Doctor no be doctor? Which one be doctorate!

Mama Oji lived next door. She had a hard face and blinked so rarely that Olanna was disconcerted by wide-eyed stare the first time they spoke.

'Welcome, nno,' she said. 'Your husband is not here?'

'He's at work,' Olanna said. 

'I wanted to see him before the others do; it is about my children.'

'Your children?'

'The landlord called him doctor.'

'Oh, no. He has a doctorate.'

Mama Oji's cool, uncomprehending eyes drilled holes into Olanna. 

'He is a doctor of books', Olanna said, 'not a doctor for sick people.'

'Oh.' Mama Oji's expression did not change. 'My children have asthma. Three have died since the war started. Three are left.'

'Sorry. Ndo,' Olanna said.

Credits: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Page 396)