Atlantida

"I still had the strength to keep going, and even as far in the lead

as possible, so as not to hear the cries of my little playmates. Each

time one of them fell by the way, unable to rise again, they saw one

of the drivers descend from his camel and drag her into the bushes a

little way to cut her throat. But one day, I heard a cry that made me

turn around. It was my mother. She was kneeling, holding out her poor

arms to me. In an instant I was beside her. But a great Moor, dressed

in white, separated us. A red moroccan case hung around his neck from

a black chaplet. He drew a cutlass from it. I can still see the blue

steel on the brown skin. Another horrible cry. An instant later,

driven by a club, I was trotting ahead, swallowing my little tears,

trying to regain my place in the caravan.

"Near the wells of Asiou, the Moors were attacked by a party of Tuareg

of Kel-Tazeholet, serfs of the great tribe of Kel-Rhelâ, which rules

over Ahaggar. They, in their turn, were massacred to the last man.

That is how I was brought here, and offered as homage to Antinea, who

was pleased with me and ever since has been kind to me. That is why it

is no slave who soothes your fever to-day with stories that you do not

even listen to, but the last descendant of the great Sonrhaï Emperors,

of Sonni-Ali, the destroyer of men and of countries, of Mohammed

Azkia, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca, taking with him fifteen

hundred cavaliers and three hundred thousand mithkal of gold in the

days when our power stretched without rival from Chad to Touat and to

the western sea, and when Gâo raised her cupola, sister of the sky,

above the other cities, higher above her rival cupolas than is the

tamarisk above the humble plants of sorghum."