Muezzinland (36 page)

Coda

Several Weeks Later…

They camped in a pine grove outside Fes. Something in Mnada's expression told Nshalla that an end was approaching. It was a new face, more open, and it showed feelings of hope and sadness. Human feelings.

"What shall we do now?" Nshalla asked.

Mnada sat closer. Her voice was slurred, sibilant consonants now muddy th's. The stroke had impaired the language and speech centres that resided in what remained of her left cortex. "I've got to learn to understand myself. It's not selfish. It's got to be done. Then I really can be whole… or as whole as it's possible for me to be. I don't think normality is an option."

"What will you do?"

Mnada stood up and gazed east at the Atlas Mountains.

"What will you do?" Nshalla repeated, her voice edging into tension.

Mnada replied, "Oh, I've got alot of walking to do, alot of exploring. Sometimes adversity is useful. I'll walk over the Atlas Mountains, meeting the nomadic robots and their beasts of burden, perhaps dancing the ahidou or the ahouach with them before descending on the other side. Perhaps I'll follow the coastline into the lands of the triple polis, and then head off towards Beach Tunis." She paused, gazing up at the sky. "There'll be hardships but I'll endure them. I'll be goaded by my past, forced to walk, to experience, and perhaps to find peace. Maybe I'll go south back into the Sahara, where I first discovered the meaning of freedom, and maybe, just maybe, I'll eventually pass through and see Timbuktu once again. Anything's possible."

Nshalla's shoulders sagged, and she stared at the ground. Tears formed in her eyes. She looked up into the sky in an effort to quell them, but it did not work. "Then you'll be going alone?"

"I'll be going with myself."

"Don't you want me to come?"

Mnada smiled a lop-sided smile. Yet her face remained in repose, as if she had come out with immense wisdom from the heart of the storm. "I'd love you to come, but you can't. I couldn't have got where I am today without you. I'll never forget that. But now I have to seek deeper into myself, to find myself. It's not that I don't need you, rather the task is one for me alone. You know that."

"That's the trouble, I do," Nshalla said in misery.

Mnada shrugged. "It's the way it is."

"But I
want
to come with you. I don't want us to split up now, when we've succeeded!"

"You can't. You've got yourself to come to terms with."

Nshalla nodded. "I suppose I have."

"It is a task for you," Mnada concluded.

Faintly, Nshalla heard a thrumming noise, and she turned to see what might be making it. Far off, she saw a 'copter speeding to the grove, unmarked, unlit, but clearly a machine of purpose.

"Mother's found us!" she said, panicking.

Mnada held her shoulders. "No. I called it through the networks."

"But—"

"It belongs to a local sheikh who thinks he's lending it to somebody else."

"And you're going off in it? Now?"

Mnada shook her head. "It's for you. All you have to do is get in and speak your destination."

The 'copter landed, its rotors slowing until they chopped lightly at the air.

Mnada hugged her sister, then kissed her. "Goodbye. Thanks for coming after me."

Nshalla handed over the ROM megadisk that had coalesced from the collapsing Muezzinland. "I suppose this is yours, if it's anybody's."

Mnada put it in her pocket. "Perhaps."

Tears made vision difficult. Nshalla stood, devastated, hardly able to think. She blubbed, "But will we see each other again?"

"Maybe. I have a long walk ahead of me. Maybe I'll die before completing it. Who knows? Don't expect me, but don't forget me."

"But…"

"I have to do it."

"But… but I don't want you to go."

Mnada said, "I have to. My sanity depends on it. My self depends on it."

Nshalla nodded, aware that this was the truth, but grief stricken nonetheless. "Can't we stay in touch?"

"Later, maybe. Post a page in Accra. Call it… Ruari's page. I'll find it, if the networks will let me, when I'm ready. But you may have a brood of grandchildren by then."

Nshalla turned and looked at the 'copter. Gmoulaye was already inside. She turned. Mnada had retreated a few steps.

"Goodbye," said Mnada.

