No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  “Would you be able to watch Moosa, just for a minute?”

  She was sitting next to Mr Abdul – the nice old man from Somalia. The day before, Aya had taught him a few words of English and he had started showing her how to play chess. He called her his “young English professor” and shared his peppermints with her.

  “I’ll come straight back again,” she said, speaking in the native Arabic they both shared, even though they had come from different corners of the world. “My mumma, she is—”

  “She’s disappearing under the waves,” Mr Abdul said, glancing at Mumma, who sat on one of the sofas with her eyes closed.

  “She just didn’t sleep well,” Aya said quickly.

  “Go, go, little professor,” Mr Abdul said with a smile. “I will keep an eye on the little one!” He waved a hand towards Moosa, who was playing with a box of toys that one of the volunteers had brought along.

  “Thank you!” said Aya. “Thank you!”

  “No need to thank me,” said Mr Abdul. “We floating people need to look out for one another – or who will? Am I right, little one?”

  Aya ran up the stairs, two at a time. The dance class was already in progress. It was mostly the same girls as the day before, moving through the same exercises, the thud of satin slippers on the floorboards, and the rhythmic tap of the teacher’s cane and her sing-song voice echoing around the room. Aya stood by the door, breathless, watching. The blonde girl was there again. And the mousey-haired dancer with the anxious face. The tall girl. The red-head … only the one called Dotty was missing today.

  “So you are real!”

  Aya spun round quickly, heat flooding to her cheeks.

  “I knew it! I knew you couldn’t be a ghost!”

  “Ghost?”

  “Yeah. I wondered if you were a fairy or something, at first.” The girl called Dotty was throwing down her bag and pulling off bright-pink fluffy tracksuit bottoms and a sparkly crop top to reveal her ballet clothes underneath.

  Aya glanced around nervously, suddenly unsure if she was allowed to be here.

  “Then I thought you might be the ghost of some long-ago ballet student who had died in a freak pirouette accident,” the girl was saying. Her skin was the colour of the sweet almonds Mumma bought in the covered market in Aleppo. “Or perhaps just keeled over from boredom in one of Miss Helena’s endless barre exercises!” She acted out a dramatic swoon before quickly recovering and adopting a theatrical pose as she declared, “Destined to wander the halls of this community centre forever.”

  Aya glanced towards the studio door.

  “Sorry – I’m Dotty, by the way.” She stuck out a hand very formally, and Aya reached out her own.

  “I am Aya.” Her words came out awkwardly and she bit her lip. She knew she sounded foreign – different.

  But the girl called Dotty didn’t seem to notice. “Cool – nice name!” she declared.

  She was wearing a different leotard from the one she’d worn yesterday. It had a lace insert across the back and triple straps that criss-crossed daringly over her shoulders. It was the sort of thing Samia would have liked, Aya thought. Samia, who had a different leotard for every day of the week – and two on Sundays. Samia who had lived in the apartment block round the corner from hers. Who she had gone to dance class with since they were six years old, walking along the dusty boulevard hand in hand with their ballet bags slung over their shoulders, Samia talking and talking and Aya listening and laughing.

  “You do kinda look like a ghost an’ all,” said the girl called Dotty. She had the same thick, flat northern vowels as Sally and the other volunteer helpers in the centre, Aya noticed. She pronounced ghost like “gurst” and said look with an “oo” of surprise. “I mean, only cos you look a bit old-fashioned,” Dotty went on. “If you don’t mind me saying.”

  Aya coloured. She knew what she must look like. In trainers that were slightly too big, a skirt that was slightly too small, a boys’ sweatshirt and a headscarf that looked more like a tea towel, she had become used to feeling different. At least it was better than just being invisible. But today – now – she didn’t want this girl to see her like that.

  “Oh, not in a bad way,” Dotty went on, now attempting to tug her unruly black curls up into a lopsided ponytail. “It’s just with you being so thin an’ all. I mean, you can’t really imagine a chubby ghost, can you?”

