The Black President looks fifteen years older. His neck has become a mere shoestring in a threadbare condition. Grey wisps of hair cover his scalp. His shoulder bones jut out from beneath his skin, which has wrinkled like a used foil paper, as if the ends of the bones were violin necks pushing out from beneath a damp cotton sack...

Let me amend the dream
Of me you had last night;
     Sun out the kiss,
Till the wetness is burnt.
Then tell my heart be still,
So I can hear his speak...

Every Friday, when the sun folded the shadows directly beneath objects under its scotching brilliance, the adults in Zaria would have their hearts in their mouths until sundown. Activities of the spirits that often spilled into the real world characterised that period. Azumi became victim one Friday. She kept four goblins and sacrificed the blood of two-legged creatures to them. The blood of birds was the usual. On that Friday in the evening, however, the goblins demanded for human blood...

Our father’s youngest wife went outside to empty a calabash of threshed groundnut shells. She returned into the compound panting, trembling and sweating. Her calabash was not emptied. She rushed straight to our father and said, “Father of Children, war has come to your home today.”