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By Root 987 0

sat. They were smiling, and Esther walked up and pulled on my nose to cheer me up. We strolled over to the market area we had driven past. I spent most of my time studying a rack of cassettes under a kiosk. Esther and Alhaji looked at soccer jerseys, and she bought him one. Leslie bought me a Bob Marley cassette. It was the Exodus album. I grew up on reggae music but had not heard it for a while. As I looked at the cassette, trying to remember the songs, my head began to hurt. Esther must have noticed what was happening to me, because she took the cassette from me and put it in her bag. “Who wants Coca-Cola?” she asked. I was excited and ran ahead to the Coca-Cola stand. She bought us each a bottle. It was cold and it teased my teeth. I savored it as we drove back to the center. I was in high spirits, smiling all the way.

Leslie took this opportunity to tell me that he had been assigned to me and a few other boys. Part of his job was to find a place for me to live after I had completed my rehabilitation. “If you ever need to talk to me at any time, go to Esther’s office and she will call me, okay?” I nodded in agreement, with the Coca-Cola bottle in my mouth.

Before Esther got into the car that evening to go home, she pulled me aside and crouched down to look at me directly. I avoided eye contact, but she wasn’t discouraged. She said, “I will keep the Bob Marley tape and bring it back tomorrow. So come by and listen to it.”

She got in the car and waved as they drove off. Alhaji had already put on his jersey and was running around playing imaginary soccer. When we got back to the verandah, everyone marveled at Alhaji’s new jersey. It was green, white, and blue, the colors of the national flag, and it had number 11 on the back. Alhaji walked up and down the verandah showing off. He finally stopped and announced, “I know the city like the back of my hand. I know where to get the goods.”

He wore the jersey for almost a week without taking it off except to shower, because he knew that someone would try to steal it. He began doing business with his shirt. He would lend it to the boys for a few hours in exchange for toothpaste, soap, lunch, and so on. At the end of the week, he had a lot of toothpaste and other items that he sold at an outdoor market farther away from the center.

The day after we returned from the city, I went to the hospital immediately after class and waited for Esther. She was surprised to find me waiting for her at the doorstep. She rubbed my head and said, “I have good news. Your results from the test came. The doctor said nothing is seriously wrong. I just have to make sure you take certain medicines and in a few months we will do another checkup.” She opened the door and I followed her without saying a word. She knew what I wanted. She gave me the Bob Marley cassette and the Walkman, along with a really nice notebook and pen.

“You can write the lyrics of the songs you like on the album and we can learn to sing them together, if you want.” She began making a call.

How did she know I loved to write song lyrics? I thought, but didn’t ask. Later, after I had been rehabilitated, I learned that Esther knew what I was interested in through the informal schooling at the center. In the short classes that we attended, we had been given questionnaires as a form of exam. The questions were general in the beginning. They didn’t provoke any difficult memories. What kind of music do you like? Do you like reggae music? If so, who do you like? What do you listen to music for? These were the sorts of questions we would either discuss in class or write a short answer to. Our answers were then given to the nurses or whoever was in charge of our individual counseling sessions.

I began to look forward to Esther’s arrival in the afternoons. I sang for her the parts of songs I had memorized that day. Memorizing lyrics left me little time to think about what had happened in the war. As I grew comfortable with Esther, I talked to her mainly about Bob Marley’s lyrics and Run-D.M.C.’s, too. She mostly listened. Twice a week