Alphabet

My father aged six years when he first had a stomach grumbling for food and eyes crying from hunger. My grandmother, borrowed black millet flour from her neighbor, prepared food, fed my dad, and put him to sleep. That day, he bought me my first letter: m.

He strived hard at school, helped grandma lift sacks at the local rice mill. Accompanied by several stomachaches and wet eyes. And by the time he finished college, he bought me another 15 consonants.

No vowels. Not yet. The vowels were the most expensive letters.

My dad, he traveled from place to place, city to city to find work. He toiled for twenty-four years to buy me a vowel: a.

I was one year and six months young when he gave me 16 consonants and a vowel, with tears in his eyes, to form my first word: maa.

As I grew up to reach age six, I had in one hand a box with 21 consonants and in other hand a fist with 5 vowels.

My dad, he neither kept these letters for himself nor forced them upon me. But when I started to love the letters, with sparkle in his eyes, he watched me form sentences from a distance.

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