No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  “On the other hand, people are always telling me how much my name becomes me,” Dotty was saying. She had let her corkscrew hair out of the tight ponytail, so that it fluffed out around her head like a halo.

  “You know, cos it means scatty, forgetful, bonkers.” Dotty did a series of head-twirling and hand-spinning gestures to make her point, and Aya found herself smiling.

  “So you learned to dance where you came from?” Aya looked up to see Ciara was watching her intently from the other side of the lobby.

  “She’s come from Syria, not from Mars!” said Dotty.

  “I thought they had a war in Syria,” said Ciara.

  The girls were all looking at her curiously now and Aya wanted to explain that her life had been like theirs once. That she hadn’t been born a refugee. That she wasn’t so different from them. Or she hadn’t been. Once upon a time. But all she managed to say was, “It was not always that way.”

  She thought of her old classmates – scattered, lost, gone – while these girls danced on, knowing nothing of the war happening in a country far away, and staring at her curiously, seeing her as different.

  “Shoo, shoo, shoo!” Madam Sylvie was at the door, waving the girls away. “Don’t you have homes to go to?”

  The girls jumped up, grabbing bags and shoes and collecting lost bobbles and hairpins that had scattered across the floor.

  “See you tomorrow, Aya!” called out little Lilli-Ella. A chorus of other farewells followed as her new classmates made their way down the stairs.

  “Oops! Gotta dash!” said Dotty, leaping to her feet and following them. “But I’ll bring you a leotard tomorrow, OK?”

  Aya wanted to beg her not to but the words did not come. And then they were gone – and she was alone again, standing in the lobby, the phrase “Don’t you have homes to go to?” bouncing in her mind.

  Such a simple question. But she didn’t have an answer. She moved her foot in a slow circle across the floor, then made her way back downstairs.

  Chapter 11

  Sometimes, at night, Aya dreamed of dancing in Syria again. Usually she was dancing on the rooftop garden of their old apartment block. Or at the Maysaloon Park where Dad used to take her on Sunday afternoons, particularly after Mumma fell pregnant and needed “a bit of peace and quiet”. Or in Madam Belova’s studio, sand beneath the satin and burlap of her pointe shoes. She always woke with an ache, as if she were remembering a missing arm or leg … something vitally part of her that was now gone.

  But that night she dreamed of dancing in Miss Helena’s dance studio and she awoke with a smile on her face for the first time in … she didn’t know how long.

  The feeling didn’t last. Moosa had a snotty nose and his bottom was sore because they had run out of nappies. He was grizzling and whining unhappily as she tried to get him dressed.

  “We’ll get you some new nappies, Moos,” she said. She was trying to talk to him in English as much as she could, teaching him as Dad had taught her. “And some cream for your bottom too. Aya’s gonna make it all better, OK?” She kissed him on his pink, snotty nose and he sniffed and gazed at her with big, damp eyes that made her heart want to break.

  “Bet-ter,” he muttered in English.

  “All better!” said Aya, kissing him again. “Promise!”

  But when she came downstairs there was a problem. The man who ran the hostel was shouting at Mumma, who was crying, confused, not understanding what he was saying. And the man was waving his arms aggressively, pointing at a piece of paper – stabbing it in front of her face.

  “My mother cannot talk English,” Aya explained, stepping in between them and taking the paper from the hostel owner. “Please tell me.”

  “The room’s not been paid for. No rent, no room,” said the man, looking Aya up and down with that look in his eyes that she’d seen before. Worse than being invisible. Like she was a nuisance, a burden, an outsider.

  She tried to remember what the caseworker had said. About papers and welfare payments and housing benefit – words she hadn’t really understood.

  “Our papers … are getting lost,” she tried to explain. “And my mumma has been ill.”

  “Look, I’m not interested in sob stories. I need money by the end of the week or you are out.”

  The man was balding, with a red face and a stained T-shirt that didn’t quite stretch over his belly. He reminded Aya of the horrible maths teacher who had come to cover for them after Mr Attia got caught up in the demonstrations and stopped coming to school – the one Samia had said had an alien growing in his stomach.

