Race, it turns out, is above all a politically useful fiction.

Of all the contracts I had signed, this was perhaps the only one that my father could never have imagined me signing, for it traded what should never be traded. It delivered me into the unknown and erased my father’s name. I could not know that this was just the first of many erasures.

Now he wanted that which had always been my own – my story. Tell.

The elders teach us: be a trickster, and you will survive.

There was a long silence, during which Father Marco’s thoughts finally drifted from the matter of wealth to the matter of God – few minds can entertain both subjects at once.

How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians – just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it.

Growing up in this town, I had long ago learned that the savagery of a man named Mohammed was rarely questioned, but his humanity always had to be proven.

I was preoccupied only with the price of things and neglected to consider their value.

As the days passed, I began to look upon my fate with new eyes. I often lamented the wicked turns my life had taken, but I rarely considered how much I had to be thankful for, how I had survived so long where so many others had perished, how I had seen wonders that no other Zamori had... I had been so intent on counting all the miseries and humiliations I had endured that I neglected to thank the Almighty for the blessings he had bestowed upon me.

I ignored the teachings of our Messenger, that all men are brothers, and that there is no difference among them save in the goodness of their actions.