Now Gheres, feeling old age gaining on him, wished to prove his wife. He pretended he was ill, and went to consult an old sorcerer who dwelt in a hut on a lofty dune, from which he never came down into the plains. There was no well there, and the sorcerer had neither sheep nor oxen nor camels, none knew what he drank or what he ate.
On his return to his camp after his visit to the sorcerer, Gheres sent for his wife and said to her—“Woman, thou alone canst cure me. My days are numbered unless I can anoint my body with magic ointment made from the brains of a child. Give me thy son.”
“My son is mine,” replied Fatimata; “I have had the trouble of bearing and rearing him. It is true I love thee next to him, but even if thy life depend on it, I will not have him die.”
The chief then sent for Gherinecha and made the same demand of her as he had of his wife.
“After thee, my brother,” she said, “I love R’isa best. But if God inflicts on me the anguish of choosing between thee and him, I choose. Take thou the child, do as the sorcerer bids thee, and may Allah protect thee.”
So Gheres hid his nephew in the bush, killed a kid, took its brains, rubbed his body with them and returned to his camp, where he summoned his relations and subjects to appear before him. He then told the story of what he pretended had happened, and everybody admired the devotion of Gherinecha. Then he called for the child—who had been brought in unperceived under the cloak of a slave—and presented him to the assembled crowds, saying, “Behold my heir and my successor. As my sister loves me more than my wife does, it is but just that after my death my sister’s son should inherit my wealth and my rights.”
The Ben-Omia law has at least had the good result where it is enforced of preserving the purity of the Tuareg blood, for the son of a black slave woman would be and remain a slave all his life, no matter how great the power or how high the lineage of his father.
Amongst the Awellimiden, on the other hand, that is to say, amongst the three chief tribes, the Kel Kumeden, the Kel Ahara, and the Kel Tedjiuane, which dominate the rest of the Confederation, this system has not been observed, with the result that the complexions of the Awellimiden have been notably darkened by the admixture of negro blood.
The Tuaregs are extremely superstitious, and I have already alluded to the number of charms with which they deck themselves.
The Demons or Alchinen play a great part amongst them, and are looked upon as almost human. They are supposed to inhabit the mountains, camping on them, and living a life very much like that of the Tuareg tribes themselves. They have their own quarrels, their own wars, and they too make raids on each other. They are, however, endowed with the power of becoming invisible, and they come unseen to take and to drink the milk of the cows belonging to the Tuaregs. “Beware,” say the Tuaregs, “when you are out at night that you do not run against an alchin (the singular of alchinen). You will see nothing at the time, but the next morning when you wake you will find that your foot is sore and you cannot walk. You have trodden on the foot of a demon.”