Free The Shadows of Ghadames by Joelle Stolz Page B

reach the city walls, on the eastern side, we find that the guards posted under the archway have left the palm-trunk gate open. No greetings are exchanged. These men don't even seem to see us. Tonight the rules governing our lives are mysteriously suspended. Tonight the women of Ghadames belong to another world that will vanish with the first glimmer of dawn.
    The moon, already high in the sky, can be seen through the branches of the palm grove, round and white, like a basin of curdled milk.
    Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
    We hear the throbbing of the
bendirs
and
derbukas
being struck by the women musicians with their callused palms.
    Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
    We finally stop near the half-crumbled ruins. I have never been in this faraway corner of the palm grove and amsurprised to see a kind of vessel covered with a tall earthen vault. The musicians are seated all around it, beating on the resonant skins of the drums.
    “This is the other spring, our spring,” whispers my mother, taking me firmly by the hand. “There has to be water for the jinn to visit human beings. Water always attracts them.”
    “Mama, aren't you afraid of the jinn?” “I am afraid of them when I am alone. Tonight, everything is different.”
    A dozen women are undressing hurriedly. They leave their clothes hanging on the trunk of a tilted palm tree at the edge of the vessel and wade into the water up to their waists, twisting their damp hair. Two oil lamps project enormous, monstrous shadows under the vault. I squeeze my mother's hand very tightly, and press my face against the side of her body. But she raises my head.
    “You have no reason to be frightened,” she says gently.
    Some other women start dancing and soon they are nearly all swaying at the shoulders and hips, their necks very straight and their heads held high, almost motionless. The musicians play with increasing vigor. A very powerful music is required to summon the jinn and to make the dancers gyrate until they collapse, exhausted. There are lamps placed in a circle and scented resin burning on small burners.
    Zam-zam!
    The musicians are old. Gold coins from Timbuktu shineon their black foreheads. They laugh as they strike the skin tambourines faster and faster, staining them with droplets of sweat. It is impossible to resist this music. It flows into the shoulders, chest and legs, making the whole body vibrate with a long, painful trembling. I join the dance, submerged, jostled, swept up by an invisible force.
    Zam-zam! Tap-tapa! Zam-zam!
    Then some women around me start saying mad, incomprehensible things in loud voices. Who are they talking about? One invokes a king out loud. Another, the red minister, but who is this minister? Yet another falls onto the ground, yelling “He slapped me!” I open my eyes wide, but I don't see anyone. The woman grasps her cheek and moans, then is immediately surrounded by a buzzing wave of women who console her and sweep her far away from me.
    I want to be safely near my mother, whom I see sitting at Aïshatou's feet with other women from noble families. Aïshatou is enthroned in their midst, like a king at court, and they call her “Princess.” How strange. The world seems upside down.
    Aïshatou looks at me with her yellowish gaze, and her lips smile slowly.
    “Meriem,” she says finally, “do you want to show your daughter how women straddle the jinn, and how the jinn take them farther than any desert track?”
    A few women grab me and pet my body laughingly, encouraging me with their voices and gestures. Suddenly, I can't stand having them touch me. And I have a headache,a dreadful headache! I leap up and run away, with just enough time to see Aïshatou put her large black hand on my mother's arm to stop her from following me.
    I don't know how I managed to break through the circle. My head feels both empty and clouded, as though I had slept in air saturated with sweat and powerful perfumes.
    Outside, the night is chilly. The moon,