Refugee mother and her child

by Chinua Achebe

No Madonna 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 odours

of diarrhoea of unwashed children

with washed-out ribs and dried-up

bottoms struggling in laboured

steps behind blown empty bellies. Most

mothers there had long ceased

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-coloured

hair left on his skull and then -

singing in her eyes - began carefully

to part it...In another life this

must have been a little daily

act of no consequence before his

breakfast and school; now she

did it like putting flowers

on a tiny grave.