His hard-bitten air was a grotesque parody, making everyone laugh, for he was shrunken and unwell, dressed in rags, and was often beaten in the streets by other boys. No one knew where he slept for he had no home. Kahlil called him kifa urongo too. ‘Another one. The original,’ he said.

Every morning, the old gardener Hamdani came to attend to the secret trees and bushes, and clean the pool and water channels. He never spoke to anyone and went unsmiling about his work, humming verses and qasidas.

A Clot of Blood

“Their intrigues and hatreds and vengeful acquisitiveness had forced even simple virtues into tokens of exchange and barter. He would go away, there was nothing simpler. Somewhere where he could escape the oppressive claims everything made on him. But he knew that a hard lump of loneliness had long ago formed in his displaced heart, that wherever he went it would be with him, to diminish and disperse any plot he could hatch for small fulfilment.

See? That was where Isaiah had faltered. To survive in this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by toubab, and Samuel’s list of grievances was long: They pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy. They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage. They stepped on people’s throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn’t breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed “CHAOS!” and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order.

The scattered scrub took formidably gnarled and twisted forms, as if existence was a torture.

A Clot of Blood

“Their intrigues and hatreds and vengeful acquisitiveness had forced even simple virtues into tokens of exchange and barter. He would go away, there was nothing simpler. Somewhere where he could escape the oppressive claims everything made on him. But he knew that a hard lump of loneliness had long ago formed in his displaced heart, that wherever he went it would be with him, to diminish and disperse any plot he could hatch for small fulfilment.