Meroe, Olivier Rolin

"Love," I said to Harald on that now distant day when it all began... But no, nothing ever truly begins. This story, for example, has as many sources as the Nile flowing before me, a razor gently cutting my eye. The Nile has no source, no other beginning than the clouds of the equator, the billions of raindrops streaming down the Ruwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon, the Ethiopian Highlands, the dew that adorns the green hills of Africa with pearls, the urine of animals and men, and even their tears between, say, the thirtieth and fortieth degrees of east longitude, and parallels five south and fifteen north. The Great River is born from a sponge, from an indescribable head of hair, from an immense nowhere, and so is each of our tiny stories.

"Love," I told Harald on that day when I was about to meet Doktor Vollender, "is like terror: an enormous power in whose vicinity one spends one's entire life, even if one has the misfortune of never having truly been in love, nor terrified."