No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  The music was louder out here. And the piece that was playing was familiar, though Aya could not think where she’d heard it before. The notes seemed to fly around – like shrapnel, like falling rubble from bombed buildings, like swirling dust on the streets of her home after the first shells fell.

  A memory of sunny Syrian skies, of running to her old dance studio past Bab-al-Nasr, the Victory Gate, laughing as she made her way up the stairs to the studio with her classmates. Samia making a joke about a boy from school…

  The notes rippled across her like pebbles skimming across the sea, running through her fingers, her toes. Aya ran a few steps across the concrete, stopped by the railings, feeling her body twist into a pirouette.

  Sitting on the roof of their apartment on a summer’s evening, watching sunset over the citadel. Dad playing the harmonica while Aya and Moosa spun round and round and round and Mumma laughed, her hands covered in flour…

  She stopped and closed her eyes. Holding on tight to the memories that spilled out and threatened to spill her with them, as she rose to demi-pointe, extending her leg in a sweeping movement.

  The girls in the dance studio, laughing before class, pulling on ballet shoes… Samia telling a silly story that made everyone laugh, even the twins who were usually so serious…

  Madam Belova leaning on the windowsill with her sardonic smile as she watched them warm up…

  Aya pushed off against the wall, up on her toes now, then spinning into a pirouette. She felt as if something inside her was coming loose and it hurt – but it also felt good.

  The bombs falling – the ruins of Bab-al-Nasr and the old suk – the sight of the dance studio now a skeleton – barres hanging off the walls, mirrors shattered by the blast. Dad saying they had to run…

  Aya let the emotions take her now. The music sped up and she leapt, air-bound, hands shooting upwards towards the white sky, then plummeting low to the weed-strewn ground.

  The memories rushed in … border guards … the refugee camp … the airless container … the boat across the sea … the storm…

  She spun again – one, two, three times.

  The sea … the boat … the beach … blood in the water…

  Her body jerked to a stop. No – there were things she couldn’t allow herself to remember.

  “Sometimes the only thing you can do is dance, isn’t it?”

  Chapter 8

  Aya lurched back into the present. She felt dizzy and dazed, and it took her a second to reconnect with where she was.

  Standing at the top of the metal fire escape was the tiny old dance teacher. Today she was dressed in a long purple skirt and giant grey knitted cardigan that swept nearly to her ankles. She looked even more like an ancient fairy queen – skin papery, eyes two violets, hair like thistledown.

  “You feel the music in here.” The old lady tapped her own chest as she made her way carefully down the metal staircase, watching Aya intently.

  Aya was breathless and dizzy, still taking in the red-brick walls, the wheelie bins, the rusted railing… For a few moments she’d been back in Aleppo.

  “I saw you watching my class the other day.”

  Aya felt herself stiffen. “I’m sorry – I—”

  The old lady waved her hand dismissively. “You have been trained where?”

  “Trained?” She realised she’d become used to mistrusting people – it was a hard habit to break. The old lady was looking her up and down with a critical, appraising eye that made Aya feel stiff and self-conscious.

  “Which ballet school do you go to?”

  “I – don’t. We’ve only just arrived. In England. Three weeks.”

  “Three weeks. And before that?”

  Aya thought of the list of places they had travelled through. She remembered Dad counting them off on his long brown fingers and laughing: Syria, the camp at Kilis, across the sea from Izmir, to Greece – the beach on Chios – all the way to England. “Our Grand Tour,” he had called it. Only Dad could have made fleeing their home seem like an adventure.

  “Aleppo,” Aya said quietly.

  “I see.” The old lady seemed to comprehend something and she nodded. “Sometimes it seems that the world never learns.”

  The sun had come out through the white blanket of cloud, making even the dirty red brick take on a brighter hue.

  “I – I do not understand.”

  “No, of course you don’t.” The old lady’s eyes traced Aya’s features, and for the second time in two days, she felt that somebody was really looking at her – not through her.

  “Perhaps,” said the old lady quietly, “you would be liking to join my dance class upstairs?”