  “But you cannot do that,” Aya said, her face screwed into a frown. She tried to sound like she knew what she was talking about, even though she had no idea. “We have nowhere else to go.”

  “Not my problem! I’m sick of you refugees coming here and taking advantage. Sort it out or find somewhere else to stay.” He turned away, shaking his head in disgust.

  Aya didn’t translate the last bit for her mother. Instead, she tried to imagine an alien crawling its way out of the man’s belly and eating him all up – just like the picture Samia had drawn of the awful maths teacher. Somehow, today it didn’t make her feel much better. And the warm, happy feeling she had woken up with was gone too.

  “Come on,” she said, hoiking Moosa up on to her hip where he stopped grizzling immediately. “We will leave the nasty man and go and see Mr Abdul, eh? And Mrs Massoud – and nice Sally who said you looked like her nephew and gave you the little cake. Maybe she will have another treat for you, Moosie?”

  Moosa giggled and grabbed at her hair, twisting it round his fingers.

  She turned and took her mother gently by the arm. Her face was red and blotchy and her eyes looked so tired this morning.

  “You are a good girl, Aya,” Mumma said, patting Aya’s hand absently.

  “I’m going to talk to someone at the centre,” said Aya. “Sally – or the caseworker man. About the rent and the papers. They will be able to help. Sort this all out. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

  Chapter 12

  But five hours later she was still sitting in the community centre, watching as the clock on the wall ticked towards one o’clock. They still hadn’t seen the man who Sally had said might be able to give them advice on housing, and there was no sign of Miss Helena either.

  “How long you think we spend sitting in queue like this, Miss Aya-My-Professor?” asked Mr Abdul. He needed to talk to someone about medicine for his arthritis, but nobody seemed to know quite who he was supposed to speak to. The whole centre was run by volunteers, and there were always too many people, too many problems – not enough time.

  “Weeks and weeks,” said Aya with a smile.

  “And months … and years…” Mr Abdul sing-songed.

  “Lifetimes!” said Aya, and they both laughed.

  “Queuing and queuing – filling in forms and answering questions,” said Mr Abdul in his deep, throaty, sing-along voice. “Waiting, asking for help, answering the same questions over and over again…”

  “I can maybe help you translate,” Aya said. “If you need me to. Sally said the translator cannot come today.”

  “Thank you, little professor,” said Mr Abdul – his old face lighting up with the big smile that came out like sun from behind a rain cloud. “And the words you teach me are up here!” He tapped the white fuzz on top of his head. “My English will be so nice – soon I will not need translator!” He grinned and added, “Thanking you ve-ry much!” in his best English, before finishing with a throaty laugh.

  “But still – if you want. I can try. My father taught me…”

  Aya tailed off, pushing away an unbidden memory of her father – of laughing over funny-sounding English words at the kitchen table. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Twelve fifty-five. Miss Helena had said she would talk to Mumma before the lesson, and there was no sign of her.

  She’s probably forgotten, thought Aya. Sometimes she felt like all
the bits of lost paperwork – misplaced, forgotten, scattered along the way.

  Mumma sat on a collapsing sofa in the corner while Moosa played with a small pile of toys that had been donated to the centre by some of the volunteers. Mumma seemed a little better since Aya had persuaded her to eat some breakfast but she still looked so small and faded.

  “I thought I would find you here!”

  Aya looked up to see Miss Helena. She wore a snowy-grey cardigan today, over a tie-dyed dress the colour of butterfly wings. Her arrival had caused a stir of interest. Mr Abdul stood and extended his hand with a small bow. “Allow me to be introduced to your friend, Miss Aya?” he said with exaggerated courtesy.

  “This is Miss Helena – the dance teacher from upstairs,” said Aya in Arabic. Then she switched to English. “Miss Helena, this is my friend Mr Abdul.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said Mr Abdul in Arabic, taking the hand Miss Helena extended to him and kissing it chivalrously. Then he added in English, just for good measure, “Hel-lo very much!”

  “He says he is pleased to meet you,” Aya explained.

  “I thought as much,” said Miss Helena, holding Mr Abdul’s twinkling gaze with a smile. “Please convey my pleasure in meeting him also.”

