No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  The music started then. Or had it started a few seconds earlier? Aya began late, a moment behind the beat, missing her footwork, feeling herself colour hotly.

  “Maybe she can apply for a study visa – though that won’t help her mother and Moosa, of course.”

  Things didn’t go well. She tried hard to focus on the class, to concentrate on her hands, her feet, her fingers, the lines she was making with her body, pointing her toes, holding her chin up – but her mind kept wandering, dancing skittishly, and her body seemed unable or unwilling to obey. The room was close and airless and she could smell the scents of England outside – sweet summer smells of grass and flowers and Miss Helena’s garden. Yet thoughts of Aleppo kept filling her head – the first night of the bombing, the sound of the call to prayer … the blood running down her leg in the dust-filled street.

  Miss Eve was walking up and down. The other two teachers sat making notes behind the desk. Aya couldn’t seem to pull her mind into focus, couldn’t even seem to hear the beat of the music properly. Other sounds and sights seemed to cloud her head – the old woman in the container, children dying of cold in the camp in Kilis…

  They were moving to the centre now. Dotty was saying something to her as they dipped their feet in rosin to keep their shoes from slipping.

  “Are you OK?” she whispered.

  Aya tried to nod but wasn’t sure if her head obeyed the command. She felt like Mumma, adrift from time and place, unanchored, floating free and not able to grasp hold of the moment. Her moment – this was her chance, everyone had said. But what did the chance mean if it was too late to help Mumma and Moosa anyway? She had promised Dad she would look after them; she couldn’t leave them.

  “We want to see your port de bras, ladies,” Miss Eve was saying. “Nothing too complicated, but we are looking for excellence in every move.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Aya could see Ciara, caught in a shaft of sunlight. She seemed to glow like an angel, but her face was tight with concentration and anxiety. She was tense like Aya had never seen her and she kept making mistakes. Aya had never seen that either. To her other side, she was aware of Dotty, her face screwed up with effort. She fumbled a couple of moves and Aya could see her bite her lip hard.

  The music continued to play as they moved to floor exercises – jumps and leaps, moving from one corner of the room to another. Then arabesques … pirouettes … Aya moved on autopilot – the heat, the warm notes mingling with the smell of the grass, the images in her head … of her old classmates – Samia falling off the stage, the twins dancing their mirror dance on the rooftop of her house, Kimi bent over Ifima’s lifeless body in the street. Where were they all now? Scattered across the globe – who knew where? Had any of them made it? Were any of them even alive? Why did she get this chance? How could she keep dancing when so many others were still suffering?

  Then the class was over and she was barely aware of how it had gone or what she had been doing. All she could think of were Miss Helena’s words. “If Aya had a place at the Royal Northern it would have really helped the case.”

  But it was too late – she was too late. And now it was all over.

  “How did it go?” asked Dotty as they made their way out into the corridor after final curtseys.

  Aya turned to her blankly. “I… I don’t really know.”

  “I got in a right pickle with those final floor combinations,” Dotty was saying. “But I don’t think I disgraced myself at the barre.”

  Aya tried to remember the floor work, but could only retain a sketchy memory of Miss Eve talking through steps she could barely remember doing.

  “I went to pieces at the barre,” said Ciara who was pale and tearful-looking. “And everyone here is so good!”

  Aya said nothing. She hadn’t noticed how the other girls had danced. She hadn’t noticed anything.

  “Are you OK?” asked Dotty, looking at her anxiously.

  “Yes – I … don’t know.”

  “Are you worrying about your mum?”

  Aya nodded.

  “She would want you to think about yourself today,” said Dotty. “This is your moment. Remember?”

  But Aya felt as if the moment was slipping away from her. As if she were being dragged back on a current she couldn’t resist. And she didn’t even know if she wanted to fight it any more.

  Chapter 39

  The girls were ushered into a small room where they would wait to be called in for their individual assessments. Some were discussing the class, nervously. Others – like Aya – sat quietly. Each girl in turn was invited back into the studio before the panel of judges for an interview. Dotty was one of the first to go, Aya one of the last. She didn’t know if there was any point in her completing the audition, but she didn’t want to let Miss Helena down.

  So when her name was finally called, she made her way back into the dance studio, which seemed bigger now that it was just her. High looming ceilings, her own reflection beaming back at her from the bank of mirrors on each side: herself, but not herself. Not the girl who had danced in Aleppo, or in the camp in Kilis, or on the beach at Izmir. Not even the same girl she had been when she first arrived in Manchester. A different girl, one she barely knew.

