At sunset, I sit outside the walled compound, in a plastic chair, in the patch of dirt alongside the new ditch. The older children have been digging this ditch all afternoon, the younger dangling their legs over the edge and watching boys play soccer across the way. Dark comes fast; the soccer game and the distant grove of baobab trees disappear into it. When I switch on a battery-powered light to read, the younger children gather behind my chair. For awhile, they quietly watch my book, but then they turn into a little circle, whispering and tracing shapes in the sand by the cast-off light. There’s heat lightning to the south, but no rain.
The call to prayer begins at a quarter to eight, amplified and crackling over some cheap loudspeaker at the nearby mosque. The children spread out, then lie on their backs in the piles of sand that have been shoveled out of the earth. I turn off my light and look up, too, and we watch the stars through the atmospheres of cooking-smoke and dust.