“The lights were off,” said Ciara with a shrug. “I just assumed…”
Aya had closed her eyes and was trying to push away the memories of the darkness that were still spinning round her…
“Anyway, how was I supposed to know she would react like that?” Ciara was saying.
Aya knew how she must look. Like Mumma did sometimes. Pale, clammy, wild-eyed, washed-out. Damaged.
“It’s OK. I’m OK,” she managed to mutter. “I’m OK.”
“When you flew at the door, I honestly thought you were going to bite your way out if you had to,” said Dotty as they made their way downstairs.
“That is how I felt.”
“I think maybe that’s what Miss Helena means, you know,” said Dotty. “About finding the most difficult places inside yourself and dancing from those.”
Aya looked at her. She knew that her friend was right – she just had no idea how she was supposed to do it.
“That’s why Ciara doesn’t like you, an’ all!” said Dotty, stopping and turning as she made her way in the direction of her mum’s waiting car.
“Why?”
“Cos of the way you make people feel – when you dance. She’s frightened of it. Just like you are of being closed in.”
Aya wanted to ask her what she meant, but Bronte Buchanan sat in the front seat of the four-by-four and Aya caught her eye. She stopped. Dotty was pulling open the car door and saying, “Hi, Mum!”
Aya hung back and waved goodbye to Dotty, telling her she’d see her tomorrow, and then the car drove off and Aya was left on the pavement in the dark.
And when she got back to the bedsit, Mumma told her that they had to leave.
Chapter 26
When Miss Helena found Aya warming up in the studio the next day, her face was pale and her eyes ringed with dark circles.
“What is the matter?” asked the ballet teacher.
Aya recalled her mother’s face when she had got home the previous night. The letter in her hand. “We have to move. Out of the bedsit. Away from Manchester.”
Miss Helena’s expression did not change. “When did you learn this?”
“Yesterday.” Her voice sounded tight with the effort of trying to hold back the emotion.
The other girls had come in behind the dancing mistress and overheard what Aya had said.
Dotty looked horrified. “Why? But – no, they can’t…”
“What about your dancing?” said Blue.
“Where will you go?” asked Lilli-Ella.
Aya could see her own pale face in the studio mirror. She felt the same awful sense of embarrassment and shame as when Dotty had offered her the hand-me-down clothes, but she tried hard not to show it.
“We don’t have a choice,” she said. “The landlord won’t let us stay. It is the only place Sally can find for us.”
“I’ll talk to my mum … my dad,” said Dotty desperately. “I don’t know – surely there’s something we can do. To help, I mean.”
“I will be back very shortly,” said Miss Helena, speaking for the first time. “Warm up while you wait for me, please, ladies.”
Class was temporarily abandoned, so the girls scattered around the floor, under the battered old barre, doing their stretches and questioning Aya. Ciara hadn’t arrived yet and somehow the others were all more open, less self-conscious around Aya.
“I don’t understand how they can just move you, just because you’re a refugee,” said Grace.
“We are asylum seekers – not refugees,” said Aya, flushing self-consciously as she tried to explain.
“Oh!” Blue’s head popped up from a leg stretch. “Is there a difference?”
Aya remembered her father explaining it to her; it felt like a million years ago. In the camp in Kilis. Where they had to fill in forms, registering themselves as refugees. She hadn’t understood and Dad had tried to explain what the different words meant.
“If you go to a new country because your home is too dangerous, then you ask for ‘asylum’. It means a safe place.”
“Right,” said Dotty. “Then you are an asylum seeker – yes?”
Aya nodded. “And if a country agrees to let you stay – then you are a refugee.”
“So actually you kind of want to be a refugee?” said Lilli-Ella. “It’s a good thing?”
Aya nodded. Refugee meant safety, it meant staying, it meant a future.
“I never knew that’s what it meant,” said Blue. “I know that’s dumb but…”
“I didn’t know either,” said Aya. “Before.” She thought of all the things she had once known nothing of – bombs, and war, and homelessness, and fear. She was glad the others still knew nothing of them.
“So might you not be allowed to stay in England at all?” said Grace with a look of concern.
“Could they send you home?” asked Lilli-Ella.
“Maybe. It is complicated.”
“How on earth is it complicated?” said Dotty, looking outraged. “Your home is a war zone. Where are you supposed to go?”
“Who decides this stuff anyway?” asked Blue, her stretches forgotten as she contemplated the injustice of the system.
“We have to go to the appeal,” Aya said. “Soon. In court – with a judge.”
“And do you have a lawyer?” asked Dotty.
“We have a caseworker but I don’t think he’s a lawyer.” She shrugged her shoulders. They had no money for a lawyer, even if she knew who to ask.
Dotty looked troubled, her face twisted into a frown. “This can’t be allowed to happen. You can’t go away. You just can’t.”
Aya just looked at her. “We may not have a choice. People don’t always have a choice.”