  Aya did so, and Mr Abdul continued to hold Miss Helena’s hand a little longer than Aya felt was strictly necessary.

  “And these are my friends Mr and Mrs Massoud.”

  “A friend of Aya is a friend of ours also,” said Mrs Massoud, greeting Miss Helena with a small curtsey.

  Aya introduced a couple of other centre regulars, as well as Sally, the perpetually smiling volunteer coordinator who ran the drop-in centre, and the two strict-looking food-bank ladies who had been concerned about Moosa since his bumped head the day before.

  “She looks after her brother so well,” said one.

  “Such a good girl,” said the other.

  “And your maminka?” said Miss Helena, after all the introductions were done. “Can I meet her also?”

  Aya led the dance teacher over to the sofa where her mother sat. Mumma looked startled as Miss Helena reached down and extended her hand.

  “Mumma, this is Miss Helena.” Aya looked at her nervously. She didn’t want Mumma to get upset, and all sorts of things unsettled her these days. “She runs the dance school upstairs.”

  Mumma shot an anxious look at Aya.

  “Please tell your mother I am very pleased to meet her,” said Miss Helena gently.

  Aya translated quickly and her mother nodded, but the crease in her forehead remained and she looked wary. Aya tried to remember when that wariness had crept into her mother’s eyes. Was it during the siege? Or afterwards, at the refugee camp? Or not till later, after Dad…?

  Moosa had clambered off the sofa and tripped up over the bag of papers that Mrs Massoud carried around everywhere. Papers to do with her missing son, Jimi, who she said she would never stop looking for. Mumma went to scoop him up, apologising in Arabic.

  “Miss Helena says I can join her ballet class,” Aya managed to say. She watched her mother expectantly, trying not to let herself hope too much.

  “We have no money to pay for dance lessons,” said Mumma in a stiff voice, bundling a wriggling Moosa up into her arms and shooting another anxious glance at Aya. “No money.”

  Miss Helena did not wait for Aya to translate the answer. “Perhaps you can explain that I would not expect payment.”

  Aya translated, aware that everyone else in the waiting room was trying to follow the exchange with interest.

  “I am thinking that Aya might assist with some of the classes for younger girls,” Miss Helena went on. “Dotty helps but sometimes but she is more of an entertainer than a demonstrator!”

  “A – demonstrator?” Aya didn’t recognise the word in English.

  “A helper,” Miss Helena said with a smile. “We then will be – how do you say it – doing each other a favour!”

  Aya explained this to her mother and for a moment – just for a moment – Mumma looked like her old self. Like the pretty, sweet young mother who had been left behind in Aleppo. Who applauded every new move and laughed as Aya danced around the kitchen.

  Aya was looking at Mumma, her heart thumping in her chest. Mumma was facing Miss Helena and a look seemed to pass between the two women. When she turned back to Aya there were tears in her eyes as she took Aya’s hand and stroked it gently between her own. “You must go, habibti.”

  Habibti. It was Dad’s word for her. Beloved, it meant. My beloved.

  Aya tried to read the look in her eyes. “But don’t you need me?”

  “I can manage.” she said quietly.

  Moosa had wriggled free and was making his way towards Mrs Massoud’s bag of papers again.

  “But Moosa…?”

  “Will survive without his big sister for an hour or two each day,” said Mrs Massoud, scooping up Moosa and landing a kiss on his damp curls.

  “We old ones can watch him,” said Mr Abdul, as Moosa wriggled like a fish and squawked like a baby dinosaur. “How much trouble can he be?”

  Sally laughed. “I’m sure we can all help,” she said.

  Aya glanced at Mumma. Her eyes were bright and a little misty, but Aya could not read the expression in them. “Are you sure you are OK?”

  “Go,” said Mumma quietly. She smiled, and for a second it was the smile that Aya remembered, with no wariness – the soft smile that reminded Aya of home. Of the smell of manoushi – the sweet bread Mumma used to bake on Sunday mornings. Of the sunlight falling through the skylight in the kitchen, of the sound of the radio playing, and her father calling her his dancing girl.

  “Go and dance, Aya.”