  The words seemed to pour out of her – like bubbles, or glitter, Aya thought. That was like Samia too. Samia’s family had left just before Aya’s. Perhaps they were in the UK now as well. Or Germany. Or France. Or maybe still in one of the refugee camps along the way.

  If they had made it out at all.

  “OK, so if you’re not a ghost, I’m guessing you’re from the place downstairs?” Dotty was ready now, but stood, hands on hips, surveying Aya, as if she were an exotic species of butterfly or a particularly interesting new flavour of jelly bean.

  “Yes.” Aya bit her lip.

  “That is pretty cool too,” said Dotty with a cheerful grin. “Not quite as good as a ghost, but I’ve never met a refugee properly either. Where you from then?”

  “Syria,” said Aya quietly. “Aleppo.”

  “Cool – that place from the news!” Dotty looked excited. “No idea where it is though.”

  “Dotty Buchanan!” came a voice from inside the dance studio. “You are late. Very late!”

  Chapter 5

  Dotty shrugged and grinned. “Alas, duty calls! Nice to meet you though, Syria Girl.” She paused for a second by the door, looking at Aya closely, and her expression changed suddenly. “Hey, I’m dead sorry if I said the wrong thing, by the way. I do that. My mum says I speak without thinking.”

  Aya shook her head. “You … didn’t.”

  “Dotty Buchanan!” came the voice from inside the studio again. “You will please get in here.”

  Dotty was still watching Aya with a look of concern. “Come back – won’t you?”

  Aya wanted to say something, but the door to the studio was opening and there stood the dance mistress. Up close, Aya thought she looked even smaller, like a tiny, tough little fairy grandmother. She was much older than Madam Belova, but there was something about the elegance of her movement, the tilt of her chin, that reminded Aya of her old teacher – a kind of indefinable grace that shimmered around the old lady like fairy dust.

  “Dotty Buchanan, what are you doing shilly and shallying out here – and so late?”

  “Sorry! My mum was in rehearsal, then we got caught in traffic – and then I met Aya.”

  The ballet mistress glanced skirtingly in Aya’s direction before tapping her watch and staring significantly at Dotty. “Time, Miss Buchanan!”

  “But Aya is a refugee – from Syria,” Dotty explained. “How cool is that, Miss Helena?”

  Miss Helena flicked another fleeting glance in Aya’s direction. This time she frowned ever so slightly.

  “That is very ‘cool’ but I am thinking that you are the one with the big audition coming up, Miss Buchanan, so perhaps you should spend less time chittering and more time perfecting your développés, yes?”

  “Yes, Miss Helena,” Dotty sighed, glancing apologetically at Aya as she started to make her way into the studio. Then she stopped by the doorway. “Hey, could Aya join our class?”

  Aya felt as if a swarm of butterflies had suddenly awoken within her belly, coloured wings fluttering.

  “I mean, look at the way she stands,” Dotty was saying. “It’s dead obvious she’s a dancer.”

  “This class, it is full,” said Miss Helena gently but firmly.

  “But—” Dotty cut in.

  The butterfly wings scattered like fallen leaves in Aya’s empty belly. For some reason she felt like crying. And she hadn’t allowed herself to cry for weeks.

  “But nothing, Dotty Buchanan,” said Miss Helena sharply, though she glanced at Aya again, an odd expression in her eyes. “Let us be getting to the barre!”

&nb
sp; Aya blinked hard and tipped her chin up firmly. She hadn’t cried since Dad and she wouldn’t let herself do it now.

  “You will come back again!” Dotty whispered as Miss Helena hustled her into the classroom.

  “I don’t know,” Aya heard herself say. “I can try.”

  “Promise?” said Dotty.

  Aya thought of all the promises she had made. To Mumma, to Moosa, to Dad.

  Miss Helena was shooing Dotty into the room. She looked back and Aya nodded – ever so slightly.

  “OK. I promise.”

  Aleppo, Syria

  The war came to Aleppo just after Aya’s seventh birthday. Mumma had made the traditional tabouleh, and an almond cake with a ballerina on the top, and she had invited all the girls from her dance class to a sleepover. The evening was so mild that Mumma said they could sleep out on the roof terrace, under the stars.

