Muezzinland (18 page)

"But…"

"Al-Uzza, the Old Woman, is enshrined in the Ka'aba." Saying this, Gmoulaye drew back the upper part of her desert robe to expose a black shirt. "Thus I identify with Al-Uzza, and devote myself to her."

Although Nshalla knew sudden image transitions were possible only to shapeshifters and illusionists, it seemed to her that Gmoulaye's skin became browner and her nose less flat, as if, deep inside, she had undergone a revelatory religious conversion. She shivered. This was a new form of change to her. She had thought that Gmoulaye, created as she was in the solid culture of the Akan, was inviolate with regard to the aether, but now it seemed that this was not true. Geography was changing her friend; not changing her inner core, for she remained a wise woman, rather changing the allegory by which she lived.

The aether was giving religion a new corporeal element. Morals were returning to the local scale on which they had first developed. The global age was already over. Was this a good or a bad thing? Nshalla did not know. If the aether could foster decentralisation and yet not drown the human condition in a storm of selfishness, then it was a good thing. But that did not seem very likely.

Nshalla recalled what she had learned about the decline of the West. Watching the rise of the new technology, watching it spread like a religion—like Islam itself fifteen centuries earlier—Western liberals had held up their hands in horror. The technology is taking over, they said. The technology is taking over.

Nshalla thought of Assane and the virtual people.

A sudden, aching nostalgia for home overcame her. Assane had exaggerated. Her mother was not all bad. No parent was perfect. Suddenly, she regretted her decision to pursue Mnada. Looking at and listening to Gmoulaye provoked all these thoughts, and generated sadness at how her life had become less secure.

Gmoulaye said in a soft voice, "I still remain me. I am who I am. It is just the metaphor that has changed."

"You don't understand. If you, if good old dependable,
solid
Gmoulaye can change, then what about me? Have I got a core like you've got? What if I change? I don't want to change, I want to stay me."

"You will."

"What if I took in too many influences when I grew up? The palace was cosmopolitan, there were people coming in and out from different places." She shuddered. "And my father was an
Irish
man. Who am I?"

"Nshalla."

"You've no idea how I sometimes envied your little village. It was like a doll's house to me. I hated the palace because it was so big and people were distant. I sometimes think I took little pieces of other people, of their cultures, to make myself. I had to, I had no parents. There was my nanny, of course. But no child is born with identity. You have to create it from relationships, from your parents. All I had was a stew of different people, bright, exotic, never lasting, never staying for long. Nothing close and stable for me."

"But—"

"And that's why I've dealt so well with the trek. The changing lands, the cultures, they haven't affected me like they've affected you. That's because inside I'm a patchwork, not solid like you."

Gmoulaye shook her head. "You are too harsh on yourself."

"Patchworks can be torn easily, not like good, strong fabric."

"Identity does not just come from culture," Gmoulaye said. "It comes from relationships, yes, but also from within. Creativity brings identity. You are creative. You and Mnada both wanted to paint and sculpt. That desire is still in you. It is part of who you are."

"But what painting have I done?"

Gmoulaye shrugged. "Nobody loses what they find in childhood. But often the template becomes blurred, or lost."

This seemed like an admission of defeat from Gmoulaye. Nshalla turned away, saddened, yet determined.

Nshalla and Gmoulaye had been placed on the two rear camels, smaller creatures carrying less. Said Mohammad had guarenteed their safety after talking with the caravanserai leader. Nshalla saw something, money or a small gift, changing hands, but when she questioned him he denied it, and she did not know if she should take his bashfulness as touching or suspicious.

So they departed the oasis. Nshalla was not sure what country they were in, if they were in any at all. Here, the oases held sway, controlling surrounding territory, but in between lay nobody's land. Timbuktu had marked the last proper country. But the sense of melancholy that had fallen upon her lifted as they plodded north, and she turned her attention to the stark beauty of the dunes—there being nothing else to look at. They were at least proceeding in the right direction.

