3 ideas
Describing Timbuktu under the Songhay, Leo reports that many handwritten books from Barbary were sold there and that this trade was more profitable than any other merchandise. He also notes the king's large holdings of gold and the judges, scholars and priests he kept on salary. The episode records a Sahelian commercial city where the book trade and royal support for learning sat alongside great wealth.
Leo tells a fable of a bird that could live in both air and water. When the king of the birds demanded tribute, it joined the fish, and when the fish demanded tribute, it returned to the birds. He applies this to himself: when Africans are criticized he will speak as a Granadan, and when Granadans are criticized, as an African. The lens treats a mixed or exiled identity as something that can be switched on purpose to avoid obligations and protect the narrator's credibility with every audience.
At the Saharan salt mine of Taghaza, Leo describes houses built from salt blocks and workers who depend completely on food brought by caravans from distant towns such as Timbuktu. If the supply caravans fail, the miners face starvation. The mechanism is an extraction site with great commodity value and no local means of subsistence, so its survival depends on the trade route that exports its product.