The Year of Rice and Salt

So they continued on the old road, and at the head of a long narrowing valley they found themselves on a broad, dry, rocky plateau, leading up to the forested flanks of a range of mountains, formed of rock darker than the rock of the Himalaya. The old road wound up the flattest part of the tilted plateau, by the side of a gravelly streambed almost devoid of water. Further along it followed a cut in the hills, just above the bed of this small stream, wandering up into mountains that grew rockier and taller. Now when they camped at night they met no one at all, but bedded down in tents or under the stars, sleeping to the sound of the wind in the trees, and the clattering brooks, and the shifting horses against their harness lines. Eventually the road wound up among rocks, a flat way leading through a rockbound pass, then across a mountain meadow among the peaks, then up through another tight pass, flanked by granite battlements; and then down at last. Compared to the Khyber Pass it was not much of a struggle, Bistami thought, but many in the caravan were shivering and afraid.

On the other side of the pass, rockslides had buried the old road repeatedly, and each time the road became a mere foot trail, switchbacking at sharp angles across the rockslides. These were hard going, and the Sultana often got off her horse and walked, leading her women with no tolerance for ineptitude or complaint. Indeed she had a sharp tongue when she was annoyed, sharp and scornful.

Ibn Ezra inspected the roads every evening when they stopped, and the rockslides too when they passed them, making drawings of any exposed roadbeds, coping stones or drainage ditches. 'It's classic Roman,' he said one evening by the fire as they ate roast mutton. 'They knitted all the land around the Mediterranean with these roads. I wonder if this was their main route over the Pyrenees. I don't suppose so, it's so far to the west. It will lead us to the western ocean rather than the Mediterranean. But perhaps it's the easiest pass. It's hard to believe this is not the main road, it's so big.'

'Perhaps they're all that way,' said the Sultana.

'Possibly. They may have used things like these carts the people have found, so they needed their roads to be wider than ours. Camels of course need no road at all. Or this may be their main road after all. It may be the road Hannibal used on his way to attack Rome, with his army of Carthaginians and their elephants! I have seen those ruins, north of Tunis. It was a very great city. But Hannibal lost and Carthage lost, and the Romans pulled their city down and sowed salt in the fields, and the Maghrib dried up. No more Carthage.'

'So elephants may have walked this road,' the Sultana said. The Sultan looked down at the track, shaking his head in wonder. These were the kinds of things the two of them liked to know.

Coming down out of the mountains, they found themselves in a colder land. The midday sun cleared the peaks of the Pyrenees, but only just. The land was flat and grey, and often swathed in ground mist. The ocean lay to the west, grey and cold and wild with high surf.

The caravan came to a river that emptied into this western sea, flanked by the ruins of an ancient city. On the outskirts of the ruins stood some modest new buildings, fishermen's shacks they seemed, on each side of a newly built wooden bridge.

'Look how much less skilful we are than the Romans,' Ibn Ezra said, but hurried over to look at the new work anyway.

He came back. 'I believe this was a city called Bayonne. There's an inscription on the remaining bridge tower over there. The maps indicate there was a bigger city to the north, called Bordeaux. Water's Edge.'

The Sultan shook his head. 'We've come far enough. This will do. Over the mountains, but yet only a moderate journey back to al Andalus. That's just what I want. We'll settle here.'

Sultana Katima nodded, and the caravan began the long process of settling in.

Eight. Baraka

In general, they built upstream from the ruins of the ancient town, scavenging stone and beams until very little of the old buildings remained, except for the church, a big stone barn of a structure, stripped of all idols and images. It was not a beautiful structure compared to the mosques of the civilized world, being a rude squat rectangular thing, but it was big, and situated on a prominence overlooking a turn in the river. So after discussion among all the members of the caravan, they decided to make it their grand or Friday mosque.