The aqal Soomaali is architecture with no plans and no site. Women plait dermo mats from hundreds of strands of caw grass — no loom, no frame — and lash them over bent galool saplings with six gar ropes. The whole house goes up in about ninety minutes and comes down onto one camel.

This system takes the mat skin as its page: sun-dried tan, matte, dusty, patched with hide where it wears. Everything is that one tone until the kebed door, the single rectangle in the structure, dyed black and red from galool bark.