  Chapter 13

  Aya ran up the steps, taking them two at time, nearly colliding with Ciara at the top.

  “Watch where you’re going, refugee girl!”

  Aya felt her bubble of excitement pop and her stomach lurched. The other girls were there too – all except Dotty – but their smiles faded on their faces and they looked at each other awkwardly, not quite meeting her eye. It was as if that word – refugee – changed the way they saw her somehow.

  Ciara said it like it was an insult, just as the landlord had. Refugee. Aya thought of Mrs Massoud, who had lost her son and her daughter. And Mr Abdul, who told her he had fled his home with nothing when soldiers came and burned his village. They were refugees too. She wanted to say something to make them see her normally again – to say that she was just a girl like they were, that she didn’t choose for her life to be turned upside down, but the words didn’t come.

  “You’re here!”

  Dotty was sprinting up the stairs, breathless and grinning. “And I’m actually not late for once. Here – these are for you.” She shoved a pile of clothes into Aya’s hands – three leotards that looked hardly worn and three immaculate pairs of ballet socks.

  Aya’s stomach contracted again and she felt heat flood to her face.

  “They don’t fit me any more,” Dotty was saying. “And you’re much diddier than me!”

  Ciara was smirking now, and the other girls were busying themselves tying shoes and fiddling with their hair. Aya knew that Dotty was trying to be nice, and the leotards were beautiful, but somehow they were worse than Ciara’s insult. They made her feel like a charity case – a poor little refugee.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, her face burning red.

  Dotty didn’t seem to be aware of her discomfort. “Come on – get changed or you’ll be late, and Miss Sylvie is taking warm-up!”

  But Aya took her time getting ready. She took the beautiful leotards into the toilet and locked herself into a cubicle. By the time she re-emerged the others were already in the studio. The tight ball of anxiety in her stomach was making her feel sick.

  “What are you wearing?”

  She could hear Ciara giggling. Feel the other girls staring now. Her face burned but she did not look up.

  Mis
s Sylvie raised her eyebrows. “No leggings in class, please. Take them off.”

  “I…” The knot tightened in Aya’s stomach. She thought she might be sick, but still she kept her eyes down.

  “You need bare legs or tights so that I can see your muscles working correctly,” Miss Sylvie explained.

  Aya felt blank as she sat on the bare floor and slowly peeled off the leggings. She didn’t look up or say a word as she pulled off the right leg, then hesitated slightly before exposing the flesh of her left calf.

  She heard Lilli-Ella gasp and Ciara make a sound between a hiccup and a giggle. Aya bit her lip to hold back the tears that she could feel beginning to form on her eyelashes. She would not cry. She would not let any of them see her cry. Especially not Ciara.

  The livid scar ran right down the back of her left calf. Purple and blue, it criss-crossed her muscle like an angry river; ugly, disfiguring. She turned away her eyes so she didn’t have to look at it.

  Miss Sylvie took a step towards her. Aya did not look up, could not catch her eye.

  “I see,” said Miss Sylvie. “You should have said. Shrapnel?”

  Aya nodded.

  Miss Sylvie bent down and took Aya’s calf in her hand, expertly turning it under the scrutiny of her eye. “Is there any permanent damage?”

  “I don’t think so. My father…” Aya hesitated. Her stomach tightened as it always did when she said Dad’s name. “He said there will be no damage – for long term.”

  The other girls had fallen silent. Even Ciara was no longer sniggering. But Aya knew that they were all staring. And pitying her – the refugee, the charity case, the war child, the victim…

  “Perhaps you would prefer to wear tights,” said Miss Sylvie.

  “No!” The bell-like voice of Miss Helena rang out, and the tiny woman appeared from the other side of the studio. “We should wear our scars with pride,” she declared. “For they contain the history of our suffering and our survival. Is that not right, Aya?”

  Aya looked up at her. She could just see her own face in the mirror – blotchy, eyes too bright. She remembered her father saying something similar to a patient who had been disfigured by a roadside bomb, her face badly burned. “Your scars show you are a survivor,” he had told her. Aya hadn’t understood it then. She still wasn’t sure she did now. But she nodded at Miss Helena gratefully, her throat too tight to say anything.