Nshalla could not answer. She turned and walked to the 'copter, then climbed in.

A masculine voice said, "Destination?"

Nshalla took a deep breath. She was about to say Accra, when a memory of that place came to her inner eye. She hesitated. Then she said, "Fly us to Ashanti City."

They landed some kilometres away from the city itself, in lightly forested country inhabited by monkeys and antelopes. The 'copter was silent as a dream.

The fits of weeping had departed, and, though Nshalla felt drained, and very hungry, she felt more a sense of nostalgia for this part of the world. The trees smelled familiar, and so did the soil. She was almost home.

She knew she would miss Mnada, but she recalled the dream they had shared in the weather dirigible, and she knew there was prophecy in those images.

It was time to focus on herself.

Accra was ten day's walk to the south. Time to start.

They wore inappropriate clothes, had no provisions and nothing to sell, but Nshalla was aflame with desire for rest, for stability, for
something familiar.
This was what she was searching for. Gmoulaye understood this, and although she too had a task, the sloughing of her Arabic skin and the rediscovery of herself, she was confident that she could do this through a process of dreaming and a slow return to the religion of her tribe. Nshalla for her part was not worried. Already Gmoulaye seemed different; more earthy, less worldly wise.

That night Gmoulaye gathered wild millet, earthpeas and yams from an abandoned plot. With ground cassava and plantain she made the sturdy Ghanaian fufu in a cracked calabash. Eating this brought a tear to Nshalla's eye.

They sat around their campfire. Water boiled in a can. The night was quiet, stridulating insects providing a subliminal curtain of sound, punctured now and again by monkey screams, the roars of distant carnivores, and the flap-flapping of bats. Attracted to the warmth, Nshalla stared into the fire, her thoughts meandering.

Gmoulaye chomped her supper and belched in satisfaction.

At length, Nshalla said, "Have you wondered why we're such friends?"

"Sometimes."

"We're so different. But I often think of you and wonder why we get on. I think I'm attracted to the tribal woman in you, the secure woman, if you like, who has a defined place. That's what I miss."

"You could have such a place," said Gmoulaye.

"I know. That's why I decided we had to walk back from Ashanti City. We have to rediscover ourselves through the land, through the plants and animals, and the people we meet. Landing at Accra would have fractured me inside. You, too."

Gmoulaye nodded, then said, "Do you think you are a worldly woman?"

Nshalla pondered this. "I was so frightened when we passed through all those different countries and it didn't change me. I thought I was an eternal wanderer. But I'm not. I need a stable home. I need a
home,
and it's got to be local, small, a village. Do you understand that?"

Gmoulaye nodded.

Nshalla hardly saw. "You must do, because that's what I'm attracted to in you. I want what you've got. I like that way of life. I'm not made to meet different people from different parts of Africa, I want something smaller. I almost envy that in you."

"I think you do," Gmoulaye said.

Nshalla helped herself to the left-overs in the calabash, as if the realisation of the tie with her locality had caused her to become hungry… which perhaps it had.

"But," she continued, "I couldn't live near Accra, it's too loaded with bad memories. I need something just out of range. A little village, just something ordinary."

Gmoulaye said nothing.

Nshalla laughed. "Don't worry, not your village."

Next morning they began the trek south. The forested land suited their leisurely pace well, and they paused often to gather daun, the aquatic potato, karou leaves, and wild rice. To Nshalla the land seemed healthy. She gathered henna and dyed the palms of her hands, using a lattice of dried leaves to make a simple template. She sniffed at the familiar tussocks of speargrass, kasuwa, and yama. Her senses told her what she had missed. It was a process of reaffirmation. She delighted even in the sensation of local grit in her teeth.

At a village they sold Gmoulaye's clothes, which were of comparatively rich cloth, giving them to the wife of the local chief so that she could make him sophisticated underwear. With the pittance of money gained they bought proper waterskins, and for Gmoulaye mbira, gongon and dondondo. This left just enough to buy a few velvet beans, aubergines, and a stock of okra to make stew with.

