Nobody blocked the way, or dragged thorn-bushes across the gateway.

There were black men and women there, sitting in the shadows of the eaves, who looked up and stared at me--men and women too intent on sitting still to care whether their skins were glossy--unoiled, unwashed, unfed, by the look of them--skeletons clothed in leather and dust, desiring death, but cruelly denied it.
One man, thin as a wisp of smoke, rushed at me from the shadow of a hut door and tried to bite my leg.

The merest push sent him rolling over, and there he lay, too overcome by inertia to move another inch, his arm uplifted in the act of self-defense.

Nobody else in the village stirred.

There were more huts than people, more kites on the roofs than huts.