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Education.
    Eventually I tired of treading water. I began to ask myself whether I wanted to live out the rest of my life in Asmara. I had a sudden urge to spread my wings. I reasoned that Addis Ababa, capital city, political powerhouse, headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity, could surely accommodate another hard-working taxi-driver. I could speak basic Amharic, the result of a friendship with the children of our Ethiopian next door neighbours. I had it all planned: I would drive by day, sending monthly contributions back to my unmarried sister who had taken over the running of the family home. Then in the evening I would enrol on some courses, revive my abandoned educational ambitions, starting with some kind of diploma in draughtsmanship, and work my way up gradually.
    With this plan in mind, I packed up my belongings, loaded them into the back of the taxi and set off for Addis Ababa and, though I did but know it, for you, my flower.
    Now I must stop. Kalil, my cellmate here, has promised to teach me some English and it is time for my daily lesson. I will leave you with another memory from childhood, an episode that came back to me recently. I am eight or nine and my father has given me a few coins as pocket money. It is late afternoon and I am hungry so I head for the neighbourhood street vendors, following the aroma of the sweet, deep-fried dough balls. I buy half a dozen from one of the women, clutching the package to my chest. Still some distance from the family home, I come across a group of street children, bare-footed and feral, and in an instant I am surrounded, pushed to the ground, relieved of my precious treasure. I still hear their triumphant laughter in my ears as I arrive back in the house, dusty and defeated.
    The story is prised from me over supper. My brother is unsympathetic and calls me weak, telling me I should have fought for what was rightly mine. My mother offers a vague, slightly anxious smile. My father tells me that it is wrong to fight fire with fire, that you should fight fire with water. Repel evil with that which is best, he says, then adds, Al Mu’minun , the name of the Surah in the Qur’an from which he is quoting. He tells me that the boys that attacked me were living on the streets without help or support and that we should pity them. He says that if you treat people like animals for long enough, they will eventually start to behave as such, that it is not their fault. He points to the Qur’an in the glass cabinet and tells me to seek support within those pages, to let the gentle words soothe me. He takes it down, flicking through the pages to find what he is looking for, a particular Ayah that I came across recently in my reading, an instruction for a good Muslim to:
    Spend of your substance, Out of love for Him For your kin For orphans For the needy For the wayfarer For those who ask
    He was a man of peace, never harmed a soul, not even with words. Never laid a hand on any of his family. I have always tried to follow his ways, my dear, as you well know.
     
    ***
     
    Well, that is my lesson for the day completed. It is not easy, I can tell you. Kalil himself admits that his English is rudimentary at best, and our only textbook is a bilingual version of the Qur’an that I received on arrival at this centre, a donation published in America. I fear that our linguistic instruction is at the mercy of the translator. Still, beggars cannot be choosers, and my father would be happy to learn of my religious piety.
    Let us return, then, to Ethiopia, to my cramped room, my initially inept attempts at taxi-driving in an alien city, my gradual establishment of a new life away from my beloved but sleepy Asmara in this sprawling and confusing metropolis.
    My first few months there I was all at sea. My taxi licence and first month’s rent ate up most of what savings I had taken with me. More often than not, I got lost while delivering my clients. Sometimes it would be the passenger who