  “So, Aya, is it?” asked the man with the small moustache and large bow tie. Miss Eve had said he was the principal ballet master, Mr Bougeard.

  “Yes,” Aya said, the word sounding thick on her tongue.

  “You are from…” He looked down at his piece of paper, then raised an eyebrow as he said, “Aleppo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, yes – I recall… You’re the girl who missed the preliminaries, right?”

  Aya nodded.

  “It says here you trained with Adriana Belova,” said the elegant older lady with the purple bob. Madam Olenska, director of the school.

  “You know Madam Belova?” Aya looked at her in surprise.

  “Ballet knows no borders, my dear,” Madam Olenska said with a smile. “I watched Adriana dance in Jerusalem and I have seen the work her company was doing before the war. You were lucky to have such a teacher. What is she doing now, I wonder?”

  Aya stared at the woman in surprise. “Madam Belova is… She’s – OK?”

  “I heard she was in Dubai,” said Miss Eve. “Involved in some very interesting new work, devising a ballet with refugees in one of the border camps.”

  “Part of a new commissioned piece about the war, I believe,” Mr Bougeard was saying. “Knowing Adriana, it promises to be very exciting.”

  Aya wanted to know more, about her beloved Madam – about the ballet she was choreographing. But then they were asking her about England and her mind was racing to catch up, and all the time her thoughts were tugging back to Mumma… The caseworker had explained that if the appeal was rejected they would be taken to the detention centre while arrangements were made for them to be deported. Would that happen today? Tomorrow? Would there be time to say goodbye?

  “So now you train with Helena Rosenberg?” Madam Olenksa was saying. “You have indeed been very fortunate. To work with two such celebrated dancers.”

  “Yes,” said Aya. She wished that more words would come out of her. They must think she could barely speak English, and even though it didn’t matter any more, she didn’t want these people to see her that way.

  “And you have suffered a leg injury,” Mr Bougeard was saying, looking down at the papers in front of him. “But Miss Helena believes it is fully healed. May we see?”

  The sun was just a little lower now, slanting across the floorboards so that dust motes danced in the shafts of light. Aya remembered the dust in the street after the bomb fell. Remembered how they had all been covered in a sheen of white – like ghost children, moving in slow motion through the rubble-strewn streets. Red blood pouring from her leg and mixing with the dust. Little Ifima lying motionless, like a porcelain doll, in the street. She gulped hard, reminding herself to breathe as the memories rose to d
rown her.

  “Step forward, please.” Madam Olenska was watching her intently as she stood up and made her way round the desk, moving with the grace and poise of a prima ballerina. “First position.”

  Aya obeyed the command without thinking, turning out her feet and holding her arms in the oval shape she had been taught when she was just five years old. She couldn’t get the picture of Ifima’s face out of her mind. Kimi holding her in her arms, rocking her in the dust.

  “Nice turn-out,” said Madam Olenska. “Point to second, please.”

  Aya did as she was told and she felt Madam Olenska’s eyes running the length of her leg, almost as if she were measuring the angles of her body – taking in the compact muscles at the top of her thighs, the slight bend of the leg, the scarring along her calf. She remembered the screaming pain. The blood running down her leg, empurpling the dust.

  “Please take off your shoes.”

  Aya took off the ballet shoes Miss Helena had given her and presented her feet. Madam Olenska bent down and took each foot into her hands, one at a time, bending them, shaping them almost like clay. Aya noticed that her long, slender fingers were beautiful to look at, even though they were pale and covered in liver spots. They reminded her of Madam Belova’s hands, holding on to the barre so tightly when the bombs fell.

  “Nice arches … supple. Though I think you can probably get more bend in this right foot … and your toes… Yes, the three big toes almost the same length… Nice.”

  Miss Eve spoke for the first time. “It helps with pointe work if your three toes are the same length.”

  Aya remembered Madam Belova saying the same thing when she showed her the first pair of pointe shoes. That felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Thank you.” Madam Olenska had released her and was on her feet. “Now, can you show us your dance.”

  The objects were laid out across the studio floor. The piece of rubble, Moosa’s sock, the ballet shoe, Dad’s handkerchief. They lay like pieces of driftwood on the vast wooden ocean of floorboards, and as the music started Aya felt like she had when she’d stared out at Dotty’s pool.

