(New York, USA, late July 2001)

The Twin Towers were still standing when the exceptionally attractive, fair-haired blue-eyed boy, who lived in a luxurious apartment near to New York’s World Trade Center, began to fill a small suitcase for his trip to Africa with his widower father. The man had advised his only child, whose personality everyone considered to be extremely charming, that they should both travel light and so the 13 year-old was only packing what he thought were essentials.

The son had been Christened ‘Robert’ after both of his grandfathers, who coincidentally shared the same forename. However, the appellation was pronounced somewhat differently in the respective countries of which the elderly men were nationals.

In contrast to the French element of the boy’s family, his American relations and friends made use of the English sound of the letter ‘t’ when pronouncing his full name. However, on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean, he was most commonly addressed as ‘Rob’, whilst on the other he was often alternatively and affectionately called ‘Petite Pomme’, or ‘Little Apple’.

Despite the fact that the word ‘pomme’ was feminine in gender, Robert did not mind being called such a nickname because he was proud of his home city of New York, or the ‘Big Apple’. However, the boy was subsequently to be acutely ashamed when he eventually earned another far less pleasant French title. The derogative was ‘Allaitant’, a translation of and explanation for which will be provided later.

Robert was the product of a marriage between a father who was a native New Yorker and a mother who was from Nantes in France. The boy’s parents had met when they were both rather impecunious young post-graduate students at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Robert’s father, quietly but significantly helped and supported by his new spouse, had gone on from the Sorbonne to become an immensely successful multi-millionaire businessman in the high-technology sector back in New York, where he and his wife had established their main home and where their only child was born. The boy therefore happily considered himself to be an American and New Yorker like his male parent. This attitude existed despite being fluent in French and having both dual nationality and a great affection for his mother’s homeland and relatives, whom he often visited and who adored their ‘Petite Pomme’.

Robert attended one of New York’s most prestigious and expensive private schools, where he was very popular with both staff and fellow pupils. The boy also proved to be gifted academically and in sports, being as able with an American football in his hands as with a soccer ball at his feet. He could also out-run and out-swim anyone of his own age.

Robert had needed the comfort of his extended family and large number of close friends after his mother died of breast cancer tragically young when he was only a 10 year-old. The boy’s father had subsequently immediately sold all of his lucrative business interests to concentrate on his only son’s upbringing, as well as on charitable works, which had previously been his wife’s biggest pastime.

Robert’s father, rather naturally in the circumstances, gave significant help to breast cancer research. However, the man also fatefully spent a lot of time and money on African charities, which had been the main causes supported by his late wife.

The history of Robert’s maternal family indicated that certain forebears had once been involved in the establishment and administration of French colonies in north-west Africa. They were especially associated with what are now the vast but impoverished Islamic Republics of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert.

Perhaps because of a guilty conscience about France’s past colonial exploitation of the region, and familial involvement in such deeds, Robert’s mother had directed most of her charitable efforts towards these countries, particularly at the eradication there of a certain still extant social evil. She had even set up her own organisation for the purpose, with the acronym of ‘Amasiaf’ for short and for which she had used her artistic talents to design a distinctive logo.

The social evil concerned was actually at the forefront of Robert’s bright mind, as he excitedly packed his suitcase at the beginning of his school’s summer holidays. The boy’s father was travelling to Africa on a fact-finding trip and his son had fatefully successfully begged to go with him.

(Agadez Départment, Niger, Africa, 1½ weeks later)

Robert, who had been comprehensively inoculated in New York against African diseases, and his father spent several days in Niger’s capital, Niamey. This city was in the relatively fertile and agricultural south-west of the country, which was watered by the river after which the nation had been named and its tributaries.

In Niamey, Robert’s father had vociferously and publicly criticised local politicians for being ineffective about a certain social evil still extant in their country. The man’s views were later reported in the ‘New York Times’ and other distinguished media throughout the world.

Robert and his father had then relocated, via a locally hired four-seat private light aircraft, to the dusty ramshackle town of Agadez in the eponymous desert-like northern region, or ‘départment’, of Niger. In doing so, they had flown over the vast country’s central zone of pasturage.

Robert and his father subsequently flew from Agadez’s rundown airstrip, heading for the far north-east of Niger and the remote town of Madama, which was located on a plateau fringing the southern Sahara. They proposed to use the place as a base from which to locate nomadic Tuareg tribesmen and check firsthand on the continued existence of a certain social evil. However, their light aircraft never completed the journey.