Kilis Refugee Camp, Turkey
The Kilis refugee camp was their home all that winter. Just on the other side of the Turkish border from Syria, Kilis was a vast city of white containers, stretching in rows as far as the eye could see. Dad said there were over 13,000 refugees crowded into the camp – there were kindergartens, a makeshift school, a hospital. It was like a city but not a city. People survived here in a kind of limbo; unable to move forward, unable to go back home. The young, the strong – those who had the means – moved on from here. The rest – the elderly, the sick, the poor – sat outside the containers all day long, watching, waiting, existing – not living. Children ran up and down the brick rows that ran between the containers, kicking footballs fashioned out of plastic bags and playing with wire-hanger cars. It was safe, mostly – but it was not a home.
After they registered they were given cards that entitled them to rations from the food tent and other basic necessities. Dad tried to say it was like an adventure – a camping holiday. But Mumma hated it. She hated the airless container and the rows and rows of people, hundreds more arriving in the camp every day, streaming across the border like a river of the dispossessed. She hated living like beggars, stripped of all the things that made them feel human. She hated having to queue up for food and share meagre washing facilities with strangers.
“They frighten me,” she said. “Their eyes – always staring. They look so empty.”
Dad tried to reassure her. That this was only temporary. Until she was well enough to move again. Then they would get to England and find a new home, start a new life. And he held Mumma in his arms and told her to be brave – just for a little while – and everything would be OK again. They would find a proper home, he told her. “Everything will be OK,” he said.
And then the winter came.
Aya would never forget the cold, the hunger, the sickness. Dad helped out in the camp hospital, where he dealt with cases of hypothermia and severe malnutrition as well as the many diseases that ran like wildfire through the overcrowded camp – typhoid, cholera, dysentery…
They were among the lucky ones. They had some money – not much because they had left in such a hurry – but enough to buy food on the black market in the town when supplies ran out in the camp, as they often d
id. And they had Dad to keep them well and safe. But still, when the snow fell and Moosa cried all night for the bitter cold, the only thing that kept Aya going was dancing.
She met a young woman in the camp called Rosarita who came from eastern Syria, who had trained with Madam Belova before setting up her own ballet school. Her town had been invaded by Isis forces and many people – including her husband – had been killed or kidnapped.
“I tell myself every day how lucky I was to get away,” she told Aya.
“But … your husband?”
“I have to think of the things I managed to save – as well as those I lost,” said Rosarita.
“How do you do that?”
“I have to fight against the current,” she said with a smile. “The tide that would drag me always back into the past. I have to keep moving forward or I will be…” She hesitated. “Washed away.”
Aya hadn’t understood her at the time.
Rosarita ran dancing classes in the makeshift school tent for any children who were interested. It wasn’t the same as training with Madam Belova. They had to use crates as barres and few of the children had shoes. Rosarita played music on an old iPod plugged into a tinny speaker. But it allowed Aya to maintain her flexibility and some of her skills. Sometimes she thought it was the only thing that helped her to survive that terrible winter.
When spring came, Mumma was still weak but well enough to travel. So they bought tickets for a bus that took them up through western Turkey. Aya sat next to her father, watching the road wind through villages and towns, over mountains and through rocky scrubland, and Dad had talked about the great future there would be for them in England.
“We will ride on double-decker buses, eat fish and chips, and have tea with the Queen!” he had laughed, pulling Aya close to him, the memories of the camp falling away as he spoke.
“With the Queen?”
“And all her corgis!” he added with a smile. “We can build a new life there. A proper life. We will find you a dancing school and you will make new friends.”
The only thing that Aya had been sad to say goodbye to at the camp was the dancing with Rosarita.
“A ballet school? Really?”
“The best ballet school in England!” Dad had laughed. “And our own house with a garden – the English like their gardens. They like pets too. Perhaps we will get a cat – or a goldfish!”
He had talked on and on like that, painting pictures of England that were daubed in bright colours across her mind, and she had laughed as he held her close, and dreamed of dancing again in a green English garden beneath sunny skies. Dancing across the grass of a new home.
Chapter 27
Aya threw herself into preparing for the audition. What else could she do? Everything else was out of her control. They were going to have to move away in less than a week and then she had no idea how she would get to dance lessons, but she couldn’t worry about that for now. All she could do was work as hard as she possibly could and hope they wouldn’t move her away until after the audition. In class, she no longer paid attention to Ciara’s snide comments, no longer even heard Dotty’s sighs and groans, or the laughter of the other girls – she focused only on her own work. Miss Helena said it didn’t matter that Aya had not been to the preliminary round of auditions. But Aya did not want to take that chance. She wanted to perfect every single move she could. To be as good as she could. To make this work.
Because if she passed the audition, then they couldn’t send her back to Syria. That was what Dotty had said anyway. “I googled it – you can get a study visa. Then they’d have to let you stay.”
“And my mumma? Moosa?”
Dotty scrunched up her face. “I’m not sure about them – my legalese isn’t that good – but if you’re here then surely it must be harder for the immigration people to throw your family out, right?”
“I suppose?” said Aya. She had no idea if Dotty was right; the caseworker just looked confused when she asked him. “I’m afraid ballet schools aren’t something I normally deal with. Not really my area of expertise,” he’d said. But if there was even a chance that Dotty could be right, then Aya had to pass the audition. She just had to.
