ou must learn to be obedient,’ Babamukuru told Nyasha and struck her again. ‘I told you not to hit me,’ said Nyasha, punching him in the eye. Babamukuru bellowed and snorted that if Nyasha was going to behave like a man, then by his mother who wasat rest in her grave he would fight her like one. They went down on to the floor, Babamukuru alternately punching Nyasha’s head and banging it against the floor, screaming or trying to scream but only squeaking, because his throat had seized up with fury, that he would kill her with his bare hands; Nyasha, screaming and wriggling and doing what damage she could. Maiguru and Chido could not stay out of it any longer. They had to hold him

My finely tuned survival system set off its alarm a

o Babamunini took over the living-room and all the unmarried women, including Lucia, slept in the kitchen. There were at least eight of us sleeping there for the whole two weeks that our reunion lasted. I was comfortable enough because I had slept in the kitchen all my jife, but Nyasha could not fail asleep until the last people had stopped talking. And, she said, it was just as well that she had grown used to smoke from cigarettes, otherwise the smoke in the kitchen would have made her uncomfortable. It was true. The kitchen was smoky, because we cooked on the open hearth in the centre of the room. The hearth was a depression in the floor surrounded by a tripartite tripod of iron on which the pots were balanced; a depression surrounded also by large, smooth stones which were for balancing as well and enabled us to cook more than three pots at one time.