The first time that the shocked pilot realised that he was out of fuel was when the aircraft’s single engine began to splutter, whilst they flew over the Ténéré du Tafassasset Desert. The relevant storage tank had been deliberately under-filled and the associated gauge sabotaged to provide a false reading. Some of Niger’s politicians had not liked criticism from such an important man as Robert’s father, which threatened their international aid, much of which actually corruptly went into their own pockets.

"I’m going to have to make a crash landing," the pilot had then announced, whilst desperately searching the arid rocky terrain below for a suitable spot on which to do so. He had already found that the radio was also no longer working and so no distress call could be made.

Unfortunately, nowhere below appeared ideal for the crash landing. Consequently, the pilot was eventually forced to glide towards an area that he knew meant trouble, although hopefully less than if he made an alternative choice.

As the aircraft descended, Robert’s father climbed from the front double-seat to his son’s similar sitting position behind and covered the boy with his own body, completing his action just as the aircraft hit the ground.

(Ténéré du Tafassasset Desert, Agadez Départment, Niger, Africa, 1 hour later)

When Robert finally regained consciousness, about an hour after the crash, he instantly knew from the chill on his father’s face and hands that his parent was dead. Sight of the man’s still-open but lifeless eyes had then confirmed the boy’s deeply distressing diagnosis.

The greatly grieving and copiously tearful Robert had, apart from receiving a knock on the head that had rendered him temporarily unconscious, miraculously survived the crash unharmed, thanks to the selfless protection of his father’s body. However, the boy discovered that the pilot too was dead and that the now roofless aircraft was a complete wreck.

In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Robert was for a while incapable of doing anything other than cry whilst hugging his dead father. However, the boy’s bright mind eventually recovered sufficiently from his acute anguish to enable him to decide that he could not remain where he was presently located.

The extremely cold night would soon descend and Robert therefore reckoned that he had to seek better shelter and preferably help before he froze to death. The immensely sad boy actually would not have minded to exit life at that moment, having now just lost his beloved father to become an orphan. However, he knew that his late parents would not want him to die so young in such circumstances and so he motivated himself at least to attempt to save himself for their sake. He was helped by the thought that they would want him eventually to carry on with their charitable causes, which he now pledged to do in their honour and memory.

Collecting the aircraft’s rather small, light and inadequately equipped emergency supply case, Robert therefore set off to walk across the surrounding rocky desert plain, guessing the best direction to take and reluctantly leaving the dead bodies of his father and the pilot behind. The boy, copious tears falling onto the sandy surface at his feet, had previously done his best to cover the corpses with loosened panelling in order to try to protect them from the various scavengers that undoubtedly roamed this arid environment. However, the young American was unsure how effective his efforts would prove to be when challenged by voracious carrion-eaters.

At the time of the crash, Robert had been wearing only a thin red t-shirt and a pair of light blue jeans, with black briefs underneath, plus brown sandals without socks. However, the boy wisely supplemented this attire by carrying some items retrieved from his suitcase before he began to traverse the surrounding desert. He thought that he would need to wear them to protect him from the overnight cold if he could find no quick assistance.

Robert’s most immediate worry, however, was the fact that the aircraft’s emergency water container had split during the crash, wastefully spilling the contents. Apart from that contained in a little bottle in the small supply case the boy was also carrying, he therefore had no supply of the precious liquid to save him from rapidly dying of thirst.

Consequently, the need for Robert to find speedy help was urgent.

(Ténéré du Tafassasset Desert, Agadez Départment, Niger, Africa, 2 days later)

Robert had needed his spare clothing, as he had just spent his second freezing night under the cloudless starry African sky, with only a shallow rock crevice sheltering him from the chilling sandy wind. However, the boy, as he fitfully attempted to sleep in such circumstances, was unsure whether the cold or the howls and other sounds of the sinister animals, with which he alone appeared to share the locale, were to him the most disturbing elements of his current distressful plight.

Nevertheless, as a rather bedraggled and staggering Robert resumed his northerly walk at dawn, he did appreciate that his main worry for the daytime was his now complete lack of water. The struggling boy, who was plagued by flies and was accompanied by vultures circling him overhead and the likes of hyenas tracking him at a respectful distance, correctly doubted that he would survive the day without a taste of the precious liquid.

The relentless sun was later high in the cloudless sky when the now very slow and comprehensively sweat-covered Robert experienced his first mirage. After the hopeful boy eventually staggered to the scene where he expected to discover tents located near to a little green oasis, he instead disappointingly found nothing but dry rock and sand.