Only, no matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t seem to get her dance right. She worked on it with Miss Helena and with Dotty. She worked on it alone, out in the back yard, in the bedsit, in the empty studio. She even worked on it in bed at night, running through steps in her mind, trying to make the movements fit to the story, trying to make her body show where she had come from, what she had been through. But it never felt quite right. It felt … uncomfortable, and she couldn’t lose herself in it as she did when she had danced back home.
She asked Miss Helena if she could devise a dance about something else – make up a story, not her own. That would be easier, she said.
“Easier, yes, but less honest. Less powerful,” said Miss Helena. “The best dancing is not easy – to execute or to watch.”
“But I can’t seem to make it right,” said Aya.
“Easy … Right… These are not words for a dancer,” said Miss Helena. “These are words for a naughty boy doing his maths lesson. Maybe it will never be right, maybe it will always be difficult – but maybe that will make it more beautiful!”
“Maybe,” said Aya. But the dance didn’t feel beautiful – it felt awkward and stilted and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t lose herself in it. And she feared that if she did, she might not ever find her way back again.
“I thought I’d pop in and watch one of the classes.” The voice was low and lilting, coming from outside in the lobby when the girls were at the barre, just a couple of days before Aya and her family were due to be evicted. “If Miss Helena will allow me, that is?” Tinkling laughter and the smell of expensive perfume wafted through the door.
All the girls looked up and exchanged excited glances. Aya’s heart started pounding hard in her chest.
“It would be wonderful to have you in the class, Bronte.” This was Miss Sylvie speaking now. “I know all the girls will appreciate it.”
Aya glanced at Dotty, who was staring at the door with an unreadable expression on her face. “State visit from my mother,” she declared loudly.
“OMG!” said Lilli-Ella. “Bronte Buchanan is coming to our class!”
“Don’t stress,” said Dotty. “She won’t find anything wrong with anyone other than me!”
Then the same lilting voice saying, “I’ve been so busy, with rehearsals for the new season and everything. I hardly feel I know how Dotty’s audition prep is going.”
Dotty groaned.
“And she’s been talking so much about Aya.” The voice was closer now. Light footsteps approaching the studio. “I confess, I’m intrigued!”
The other girls all turned to look at her. Aya realised her heart was pounding harder than ever and she felt slightly sick.
“Oh, I wish I’d sorted my hair out better,” sighed Blue, whose orange curls were escaping wildly, defying all attempts to subdue them.
“And I wish I’d sorted my pirouettes,” said Grace, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t stress – she’s just come to check up on the war child,” said Ciara, and Aya felt herself flush even hotter. “She’s been talking to my mum about bad influences … standards slipping…”
In any case, it was too late for anyone to sort anything, because just then Miss Helena entered the room, accompanied by a small, slender figure dressed in a neat grey trouser suit and red pumps with silver pom-poms on the toes. All the girls stood to attention and Aya could feel Bronte’s eyes passing along the row before coming to rest on her.
“OK, girls, let us continue with our battement jetés.”
Aya felt herself flush, but then she remembered Miss Helena saying, “England is a country of refugees – a country that once prided itself on helping the helpless.” The words came back to Aya now as the music started and she lifted her eyes to meet those of Bronte Buch
anan. “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said to herself.
She tried to push away all thoughts except of dancing – keeping her shoulders level, her supporting leg turned out. Because, outside these doors, she was an asylum seeker, a would-be refugee, a poor little girl from Syria, a fatherless child from a war zone. But here, at the barre, in leotard and leather ballet shoes, she was like any other dancer. Dancing transcended borders; it cared nothing for languages, skin colour, nationality, religion. It did not require a passport. Or papers. Or “Leave to Remain”. It could not be bombed, or shelled, or destroyed, or drowned. It was a safe space, but it was more than that. It was a timeless space, where wars and love and family existed and had always existed. It had been there before all this and would be there long after it was all gone.
She did not realise that she was dancing differently that day. That her thoughts flowed through her limbs, even when she was doing the simplest of movements. That her memories, her sadness, joy, melancholy, and her defiance – all of that was channelled through Aya’s arms in the port de bras, through her extended leg in her arabesque en fondu, giving her a stronger, straighter composure, a more expressive tilt to her head, an intense light in her eyes that was magnetic and powerful beyond measure.
After the class was over, she curtsied to Miss Helena and to Bronte Buchanan, nervously lifting her eyes to meet those of the famous dancer, who was staring at her with a peculiar expression on her face. Bronte Buchanan held her gaze, inclined her head and smiled.
Then she turned to Miss Helena. “Now I understand,” she said.
Chapter 28
“Thank you for letting me watch your class.” As the girls pulled on jumpers and leggings in the lobby, Bronte Buchanan came over to talk to them all. “I was incredibly impressed – by all of you.”
Ciara beamed as if the compliment had been for her alone.
“Lilli-Ella, your floor work is exquisite,” she said. “Blue, I am so impressed by your lovely lines, and Grace, what an improvement in your port de bras!”
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