“We touch the grass,” Nani had said to me when I was a boy, as she’d drug her fingers through the feathered heads of the blooming stalks, “and the grass remembers. If we cut the grass, it will forget who we are and we never want the island to forget.” She’d turned to me then and patted the top of my head. “The same is said for our hair. It is a physical manifestation of our memories and our experiences. We touch our hair with our fingers and we will remember who we are.”