  Aya felt herself flush. “You said there is no space…”

  “For the right dancers, we can always find a little more space, I think.”

  Hot steam belched out of a pipe, giving off a smell of stewed meat and carrots. Aya’s stomach rumbled and she realised how hungry she was. She looked down at her feet and shrugged. “I … we have no money – to pay. For the lessons.”

  The old lady moved slowly down the last few steps, her eyes intently on Aya.

  “When I first came to England,” she said, glancing around at the weeds and the cigarette butts, “I relied a great deal on the kindness of strangers – as somebody once said. I forget who.”

  The concrete slabs beneath Aya’s feet felt rough and the sun beat down, hot and sticky. A pulse was beating hard in her tummy. She needed to check Moosa was OK. Get him something to eat. And Mumma too. Yesterday she had barely eaten anything.

  “Sometimes we need to let ourselves accept help from others.” The old lady reached into her pocket and unwrapped a bar of dark chocolate, breaking off a piece and handing it to Aya before popping a square in her own mouth.

  Aya took a bite. The chocolate was rich and bitter, with a tang of something sweet – cherry or orange.

  “Perhaps I can have a word with your parents? About the dancing.”

  “There is only – my mumma.” She felt as if the words might trip her so she trod carefully over them, like stepping stones. “She does not speak English.”

  From somewhere, not far away, she could hear a siren going off and the sound of traffic.

  “Maybe we can speak to your maminka together then.”

  Into Aya’s brain flashed an image of Madam Belova. Her neat blonde bob, dark penetrating eyes, the curve of her mouth when she saw a movement she liked. She had a feeling Madam Belova and this old lady would have got on.

  “Please, Madam, I—” Aya began to say.

  The old lady stopped her. “No Madam here. I am Miss Helena. And you are…?” Her milky-blue eyes twinkled as Aya looked up to meet them.

  “Aya.”

  “Well, Miss Aya from Aleppo.” Miss Helena smiled. “I think you must come and see what you think of our little dance class?”

  Chapter 9

  The lesson had started by the time they got up to the studio. Another teacher stood by the barre. She was maybe thirty years younger than Miss Helena, and taller too, but with the same bright-blue eyes and erect carriage, her steel-grey hair cut in a severe bob. The music was playing and the girls were doing a very fast exercise at the barre – a battement frappé – their feet darting back and forth in double time, their heads moving in unison – but all eyes swivelled to follow Aya as Miss Helena ushered her into the room.

  “Eyes front,” Miss Helena said as she crossed to the barre. “Chins up. No, no, no, Dotty! This is the corps de ballet, not the dance of the corpses! You must be looking enchanted … not like a – how do you say it? A zom-bie!”

  The girls giggled as Dotty pulled a zombie face then, as the exercise came to an end, turned to look curiously at Aya, who stood awkwardly by the door. Dotty’s face broke into a huge grin.

  “Hi, ghost-girl!” she mouthed.

  Miss Helena was introducing Aya to the younger teacher. “This is my daughter, Miss Sylvie,” she said. “She is in charge of the day
-to-day things at the school. This is Aya.”

  Miss Sylvie – who seemed too old to be described as anyone’s daughter – nodded and put out her hand formally. “Pleased to meet you, Aya.” She was stiffer than her mother, but her stern face was not unkind, though her expression was a little curious.

  The older ballet mistress had turned to the assembled girls. “Aya will be joining class today.”

  “Dressed like that?” The blonde girl called Ciara was the one who spoke. She wore a leotard with a lace panel, like curling tendrils of flowers, and her skin was so white it made Aya think of coconut milk.

  Aya flushed and glanced at her own reflection in the liver-spotted mirrors. She wore leggings and an old T-shirt that she had been given at the detention centre in Bedford. It was a boys’ style and several sizes too big for her. Her feet were bare and dirty inside an old pair of Mumma’s sandals and she felt – she searched for the word and couldn’t find it. Strange? Alien? Lost? She knew that’s what she must look like to these girls.

