REFUGEE MOTHER AND CHILD- CHINUA ACHEBE

No Madonna1 and Child could touch
that picture of a mother s tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.
The air was heavy with odours2

of diarrhoea3 of unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most

mothers there had long ceased4
to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother s
pride as she combed the rust-coloured5
hair left on his skull6 and then

singing in her eyes  began carefully
to part it In another life this
would have been a little daily
act of no consequence7 before his
breakfast and school; now she

did it like putting flowers
on a tiny grave.