The three girls all looked thrilled with the compliments.
“Ciara, you are lovely, of course,” smiled Bronte – causing Dotty to pull a face at Aya. “I just wonder if we could see a little more of what you are thinking – what you are feeling, as you dance?”
“That would NOT be a pretty picture!” Dotty muttered.
“Dotty.” Bronte turned to her daughter now and Dotty flushed in a way that Aya had never seen before. Aya remembered the pleading expression on her face in her audition dance.
Then her mother smiled softly. “There is a difference in the way you move that I can’t put my finger on, but I like it.”
Dotty beamed. “Thanks,” she managed to say.
“But you could manage to look as if you were enjoying it a little more!” Bronte added. “So many girls long for the opportunity you have.”
Dotty’s face fell and she looked as if she wanted to say something, but Bronte had already moved on.
“And Aya – it is Aya, isn’t it?”
Aya nodded, feeling Bronte’s eyes on her again. She could feel all the other girls watching her too.
“Aya, I hear you are auditioning for the Royal Northern,” Bronte Buchanan was saying. In her flat red shoes she was tiny – Grace towered over her – and somehow not as scary as Aya had previously thought.
Aya nodded.
“Well, I wish you luck,” said Bronte. “You deserve it.”
“Thank you,” Aya managed to say.
Bronte smiled and turned to her daughter. “Dotty, perhaps now your father is back from his business trip, Aya would like to come over to our house sometimes. You could practise together in the studio. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Dotty beamed some more. “Um, yes, that would be awesome! If – um – Aya would like to, that is?”
Bronte turned to her with an amused smile on her face. “Would you, Aya?”
Aya was staring at the ballerina. The way she stood, even the way she held her head had indescribable elegance and beauty.
“Yes…” she stammered. “Yes, I would.”
“Perhaps this Saturday. After class?” Both girls nodded and Bronte smiled. “Good. Because sometimes I think we meet certain people for a reason. Now, I must go. Lovely to see you, girls. Oh, and, Dotty, your messy jetés are so much better than they were – but do keep working on them.”
“Wow,” said Dotty after she had gone. “How does my mother manage to make a compliment sound so … uncomplimentary!”
Izmir, Western Turkey
The sun was only just rising when they stepped off the bus but the port town was already bustling. They were immediately accosted by hawkers trying to sell them everything from sea-sickness pills to balloons to keep their valuables in. And others who crowded in, saying soft and low, “You are looking for a boat? I have a good boat. Very reliable. Take you and your family to Greece – no trouble.” Aya hated the way they pressed round them – like birds of prey – and Moosa started to whimper.
Dad left them in a café in the town square while he went off to arrange it all. All around the square there were shops selling life jackets – blue, orange, red – wet bags, rubber inner tubes. There were signs offering “pre-crossing accommodation” and “migrant travel insurance”. There was even a shop that sold police uniforms, with life jackets among the merchandise hanging out front. Refugees were big business in a town cashing in on the migrant crisis.
Dad came back a few hours later and took them to the single room they would stay in until the conditions were right to sail. There had been bad storms and the spring tides were not safe to cross just yet, he said.
“How long?” Mumma had asked.
“That depends on Allah’s plans for the wind and weather!” Dad smiled. “Soon, I hope.”
There were hundreds of families like theirs in the town. Some had been there for months, some stayed only a few weeks, more arrived every day. Mostly Syrian, all wanting to make the crossing to Greece to claim asylum in Europe. There was no future for anyone here, Dad said, because they could not get work permits. And going back wasn’t an option.
Not everyone had enough money to pay the boat owners to get them across, so many people worked illegally to raise the fare, hawking cigarettes and alcohol in the town square, evading the Turkish police and customs officials. Aya made friends with a boy called Tariq whose family had been there nearly a year, selling trinkets in back streets to raise money for the crossing.
“Not everyone makes it,” he told her. They were sitting in the town square. Aya had just been trying to teach him to do a grand jeté, which had resulted in them both falling over in a heap on the floor.