  “Ciara, you might like to focus more on your own sloppy cou-de-pied and less on others’ fashion choices,” said Miss Sylvie curtly.

  The small red-headed girl giggled, and even the tall, anxious girl with glasses twisted her mouth into a smile. Dotty let out a loud snort.

  “But you said the class was full—” Ciara objected.

  “Then let us hope one of you is not asked to leave!” said Miss Helena.

  Ciara went even paler and said nothing more, but her eyes flashed crossly in Aya’s direction.

  “And now – if no one has any objections –” Miss Helena raised her eyebrows – “We will begin!”

  Aya wanted to run away suddenly. To say that she couldn’t stay long. That she had to get back to Moosa – and Mumma. But the music had begun and the other girls were moving, and she had no choice but to join them.

  It was a simple barre exercise, the sort of thing Aya had done a million times at Madam Belova’s. But that felt like a lifetime ago.

  Dotty turned to her and whispered, “Copy me. Well, the steps, anyway. Don’t copy my technique or you’ll be in all sorts of trouble!”

  Aya felt a wave of gratitude along with a welling sense of panic. What if the music made her feel like it had earlier? When all the memories had spilled out of her – out of control…?

  She tried hard to think only about the steps, blocking everything else out and focusing only on the gentle rhythmic shuffle and thud of satin feet on the floor, the hum of the air conditioning, the smell of sweat and rosin, helping her feet and arms find the old familiar shapes.

  “Bottoms in, ladies!” Miss Helena was saying. “Dotty – are you remembering the twenty-pound note? You have a twenty-pound note held tight between the cheeks of your bottom. You do not want to lose it, so you must clench – tight – so!”

  Aya smiled. Madam Belova had said once that the body held on to memories – in the arms, the legs, the toes, the fingertips. Muscle memory, she called it. And as the music flowed and they moved through each different exercise, Aya felt her body remember. From the smooth elasticity of battement fondu to the rapid battement frappé, the slow and sustained relevé lent to the fast, sweeping grand battement, Aya felt each movement release memories that had been locked tight in her muscles. It felt painful and hard but beautifully bitter-sweet. Magical.

  “Very nice,” Miss Helena was saying. Aya had barely realised the music had come to an end. The other girls were smiling, and – with a shock – Aya realised the teacher had been talking to her.

  Aleppo, Syria

  The day she realised the war had really come to Aleppo, Aya had been at a dance lesson. Madam Belova had been teaching them how to do an arabesque. Just a very simple arabesque parterre – that was what you had to master before attempting to lift your leg, Madam had said. Still, Aya remembered how she had felt like a fairy, like a bird about to take flight.

  “Your arms must be extended in harmony with your legs,” Madam was saying. “To form a graceful curve from fingertips to toes—”

  The explosion shook the building like an earthquake. The lights went out and dust fell from the ceiling. One of the mirrors cracked.

  Aya remembered the silence afterwards – louder even than the noise of the explosion. It seemed to go on forever. Then the sound of sirens wailing. Everyone coughing. Madam Belova calling, “Girls – are you OK? Is everyone all right?” And then – weirdly – the music starting again – the CD player picking up where it had left off, barely missing a beat. As if nothing had happened. As if the world hadn’t changed forever.

  The bomb hit some apartment blocks near the hospital where Dad worked. And the thousand-year-old minaret of the Umayyad Mosque was also hit. Many worshippers had been trapped inside when it collapsed. Later that evening, Aya heard Dad talking to Mumma about the casualties who had been brought to the hospital. There had been terrible, terrible injuries, he said.

  “A thousand years it has been standing,” she heard Dad say. “And then in one day – destroyed, and so many lives with it.”

  Aya was in the sitting room, practising her arabesque croisé. Dad and Mumma were in the kitchen, sitting in the dark with only candles for light because there had been a power cut.

  “The radio says troops have cut off the main highway to the south,” Mumma said. “People are saying that there will be a siege.”

  Aya looked up. She didn’t know what the word meant. Not then.

  “But if there is a siege, what will we do?”

