A Boy Ten Feet Tall (1961)

   

Originally printed in England under the title "Sammy Going South", later printed by The Viking Press as "Find the Boy". The introduction note says: "'A Boy Ten Feet Tall' is the African 'Huckleberry Finn', with the Nile substituted for the Mississippi... Each adventure along the way educates the boy, tests him, and is the novelist's short-hand way of describing him growing up."

Sammy’s father and mother seemed to have been arguing for days. His father no longer went every morning to teach English at the new lycée, but stayed at home in dressing gown and slippers, smoking a great deal, listening to news bulletins on the radio, and arguing, arguing with Sammy’s mother.
They argued about something called the Crisis. Sammy didn’t know the meaning of the word, but it dawned on him all the same, with a sense of horror, that his mother was trying to persuade his father to leave Port Said. Leave Port Said? Leave the wonderful Canal, with the big liners gliding gracefully along, and all the people waving to him; leave his friends, Mahmoud the doorkeeper’s son, Busty who kept the sweets and lemonade stall by the ferry to Port Fuad? Unthinkable, terrible! He burst into tears.
His father said, “Now look what’s happened. The kid’s crying,” and comforted him. His mother said nothing but set her lips and sat straight and beautiful in the cane chair and looked out through the windows of the flat. Sammy saw that she was crying too and went over to her, slipping from beneath his father’s arm.
She caressed his head absently, her other hand holding the letter which had come that morning from Sammy’s Aunt Jane in Durban.
“Tony,” she said, “Jane says that if we won’t go, she’ll have Sammy till things settle down. I must admit she doesn’t seem terribly keen, but it would be no trouble for her. After all, she keeps a hotel. Sammy could fly down. We could scrape up the fare somehow.”
For Sammy this put a different complexion on things. He knew his Aunt Jane kept the Duiker Hotel in Durban, and when his mother asked him if he would like to go in an airplane for a short holiday with his aunt, he began to bounce excitedly up and down, shouting, “Yes-yes-yes! I want to fly in a plane!”
His father said, “Stop behaving like a baby. Anyone would think you were five, not ten. You’re not going, and that’s that.”
When that started another argument, Sammy made himself scarce. He wandered disconsolately out of the flat. Grown-ups muck you about, he thought. For heaven’s sake why can’t I go in a plane? By the time he had descended the three flights of stairs, he was a plane. He pulled out of a steep dive into the courtyard, flattened off, and buzzed in a tight turn through the fat and stubby palms. The afternoon was pleasantly warm, and the doorman-cum-gardener was nodding, perched on an old box with his back against the dusty white wall splotched with scarlet hanging flowers. Sammy landed and switched off.
“Saida, ya Bouab,” Sammy began diffidently in the Arabic which he spoke almost as well as his own language; and the doorkeeper opened a yellow eye and grinned, for he liked Sammy.
“Where’s Mahmoud?” asked the boy, and the man lifted a hand in despair and resignation.
“How should a father know where his son is these days? Dodging his work, I have no doubt.”