“What do you mean?”
“My dad says there are more Syrians under the sea than in the ruins of Aleppo,” said Tariq with a shrug. He was ten years old but small for his age, with sharp black eyes like pebbles, and thin, wiry limbs.
“Well, my dad says it’s worth the risk.”
Tariq shrugged. “Just saying. I’ve seen the people they sent back. And heard their stories too.”
“Sent back?”
“Yeah – some new agreement between the EU and Turkey,” he said, tipping his chin up and sounding very superior, like he himself was a politician suddenly. “Even if you make it, they can still ship you back here if they catch you.”
Aya surveyed him warily. He was tipping back and forth on his heels, pebble eyes twinkling.
“That’s not true,” said Aya. “Is it?”
“Ask your dad, he’ll tell you!” said Tariq. “Come on – show me that jumpy thing again.”
So Aya taught him how to stretch his leg when in the air, to make sure his head was moving in harmony with his body, to close quickly on landing. Tariq was a fast learner, she thought. He might have made a good dancer – maybe he still would. But for now he was selling trinkets to tourists in the streets.
Chapter 29
Dotty’s house was – well, it wasn’t really a house, more like a mansion. “It’s kind of embarrassing living in a place like this,” Dotty said. “Like the Real Housewives of somewhere or other!”
Bronte Buchanan, who was driving them up the front drive, let out a tinkling laugh. “Dotty, you do say the silliest things.”
“Oh, I know we’re dead lucky but – well, after all Aya’s been through. It makes you feel dead guilty about all this, to be honest!” Dotty waved a hand at the palatial mock-Tudor mansion, the sweeping driveway, the garage big enough to fit four cars.
“It’s lovely,” said Aya quietly.
“Seriously, Mum, I still don’t get why Aya and her family can’t just come and live here with us.”
Aya felt her stomach do a flip.
“Dotty, we talked about this…”
“But it would only be till they sorted things out,” Dotty insisted. “And we have so much room.”
Aya felt like she wanted to curl up on the back seat and die. It was like the time that Dotty had given her the clothes – only worse, because it was obvious that Bronte Buchanan hated the very idea of having a family of asylum seekers under her roof.
“Dotty, things are much more complicated than you realise,” she said as they drew to a stop on the gravel in front of the house. “So can you please drop this!”
“It just doesn’t seem fair, that’s all,” said Dotty.
“Please,” said Aya. “It’s OK.”
She caught Bronte’s eye in the rear-view mirror for a moment, then looked away quickly.
“Fine! This is my dad.” Dotty was dragging Aya out of the car and introducing her to a tall man who had come out to greet them, with the same laughing eyes and dark-chocolate skin as Dotty. His hair was greying at the temples and he wore a sharp pin-striped business suit and old-fashioned-looking glasses that lent him a slightly boyish appearance. His smile was as wide as Dotty’s as he clasped Aya’s hand saying, “Ah! The famous Aya! I have heard so much about you from my daughter and my wife, I’ve been starting to feel a
bit jealous!”
He laughed and Aya found it was impossible not to smile back. Mr Buchanan had a halo of warmth about him that reminded her of her own father somehow, and helped dispel the awkwardness that had engulfed her.
“Obviously, if you want to know anything about dancing, do ask me, as I believe I may be the most talented ballerina in the family!” As he said this, Mr Buchanan flung his arms in the air and executed a terribly clumsy spin that caused Dotty to groan loudly.
“Dad, you are so embarrassing!”
“What!” he exclaimed in mock surprise. “I danced Swan Lake with Nureyev, don’t you know!”
“Come on, Aya. What do you want to see first, my room or the dance studio? Oh, dumb question. Come on!”
“Have fun – and don’t forget to work on those jetés,” Bronte called after them, but Dotty did not reply. “And I’ll be taking Aya back at five, OK?”
Dotty’s dance studio was in the conservatory, which had been adapted specially, with sprung floors and a row of mirrors with a barre running alongside them. The walls were decorated with images of ballerinas, but when Aya looked closely, none of them was of Bronte herself. “Even mum reckons that training under her own watchful eye would be a bit intimidating!” Dotty laughed.
