But reality hit him. He was eight years old and much too old for kindergarten. All around him in austere rows were the beds of other children and they had woken up too at the sound of the bell. The room was large; there had to be twenty or thirty beds.
The atmosphere was neither pleasant nor welcoming. The walls and floor were bare stone and scrupulously clean - they looked as if they had been scrubbed. There were windows but they were high up and barred as if to prevent escape, except that no-one would have been able to reach them even if they had climbed on one of the beds. There were no colourful objects like there had been in the kindergarten, and no cheerful, homely touches like curtains or cushions.
The beds had iron frames and each one had white pillows and sheets and a grey blanket. The children were in white pyjamas – all the same. The looks on their faces were the same too because they all felt lost and had no idea how or why they had come to this place. Muko tried to remember. He cudgelled his brains but it was no good; he had no memory of where he was before or of anything that had happened to bring him here.
There were sounds of sobbing from different parts of the