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• Qais Ghanem

  Newsboy – a book review. Bill Fairbairn’s Newsboy grabbed my attention from the first page of the first chapter, because it mentioned his Scottish home town of Hawick, where lives my closest medical student friend from our University of Edinburgh class of 64, and where I have visited many a time. On that same page, I learnt for the first time, the Scottish origin of the expression “the real McCoy”. And throughout this interesting 280 page book, I kept learning so much about the many different nations among whom the author lived, be it in Africa, Europe, or North America, and the varied experiences of the author in those near and faraway places, from learning Pitman’s shorthand, to soldiering with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, to writing for The Scotsman and the Edinburgh Evening News, both of which I read voraciously in years gone by. Later he worked for the Sheffield Telegraph, voted Best English Provincial Newspaper in 1960. The middle part of the book is mainly about Africa, where he spent many years and where he has a lot to say about the big-league political players such as Ian Smith, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Banda, Kenneth Kaunda, Joshua Nkomo, Robert Mugabe, Moise Tshombe, Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Patrice Lumumba, and of course, that special hero, Nelson Mandela. But, since he chose to move to Canada, Fairbairn also tells us about Louis Riel, and the role of Canadian leaders such as Sir John A. MacDonald, in the history of this, his adopted country. In the final chapters of his book, describing his later years of life, Fairbairn also wrote about Canadian politics and social issues, which sound somewhat mundane, only if compared with the chaotic upheavals of Africa. As I read through this 280-page book, it became evident that all those inter-continental travels must have somehow frustrated any romantic relationships he might have attempted to develop. I felt sorry for this warm, kind hearted Scotsman. But then Janina came along, and there is a happy ending, at last! Qais Ghanem, Canada Author of: Democracy Deity and Death. (publishers Austin Macauley, London) And 4 other novels.

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