On the fourth day they reached Bir Ounane Oasis. Simoon dust storms patrolled the desert, whipping up the sand so that they had to cover their faces else choke on grit and dust. The lengthy seif dunes were churned up. Clouds appeared on the horizon, but no storms developed. The camels plodded on.

Now the land gradually began to rise. They were heading towards a great spur between the sandy vastness of the Ijafene to the south west and the Erg Chech to the north east. Two days later they entered the sprawling Dglats de Khenachiche Oasis, a stopping point where the camels were loaded with more bartering goods until they groaned under the weight. This oasis of silty pools and crisping date palms was unkempt, run, if that was the word, by a single family ruled by a sheikh so ancient he remembered the era of the global village. Amazed, Nshalla and Gmoulaye listened to stories of radio waves circumnavigating the Earth and carrying music, of transputers so big they could not be carried, and of the spread of biograins and the aether on the wings of a technophilic Islam.

It was at Dglats de Khenachiche Oasis that the extent of the making of the gods became plain.

The claims of the Songhai shamen had been true. On the evening of their arrival the population of the oasis walked en masse to a scattered set of buildings on the northern edge, where lay four giant scaffolds. Within each was a dark tub, something like a huge water butt. Had Nshalla realised what lay inside, she might have done something, but it was too late. From the aether a quartet of virtual people materialised, Bambara shamen that Nshalla recognised from the research she had done with her transputer database. Around the scaffolds stood human shamen, also from the Bambara people. They were some distance from their homeland in Western Mali, but Nshalla knew why they had come. Their gods were about to appear.

In minutes, four shapes were climbing like primeval beasts from the tubs, bioplas evaporating from their caustic bodies, aether symbols rocketing into the air like fireworks—spirals, fire, earth, acacia, antelope, all the true symbols of the Bambara. There was Ngala, the creator, and the water god Faro, Teliko of the hot desert wind, and the earth goddess Muso Koroni, the black leopard. When all were free, the populace ran in terror.

Nshalla and Gmoulaye ran too. Having seen what Sajara could do, they were not keen to repeat the experience. At dawn next day they rejoined the camel train.

So they departed the oasis with an unknown future ahead. Nshalla fell into the depths of depression, aware that, day after day after day, the Empress was winning and they were becoming less effective. Five gods had appeared in the world. She was just a woman.

~

The next four days were peaceful. The desert changed from sandy orange to a crystalline yellow and grey grit as they approached the hamada at Taoudenni. They began to see other people and other camels. Taoudenni was a large settlement, a proper town despite its location in the middle of the Sahara.

On the fourth day they arrived. They slipped away before any of the men had a chance to shepherd them to dubious places. Their plan was to locate other camel trains making north.

Taoudenni was a mixture of stone houses, shanty huts and rickety structures of mud and straw. Camels lay around pools. Goats and fowl went as they pleased along the streets. The people were quiet, docile even, as though ruined by poverty. They stared as Nshalla and Gmoulaye walked through dusty lanes, as if they could see through the robes the women wore.

Scouting the northern lanes of the settlement Gmoulaye noticed a large group of camels lying under date palms. They approached, hoping to find who owned the beasts, then noticed a tall herder with white robes and wrapped face waving at them from behind one of the camels. Hopefully, they walked forwards.

There were huts at the low escarpment to their right. From one of these a giant of a man emerged, half naked, sweating like a slave. He bellowed at them.

They stopped. Nshalla felt tension in the air.

The tall camel-herder took off his head wrap.

I-C-U Tompieme. He laughed, face to the sky, staggering like a drunkard.

And he taunted them. "The gods are free! Mnada is mine." He chuckled for a moment, then continued, "All she had to do was look within herself if she wanted to find Muezzinland. That was all! But now she is mine. And you I shall consign to history. Fare painfully and in darkness, Princess Nshalla."

Roughly the huge man grabbed them both. They struggled, but his grip was unbreakable. Into the hut he pulled them, and they were horrified to see a shaft cut into the rock behind it, a shaft that sloped down into the ground.

The brute laughed as he pushed them into the shaft, where two other men grabbed them. "It's the salt mine for you, my dears. We don't like foreigners here. Take them away."