Gmoulaye again went naked, except for the minimal equipment she carried. It was a stage in her own rediscovery.

As they departed Nshalla noticed a young man. He had watched them during the bartering, his eyes drawn to Nshalla in particular, but Nshalla, though she noticed he was handsome, had not responded. However he followed them out into the woods, acting as a guide through what he claimed was land infested with snakes. Nshalla wondered if this was a ruse.

They camped early that night, and a hearty meal was made. Nshalla and the man, who teasingly refused to give his name, became slightly intoxicated, Nshalla knew not what from, and ended up alone under a tree. Suddenly passionate for him, Nshalla began the run-up to a seduction; but he knew what was coming. Under the tree they made love, pausing, dozing perhaps, then returning to their needs. Gmoulaye had disappeared into the woods long before.

He departed before dawn. Nshalla was pleased to see him go. She realised that the night had been part of an education, the education of herself, and he had been just a cipher for some process of healing in her mind. Charming though he was, enthusiastic though he had been, Nshalla laughed at him.

Gmoulaye appeared, carrying food that she had gathered. "Time for breakfast." She laughed. "I expect you're hungry."

Later, they walked on.

That night Nshalla slept early, but woke up in the hour before dawn. Above her face, not a handsbreadth away, a spirit hovered, like an ancient soul departed through the mouth in a breath of exhalation, rippling as though rocked by currents in the aether. Nshalla felt that if she breathed in she would inhale the image and its spiritual power would be rendered to her, but it smiled before she had a chance and floated away on a tide. As it went, sun-flecked raindrops fell, and from globular projections at its edge birds swelled, broke off, and flew, fading into nothingness as if merging with the darkness all around, like fine smoke to a breeze.

Nshalla understood these omens as symbols of good fortune and of freedom. She rejoiced, jumping up and laughing, waking Gmoulaye up in the process. That night she seduced another young man from the local village, though she chose a campsite well away in case of trouble. Her sexual awakening seemed a symbol of power gained from the earth, as if by making love upon the ground she attracted into herself its power. Next morning the colours of the land seemed more intense, the greens more vibrant, the soil ruddier, the bark of trees more ancient and brown. She felt this sensory excess to be a symptom of happiness.

The next night no villages lay nearby. Nshalla stood on watch, quiet in the whirring night, taking it all in. There were no clouds in the sky and the stars burned bright, except where moon glow reduced their brilliance. Far off, on some hillside, floating ant harvesters glowing like giant fireflies grasped with prehensile spades their crops, so that the whole area looked like a torchlit arena. Near to this some local fixer had erected a loudspeaker, which seemed a great bloom sickly luminous in the night.

When the next evening came, Accra just three days walk away, Nshalla decided she had gone far enough. Gmoulaye agreed. "Nearby is the village of my sister," she said.

"Will it be right for me?"

Gmoulaye smiled. "Leave it to me. Stay here, and I will fetch something."

"What?"

"You will find out."

Nshalla waited under a baobab tree until the night was dark. At length Gmoulaye returned, holding a length of cloth. Delighted, she put the wrap on.

"Sleep tonight," Gmoulaye said, "and tomorrow we will visit the village."

Nshalla slept in fits, too excited for anything else. Dawn arrived, and they breakfasted on cowpeas and aubergines, with millet beer.

The village was a few hours walk away. They approached it from the north, walking down a wide path set between forest into the centre. It was small. The huts themselves were large, with conical straw roofs, through which aether aerials grown from tiny pods poked, like green spring growth.

Nshalla looked around. She smelled cooking, felt pestles pounding the earth, heard singing and laughing.

From a hut a woman approached; Gmoulaye's sister, Mtore.

"You are Nshalla," she said.

Nshalla nodded.

Mtore indicated the hut from which she had emerged. "This will be yours for the moment."

Nshalla's heart pounded. Here she could rest, safely alone yet amongst people, happy, with promises of fulfillment ahead. She wanted to cry, but her heart was for the moment too full of hope.