No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  “There are dancing schools in England!” Dad said, his mouth turned up into a smile but his almond eyes looking tired and anxious. “Other dancing teachers too.”

  “But they won’t be Madam Belova!” Aya had insisted, tears in her eyes.

  Dad put his arm round her then. “Habibti,” he said. “Even when you could not go to class because of your leg, even when you were laid up in bed, you were still dancing. I could see it. If you weren’t up on your feet you were dancing in your head, making up stories with your fingers and toes. Sometimes I swear I could see your arms going through repetitions in your sleep. That is what it means to be a dancer. The barre, the studio – they are just accessories.”

  Aya tried to smile but she still felt anxious as Dad pulled her tight.

  “It is no longer safe to stay here. We need to get out while we still can,” he said. “But wherever we go to, wherever we end up, you will always dance, habibti. Because dancing is in your heart, so you carry it with you everywhere.”

  “Do you promise, Dad?”

  Her father lifted her chin so that she was looking at him and this time his smile reached all the way up to his eyes. “I promise, habibti!”

  Chapter 16

  After the lesson, Aya asked Dotty about what the little ones had said. Both girls were perched on the wall outside the community centre, waiting for Dotty to be picked up. Aya had collected Moosa, who was asleep in his pushchair, his face and hands still sticky from ice cream the food-bank ladies had given him.

  “My mum is always late!” Dotty said. “She’s never actually forgotten me though! Not yet, that is!”

  The two girls sat on the low red-brick wall, Dotty scuffing her feet rhythmically along the grey concrete pavement. The day was hot, which Dotty said was pretty unusual for Manchester.

  “I think it rains, like, every two days, and twice as much in leap years – or something like that. I read it somewhere,” said Dotty, who wore a leopard-print bomber jacket paired with cartoon-strip leggings and gem-encrusted Converse. Somehow the strange combination suited her. “Don’t get too used to the sunshine, that’s all I’m saying,” she added with a grin.

  Aya sometimes wondered if she’d ever get used to anything in Manchester. Even the colours were so different from home. The grey concrete, red bricks, white sky, smatterings of green grass. And England smelled different too. She wondered if every country had its own smell that made locals feel at home and outsiders feel … alien.

  “Is it true you have an audition?” She sounded the unfamiliar word out, glancing down at her own feet in Mumma’s old sandals – so drab next to Dotty’s sparkly new Converse. “For a ballet school? The Royal Northern?”

  Dotty sighed loudly. “Yup – why do you think I spend so much of my life here at the moment? I mean, it’s supposed to be the holidays and I’m here every day!”

  “That is – very amazing. When is this audition?”

  “We already had the prelims,” said Dotty with a shrug. “Final auditions are in, like, three weeks.”

  Aya stared out at the little parade of shops opposite the community centre, and the high-rise tower blocks rising up beyond them, glass windows glistening in the sunshine. It was hard not to compare it with home. This was a city where dreams had not been blown up in smoke and rubble.

  “But you don’t really want to go?” said Aya.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Aya wasn’t sure how to explain – how Dotty seemed more alive outside the studio than in it, how her eyes clouded over when she talked about the audition. “Colette said you want to be an actress.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like dancing,” said Dotty. “I do. Just not always ballet. What I’d really love to do is musical theatre – acting, singing, dancing, the whole lot.”

  Then she was leaping up, on to the wall, arms thrown wide, toe-tapping and jazz-hands waving with her head back, belting out, “There’s no business like show business!” as if she was in the spotlight on Broadway. And then she came to a stop, her shoulders slumped, and she plonked herself back down again. “But, you know, you can’t have everything – right?”

  “Right,” said Aya.

  “Ciara is trying out for the Royal Northern,” Dotty added, pulling a face. “So we have to go to extra audition sessions with Miss Helena, plus I’m supposed to practise at home – like, all the time! If I’m not eating, sleeping or on the toilet, I’m supposed to be training.”

