Chapter Eleven: The Final Judgment of the Son

Balarabe walked toward his father's compound for the first time in nearly a year. The familiar path was overgrown, and a silence, not the respectful silence of discipline, but the heavy quiet of despair, hung over the place.

He found Malam Isa exactly where he expected: sitting in the courtyard, on the same low mat, staring fixedly at the entrance of Balarabe's abandoned hut. The great man of the harvest was a skeleton of his former self. His shoulders were bowed, his once-sharp eyes were dull and unfocused, and. . .