'I have to get help,' I repeated. 'You can't stay here.'

Again he shook his head. 'I want to stay here,' he said. 'I'm not going to die. Not yet.'

He sounded so determined that I couldn't make myself object, even though deep inside I knew what he needed most was a doctor.

He turned his head and looked at me. 'It feels so cool up here,' he said. 'This is where I want to stay.'

I sat down beside him. Now and then I gave him some water to moisten his lips. Since he had been shot in the chest, I didn't dare let him have anything to drink.

That was the first night.

I sat on the mattress at his side. When he seemed to be asleep, I would go down to the ovens to make sure the bread was not burning.

When it was still long before dawn, he opened his eyes again. By then he had stopped bleeding, and the bandage had grown stiff on his thin chest.

'The silence,' he said. 'Here I can dare to release my spirits.'

I didn't know what to say. The words sounded strange coming from a boy who was only ten years old.

What did he mean?

Much later I would understand.

That was all he said.

For the rest of the night, that first night, he was silent.

The Second Night

I have sometimes wondered why the sunrise arouses such melancholy in my soul. Often I would stand on the roof after a long night in the bakery where the heat was at times so intense that I felt it was about to drive me mad. In the early dawn, when the city was just starting to wake up, I would feel the coolness of the morning breeze from the Indian Ocean, watch the sun rise out of the sea like a huge globe, and feel a heavy sadness in my weary mind.