  Samia was dancing around, doing impressions of her favourite pop star. Nadiya and Nooda were making up a routine that looked as if they were one girl, dancing in front of a mirror. Kimi was drawing pictures of ballerinas in pink and lilac and turquoise tutus. There had been music coming from the garden below and the smell of Mumma cooking mahashi in the kitchen.

  When the first explosions happened, Aya had thought they were fireworks going off in the eastern part of the city. Fireworks for her birthday.

  But Dad came home early from the hospital and she heard him and her mother talking in low, urgent voices in the kitchen. “Protestors shot by government troops … fighting in the Old City,” she heard him say. The beautiful old covered market where Mumma had bought fruit and almonds for Aya’s birthday cake had been damaged, bullet holes pock-marking the walls of the ancient suk.

  Mumma gathered all the girls inside. It was not safe to sleep on the roof, she said, so they made a den of mattresses in Aya’s room and lit the candles on the cake and sang Happy Birthday. But the evening was spoiled somehow, and Aya could not fall asleep for a long time because of the sound of gunfire.

  The following day they found out that Samia’s older brother Rami had been to the protest. He’d been one of the lucky ones. He came home with just scratches and a frightened look in his eyes. Others had not been so fortunate.

  Over the next few days the fighting got more intense. The eastern part of the city was taken by the rebels and Aleppo felt as if it had been cut in half. Now there were soldiers patrolling the streets near Aya’s home, and Dad said they could not go to the western part of Aleppo because it was occupied by government troops. Luckily Madam Belova’s dance studio was in their quarter of the city – that was all that mattered to Aya back then.

  The party gifts were all packed away, the last of the cake eaten, but the sound of gunfire did not stop. It was surprising how quickly something like that started to feel … normal.

  Chapter 6

  “My father is a doctor,” Aya explained, for what felt like the millionth time. “I mean – he was.”

  This was a new caseworker. Not the one they had seen in the detention centre in Bedford. He didn’t seem to have their files. They had been lost or mislaid somewhere – nobody seemed to know where – when they had been moved out of the centre and relocated to Manchester, and so Aya had to go over everything all over again.

  “He worked in a hospital in Aleppo, but before that he was in England for five years – in a place called Birm-ing-ham.” Aya sounded out the unfamiliar name, remembering how Dad had always pronounced it with a funny nasal accent that had made her laugh. “He had papers from the hospital there. They say they will find him a job.”

  “Do you still have the papers?” The young caseworker looked up hopefully. He was in his early twenties, with a smattering of a beard growing across his face. He looked very tired.

  Aya shook her head. “They were—” she hesitated “—also lost.”

  Moosa was attempting to clamber under one of the tables by the food bank, and the two elderly ladies in charge were looking cross. Aya went to rescue him before he bashed his head or knocked something over.

  “Enough mischief, Moosa!” she said, feeling tired. “Aya is trying to sort things out, so she needs you to be good today, OK?”

  The young caseworker was looking impatient as Aya returned with a wriggling Moosa in her arms. Mumma was fiddling with her wedding ring, the way she did when she was upset or anxious. Aya leaned over and stroked her hand. “Don’t worry, Mumma. It’s going to be fine.”

  “And your initial claim for asylum was rejected because…?” The caseworker was asking questions again. Aya wanted to ask why they had been moved here, and why she had to go over all this stuff again. There never seemed to be time to ask those things.

  “I don’t know. They say we are entering the country illegally,” said Aya.

  She remembered the immigration officials, bundling them all into the back of a police van and taking them to the detention centre, which felt more like a prison than a place of safe haven.

  “And I think the other lady – our caseworker before – she said we had already claimed safe haven in Turkey … or Greece, I think – and so we cannot apply for asylum here.” These words had become familiar to Aya now – “safe haven”, “asylum”, “refugee status”, “right to remain”. She knew the words even though she still didn’t fully understand what they meant.

