Extract from 'Empty Bananas'

Burning Books

It was Saturday. Ed had been working at the school all week, spending some time in Ma’s class telling stories, some time with Tamara inventing games for her reception class children to play and spending rather more time chatting with the head teacher and the caretaker about the ways of the world. The head teacher occupied the library, stocked with hundreds of books donated to the school by well-intentioned visitors. Sadly many of the books were unsuitable for such young children or, in many cases, simply junk thrown out of other schools and hoarded by the previous head. A small collection of German fashion Magazines rubbed shoulders with a dog-eared book of Victorian traveller’s tales. Books missing their covers and spines slumped dejectedly in a heap in one corner of the room, nourishing invading mice. Time and termites had wrought havoc with bindings and pages and many volumes had been reduced to scrap. So here was Ed on the following day planning a sorting and a burning of the books. He made a pit in the sandy soil of the school compound and lit a small fire of leaves and twigs. He carried a heap of the most badly damaged volumes and started to rip out the pages and feed them to the flames. He managed to burn perhaps a dozen when an outraged cry rang in his ears. A group of village youths were running as fast as they could across the compound towards him, shouting

 “Stop, stop, stop!” The largest boy stamped out the fire and Ed was amazed to see tears in the boy’s eyes. “Ed, what do you do?” Ed explained the reason for the fire, not best pleased to have his actions questioned. He showed the damaged pages, explained the unsuitability of the books and pointed out that the village had as yet no refuse collection. Hence the fire and his public spirited behaviour. The boys stared open mouthed at him.

 “Sir,” said their spokesman, “Sir, we have no books to read. Half a page is better than no book. We can observe how the writer makes his sentences, where he places his punctuation, note what adjectives and adverbs he uses and discuss his employment of tenses.” It was Ed’s turn to gape. This eleven year old, the tears still wet on his face, was teaching Ed a lesson he would remember for the rest of his life.