Little Princes by Conor Grennan Read Free Book Online Page A

and yell “ Conor !!” in the roar I had taught them on the first day, and I would assist Farid with the take-downs. Eventually the pairs of children would huddle together under the blanket for warmth; lights went out at 8:00 P.M. I heard them whisper for a few minutes before sleep took them. The house would fall silent for the first time all day. Then, each night, volunteers would gather in the living room, relax and drink tea, and tell stories about what the kids had done that day.
    I recalled times when I had listened to parents speak about their own children, laughing hysterically about seemingly inconsequential things their child had done. I was beginning to understand that sentiment. We took enormous pleasure in recounting something a particular child had done, at how predictable they were and yet how they could continue to surprise us. It made each day completely different, and, at the same time, exactly the same.
    I was woken up one night in early December by a loud groaning. It was coming from the boys’ room. I put on my head torch, which I kept near my bed, turned on the powerful beam, and ran into the boys’ room. I scanned the ten beds. I heard the groan again. I moved closer, stopping again to listen for the next sound, like a game of Marco Polo. It was coming from Dawa’s bed. I pulled back the covers to find Dawa drenched in sweat.
    “Dawa—what is it? What’s wrong?” I whispered frantically, my face just inches from his.
    “Eyes, Brother!” he pleaded, blinking.
    “Your eyes? What’s wrong with your eyes?”
    “Your light, Conor Brother!”
    I was shining my high beam directly into his face. I turned it off and swept him up. He was shaking. I carried him to a spare bed in the volunteers’ room. As I put him down, more groans came from across the room. A moment later I saw Sandra dart into the room, straight for Santosh’s bed. She scooped up the groaning boy, who was clutching at his stomach, and carried him to another spare bed in the volunteers’ room. There was no way to go to a doctor at that time of night, not out here in the village. We sat up with them and soothed them until they finally fell back to sleep a couple of hours later.
    The next morning Farid and I took both boys to Patan Hospital in Kathmandu, a forty-five-minute bus ride from Godawari. Inside, we navigated the dense crowd. I kept my head up, looking helplessly at the signs in Sanskrit hoping for a clue as to where to go. I found the admissions desk, and told the woman on duty that we had two boys who needed to see a doctor. She called over a colleague who knew a few words of English, and we struggled to understand each other while an impatient line grew behind us.
    The hospital itself was a terrible place. It felt more like an abandoned bus station than a medical facility. Everywhere patients sat or lay down with wounds covered in dirty bandages. We were shuttled between various doctors and made to wait for several hours over the course of the morning. Farid had taken Dawa to another wing to get him checked out, while Santosh and I sat together. Other patients stared openly at us, looking back and forth from me to Santosh, back and forth, until slowly making the connection, and then smiled kindly at me.
    We were directed to yet another room, where we were told to take a number and wait our turn. The number on the screen was six. I looked at the number on my piece of paper. Seventy-nine. Ten minutes later, the number on the screen changed to an eight.
    After having waited five hours just to get a number, I’d had about all I could take. I sat Santosh down in the recently vacated wooden chair. The doctor glanced up at me and did not ask to see my number. He set to work examining Santosh.
    After six hours in the hospital, nobody could find anything wrong with him, and he was released. We found Farid and Dawa waiting outside, holding a small bag of antibiotics for Dawa’s fever, and together we walked back to the bus that