“Who’s this?” Aya went up to one of the pictures of a young, dark-eyed dancer, en attitude.
“That’s Miss Helena again,” said Dotty. “She was lovely wasn’t she?”
Aya nodded. The girl in the photo was young, possibly only early teens, and the date at the bottom read 15th July 1947. Miss Helena had said that she’d left her parents and her family when she was younger than Aya. During the war with Germany, many, many years ago. Had she ever seen them again, Aya wondered? And how did she keep on dancing without them? How did she keep training every day? How did she hold out against the tide?
“Come on, let’s go and get a snack!” said Dotty. “A girl cannot live on ballet alone! And Miss Helena said we need to feed you up for the audition!”
The kitchen was a vast room, oceans of marble worktops, a white stone floor, and a giant pine table, with huge glass doors overlooking the garden.
“What was your house like?” Dotty asked as they sat down with milk and home-made cookies.
“Oh, it was an apartment,” said Aya. The sun was shining through the glass doors, casting dappled sunny shadows on the table, reminding her of the late-summer sun in Aleppo.
“Sounds cool!” said Dotty.
“It was not as big as your house but it was nice – we had a roof terrace and we could see all of the city. And my dance school was very close.” Aya had not talked to anyone about her home since she came here. It felt nice somehow to recall. “I could walk there by myself, before the war. Also it was near the hospital where my father worked. And near the park with the swimming pool – and the covered market…”
“Ooh – that gives me an idea!” Dotty jumped up excitedly. “I’ll be right back!”
Then she was skipping out of the door, leaving Aya alone in the vast kitchen, remembering the view from the roof terrace, the castle towering over the city, the walk to school…
“Your father was a doctor, right?” Aya looked up to see that Mr Buchanan had come in and was standing with a cup of coffee by the counter.
“Oh – um – yes, he worked in England. In Birmingham.”
“Really? Your mother didn’t mention that.”
“You’ve met my mum?” Aya looked surprised.
“Your Miss Helena is very good at making introductions.” Dotty’s dad grinned widely. “So do you know where your father worked? Or who he worked with?”
Dotty recalled the name of the consultant Dad had been in touch with and she told him. “And he worked with British doctors in the camp in Kilis too. Red Cross.”
“I see,” said Mr Buchanan thoughtfully. “That could be helpful, I suppose…”
“Helpful?” said Aya. She wanted to ask Mr Buchanan what he meant, why he wanted to know about Dad, why he’d been talking to her mother. But there was no time, because just then Dotty came bouncing into the kitchen with a giant grin on her face.
“Come on,” said Dotty. “Let’s go for a swim.”
Izmir, Western Turkey
Moosa had never seen the ocean before. And Aya had only been to the seaside a few times – when she was younger, before the war started. She hardly remembered it, really. Moosa laughed and laughed when they dipped his toes in the waves. He had just started crawling by then, and he tried to put pebbles in his mouth while Dad showed Aya how to skim stones across the flat, white ocean that sparkled turquoise in the early-spring sunshine. Then they collected shells, picking out the ones with the best colours, the smoothest shapes. Dad picked up a shell and pressed it into her palm, pointing to the smudge of land on the horizon.
“See, it’s not far away. Just a few miles across the sea. And then we are in Europe.”
“Is it safe? In the boat?” She was thinking of what Tariq had said – about the people who didn’t make it. Who lay at the bottom of the Med.
“Of course,” said Dad.
“And if we get there, they can’t send us back, can they?” She recalled Tariq’s face as he’d said that – tipping back on his heels and offering it up like a challenge.
Dad’s face creased into a frown. “They can, but I will not let that happen,” he said.
“How?”
“I know people in the Red Cross – colleagues in England. They can’t get me a visa or work in Turkey but once I am in Europe – well, people always need qualified doctors.”
