1

Master Jack

He came down the Shari River from the south out of the country of the Lagones and Bagirmi. He had three horses with him, two of which he used as pack animals. He rode the third himself, a small brown mare with a white blaze and dark brown eyes, a beautiful horse.

It was on the day of the feast of Id El Kebir, the Bairam. I remember it as if it were yesterday—a hot morning—there was the smell of warm blood and entrails, of freshly baked bread. That morning rams had been slaughtered in front of all the houses—even before the huts of the poor. The king, Allah be praised, had animals distributed to them for slaughter, so that no one in the town would be without his roast for the Easter celebration. The men had already begun to drink Laqbi early in the morning. They were lighthearted and merry and some of them were even slightly inebriated. Then news came that a stranger had ridden through the southern gate of the town.

Annur, the barber, brought the news. In spite of the heat, he had his melefa slung tightly around his shoulders. His toothless smile froze into a grimace. He rubbed his long nose and his small eyes—lively from curiosity and Laqbi—sparkled in his brown wrinkled face under his bleached barbusch that had once been red. ‘So, so, one of light skin’, my father said slowly, laying his knife and the bloody liver beside the head of the ram on the bench in front of our hut. He cleaned his hands on the blood spattered apron, which he had put on over his burnouse, wiping the sweat off his brow with his arm. ‘A travelling doctor?’

‘Not a Tabib’, Annur said and looked with the eye of an expert at out ram. ‘He says that he is a man of learning, a sort of stargazer.’

‘Stargazer?’

The barber shrugged and snorted. ‘At any rate, he comes from somewhere way down south, somewhere where there are not only blacks. In former times, whites are said to have lived there.’