  “I see.” The young man sifted through papers with a frown as Moosa wriggled his way off Aya’s lap again. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “But we hadn’t,” said Aya quickly, as Moosa tottered off in the direction of the food bank again. “You see, they interviewed my mother. When we first arrived in the detention centre – three weeks ago.”

  Three weeks. Had they really only been in England for less than a month?

  “But she wasn’t very well. And her English…”

  She wanted to explain. About how things had been after Dad. About the refugee camp … and Mumma being unwell. About the caseworker at the detention centre who had insisted on interviewing her without Aya – how Mumma probably hadn’t understood what they had been asking her.

  But the young man had already started putting away papers in the folder and didn’t seem to be listening any more. Moosa was being shooed away from the piles of tins and packages by the two fierce-looking ladies, who were tutting crossly.

  “I understand.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his temples, and Aya thought he didn’t look as if he understood at all.

  “But we can apply again? We can appeal?” asked Aya. “The other caseworker – she said we could appeal?”

  “I’ll look into it,” said the tired young man, scribbling something on a piece of paper. “Now I must see the next person.”

  Moosa had fallen over and bumped his head. He was crying now, a high-pitched wail that made Aya feel suddenly desperate.

  “They won’t send us back, will they?”

  The caseworker was beckoning to the next family and Aya could feel panic rising. She had waited so long to talk to him and there were so many things she still needed to ask.

  “Ay-a… Ay-a!” Moosa’s sobs rose high in the hot air.

  “They can’t – can they?” Aya demanded. “They can’t send us back to Aleppo?”

  She remembered what Mr Abdul had called them – “floating people”. Sometimes it felt like they were pieces of driftwood, forever being moved on the ebb and flow of the tide, with no choice where they were taken – always at the mercy of others.

  “I will do my very best.”

  And then the caseworker was opening the next file and Moosa was red-faced and whimpering in the arms of one of the food-bank ladies, who was tutting crossly and saying something about keeping children under control. He reached out his little fingers towards Aya and murmured, “Dada, want Dada!”

  “Me too, Moos!” said Aya as she reached out a finger to Moosa’s outstretched palm and took his tiny sticky hand in her own. “Me too!”

  Chapter 7

  It took ages t
o calm Moosa. Aya bounced him up and down on her hip, crooning quietly, trying to remember the song Dad used to sing when she couldn’t get to sleep. Or when there was a storm. Or the first night the bombs fell. The song about sunshine after rain and grey clouds with silver linings. But she couldn’t remember all the words. And it didn’t work anyway.

  “Want Dada!” Moosa wailed again.

  “Hush, Moosie. Everything’s going to be OK,” she said, kissing the tears off his hot little cheeks and humming bits of the tune into his damp hair. That’s what Dad had always said – that everything would be OK when they got to England. But now they were here and it wasn’t … and he wasn’t with them … and Aya felt so tired and so angry suddenly. Because it wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair that Dad was gone and Mumma was sick and she was supposed to sort everything out. Always being moved and not knowing why. It wasn’t fair that she had to look after Moosa and he always needed something – someone. She felt as if she might explode. It wasn’t fair! None of it was fair!

  Moosa fell asleep eventually, exhausted, his eyelashes still damp with tears as Aya laid him down in the buggy. The music had started upstairs again and today it seemed to tug at the ball of anger inside her, pulling strands of it free – the bombs, the camp, the border guards, the container, the sea… All the memories she tried so hard to keep locked away.

  “You OK, little professor?” asked Mr Abdul with his big white-teeth smile. “You want to play some chess?”

  “Not right now. I’m just … going out,” she said. “I need some air.”

  Aya pushed her way out through the fire door at the back of the hall and found herself in a small concrete yard, closed in by red-brick walls on three sides, and rusting wire meshing on the fourth. A square of white Manchester sky above. Weeds growing through black crazy paving below. Cigarette butts strewn in a corner by the wheelie bins. The smell of refuse and exhaust fumes and hot soup from the kitchen.