26 A Mother in a Refugee Camp

No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She would soon have to forget...
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labour steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother's pride....She had bathed him
And rubbed him, down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then--humming in her eyes--began carefully to part it
In their former life this was perhaps
A little act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave

~Chinua Achebe
in his book Collected Poems