Lockdown on Nias island in Indonesia served as a spiritual reset.

When the curfew sounded, at a drum’s command, young and old climbed the creaking staircases, ducking through narrow doorways into gleaming, echoey halls empty of furniture, a communal airy space with dingy, cabin-like cells at the rear. As roof hatches were lowered and doors bolted, the trim, receding dwellings became arks, the outside world dropping away. With the house sealed against contagion and curse, and constituent families – half a dozen per lineage – quarantined between earth and sky six feet above the ground, the isolation was total. Each lineage, with its 40-odd crew, was cut off from its neighbours, afloat on a hilltop, deep in the forest. Such was lockdown in Tanö Niha, the Land of People.