  “At home?” Aya glanced at Dotty

  “Yeah, we have a studio at home. I have to do two hours every morning.” Dotty sighed, looked Aya in the eye, shrugged, then declared, “OK. I suppose I had better tell you.”

  “Tell me…?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t before. I mean, you’ll get all the other stuff. It’s just I’ve been putting it off cos people start acting dead weird once they know.”

  “I don’t … understand?”

  “My mother.” Dotty stared out at the street where a man in a white van was having an argument with the owner of the kebab shop opposite. “Have you heard of Bronte Buchanan?”

  Aya shook her head.

  “Well, that’s a relief!” Dotty grinned, but she was fiddling with the sleeve of her crazily patterned jacket and she didn’t look Aya in the eye. “For a rather small woman, my mother is a very large shadow to grow up under. ‘The most famous British dancer since Darcey Bussell’ – that’s what everyone calls her!”

  “Oh,” said Aya. “I see.”

  “Yup! Everyone’s always expecting me to be like her. Prima ballerina and all that. Only I’m totally not! And no one has ever stopped to ask if I want to be.”

  Aya glanced at Dotty. She didn’t look up. The smile had faded from her face.

  From far off, Aya could hear the sound of a police siren. The men across the road were still arguing. Two kids whizzed past on scooters with lights in the wheels.

  “Mum trained with Miss Helena too, you see. She ‘spent the happiest years of her life’ there – as she is constantly reminding me.” Dotty sighed, shrugged and looked up with a wry grin. “So I’m supposed to be having the time of my life too. And I’m trying, but…” She tailed off.

  “You are a beautiful dancer also,” said Aya, not knowing what else to say.

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” said Dotty, without a hint of pride or boastfulness. In fact, her tone was, if anything, slightly regretful. “And ballet is the only kind of dancing worth doing, apparently. Why would anyone want to do any other kind of dancing – that’s what Mum says! Tap is tacky, modern is undisciplined and as for hip-hop … don’t get my mother started on that! If I dared mention that I wanted singing and acting lessons she’d probably have a heart attack. So vulgar! So that’s that, I suppose.”

  Both girls sat in silence for a moment. The man opposite got into his van, slammed the door and screeched off. The two scooter kids turned in slow circles outside the chip shop.

  “Listen to me – going on about my problems,” Dotty said, giving herself a shake. “When your home got bombed to bits and you don’t even know if you’re going to be allowed to stay in England. Moaning about ballet school and a pushy dance mum sounds so lame.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Aya, and she meant it.

  “What about your mum,” said Dotty, with a little shake of the head. “What’s she like, anyway?”

  Aya thought of her own mumma. Fading away, not glistening like a star.

  “She is unwell,” she said. One of the kids was doing stunts on his scooter, making it bunny-hop along the pavement, lights flashing. “The journey – it made her sick.”

  “Sick how? When did it start?”

  How could she explain? That Mumma had still been recovering from the birth of Moosa when they left Aleppo. That there hadn’t been enough food. That by the time they reached the refugee camp in Turkey she was feverish and dangerously dehydrated. That the winter they had spent there had been freezing, and hundreds had died from the cold. How could
Dotty possibly understand all that? It didn’t seem fair to even tell her.

  “We were in a camp in Turkey.”

  “A camp?”

  “A refugee camp.” Aya bit her lip. “It started there. And then after that she get … got worse.”

  Dotty looked at her curiously for a moment. “We’re not so different, are we – you and me,” she said.

  Aya wanted to ask her what she meant, but at that moment a car drew up on the opposite side of the road. A glossy black four-by-four with tinted windows, one of which rolled down to reveal a glamorous-looking woman. She had large, expressive dark eyes, black hair pulled back into an elegant chignon and a long, slender neck. She wore no make-up but her face seemed to glow in the same way that Dotty’s did, though her skin was much lighter than her daughter’s.

  She had evidently been talking to someone on the phone for she seemed distracted. “Just one second, Marcus. I’m picking up my daughter. Dots! Jump in quick. I’m in a terrible rush.”