Aya glanced over to where Mumma was sitting with Moosa by the rocks. It was a warm spring day but she was wrapped in a blanket. She was looking better though – better than she had for a long time, and she was laughing as she and Moosa played together. Dad glanced over in her direction then he turned back to Aya, his face serious now.
“Habibti,” Dad said. “If anything happens – if we get separated … if something goes wrong – you look after your Mumma, OK?”
From his pocket he retrieved a plastic bag containing a wad of euros and a sheet of paper, covered in Dad’s spidery, unreadable handwriting.
“Dad, I—”
Dad glanced over to Mumma again. “You look after each other,” he said. “You go to England and I will meet you there, OK? There’s money. And people who will help you – OK?”
“But, Dad—”
“It’s just in case, habibti,” said Dad, wrapping an arm round her and running his hand over her hair, his dark eyes softly serious as he spoke. “Just in case. Always better to plan for the worst and hope for the best – that’s what I say!”
Aya was still thinking of Tariq’s stories – of capsized boats. Of the Greek authorities sending them back.
But Dad was smiling now, tossing a shell up and down in his palm. “Now, show me this new move you have been working on, where you hover in the air. Or the one where you jump like a cat.” He smiled, his almond eyes reflecting the curling waves of the ocean.
“Dance for me, habibti.”
That was the last time she had danced for him.
Chapter 30
The world stopped for a second. Dotty was already on her feet, gulping down the last of her milk, stuffing another cookie in her mouth and making for the door.
“Didn’t I say that we have a pool? It’s outdoors, so we have to make use of the rare moments of sunshine we get here.”
“But I…” Aya began to say. Her voice sounded distant – disconnected from herself – like the time they’d been locked in the studio. Only worse than that, even.
“Don’t fret! I’ll lend you a costume.” Dotty was pulling her up from the table. “If we stay in any longer, Dad will never stop talking and you’ll die of actual boredom. Come on!”
“Hey, young lady, I’ll have you know that I am VERY interesting!” Mr Buchanan called out as they disappeared upstairs.
Aya wasn’t aware of getting changed, of Dotty
throwing different costumes at her, grabbing towels, Dotty talking non-stop. She barely took in Dotty’s giant room, with the oceans of deep fluffy pink carpet, the bed hung with gauze like she was a princess, teddy bears and cuddly toys piled up and clothes scattered all over the floor and pouring out of the giant wardrobes.
She was aware of everything seeming brighter than usual, as memories lapped at the edges of her thoughts, like an ocean current that had ebbed briefly, but which rose now on the spring tides.
Then they were making their way down the staircase, along the marble hallway, out through the patio doors and across the warm paving stones.
Dotty was giggling but Aya’s head felt empty, as if a distant wind was whistling through it. She could barely feel her legs and arms and when she looked up to the warm blue sky above, images etched themselves – words, phrases, the odd flash as of a photograph appearing somewhere in her blank brain. There for a moment – then gone again.
“Come on – race you!” Dotty was calling. She wore a red swimming costume covered in white dots, and somewhere in Aya’s brain she was aware of a rhyme playing: “Spotty – Dotty” as the dots swirled in front of her eyes.
Then Dotty was leaping, up through the air into the pool, and Aya felt panic rise. She closed her eyes and felt the wave overtake her.
Dotty’s voice, somewhere far off: “Come on in! It’s lovely and warm.” But she seemed distant, as the tsunami of memories came, and there was no holding them back any more.
The Mediterranean Ocean
The boat they went in had been designed to hold no more than twelve, but there were thirty people squeezed into it. Grey, inflatable. The colour of the waves, Aya had thought when she saw it – not much bigger than the inflatables they played with at the water park in Aleppo. Before it was bombed, that is.
They left from a secluded beach at midnight so that the Turkish police would not see them. Minibuses bumping across the shingle, groups of people standing on the pebbly shore, their belongings tied into black bin bags. Babies in life jackets, crying. The men shouting at everyone that they had to hurry. Moosa screaming when the cold water hit him.
No Ballet Shoes In Syria Page 10
