Granite. Jenny Robson

there in the Queen’s enclosure. My grandfather could not help himself in those dark days, back when my father was a boy.

      So how could his spirit help us? And besides, his spirit did not inhabit the granite shrine in our compound. No, it wandered the unhealthy lowlands, lost and broken.

      I often think of my grandfather, even now. Always with sadness. Even though he was gone before I was born.

      And you were praying too, Shafiq. I remember how you unrolled your prayer mat in the corner of the compound. Always facing to the north.

      “That is where the blessed town of Mecca lies,” you explained. “That is the holy city of our prophet Muhammad, peace fall upon him.”

      And you went back to your prayers to your god, long and earnest and with much kneeling and bowing and holding out your hands. And I hoped with all my heart that your god Allah and our spirit ancestors were listening well and with loving hearts.

      Yet and still my friend Tshangani bubbled over with too much excitement. Like a pot forgotten over a fire.

      “Come, Mokomba, you must smile, my friend. We will come back heroes as adored as Shumba. We will take our pick of the daughters of the nobles. Maybe even the King will grant us one of the lesser princesses for a wife. Once our initiation is done.”

      “Yes, like Foneli,” I answered. “Maybe you can have Foneli?”

      Foneli was the fourth daughter of the King’s fourth wife and mad and with a crooked arm and bright pink patches across her cheeks. She was mostly hidden from view though her moans and her strange songs were heard often beyond the Queen’s walls.

      Tshangani punched my arm. “Hear me, Mokomba! This will be a great and wonderful adventure. I am impatient to be moving!”

      Two days before we left, a full meeting was called for all the citizens: nobles and common people. There at the mouth of the holy cave of Mmwahhari, at sunset.

      My sister Raii did not attend. She was still sobbing and stamping and screaming inside her hut that it wasn’t fair.

      I confess I wished with my whole heart that we could swop bodies. So that she could be the boy and go, and I could be the girl and stay.

      How shameful is that? How cowardly? Even if I was not yet initiated.

      I never spoke that wish out loud. Otherwise my parents would have taken me to the spirit-cleanser. Immediately and with deep concern.

      So. This full meeting.

      Outside the mouth of the holy cave, it is strange and frightening and nothing grows. Granite slabs lie at angles as though they have oozed like slime from the hill slope.

      The senior priests were gathered in their robes and wearing their fearsome masks.

      Six cows had to be slaughtered before the voice of Mmwahhari finally came from the depths of the cave. Making the rock beneath us tremble.

      “Our God is pleased,” the chief priest interpreted.

      And Shumba knelt to receive the blood-blessing on his forehead, rubbing at the stump of his severed arm. Around which so many stories had grown.

      Now the singing began. The King stayed awhile, there in his sedan chair behind the silk and gauze curtains that hid him from us. With his giant bodyguards posted around him.

      The King had gifted us travellers with new strong sandals. And with fine karosses: soft and thick and wide and warm. Made of the finest skins.

      His spokesman said, “It is a cold place where you are headed. So says Shafiq the Arab. But these karosses have been specially blessed. They will keep you warm and safe from harm. No spear can penetrate.”

      The singing continued. And dancing and drumbeating. Deep into the night, with the moon so round it was almost like day. And yes, the excitement touched me too, driving out the fear. So that, when finally I fell onto my sleeping-mat, I dreamed of being a hero, worshipped by my peers and admired by the noble maidens and even the princesses. More admired even than Shumba.

      But when dawn broke on the day of our departing, when we took our places in the long procession, it was not the priests nor the King who stood by to wish us farewell and bestow travel blessings.

      No, it was the prophet Tza. And his words filled me with fear once more.

      *

      He crumbled this morning as we began, poor lad! Crumbled like soft sandstone beneath the hands of an unskilled sculptor.

      It was the moment he made mention of his mother. Tears sprang into his eyes and his voice broke. Soon sobs shook his body and he hid his face in the blanket.

      I said, “Mokomba, it is well. We will leave this task. This is too hard for you. Come, maybe it will help if we go and sit on the roof in the sunshine? Or walk beside the sea?”

      Perhaps my own mother was mistaken? Perhaps silence is the best way to ease the heart. Especially a heart so young and so torn apart with tragedy and loss.

      But then he wiped his face and sat up with his back straightened. He said, “No, Shafiq. The story must be told. And what you said is true: if not by me, then by whom?”

      I picked up my pen once more as he began afresh: “So let me speak about the problem with my sister Raii.”

      As I wrote, I thought: Aah, but this Mokomba is not the coward he believes himself to be. No. Perhaps somewhere deep in his spirit, there is rock as strong as his father’s granite.

      But now.

      There is a strange thing I have noticed with Mokomba’s telling. He ends the day’s dictation at strange points. Always half through an episode. As today now with this matter of the prophet Tza. Why did he not continue and give the prophet’s words?

      When I was a young boy, our tutor set us to read the chronicles of some explorers and travellers. Like that of the great Ibn Battuta. And too, I read the chronicle written by my great-uncle. So I have experience of the methods to be used.

      The correct manner, the natural manner, of a chronicler would be to tell exactly what words it was that the prophet Tza spoke. To complete this part of the tale. Yet Mokomba leaves this question hanging in the air of our small room.

      I wonder why. I would like to ask him. But I do not wish to disturb the flow of his story. Especially when he finds it so painful.

      Now I must wait until tomorrow to hear what this man said.

      Because even though I was there too when Tza spoke, lined up in that long procession, I paid no attention. I was too busy with my own dark concerns.

      Mokomba is correct. That night of the King’s command, I went out to the forest edges to walk alone with my thoughts.

      “Perhaps now it is time I take my leave of Zimba Remabwe? Now, before this wild escapade led by the arrogant Shumba, in whom I have little faith.” So ran my mind.

      I have the heart and the blood of a traveller. To see new places, to experience different ways of life – that is my goal, as it was the goal of my grandfather and my great-uncle. But my grandfather and my great-uncle set off with respect and humility. Not with arrogance.

      Arrogance is a dangerous quality to carry into the unknown.

      Arrogance will not invite the blessings of almighty Allah, nor any other god worshipped by man.

      No, I thought there among the dark forest trees, better to continue my travels in other places. For I was not bound so strictly by the King’s command, being a foreigner and with a king of my own back in Egypt. Well, not a king but a Mamluk sultan and his council.

      Yet in the dark shadows of that forest, I made my peace. I could not abandon my friend ReDombo. No, if he must take this journey, then I must share it with him.

      Aah yes, and the singing and dancing and drumming there outside the cave of Mmwahhari!

      I stood some distance away,