oint.
That ridiculous statement you made about El Hassan."

"Of course, I am merely giving background. Most of we field workers,
not only the African Development teams, but such organizations as the
Africa for Africans Association and the representatives of the African
Department of the British Commonwealth, and of the French Community's
African Affairs sector, are composed of Negroes."

Zetterberg was nodding. "All right, I know."

Homer Crawford said, "The teams of all these organizations do their
best to spur African progress, in our case, in North Africa,
especially the area between the Niger and the Mediterranean. Often we
disguise ourselves as natives since in that manner we are more quickly
trusted. We wear the clothes, speak the local language or lingua
franca."

The American hesitated a moment, then plunged in. "Dr. Zetterberg, the
African is still a primitive but newly beginning to move out of a
tradition-ritual-taboo tribal society. He seeks a hero to follow, a
man of towering prestige who knows the answers to all questions. We
may not _like_ this fact, we with our traditions of democracy, but it
is so. The African is simply not yet at that stage of society where
political democracy is applicable."

"My team does most of its work posing as Enaden--low caste itinerant
smiths of the Sahara. As such we can go any place and are everywhere
accepted, a necessary sector of the Saharan economy. As such, we
continually spread the ... ah, propaganda of the Reunited Nations--the
need for education, the need for taking jobs on the new projects, the
need for casting aside old institutions and embracing the new. Early
in the game we found our words had little weight coming from simple
Enaden smiths so we ... well, _invented_ this mysterious El Hassan,
and everything we said we attributed to him."

"News spreads fast in the desert, astonishingly fast. El Hassan
started with us but soon other teams, hearing about him and realizing
that his message was the same as that they were trying to propagate,
did the same thing. That is, attributed the messages they had to
spread to El Hassan. It was amusing when a group of us got together
last week in Timbuktu, to find that we'd all taken to kowtowing to
this mythical desert hero who planned to unite all North Africa."

The Swede was staring at him unbelievingly. "But, a bit earlier you
said you were El Hassan."

Homer Crawford looked into his chief's face and nodded serious