“Hang him?” and he laughed, kicking the ball from below my feet, dribbling it into the makeshift goal post of arranged stones. Surely, after all these years, the people of Makutano would want something to thaw away the silence which had wrapped itself around the town. Surely, music played from a guitar would be welcome, just in time even, I thought.

“I remember the first time I went to the battlefield. I could smell everything. From the antiseptic”

“He couldn’t run away. He had contemplated the idea deeply before. He was a wall on which his family leaned.”

“It occurred to me then that Kemi was unlike any person I knew. I’d never known anyone to trick a pastor like that, and have him not see through it; never had anyone sneak into my bed without warning and steal my sleep, disappearing by morning and causing me to doubt the verity of the memory.”

“She was unnerved, snappy—it was unfamiliar to her, being scared like this. I didn’t like it. Moraa was never scared. I’d had all the fright in the family and she, all the belonging.”