  Dotty was already on her feet. “Mum,” she was saying, as she gathered her things hastily together. “This is Aya – remember, I told you. She’s from Syria.”

  Bronte Buchanan took in Aya for the first time, her gaze distracted. “Yes, Marcus, hold on a sec…” she said to the invisible caller.

  Aya was aware of how she must look. Wearing one of Dotty’s old leotards and the jogging pants from the clothing bank, a headscarf pulled over her head, and Mumma’s tatty sandals slipped hastily on to her feet. With a grubby-looking baby in an old pushchair.

  “Hello…” she started to say.

  Bronte Buchanan’s face was unreadable as she said simply, “Nice to meet you, Aya. Dotty, jump in. We need to go…” Then her attention was back to the invisible Marcus. “Yes, yes, tell them I’ll get right on to it. I’m on my way.”

  Dotty turned to Aya and shrugged before jumping into the car. The tinted window rolled up and the car took off, leaving Aya sitting on the low wall, alone once more.

  Chapter 17

  Aya arrived back at the bedsit to find Mumma had made food – just beans on toast, cooked on the two-ring stove in the corner, but it was the first meal she had prepared for a long time. She smiled when she saw Aya. A tight, anxious smile, but a smile – that was something.

  “You’re feeling better?” Aya asked, thinking for some reason of Bronte Buchanan, in her big black four-by-four, with her manicured nails and wrists jangling with bracelets.

  “Yes. And I have good news, Aya,” said Mumma. She was wrapped in a new cardigan, her hands shaking nervously as she served up the food on to plates.

  Aya’s stomach lurched. “Is it Dad?”

  Mumma shook her head quickly, blinking hard, the tight smile slipping a little.

  Aya’s heart sank, but she tried to hide her disappointment. “Did you speak to the housing people? Did they sort out the rent?”

  Another brief, nervous shake of the head.

  “Oh.” A pulse of anxiety fluttered in Aya’s stomach.

  “Your Miss Helena brought this.” Mumma held out a brochure and Aya stared at it, confused, still thinking of the landlord’s threat to throw them out. The picture on the front was of a young ballerina in practice clothes, standing at the barre with her leg gracefully extended in arabesque penchée.

  “Royal Northern Ballet School? This is where Dotty is going.” Then she thought of her friend’s mournful expression and added, “That is – it’s where her mum wants her to go.”

  Mumma sat down then, kneeling on the floor in front of Aya, taking her hands, the food forgotten. Her fingers felt papery and frail between Aya’s own. “And you too,” she whispered.

  Aya sighed. Mumma was obviously confused. She had sauce on her cheek and her eyes were too bright. She must be tired.

  “Mumma. You have to audition to get in here. And it’s too late anyway.”

  Mumma’s hands gripped hers more tightly. “If you get in, they can’t send you away from England, even if our appeal is rejected. Miss Helena says—”

  “When did you speak to Miss Helena?” Aya could feel her mother’s fingers clasped round hers. She felt tired and suddenly not hungry.

  “She said the audition is in just a few weeks.”

  Aya stared at the brochure again then glanced at her Mumma’s too-bright eyes and wavering smile. “Mumma, I missed the prelim rounds. It’s too late.”

  “This is a chance for you, Aya,” said Mumma, her voice more urgent now, her fingers still gripping Aya’s. “Even if Moosa and I have to leave.”

  Aya felt her stomach contract. “I told you – I won’t let that happen.”

  Mumma pulled her hand away and placed the brochure in Aya’s grip. “This is what your dad would have wanted,” she said quietly.

  Mumma hadn’t said Dad’s name for so long. Hearing it now sent a shock, like electricity, through Aya. And the expression in Mumma’s eyes as she said it frightened her somehow.

  “Sure, Mumma,” she said, leading her over to the bed, sitting her down gently. Mumma was obviously confused, but Aya didn’t want to upset her any more. “Sure, OK. I’ll talk to Miss Helena tomorrow. OK?”

  “Promise?” said Mumma.

  “Yes, Mumma. I promise. Now, sit still and I will finish the supper.”

