Chapter 33

Chinguetti

Yet with every step, I feel the contradiction more keenly: treated as precious but forced to remain at the edges of trust. All I want is to sit under a fig tree with bystanders and stories, to be an ear, not an exhibit.

Tomorrow, I decide, I will negotiate harder.

Today, I let annoyance simmer and stories gather, hoping the people of Chinguetti will see through the armed men and share what they remember — not with a guarded guest, but with a fellow collector of fading voices.

I spread my notebook and battered maps across the table in my guesthouse room, tracing the route south with a half-blunted pencil. Nouakchott to Dakar by boat, if I can wrangle a ride or bribe the right harbour hand, then on to the rich delta mysteries of Casamance. I am scribbling names of griots, ticking numbers I need to call, threading new hopes through every possible risk. The air is heavy with future stories, and for a moment, the world bows to the rhythm of my ambition.

I dial — one fixer in Nouakchott, a griot’s cousin in Pikine, a friend-of-a-friend in Ziguinchor, voices bouncing from tongue to tongue. Each conversation feels like catching a fish on a desert river: slippery, improbable, thrilling.

Then my phone vibrates. Tarmo.

I almost let it ring out, but don’t. When I answer, his voice is more granite than usual, the connection prickling with Atlantic distance and something knife-edged underneath.

“Elena, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I roll my eyes skyward, biting back a retort. “I’m working. You know, stories don’t collect themselves.”

Is he psychic now, too?

His exhale sounds like wind over stone. “Stay put. You’re safe where you are. Wait for me. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve captured Isaa and his men.”

There it is — his promise, his command, his fear for me masked in frustration — a tug from distant continents, protective but heavy as a chain.

“I’m not meant to wither behind walls, Tarmo,” I say, softer than I intend. “I didn’t cross half a desert and dodge bullets just to sit tight.”

His voice loses nothing. If anything, it gains an edge: “If anything happens to you, if they find you—” His tone breaks off, cold as North Sea water. “Just promise me. Wait for me. Don’t make it harder.”

Silence drips between us like desert sweat. I want to promise. I want to hang up. I like everything at once.

When I speak, my voice is quiet but stubborn as ever:

“I’ll be careful. But my path isn’t shrinking, Tarmo. It’s opening.”

I lower the phone, pulse thrumming — half with defiance, half with worry for him, for me.

I let the map anchor me, ferry routes and griot names swirling with possibility, the future as vast and perilous as the Atlantic. For now, I continue to draw the lines. And if I don’t wait forever, well — he knew what he loved from the beginning.

I end the call with a lingering ache, Tarmo’s words echoing in the soft blue of the lamp-lit room. Part of me aches for his protection, part resents the leash.

I turn — and there’s Karim, carved from shadow in the open doorway, his face oddly bare.

For a moment, we just look at each other. He clears his throat — the man who has carried me through dust storms and bureaucratic hell, now searching for words, knuckles white on the doorframe.

Karim fills the doorway just as the last desert light slips off the stone. He stands easy but wary, as if undecided between entering and vanishing. I study him — always the same, always a little new: tall and lean, all wiry muscle, his presence more feline than brutish. Every movement is efficient, measured.

His skin is pale for this side of the African continent — olive brightened by the Saharan sun — framed by a tumble of inky black curls that fall past his brow, never quite tamed. Those eyes: startling green, sharp and wildly out of place, ringed with thick lashes that would look dramatic on anyone but him. I have seen strangers trip over their words just looking at him for the first time.

He has that long, hawkish nose — a Roman coin profile, my mother would have said — and lips that seem surprised by their own softness. There is always a ghost of a smile hiding beneath his shyness, as if he hopes the world won’t notice him staring back.

I can’t help it — whenever I see him, even angry or afraid, he makes me smile. Some people sparkle; Karim glows quietly. Even the Kalashnikov slung awkwardly by his side can’t make him less pretty, just more surreal.

Tonight, shoulders tense against everything unsaid, he looks at me with that open, unguarded honesty that is rare in men and rarer in friends. In a world full of masks, Karim lets his beauty and his nerves show all at once — and whether I want to or not, I am always glad for it.

“I had to tell him,” he says at last, voice rough as gravel. “Tarmo. I… owed him that much.”

He nods, not angry — understanding, almost. “I know. It’s all right.”

He steps inside, touches a scar at his temple — a nervous tic.

“Listen, Elena, I’ll go wherever you want to go. Dakar, Bamako, Timbuktu or Timbuktu’s last outpost — I’ll follow. But… just—” He stumbles, fighting for composure. “Just don’t ask me to be intimate with you again. That’s the only thing, ja?” His voice cracks with an honesty so rare I barely breathe. “When it happens, I lose myself, and in the process, you. It scrambles my balance. Your magic is too powerful, Elena, and if you can promise me that, I’ll keep on following, however far. I’ll be your shadow.”

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We slip out of Chinguetti beneath the hush of paling stars, Karim leading our camels through winding alleys where only the curious wind gives us away. The city behind us is a patchwork of memories — its stories, its lingering dangers — and what lies ahead shimmers with both promise and risk.

Karim rides just ahead, tall and lean, sunlight soon picking out the green of his eyes and the wild black tumble of his curls. There is a warmth in my chest whenever I look at him — a flutter, gentle at its edges, the sort of affection that makes me smile despite everything. I marvel, not for the first time, how I can love this young man so fiercely and yet hold in my heart two others so differently.

Because Tarmo too is with me, if only in memory and in spirit. An ocean or a desert away, the weight of his presence is steady as a vow — his voice lingering from our last call: wait for me, Elena, stay safe. His love is stone and shadow, stoic but deep, underscored by that impossible, ancient tether between us.

And now, as the last dunes slip from gold into the oasis’ green embrace, I sense another presence: Asdar. The people there spoke softly, their voices knotting around the old code — wolves, wolves are near. It is never said aloud, but I know: wolves mean Asdar, the watcher at the world’s edge, neither threat nor saviour, always circling close whenever I need to be watched over.

My body answers before my mind does — a sudden, tingling warmth at my breasts. I know without looking that my nipples are beading with a golden liquid, that ancient and intimate magic that stirs when Asdar is close.

The camel grunts. I don’t ask why. Some mysteries are better left to the beast.

I.Ph.