by Antonio Napoli

The man of letters arrived on camelback, advancing through the golden sands of the Sahel. His gaze wandered over the ruins of an ancient madrasa, where once the chants of the Quran echoed among the stone columns, now broken by wind and relentless sun. He dismounted with the grace of one who had known many lands and approached what was once the library, the beating heart of a forgotten wisdom.

With expert and disenchanted hands, he began to move the stones and the age-old dust, searching for what no one would ever find again. And so it was that, amid silence and scorching heat, his effort was rewarded: he unearthed a massive book, intact, bound in gazelle leather, with copper studs and inscriptions in an ancient Berber language. Despite raids, fire, and time, the book had endured, like a fragment of eternity buried in the sand.

With delicate care, he took it to his dwelling, a clay house on the edge of the oasis. He placed it on a carved lectern as the day gave way to night. But when the evening breeze slipped through the windows, the book seemed to come to life. Its pages lifted, some detached and transformed into white ibises that flew toward the distant Nile. The gold and lapis lazuli decorations dissolved into the air like stardust, and the words, those silent sounds, scattered like djinn chants in the desert nights.

Then, suddenly, everything fell still.

The man of letters, shaken, approached the book and, speaking aloud, whispered: “This must be the Book of Love, of which the legends of Timbuktu speak. Whoever possesses this book can make anyone fall in love.”

In the house, there was a hunchbacked servant, son of dust and scraps, who had the habit of eavesdropping. Upon learning of the book’s power, the servant did not hesitate to steal it. With greed in his heart, he used it to make the scholar’s daughter fall in love with him. But every time their love was thwarted, the book reacted: its pages glowed like embers, never consuming, burning with the same fever that devoured the lovers’ hearts.

Thus, on a night of veiled moonlight, the house was engulfed by a mysterious fire. All the books were destroyed, except one. The servant and the maiden perished in the flames, bound by a love as dark as it was eternal.

Years later, the book reappeared in the market of Djenne, among amulets and worn carpets. A merchant bought it and carried it along the Niger River. There, he won the love of the captain’s slave, but when the captain discovered the secret, he cast the merchant and the book into the abyss of the waters. A whale swallowed the volume and later returned it to the shore, as if not even the belly of the deep could hold that mystery.

Then came the turn of a griot, a wandering storyteller, who found the book among the wreckage of a shipwreck. He brought it to the court of an African king, intending to offer it to the queen. As soon as she touched it, she fell madly in love with him. The king, blinded by jealousy, ordered the griot’s death, but the storyteller fled, finding refuge in a secret library hidden among the dunes and palm groves, where the Book of Love was buried among thousands of manuscripts.

There, where time does not count and words seem to breathe, the book was sought, reproduced in false copies, pursued by restless librarians. But the original is everywhere and nowhere, for every book, in its own way, makes someone fall in love with something, like a secret each reader is destined to discover.