Ezra and the Lion Cub (2 page)

 

 

At night, Ezra would share a room with five or six other boys.
It was the same with these boys too.
No family. No school. No money.

 

 

Ezra's life was filled with things he couldn't do. He couldn't sleep past dawn because he had to be ready as people got up to go to work, in case they wanted their shoes shined.
He couldn't take a break whenever he wanted in case he missed a customer.
He couldn't buy what he wanted because he had little money. He couldn't live where he wanted because the room was all he could afford. He couldn't go to school because he didn't have enough money to pay for his school materials.

 

 

Ezra desperately wanted to go to school. He wanted to learn how to read.
He wanted to find out how other people lived. He wanted to make sense of the world around him and life outside of Gondar.

 

 

Ezra could dream.
At night as he lay wrapped in his thin blanket with his head on a flat pillow, he dreamed of himself as Ezra, king of the forest.
This was a different Ezra. An Ezra who could do what he wanted…but then of course, unexpected things happen even when they are imagined:

 

 

Ezra's mother told him never to go into the forest on his own …but he never listened. “It is a dark and dangerous place,” his mother said.
Then off he would go, plunging into the deep darkness of the forest without looking back.