One hundred lashes. They’re actually going ahead with this. I didn’t say anything on the ferry because I assumed my master would change his mind as soon he calmed down. Surely he knows as well as I do that false accusation is the worst kind of lie.

  ‘What about the ferryman?’ Redbeard is saying. ‘Should we lash him too?’

  ‘We can’t have them sharing a cell,’ says Zaarib. ‘It would be improper. Let him go with a warning, just this once.’

  �
��You heard him, Tijani Traoré,’ says Redbeard. ‘Off you go.’

  The swarthy ferryman blinks and shakes his head, but he does not dispute the ruling. Like a sleepwalker he moves away stiff-legged into Independence Square.

  ‘Tell Mama I’m here!’ Kadija shouts at his retreating back. ‘Tell her the charges are false!’

  ‘God and I will be the judge of that,’ says Zaarib.

  God and I. The phrase trips off his tongue so easily.

  A strange sensation comes over me. I am out of my body, floating in a haze of heat above the shimmering square. I see scrubby acacia trees, a headless djinni atop a horse, and a cluster of humans on the steps of a police station. Five black turbans, one black veil, and swirling within those swathes of black are anger, pride, dismay and dread. Unholy, all of it.

  Redbeard’s voice brings me harshly back to ground. ‘Tell me, Ali Konana, when did you last sleep?’

  ‘I don’t know. The day before yesterday, I think.’

  ‘That’s why you look so terrible,’ says Redbeard. ‘Let’s go back to camp.’

  I walk at my master’s side. The silence between us is heavy and sullen. Some words from the Book are pounding in my head: Those who malign believing men and believing women undeservedly, they bear the guilt of slander and manifest sin.

  Near the gate of our camp, my master turns to me and scowls. ‘War is deceit,’ he snaps. ‘Not my words. The Prophet’s.’

  I say nothing. I long to talk to Omar, or even to my father back in Goundam. He is spiritually obtuse, of course, but I wouldn’t mind hearing his voice.

  As we enter through the gates of the camp, Redbeard takes a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his outer robe, glances at it briefly and drops it into the metal barrel that we use for burnable rubbish.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he says to me, and hurries off into his private quarters.

  I stay beside the barrel. As soon as my master is gone, I reach inside and pluck the paper out. Yes, just what I thought, it’s the mislaid manuscript we found behind that bookcase in the vault.

  Beside the sorry remains of Tamba-Tamba’s tomb, I sit on my mat to examine the manuscript. The single page is crammed with fine calligraphy, with a rust brown footnote scrawled beneath. The footnote reads: