"It tore my heart to send my wife and children away," he told me over coffee. "To take care of them was my only duty in life." He shook his head. "But it wasn't possible under the circumstances."

Relieved of both the burden and joy of his family, he roamed the streets, determined to find work. By day he scoured the marketplace, handing out cigarettes and building relationships that might eventually lead to a coveted place on a labor crew. By night he slept on the sidewalk, renting a straw mat beside the other street people, always on the same corner, ready to flee when the police made one of their periodic raids. He paid an old woman a few cents to look after his only change of clothing and allow him to wash at a pump in a back alley.

At last his marketplace tenacity was rewarded by a job as a loader. Every morning at half past three he presented himself at the lot where the trucks rolled in, laden with fruit. For three hours at a time, with two fellow laborers, he shuffled under the weight of bananas and pineapple, coconuts and breadfruit and papaya to the vendors' indoor stalls. Twenty percent of their pay went to the Mob who had secured them their jobs. The rest - fifty cents - they split amongst themselves. On lucky days they had the opportunity to unload three trucks; then he had the money to eat at the outdoor cafes and soup stands, perhaps even twice. When sickness loomed or trucks were scarce he made do with a piece of bread and a cup of green tea. For four years, his life was defined by the ant-like lines of fruit, shuffling in long columns along narrow alleys and disappearing into the pitch-black innards of the cavernous marketplace.

With the money from his job as loader he aspired to a home with four walls and a roof - a shack in the slum. Once again he returned to the marketplace armed with cigarettes and money "to make people happy." The result was a single room, seven by five feet, with a ladder up to a tiny loft barely high enough to crawl into. He ran a miniature bulb tapped into a neighboring line, papered the walls with old newspaper, put a lock on the door and proudly retrieved his wife and children. It became home to their family of seven for the next fifteen years.

GIVING BLOOD · WAR-TORN ROMANCE