Oasis of El Golea in the sands of Algeria. An ethnographic museum was opened here by French Army Colonel Marcel Augieras. His young nephew François came to visit his uncle in 1945 and became his lover. The history of their relationship is described in the book “The Old Man and the Boy,” which was published in 1949 under the pseudonym Abdalla Shaamba. This story of a young savage was admired by Andre Gide, Paul Bowles, Claude Mauriac and other great writers. “He will remain in the memory of people only thanks to me,” wrote François Augieras about his uncle - mentor, lover and tormentor.

These pages, which will certainly shock many readers, seem to me pure and, to use a word that, unfortunately, is not in use in our time, noble, because they are written seriously, compared to the artificiality and baseness with which we are now showered.

Marguerite Yourcenar