Iman was learning language all over again. Opposites intrigued her. Black fur, white ice. Warm breath, freezing snow. She swallowed huge gulps of it, felt it turn to water in her mouth and body. She must listen in order to learn. She must listen to Salma’s voice, trying to reach her, to filter through what she had become. Iman. Iman. Salma was saying her name, repeating it, so that Iman could never forget it. Never forget its meaning and how it was a simple word that was as light as a spark, as pretty as a glow, as necessary as air, always special.
Salma felt warm and safe between her two friends. They would not harm her, they were here for her. Out of the three of them, she was the one who had full faith in friendship. The one to whom sisterhood was the most valuable and worthy of investments. Moni and Iman might see her as their leader, but she was the one who needed them. She could not now move an inch without them. When would her strength come back, would it ever? When we return. That was the answer. They must keep on moving. They had stopped long enough. It was now time to soldier on. Moni on her right, Iman on her left, dragging her through the snow.
They plunged, the three of them, holding on to each other, cascading through snow as the ground fractured and gave way beneath them. An avalanche. They screamed and fell through a cloud of white, a flurry that gathered momentum, lifted them high and swiped them down the mountain slope. Down they tumbled until they could not hold on to each other any longer, could not see at all, each one in her own white darkness, each electrified by her own shock. Eventually there was a stop, a deposit, a pile-up and they were beneath it, buried.
It was Iman who was able to scramble out first. Iman, who pulled out Salma and then, with Salma directing her, was able to find Moni and pull her out too.
‘I thought I’d died,’ said Moni. ‘I really did.’ She was like a snowball herself, almost invisible in this landscape. It had taken Salma and Iman a long time to find her.
At the bottom of the mountain, they found a gathering of people. But these people could offer neither hospitality nor directions. These were eating themselves, chewing on a hand or pulling up their knees and gnawing on a foot. Each of them was alone, absorbed in themselves, they would not eat each other. Nor were they interested in the three women who were passing through. They could barely look up at them, so intense was their concentration on their own pieces of flesh.
Salma insisted on drawing them in conversation. ‘Why are you doing this to yourselves? There are plants that could be eaten, fish and other good things. You are harming yourselves.’
Her pleas were unanswered. What she said fell on deaf ears. Iman and Moni, sensing danger, dragged their friend away. She protested, saying that they had a duty to help others, to save them from themselves, to guide them to what was right and safe.
‘Are we in a position to preach?’ Moni scolded her. ‘Look at us.’
‘Better than them,’ said Salma.
‘I don’t know any more,’ said Moni, ‘who is better than whom.’ And when she said that, her body relaxed. Her neck, perpetually bent forward, became less stiff. She could move it a little from side to side, even though she could not look straight up.
They kept on moving.
‘I must eat,’ said Salma. ‘If I am to grow my strength again, I must have protein.’
A chill ran through Iman. She remembered a story the Hoopoe had told her. A story about a young camel, a jaguar, a hyena, a crow and their king, the lion. Iman began to cry. She began to whimper and scratch the ground.
‘Oh dear, Iman. I would never eat you,’ said Salma. ‘How can you even think it? Don’t you know me? Don’t you know who I am? If I had the use of my arms, I would be hugging you now. Please don’t cry.’
‘Hunt for her,’ said Moni. ‘Catch her something to eat.’
So Iman was sent to hunt and she came back with a mouse and a toad. To Salma, the taste and texture did not matter. All she wanted was to build her muscles again. But it would take more than food. They had to keep going, keep moving; they must return.
The land turned rocky, its colours lighter than before, the vegetation thinner. They passed a group of people whose mouths were sealed across with stiches and whose eyes blazed with shame. ‘What have you done to deserve this?’ Salma asked. They must have spread lies, she thought, or bore false witness; they must have killed with their tongues. They must have said yes when it should have been no. They must have ruined lives with a word or more than one word. ‘What have you done?’ But no one could answer her, they could not move their lips. At the end, one of them pointed to an inscription on the rocks. ‘They kept silent when they should have spoken out.’
Iman, Salma and Moni kept on moving. To protect Salma from the path that was now rocky, Iman carried her on her
