“Bushman,” he repeated the words to himself. She called him a bushman, a good-for-nothing illiterate that she felt ashamed to introduce to her acquaintances.

“Wolves live in the jungle. Go there and join your brother and sister wolf in the jungle, bushman!.” Sanaa spat the words one day during an acrimonious dispute between her and her husband Wolf.

Wolf sat there like a beaten dog. Those words really sank deep. He was the firstborn of his parents and hadn’t amounted to anything his parents and siblings dependant on him could be proud of.

He had ambitions, but those ambitions could neither put food on his table nor convince his woman to stay and keep hoping.

She was seeing El Fadi and El Fadi occupied most of their conversations and marital peace.

When she finally left him, taking along their son that she said she didn’t want him to end up like his illiterate father, Wolf was shattered. He had never thought anything in life could break him to a point where he could sit absent-minded for hours, without feeling hungry for days, wondering if happiness truly existed in the world.

When the tide of grief that threatened to drown him subsided, he braced himself to go to school. It wasn’t an easy decision. In his room, it was easy to encourage himself to close his eyes to the obstacles. But the obstacles in his path to educating himself were so daunting, they forced him to open his eyes wide.

For in that classroom, he sat there like a fat cow in a small hen coop. Many visitors to the school mistook him for the class teacher. He was the only adult in that classroom of youngsters, and the laughter and mockery he stirred among the students of his school was impressive.

But a man must survive. And surviving he did, through mockery, shame, and much more till one day he became a mine worker in Canada and could look back with pride at how far he had come.

The jeering had died to give way to the new demons of his next level. Sure, he had crossed a milestone into his present condition, but this new place had its own challenges.

When Wolf later learnt how bitterly things had turned out between Sanaa and El Fadi, he didn’t know why he felt sorry for her. She had abandoned him for greener pastures and now, her greener pastures had dried up. And he, a rejected weed, had grown into a palm tree with a thousand usefulness. For at the school there, they taught him many useful things he could do with his life with the skills and knowledge he had acquired.

The journey continues. He was pushing hard to bring into fruition many of his ambitions. But things started deteriorating to the extent that he had to ask his ex-wife for assistance. He wished he had an alternative but no one came to his rescue.

Here was Wolf, begging from his wife that had rejected him. She had just been sent out of her matrimonial home. Here was both of them, who initially set out to make something big out out of their lives, reduced to shame. She had messed up everything. She offered him the help he needed and he had to swallow it hard like an old vomit. Man is hungry, choice and beggar at loggerheads.

This turn of events in his life was only a curtain to his hall of shame. The courage to keep touring the embarrassing moments in his life was depleted. He migrated to Volkshire, far up in the north of the country, away from all who knew him, to take up teaching. He wondered if he had the courage to begin afresh.

In Volkshire, loneliness attached him to one of his favorite students, Ladi. He could not tell what it was he felt for her – lust, love, genuine concern for her well-being? Why he felt so attached to Ladi, he could not tell.

Many of his colleagues at Martin Fisher Memorial complained that he was too close to his student but he felt they were reading too much into the relationship.

Ladi was raised by a single mom who saw a father in Mr. Wolf. Her daughter called many men “Father” and she could tell Ladi longed for someone that will be a father figure in her life. When Ladi bonded naturally with Wolf, she was happy that her daughter had finally found a father.

She heard the rumours but wasn’t bothered by them. Wolf had good intentions for her daughter. Her maternal instincts told her so.

One cold, rainy morning, Wolf heared that Ladi’s mom, Mrs. Olivia Smith, had been transferred by her company Express Train to Southampton.

Wolf acted very happy for Ladi and her mom for the promotion and transfer. However, deep down, he was broken by the news. This Ladi, she was just a child of nine years, though she carried a body riper than her age. But in her was all of Wolf’s emotions vested.

She had come to represent family and all that mattered to Wolf. He lived alone and Ladi was his company, she soothe his loneliness. When the loneliness got icier, he would hold on tightly to her to keep warm. He was a creeping plant and here was a tree.

When Mrs. Olivia Smith finally left Volkshire, Wolf’s Ladi eclipsed into a goodbye.

He took solace in the fact that they would stay in touch.

Weeks became months and months morphed into years, yet, there was no sign of any letter from Mrs. Olivia or Ladi.

Had they been thinking of getting rid of his attachment to them all this while and the transfer provided the means? He turned to drinking for answers and in his search, he found death.

We were all shocked years later when many of us no longer lived in Volshire but were now scattered across the country, to learn of the death of our beloved teacher, Wolf.

They said his neighbors broke into his room after many days of not knowing his whereabouts to find a lifeless body perspiring with maggots, seated against his room wall, a half empty bottle of beer guarding the corpse…