Blood & Ink Read online

  ‘It’s not going to cave in, is it, Baba?’

  ‘Impossible,’ says Baba, ‘inshallah.’

  ‘It won’t cave in,’ says Mama firmly. ‘Remember God, and do not let worry gain a foothold. That’s what Imam Cissé told us.’

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ says Baba. ‘We should do dhikr.’

  He tightens the wick of the paraffin lamp so that the flame shrinks to a frail orange glow. We sit down on the cool earth floor and hold hands.

  ‘Hasbi rabijal Allah,’ says Baba. ‘Our defence is in God.’

  ‘Hasbi rabijal Allah,’ we repeat. ‘Hasbi rabijal Allah. Hasbi rabijal Allah…’

  My racing heart begins to slow. At first I am aware of the Arabic syllables and the light touch of my parents’ hands, but soon my tongue takes over and I speak the words without thinking about them. Before long I forget my parents, and then I forget myself.

  Our defence is in God. In my mind’s eye I see Timbuktu cocooned within a bead of amber. Our defence is in God.

  Wisdom of Timbuktu #4: At the beginning of a session, you do dhikr. By the end, dhikr does you.

  Manuscript 11045: the tariq of Sidi Yahya

  One Friday night in the year 1440, the imam of the Sankoré Mosque had a dream. He dreamed that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was telling him to build a third mosque in Timbuktu. He shared his dream with the city elders, and they decided to build a new mosque between the Djinguereber Mosque and the Sankoré Mosque.

  ‘Where will we find an imam for the new mosque?’ people asked.

  ‘God will provide an imam,’ the elders replied.

  The front door of the mosque remained locked for several years, and then one evening a holy man arrived from Oualata in Mauritania. He was dressed all in white and was followed by three camels and a well-washed band of students.

  ‘Where are the keys to this mosque?’ he asked.

  Recognizing the man as God’s intended imam for the new mosque, the neighbours of the mosque gave him the keys.

  The man was Sidi Yahya.

  Sidi Yahya lived a simple life in Timbuktu. He had no riches, animals or commerce. Whenever he received a gift, whether sugar, cotton or gold, he gave it immediately to the poor.

  One day an old woman came to see Sidi Yahya. ‘Man of God and sheikh of sheikhs,’ she said, ‘have pity on a poor servant of God who has lost all hope.’

  Sidi Yahya was moved by the woman’s tears and he prayed to God on her behalf. When at last he opened his eyes he saw a company of djinn passing in front of his gate on their way to a djinni wedding.

  ‘Dear woman,’ he said, ‘I want you to imagine you are at a wedding ceremony. Open your mouth and let your tongue trill to high heaven.’

  The woman could not see the djinn, but she did what the saint commanded. Although she was feeling sad and hopeless, she raised her head, closed her eyes and began to ululate.

  ‘Yu-yu-yu-yu-yu!’ trilled the old woman, and the populace of Timbuktu wondered at the sound.

  All of a sudden a whirlwind of dust began to gyrate in the air. Out of the centre of the wind flew a purple velvet pouch, landing with a thud in the old woman’s lap. She opened her eyes, undid the drawstrings of the pouch and stared, for the pouch was brimming with grains of purest gold.

  May the blessings of Sidi Yahya be upon us all.

  When at last I open my eyes I see my namesake in the stars above me, wielding the good sword Zulfiqaar. The three bright stars of Ali’s belt shine down on me and bring me peace. Ali the warrior, Lion of God, protector of Muhammad at the battle of Uhud, commander at the Battle of Khaybar, glorious hero of the Battle of Hunayn. King of the Brave, Lion of God with the strength of God.

  Bursts of gunfire sputter near and far, with an occasional chest-filling boom from a grenade.

  The battle! The mission! It’s still going on!

  I jump to my feet – and collapse in pain.

  ‘Don’t try to stand,’ says a voice by my side. Omar is sitting cross-legged next to me, cradling an AK-47 in his lap.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You are in the military camp. You hurt your ankle when you fell, and you hit your head as well. Your battle is over, Ali.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Out,’ says Omar. ‘They are helping Litni and his men to secure the airport and the radio station. They told me to stay here and look after you.’

