Evidentia

The Mauritanian human rights organization SOS-Esclaves just sent me this testimony of a female slave, Oumoulkheir Mint Yarba, who escaped servitude in February 2010, and has now lodged official complaints against her former masters.

The time I first became aware of liberty was while visiting Kraków, Poland under the communist system, in the late 1970s.

There is in my heart a secret place:
I returned there at ten past four
Repicturing in the cold of night
As if on a panel of light floating before me
All the sweetness of the first days …