  There was a silence. Aya imagined her father going to stand behind Mumma, rubbing her temples the way she liked when she got one of her headaches.

  “We will cope,” she heard him say.

  Aya lifted her head as Madam Belova had taught her, keeping her back strong and square, and trying to follow the line of her arm with her eyes.

  “It cannot last forever,” Dad was saying.

  Very, very carefully, Aya lifted her leg, trying to visualise the shape she wanted to make, keeping the line exactly. It was easier somehow in the dark. Mumma was saying something that Aya couldn’t make out. Aya lifted her tummy and felt the lovely curved line rippling through her whole body – just for a second.

  “Things must be resolved eventually,” Dad said. “One way or another.”

  She wobbled then and lost the shape but she could remember what it felt like and she knew she would be able to find it again next time.

  Chapter 10

  The lesson seemed to go by in a heartbeat for Aya. Concentrating on the dance steps. Sinking back into remembered movements, letting go – just for a short while. Allowing herself to forget about Moosa and Mumma – and Dad. It felt so good, too good – and it went too fast. Before she knew it, it was over and Aya felt light and a bit strange, and guilty – but in a good way.

  As the other girls took their curtseys and began to make their way out, Dotty grabbed Aya and dragged her out into the lobby, grinning broadly.

  “I’ve been telling everyone all about you,” she said with a grin. “They thought you were a figment of my overactive imagination! Like the time I thought I saw a tarantula in the toilets that turned out to just be a mop head…”

  Dotty performed a little dance – her body and her face transformed first into a spider, then into a mop sweeping the floor.

  “Or the time you told us the man in the corner shop was a vampire,” said the girl called Lilli-Ella, rolling her eyes.

  “Yeah, well, I still reckon he’s got the look of the undead about him!” said Dotty, and this time she did a turn as some sort of zombie vampire that made all the other girls giggle. She was a natural performer, Aya thought, as Dotty collapsed in an undead heap on the floor.

  “Anyway, the fact is, I didn’t make Aya up!” said Dotty, sitting up and grinning. “I mean, even I couldn’t imagine someone who dances like she does!”

  “What’s so special about the way she dances?”

  “I am going to ignore that comment, Ciara,” said
Dotty. “Cos clearly you’ve taken a blow to the head, or need a guide dog or summat, or you wouldn’t have asked.”

  Aya glanced at Ciara, who was eyeing her with suspicion. She felt herself flush.

  “OK, so the charming Ciara clearly needs no introduction. Now you’d better meet the rest of the gang,” Dotty went on. “This is Lilli-Ella. She’s only in Year Five and she’s already in the advanced class with us ancient Year Sixes, so she’s basically a child prodigy.”

  “I am so not!” Lilli-Ella smiled and blushed. “But it’s nice to meet you, Aya.”

  Aya nodded and tried to smile.

  “And this is Grace,” Dotty went on. “She’s far too nice for her own good!”

  The tall girl stooped to shake hands very formally with Aya, her eyes blinking nervously. “Actually, I’m the class giraffe,” she said. “All long limbs and no grace – which makes my name ironic, I know!”

  Aya felt Grace’s hand warmly grip her own. She reminded her of Assia, who had been in her class at school. She came top in every science test but tripped up over her own feet in basketball. Assia’s family had left Aleppo before the siege. Fled overnight. One day Aya had turned up at school and Assia’s desk was empty. Gone – just like that. They had gone to Germany, Aya found out later. They had family there. She hadn’t heard from her again.

  “And this is Blue,” Dotty went on. “The most colourful member of the class!”

  Blue grinned. “I know – it’s a dumb name. And it’s doubly confusing because of the hair.” She held up a strand of copper-coloured hair and sighed. “My parents were – well, I don’t know what they were thinking!”

  “You should be called Red,” Dotty chipped in helpfully. “Or perhaps Ginger – good name for a dancer! Not a ballet dancer, mind you. Far too cool for ballet!”

  “Basically, I suit my name about as well as Grace suits hers!” said Blue with an expressive shrug.