I'm rating this a 3 but it's a 3.5 I just couldn't quite round up. I really did like the story. The setting seems to confuse some folks, since it mentions Al-Quaeda but is not set in Afghanistan or the Middle East. Al-Quaeda is active in Africa also, and this story is set in the sack of Timbuktu. The protagonist has been off making his way in America, but returns to Mali to see his family and retrieve his sense of place. But he arrives in the middle of a battle between the French and Al-Quaeda, which ends in a lot of destruction, murder and book burning. The book burning releases a genie, who rescues a book of power.
The story lifts up heritage and sense of place in the face of terror. Like a lot of short stories it doesn't really conclude, but that's fine, it's more of a setting.
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