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“In Galam”... who can divine what mysterious echoes these words may awaken deep in the soul of an exiled negro?
The first time Jean has asked Fatou (this was long ago, in the house of his mistress),
“Where do you come from, child?”
Fatou had replied in a voice full of emotion,
“From the country of Galam”...
Poor negroes of the Soudan, dwelling in exile, driven forth from their native village by great wars, or great famines, those vast catastrophes that come upon these primitive countries—sold, carried away into slavery, they have sometimes traversed on foot, under the lash of their master, stretches of country more extensive than the whole of Europe. But the picture of their native land has remained graven ineffaceably in the depths of their black hearts....
Sometimes it is far-away Timbuctoo or Ségou-Koro, with its great palaces of white clay mirrored in the waters of the Niger, or merely a humble village of straw, lost somewhere in the desert, or hidden away in an obscure cranny of the mountains of the south, and left in the wake of the conqueror a heap of ashes and a charnel house for the vulture....
“In Galam!”... the words are repeated musingly, mysteriously.
“Galam!” Fatou would say,
“Tjean, one day I shall take you to Galam with me.”...
That ancient, sacred land of Galam, which Fatou had only to close her eyes to see again—the land of Galam, a country of gold and ivory, a country in whose tepid waters grey alligators lie asleep in the shade of tall mangrove trees, where the elephant roams through the deep forest, trampling heavily upon the soil in his rapid stride.
Once Jean used to dream of this land of Galam. Fatou had told him very remarkable tales about it, which had excited his imagination, sensitive to the fascination of new and unknown things. That was over now. His curiosity concerning all this land of Africa had abated and worn itself out. He preferred to continue his monotonous existence at St Louis, and to hold himself there in readiness for the blissful moment of his return to the Cevennes.
Besides, to go away over there to that country of Fatou’s—so far from the sea—the one cool thing in Africa, the source of refreshing breezes, and above all, the means of communication with the rest of the world—to go away into that land of Galam, where the air must be hotter and heavier—to plunge into that stifling atmosphere of the interior—
No. He no longer desired it. At present he would have refused, had a proposal been made to him to go and see what was happening in Galam. He dreamed of his own country, of its mountains and its cool rivers. The mere thought of Fatou’s country made him feel hotter, and gave him a headache....