Zana and Halim were called in by the headmaster. She went alone, with Domingas, her servile shadow. She let him have it right in the eye. Didn’t you know my Omar was ill when he was an infant? He nearly died, Father. Only God knows … only his mother and God … She was sweating, reveling in her role as the great protective mother. They heard the bell ring six times, and the commotion and shouting of the boarders on their way to the refectory, then silence, and then again her voice, calmer, not so much the innocent victim. How many of the orphans in this school eat at our expense, Father? And what about the Christmas dinners, the charity bazaars, and the clothes we send to the Indian girls in the mission stations?

Domingas was fanning her mistress’s body. The headmaster let her give vent to her feelings, looked outside into the warm dusk that was beginning to hide the huge Salesian college. There were goats feeding in the college yard. The orphan children, in uniform, were playing on a seesaw; their bodies, perched in midair, gradually melted into the night. He opened a drawer and gave Zana Omar’s school record and a copy of the ruling expelling him. He showed her the medical report on the health of Father Bolislau, the math master. He understood a wounded mother’s indignation, and the excessive energy and rashness of some young people, but this time it had been inevitable. It was the only expulsion in the last ten years. Then the headmaster asked about the other son, Yaqub. Would he be staying on?

She stammered, confused; her eyes rested on the seesaw, now empty. The view from the window was going dark; the night came inside the room. She was thinking about her son’s penchant for math. The shepherd, the country boy, the genius with numbers, who promised to be the brains of the family. She put the reply off and suddenly got up, half bitter, half optimistic, saying to Domingas a phrase she would repeat later, like a prayer: “Hope and bitterness … are alike.”

In her old age, which could have been less melancholy, she repeated this several times to Domingas, her faithful slave, and to me without looking at me, unconcerned whether I was there or not. The truth is that, for Zana, I only existed an echo of her sons’ world.

Omar, after his expulsion, was finally taken on by a school in Manaus where, years later, I was to study. It had a pompous name—the Rui Barbosa Lyceum, named after the “Eagle of The Hague”—but its nickname was much less edifying: The Vandals’ Cockpit.