12

~ fights with the small Turkish hooligans ~

 

      About these returns on foot through the Moslem districts, I remind myself that we so cross(spend) at first by the district gypsy, the Turkish district, and that then we go back up(raise) a rib(coast) occupied by a Moslem cemetery, where Pierre Loti had said in one of his books, Aziyadé that his friend had been buried there. And it's not only today that the small hooligans attack(affect) people who pass near them in the deserted places, as it was the case of this Moslem cemetery. Consequently several occasions in the year, we were obliged to undergo fights which we didn't provoke, and we were forced to try to defend(forbid) us. There was in the exit(release) of this cemetery, immense excavations in shape of truncated cone knocked down, summit downward, and opening of the cone upward. These sorts of craters were any more of use to nothing at the time of my childhood, but one told that, numerous years previously, given that in the time the manufacture of the ice(mirror) was unknown, the sultans who always wanted to have of the ice(mirror) to be able to refresh the drinks which they absorbed or made offer to their hosts, made come in winter the whole carts, pulled(fired) naturally by buffaloes, full of ice(mirror) which one poured in these sorts of craters. Once about heights, the ice(mirror) was covered with a thick coat(layer) of earth(ground), so that it kept(preserved) during all summer. So the sultan could have his reserve of ice(mirror) for all the period of the warm season. Naturally, at the time of my childhood, one knew already how to make the ice(mirror), and these sorts of craters, remained unused, were always gaping in the exit(release) of the cemetery of kassim Pasha and my brother Albert told us that, before my passage at the secondary school Faure, when he was in purpose in the attacks of the small Turkish hooligans, he took them one after the other by the snare, brought them up to the edge of craters, and rocked them inside. After what, they'd a bad madman to go back up(to raise) and were cured; they didn't return any more to the load(responsibility) to attack(affect) us.