736 - The only need

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

In the room the teacher used to write on photocopies. He had brought them from that strange place. He called it library. The teacher was poor, he hadn’t any books of his own, but he loved us and he wanted us to learn things. Every day he used to teach us a new lesson. I used to try and do whatever he showed us. But it was difficult. The teacher though never gave up, he helped me always. He wanted me to become human. The others didn’t know how difficult that was. They thought they knew. But I knew that they didn’t. Humans were few, too few. And humans helping the others are rare. The teacher knew only how to help us. He wasn’t either a father or a mother. He was only a teacher. But he loved us even though we weren’t his children. He used to hold our hands when we had to write letters. Every day we used to learn new words. Each day was different. However, the teacher wanted books as well. And he had to go to the library to make photocopies for us. But we didn’t want that. We wanted him with us. And every day we asked heaven to bring him books so that he could have these with him and he could stay with us. But no one brought him books. One day I saw him crying in his small office. Hopefully, he didn’t see me and I closed the door. I wanted to do something but I didn’t know what. I had to learn even more things to help him. I had to learn how to read and write. We used to hug him but we knew that he was sad. The one who loved books so much hadn’t got a single one for us. He used to wear his glasses more often to hide his wet eyes from us. But we knew about pain and we were looking at his heart only. We tried to understand why no one wrote books for us, but we couldn’t. Until one day after a new lesson of our teacher’s we learned that the books don’t belong to special needs.