Robert’s confusion and distress then caused him to begin unthinkingly to drop the items he was carrying. The delusional boy also eventually encountered three more mirages during the course of the long hot afternoon.

Robert had therefore decided to ignore the latest tents that appeared before his tormented eyes until a brown-skinned man, attired in a blue indigo-dyed Arab-like robe with veiled head-dress, and mounted on an ornate saddle on a camel, came riding out to meet him. As the adult did so, the white boy was just beginning to collapse to his knees.

After apparently asking some unanswered queries in an indecipherable language, which Robert was later to discover was called ‘Temajeg’, the mounted man, armed with a sheathed sword, eventually gave up his questions in favour of dragging Robert onto his camel. He then rode with his young prize back to the local assembly of goatskin tents.

Some subsequent shouts resulted in the appearance from inside a tent of an older similarly dressed and armed man. Robert was later to discover that this adult was the leader of the inter-related ninety-strong Tuareg tribal group, which was currently encamped close to a waterhole and some oasis animal pasturage.

The older man, whose sole visible feature on his veiled face was his eyes, was accompanied by a rather pretty black boy of Robert’s own age, who was attired only in a skimpy brown one-piece camel-hide loincloth. However, the 13 year-old also strangely displayed around his neck a broad silver-coloured steel collar, with four affixed rings at the front, back and sides, and similar smaller adornments on his wrists and ankles.

The boy’s collar, wristlets and anklets were all clearly engraved with the outline of a scorpion. He also exhibited what looked like a portrayal of the same arachnid in dark paint on the middle of his chest, although the precise nature of the mark was difficult to discern because of his black skin.

The dishevelled and parched Robert was dismounted from the camel to be presented to the family elder, who began to address the white boy in disjointed French, which was the official language of Niger and which the young bilingual American could understand. In reply, the 13 year-old tried to explain his background and current distressing circumstances to the man, who rather incongruously then started to smile.

Meanwhile, the rest of the tribal family group, comprising other veiled men and unveiled women, some with headscarves, plus their offspring, gathered to surround their elder. They wanted to see the dirty white boy in a grubby t-shirt and soiled pairs of jeans and sandals, who had suddenly appeared in the midst of their encampment. As they did so, Robert noticed that other much less well dressed women, with brass wristlets and anklets, plus some similarly adorned young children, continued nearby to attend to menial chores.

After hearing Robert’s tale without comment, the family elder asked the boy, in his apparently very poor French, whether he would like some water. The young American naturally accepted the offer with intense enthusiasm.

The black boy in the loincloth and with the strange body ornamentation was subsequently seemingly commanded in the local tongue to run to collect a large pottery beaker full of water, with which he quickly returned. However, he did not then give the cup to Robert but instead handed it to the family elder.

The family elder then proffered the beaker to the desperate Robert but only after addressing the white boy in the man’s own Temajeg language and then strangely concluding his brief discourse with a question in French. The latter enquired "Do you agree?"

Robert was, of course, confused by the latest exchange of words but was too desperate for the water to query the situation. The boy therefore simply replied "oui" to whatever the man was asking, which he believed could not be of great significance. His young throat was soon rewarded for his positive answer with the delightful pleasure of receiving the much-needed refreshing contents of the cup.

Meanwhile, the black boy collected a chair for the family elder to sit on. The tribesman did so just as Robert finished his drink.

"So, American," the now sitting family elder then advised Robert, in accented but suddenly articulate French, which indicated that he had once received an excellent education somewhere, "by your own agreement and subsequent symbolic acceptance of my life-saving water, you have pledged yourself to be my slave for life." "You may serve alongside this young Hausa," the man went on to inform, whilst referring to the black boy and simultaneously licking his lips under his veil at the thought of also being attended by the young white beauty, "as my intimate personal servant."

"Remove your clothes," the tribal elder subsequently proceeded to command of the tricked and aghast Robert, "as you’ll no longer need such garments. In future, you’ll only wear, if anything, a loincloth like the young Hausa here, as well as an identical but ebony slave neck collar and similar wristlets and anklets, which will be without linking chains only when you can be trusted not to attempt to run away."

"Also like the young Hausa and my other male slaves," the tribal elder then notified, "your genitals will additionally be tightly ringed and your chest will be branded with my mark, as a permanent reminder of your slave status!"

(To be continued in part 2 – ‘Esclaves’)