After mint tea, one of the younger Tarqui leaned forward. He said, "You have brought strange news, oh Enaden of wealth, and we would know more. We of the Ahaggar hear little from outside."
Moussa-ag-Amastan scowled at his clansman, for his presumption, but Omar answered, his voice sincere and carrying conviction. "The world moves fast, men of the desert, and the things that were verily true even yesterday, have changed today."
"To the sorrow of the Tuareg!" snapped Moussa-ag-Amastan.
The other looked at him. "Not always, old one. Surely in your youth you remember when such diseases as the one the Roumas once called the disease of Venus, ran rampant through the tribes. When trachoma, the sickness of the eyes, was known as the scourge of the Sahara. When half the children, not only of Bela slaves and Haratin serfs, but also of the Surgu noble clans, died before the age of ten."
"Admittedly, the magic of the Roumas cured many such ills," an older warrior growled.
"Not their magic, their learning," the smith named El Ma el Ainin put in. "And, verily, now the schools are open to all the people."
"Schools are not for such as the Bela and Haratin," the clan chief protested. "The Koran should not be taught to slaves."
El Ma el Ainin said gently, "The Koran is not taught at all in the new schools, old one. The teachings of the Prophet are still made known to those interested, in the schools connected with the mosques, but only the teachings of science are made in the new schools."
"The teachings of the Rouma!" a Tuareg protested, carefully slipping his glass of tea beneath his teguelmoust so that he could drink without his mouth being obscenely revealed.
Omar ben Crawf laughed. "That is what we have allowed the Roumas to have us believe for much too long," he stated. "El Hassan has proven otherwise. Much of the wisdom of science has its roots in the lands of Asia and of Africa. The Roumas were savages in skins while the earliest civilizations were being developed in Africa and Asia Minor. Hardly a science now developed by the Roumas of Europe and America but had its beginning with us." He turned to the elderly chief.