  Aleppo, Syria

  Dad always planned things carefully. Once he had decided that they had to leave, he dug out Aya’s school atlas. He couldn’t print off more detailed maps because there was no power, and anyway, it was too risky, he said, to have such things in the house. He even hid the atlas under the mattress, but took it out every night to pore over as Mumma slept on the sofa, arms wrapped protectively round her ballooning belly. Aya would crouch on the floor next to him as Dad traced his long fingers across the contours of the maps in the atlas – along the rivers, following highways, over mountains and lakes … talking her through the long journey they would make: Turkey, Greece, then onwards … all the way to England.

  Once the baby was born then they would go – to safety, he said. It was too dangerous to leave while Mumma was pregnant. And the baby was due in just a few weeks now. It wouldn’t be long…

  But then – just before Mumma’s due date – government forces surrounded the rebel-held area of the city, cutting off the escape route along the road that led north to Turkey. There was no way out of the city in either direction. They were stuck. No supplies coming in. No way out.

  Now Aya understood the meaning of the word ‘siege.’

  Moosa was born at home during an airstrike. There were complications with the birth, Dad said. Aya didn’t really understand. She only knew that Mumma lost a lot of blood. She would need time to recover.

  Aya looked after her new brother a lot in the early days because Mumma was so unwell and Dad was needed at the hospital all the time – coping with the casualties of the war who kept pouring in, working with fewer and fewer resources because the city was cut off from outside supplies – sometimes without electricity.

  Aya remembered sitting in the dark apartment in a blackout, singing to baby Moosa by candlelight. Maybe that was why she felt like a second mother to him sometimes.

  She had never understood until then what it meant to be hungry. But government troops had cut supply routes to the city and after weeks of food shortages, there were stories of people eating grass and leaves. Luckily Dad had stock-piled provisions, but still they had to be careful. Mumma no longer baked manoushi bread or mahashi and there were no almonds or fruit in the market, where the stalls were all bare. Nobody knew how long the siege would last.

  “Why is our own government attacking us?” Aya asked Dad.

  Dad sat in the kitchen with Moosa asleep in his arms. Moosie was so tiny then – small and red-faced, with a shock of dark hair and long eyelashes.

  “The world has turned upside down, habibti,” Dad said. “Let us hope it turns the right way back again soon!”

  “Will we stay here now? Forever?”

  Dad’s face crea
sed into a frown. His almond eyes looked full of something Aya did not understand. “No, Aya. We have to leave. I don’t know how just yet, but somehow we have to get out of Syria.”

  Chapter 18

  “I used to dance when I was younger,” said Mrs Massoud, her lined and anxious face lit up with one of her rare, twinkling smiles. She had offered to take Moosa to the park while Aya went to ballet upstairs. “And so did my Milena – ballroom and Latin. There was a beautiful ballroom in Damascus; it’s gone now.”

  Her eyes were bright as she talked and Aya thought of her crying every night. Of the picture of her daughter she always kept in her wallet. Of her bag of papers about her lost son.

  The people left behind.

  “Are you sure – about Moosa?” said Aya.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Mrs Massoud, taking Moosa out of Aya’s arms and planting a kiss on his warm cheek. “I see all you do, for your mother and the little one. You go. Enjoy your dancing! I shall be happy having a little one to spoil!”

  Aya gave Moosa a kiss and told him to be a good boy. “Don’t you be a pickle for Mrs Massoud, Moosie!” she said. “And keep an eye on Mumma for me, OK?”

  The relief she felt as she raced upstairs tore at her insides. She had promised to look after her baby brother, but sometimes she couldn’t wait to get away from him.

  She wanted to talk to one of the teachers before class began, but Miss Sylvie was on the phone in the office and there was no sign of Miss Helena. Aya started to put on her ballet shoes, thinking she could warm up before the others arrived.

  “Yes, Bronte, I understand, but there’s nothing to worry about,” Miss Sylvie’s voice was clearly audible through the doors. “I understand that Dotty needs to focus… No, Aya will not be a distraction…”