The old woman and the glass bead

“An encampment was being set up in the early hours of the morning, before the sun came out to daze everyone. Away from the general bustle, an old woman, leaning against the trunk of a beautiful thorn tree, carefully removed a small sheet of metal and two large pieces of pottery from a wooden chest. Then she untied the small squares of cloth containing the coloured powders. She poured some of them into shells. Patiently, on a frame made from two strands of straw, she modelled a smooth ball of grey glass paste and began to decorate it. Using her saliva, the colour powder and a fine needle, she first drew the blue circle of the sky, the circle of the infinite Universe, and also the circle of the human skull, then the green circle of hope. She then drew several squares of different colours to mark the chosen place where the tents, symbolised by triangles, would stand under the great tent of God, represented by a larger triangle. She then drew two small chevrons to represent the water from the well. She held this bead before her eyes for a moment and examined it carefully. Then she marked the upper pole with the point of the North Star, and the lower pole with a cross formed by the lines joining the four cardinal points or the four rivers of Paradise. She then placed the pearl on the hot metal sheet covered with finely sifted sand, and covered it with a piece of pottery. When the tents were pitched and the camp was finally silent under the sun, the pearl would be baked.”

After a story reported by M.-F. Delarozière, Perles d’Afrique, 1994
Translation from French by Sawsan Curation