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.