“As he lit the leaves within, savoring the first fragrant puff through the red clay bowl, it was this stem that gave him his first question for his girls. The three of them were lined up eagerly before him as the recalcitrant twins scrubbed and piled dishes in the tub by the door under Namara’s watchful eye-and her watchful spoon as well. He gazed at his brood, from the smallest with her smudged face and pigtails, all the way to the twins, tall and growing broader every day. With the solemn air of a holy man presiding on a ritual in the Hall of the Ancestors, Judan began.”