  ‘What about Redbeard? Is he here yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I sit up and rub my left ankle. ‘I fell, you say?’

  ‘Like Lucifer from heaven!’

  I should be out there, fighting shoulder to shoulder with my brothers. Instead, I am sitting here rubbing my useless ankles. I have imagined this battle a hundred times but never once did I see it like this.

  ‘The hard work is done,’ says Omar. ‘Praise be to God, the city has fallen.’

  There is no joy in his voice, only tiredness.

  ‘My namesake Ali slew twenty-seven men at the Battle of Badr,’ I say. ‘And I slew none at all.’

  ‘It does not matter,’ whispers Omar. ‘You threw the metal claw perfectly, just like in training. You gave us our way in.’

  ‘There are a thousand shepherds in Goundam who could have thrown the claw.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ says Omar. ‘Do you know what Chief Litni’s men are calling you?’

  ‘Idiot?’

  ‘No. They’re calling you Lee.’

  ‘So they should. It’s my warrior name.’

  ‘Not Ali, but Lee, as in Bruce Lee, the ninja in those movies we used to watch. They are calling us the Ninjas and they are calling you Lee.’

  My heart fills up with pride, but I must not let it show. ‘I’m nothing like Bruce Lee,’ I mutter. ‘Bruce Lee would never have fallen off that rope.’

  ‘If he got shot, he would.’

  Omar holds the backlight of his phone to my goatskin satchel and shows me a small round hole in the leather. Then he reaches into the satchel and pulls out my grenade.

  The grenade rattles when he shakes it.

  ‘There’s something trapped inside,’ I say.

  ‘Correct, my friend. Your grenade stopped a musket ball!’

  I grab his phone and shine the light on a tiny hole in the grenade casing.

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ I gasp. ‘Why didn’t the musket ball set the grenade off?’

  ‘Once the casing of a grenade gets punctured, it can’t explode, not even if you pull the pin.’

  ‘Allahu Akbar.’

  ‘You should keep it as a souvenir,’ says Omar. ‘God loves you, Ali Konana.’

  Still clutching the miracle grenade, I lie down and close my eyes. My head and my ankle are throbbing. Tiredness spreads warmly through my body, mingling with the pain.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone about the grenade,’ I hear myself murmur as I fall asleep. ‘Let it be a secret between ourselves and God.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And Omar—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell them to stop calling me Lee. Movies are haram.’

  When I wake again, prayer calls are blaring from nearby mosques. As soon as I make out the cadences of one call, another overtakes it, like shepherds singing a round. They have guts, these prayer callers. In any other city, the callers would lock themselves in their houses during a battle, and the townspeople would miss all five of their appointments with God.

  I open my eyes and see the Scorpion directly above me. The Scorpion constellation is always chasing Ali the warrior across the sky, but it never catches him. When the Scorpion rises in the east, Ali sets in the west, and so it will be for all eternity. Ali is blessed. He always gets away.

  I see the grenade in my right hand and remember what Omar said about my near escape from death. I rub my thumb over the tortoiseshell grooves. God loves you, Ali Konana.

  ‘Good morning,’ says Omar.

  ‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Is Redbeard here yet?’

  ‘No, not y
et.’

  The sky is beginning to lighten in the east, and I can make out the shapes of men moving round the camp. Charcoal stoves glow in the lingering dark, and the bitter smell of Tuareg tea hangs in the air. Chief Litni’s men brought their teapots and stoves in their kit bags alongside their grenades and ammunition. Tea addicts, every one of them.

  Omar is sitting with his back against a squat mud-brick pyramid.

  ‘Is that Tamba-Tamba’s shrine?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Omar. ‘His bones protect the garrison from attack. They seem to have failed this time.’

  Omar brings a bowl of water for morning prayer. I wash my hands three times, and then my mouth, nose, ears and feet. When Omar washes his hands I can’t help noticing the blood under his nails.

  ‘Yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Hilal’s.’ Omar takes a deep breath. ‘We buried him just before sunrise.’

  ‘God!’ I cry. The word comes from deep within me, a long drawn-out groan of grief and prayer. Hilal the jester is dead. We will never laugh again.

  ‘Paradise has been decorated for him,’ quotes Omar softly, ‘and beautiful women are calling upon him – “Come, oh commander with the order of God” – and they are dressed in their best attire.’

