Chapter 5

Abstract

Omar looked at the spirit house, which, during his long absence, hadn’t changed. It was still a thatched hut, shaped like a beehive, situated at one end of the family compound. Adjacent to the spirit house stood the spirit canopy, nine wood posts that supported a thatch roof, under which musicians played spirit music. Omar’s brothers had built rectangular mudbrick houses for the rest of the family. These homes, each of which consisted of two rooms and a corrugated tin roof, hugged a millet-stalk fence, creating a common clearing in the compound’s center, a space where goats and sheep were tethered. A small round mudbrick house, fashioned for cooking, had been constructed near the compound entrance. Close to the spirit hut, two acacias shaded the well, which Omar’s grandfathers had dug in the distant past.