The cannon bewitches the body…the school compels the soul.”
-Ambiguous Adventure

Some ten years ago, while my mother and I lived in Dakar, Senegal in an overlarge white concrete building between the grandiose villa of a corrupt politician with three wives and a squatter settlement covered in weeds and rocks, I first came across a copy of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Aventure Ambigue. It stood slightly askew on our mahogany shelf among several dozen thicker, newer books purchased in airport boutiques in Paris or New York. Until that afternoon, I had somehow overlooked …

Grandmother Spider lingered at the center of the room, lit by a golden orb.
Come closer, hija she said. Come. Ven Aqui.
She spoke the language of Borges and Cortásar and in my dream I froze,
unable to understand,
–
Come Closer Hija.
She said.
Ven. Ven Aqui.
So I went to the orb, the great ring of light Grandmother Spider sat round with all her eight long hairy limbs, and she held in her right palm (For she also had fingers and toes and feet and hands) a pair of scissors and a Daffodil, and in her …