  ‘Where is Hamza?’

  ‘He has gone back to his village, to give his parents the news.’

  Omar’s voice is close to breaking, and mine as well. If we talk any more, we will cry, and that would shame us both. So instead we pray. I lean on him to recite Al-Fatiha, and then we kneel to pray.

  I think of Hilal’s brother trudging across the dunes towards Lake Débo, his feet entrenched in sand, his heart in grief.

  At breakfast time, Redbeard is still not here. Omar and I eat dates and peanuts, while ragged vultures gaze down on us from the top of the wall.

  Omar tells me more about the battle. He tells me I was shot by a sniper on a nearby roof, but he can’t remember which one.

  ‘Hamza dragged you to safety,’ he says, ‘and the rest of us went over the wall, just like we planned. Hilal was first, but he spent too long rigging the rappel rope. A sentry saw him.’

  ‘The sentry shot Hilal?’

  ‘Yes.’ Omar winces at the memory. ‘And I shot the sentry.’

  ‘You shot the sentry?’

  ‘I got lucky,’ he shrugs. ‘After that, it was easy. We split into two groups, like Redbeard taught us. Four of us laid down covering fire and the other four rappelled down the rope and fought through to the gates.’

  ‘Allahu Akbar,’ I murmur. ‘God is great.’

  ‘Once we got to the gates and opened them for Litni and his men, the infidels had no chance. Eight got shot in the battle, and the rest of them surrendered.’

  ‘What happened to the ones who surrendered?’

  Omar takes a date stone out of his mouth and throws it across the compound. ‘The Tuaregs shot them.’

  I stare at him. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘You know what Tuaregs are like.’

  I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to hear any more. Executing prisoners of war was never part of our training. The thought of it makes me feel sick.

  When I open my eyes at last, Omar is still munching dates.

  ‘They can’t do that,’ I say weakly. ‘It’s against God’s law.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘There are two schools of thought.’

  With Omar there are always two schools of thought. He probably thinks there are two schools of thought about whether sand is sandy.

  The Ninjas return jubilant. They have helped the Tuaregs to secure the airport and the radio station, and now they have a few hours to eat, sleep and swap battle stories. They have brought me bandages and painkillers from a nearby pharmacy.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I did not think the pharmacies would be open for business this morning.’

  ‘The Tuaregs have opened everything for business,’ laughs a buck-toothed Ninja called Jabir. ‘They are roaming around town taking whatever they want. Food. Cars. Sheep. It’s crazy out there.’

  ‘Looting!’ I drop the pharmacy bag in the dust. ‘It’s common theft.’

  ‘Actually,’ says Omar, ‘it could be interpreted as ghazwa, raiding, which would be—’

  ‘Shut up, Omar,’ I say, reaching into my satchel for my phone. ‘I’m calling Redbeard.’

  I try several times before getting through, but at last Redbeard answers. He is pleased that we have taken Timbuktu but he is angry about the executions and the looting. ‘We work with Chief Litni because he is useful,’ he says, ‘but his soldiers are not fit to call themselves Muslims. A thug who prays five times a day is still a thug.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Do nothing,’ says Redbeard. ‘We will be with you in three days. Keep yourselves pure and wait for—’

  The line goes dead. I have run out of credit.

  ‘Three days!’ I cry. ‘Redbeard is planning to come in three days. That wasn’t the plan. What is he doing in the desert that needs three days?’

  ‘It’s simple,’ says Jabir. ‘He wants life in Timbuktu to get worse before it gets better. When he carries the black standard into town three days from now, the people of Timbuktu will welcome him like a saviour. He’s a clever old fox, is Redbeard.’

  ‘He’s not an old fox,’ I snap. ‘He’s our master. Show some respect.’

  Jabir glances at my ankles, and I can tell what he’s thinking: What did you do in the Battle of Timbuktu, Ali? Did you sleep well?

  I lie down and close my eyes. My ankle is throbbing, and my head as well.

  Maybe I will take those painkillers after all. When my ankle is better I will go to the pharmacy and pay in full.

  Later that morning we go on patrol in three Save the Children pickup trucks. Litni and his men take the comfortable seats inside the trucks, and we have to ride in a trailer. Omar and the others lift me into the trailer and then hop in themselves. It’s a squash, and the metal underneath us is already hot from the sun.

  The trucks drive out of the gates of the military camp and into the dusty streets of Timbuktu.

  I already know this city a little bit. My parents used to bring me here on the feast days of Tabaski and Mouloud, to pray and celebrate with the multitudes. On those special days, everyone was dressed to impress in their pristine feast-day robes. There were women crouching at the side of the road making pancakes, young men selling coffee and cassettes, old men grasping each other’s hands and elbows in respectful greeting.

  Back in those days, there were tourists too – men and women with lopsided turbans and sunburned noses. The men wore T-shirts and shorts like little boys, and the women had bare shoulders. The people of Timbuktu seemed to love the tourists, even though they talked loudly, took photos without asking and had no fear of God in them at all. With my own eyes I saw a white man saunter into the Sidi Yahya Mosque without even taking his sandals off. But when Muhammad Zaarib and his gang started kidnapping tourists and holding them for ransom, the tourists stopped coming to Timbuktu, God be praised.

  Today the streets of the city are deserted. Sometimes I catch a pair of eyes peering from a crack in a door or between shuttered windows – dark, fearful eyes which appear for a moment and then disappear again.

  We drive through Independence Square and past the square turrets of the Sidi Yahya Mosque. The Grand Market is still and silent, and many of the shop fronts have been vandalised. Corrugated iron frontings have been torn to shreds by pickaxes, and the empty shelves within bear witness to a morning of frenzied looting. Rice, palm oil, tea, sugar, dates, biscuits – the Tuaregs have taken everything. Even the charcoal market has been plundered for the sake of morning tea.

  I used to love coming to Timbuktu, even if it was only once or twice a year. There were table footballs on every corner. There were televisions showing distant football matches. There were pretty girls with tattoo
ed lips and earrings the size of oranges. Best of all, on the corner of the Grand Market, there was a fiery cabinet of whole roasting chickens which sizzled and crackled as they rotated on their skewers. I bought one once, and squatted out of sight behind a donkey cart and ate the whole thing there and then. Paradise.

  I was wrong to think that Timbuktu was paradise. I can see clearly now, thanks to Redbeard, and I know what a dustbowl of godlessness the city is.

  We drive round the Well of Old Bouctou, back through Independence Square and then up Askia Avenue. Like everywhere else, the avenue is deserted.

  As we pass under the shadow of the Djinguereber Mosque, I close my eyes and wince.

  ‘Ankle?’ asks Omar.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Memories.’

  Two years ago my parents took me and my sister to Timbuktu on the Feast Day of Mouloud, the birthday of the Prophet. The crowds in the streets around the Djinguereber Mosque were massive. Too many people in too small a space, squeezed together like goats in a market truck, and the pressure increasing all the time. None of us saw the danger until it was upon us. One moment we were rubbing shoulders and singing, then suddenly we were jostling and shouting and fighting for breath. ‘Don’t let yourself go under!’ That’s what my mother kept screaming. ‘Don’t let yourself go under!’

  I grabbed my sister under her arms and hoisted her up until she was half above the crowd. Someone else got hold of her foot and pushed her clear. ‘Head for the wall, Safi!’ I shouted, and off she went, too dazed to cry, clambering over people’s shawls and turbans to safety.

  The boy next me – a young Qur’anic student – was not so lucky. With his blue lips and dilated pupils he looked more djinni than human. He was staring straight at me and his blue lips kept mouthing the same thing over and over: Wallam, wallam, wallam. Help me. But by now my arms were pinned to my sides and there was nothing I could do. The poor boy choked to death under an infinite blue sky, him and twenty-five others.

  After the Djinguereber Crush, our family never came to Timbuktu again. We stayed home in Goundam, even on feast days, and prayed with our neighbours in the tumbledown mosque on the shore of the lake.

  Our three patrol trucks arrive at the top of Askia Avenue, where the street widens out into a public square. On the north side of the square, with the sun shining fiercely on its whitewashed façade, stands the Ahmad Baba Library. A human chain surrounds the library. Young and old, women and men, the citizens of Timbuktu hold hands in the sweltering sun.