  The opening bars of the music started and Aya remained motionless. Her heart was beating so fast she could feel it in her head.

  How could she dance when so many of her friends would never get the chance to dance again? When it meant remembering home – and all she had lost. When it meant reaching out to Dad across the wooden waves, when the memories lapped so close she wasn’t sure she could let go of them without being swept up and drowned in them.

  More notes playing, dancing over her static form, but still Aya was frozen, unable to move.

  How could she dance when Mumma and Moosa were going to be deported? Sent back – where to? To Syria? Aleppo? To a home that no longer existed. To the camp at Kilis? This was probably her last day here. Her last day in Manchester, last day with Dotty, last chance to dance … yet she could not make her body move.

  Then suddenly the music had stopped and Madam Olenska was waving her hand in the air.

  “Do you need a moment?” It was the man who was speaking. The man with the moustache and the funny bow tie. Aya suddenly couldn’t remember his name.

  She nodded. No words coming out. Memories buzzed all around her and Aya had the same dizzy feeling she’d had when she’d been locked in the studio, and when she’d been at the pool, as if she couldn’t seem to breathe, the roaring sound of panic in her ears. Only worse than either of those times. Worse because it wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t go away. And then there was more talk and then a feeling like a curtain coming down in her head, and the next thing she knew she could hear voices – she had no idea whose – saying, “She’s passed out!”

  Chapter 40

  When she woke up she was lying in a small room that she thought was perhaps the school nurse’s office – there were posters round the walls that were not about ballet, but about things like “Healthy Diet” and “Why it’s important to drink lots of water”. Miss Helena was sitting on the other side of the room. When Aya stirred she smiled. “Ah, you are with us again!”

  “What … what happened?”

  “You fainted. Clean away! Like a candle blown out – poof!”

  “Oh no.” Aya sat up quickly and immediately felt dizzy again. “I’ve let you down. I have let everyone down.”

  Miss Helena placed a hand on her arm. “No, no. These things – they happen. The heat, the excitement. Here.”

  She handed Aya some tea in a thin plastic cup and helped her up. She sat with her legs dangling off the bed and stared down at the hot brown liquid. The dizzy feeling was receding a little but she felt exhausted and tearful.

  “If you wish, when you feel better, you may try again,” said Miss Helena.

  “I do, I…” Now that the opportunity had been snatched away from her, Aya suddenly realised how desperately she wanted it. How much she wanted to dance. How much she suddenly, desperately wanted to get into the school.

  “But for now you are to drink your tea and eat a biscuit – here.” She handed Aya a small plate containing a couple of chocolate biscuits. “And I am going to tell you the end of my story. And you are going to listen. And then – only then – you may decide what you want to do.”

  Miss Helena sat down. She had the same expression in her eyes as the night when she had told Aya of her journey on the Kindertransport.

  Aya took a sip of the tea, which tasted warm and sweet. The room still felt as if it was swimming as her dance teacher started to talk.

  “I told you that I came to England on the children’s transport in 1939,” said Miss Helena. “What I didn’t tell you was that my sister Elsa was supposed to come too.”

  Aya had a strange feeling listening to her. As if time had stood still and the audition, the appeal, were on pause, suspended, waiting for this story to be told.

  “There was a confusion at the station. There was only room for one of us. Elsa insisted that I go on without her.” Miss Helena paused, smiling a little as she recalled. “I remember that I cried. I was very angry. I didn’t want to get on that train on my own and I didn’t see why my sister was to stay with my parents when I was not.”

  Miss Helena smiled again but it was a sad smile, Aya thought. “I see now that she was being very kind, but that is not what I was thinking at the time, I can tell you!”

  Aya took another sip of the tea and nibbled on one of the biscuits, sending a little jolt of sugar through her body.

  “Elsa promised me that she would come on the very next train. That she could come and find me as soon as she got to England.” Miss Helena stood up and moved towards the window where she stood gazing out towards the green sweep of the fields beyond. “The Robertsons had, in fact, agreed to take us both, you see. There was just an error on the paperwork.”

  Aya thought of all the bits of paper she had encountered on the way to England – forms, and applications, and more forms. Just lines and patterns in pen and ink – but they could shape your destiny. They could be the difference between home and homelessness, safety and danger, life and death.

  “What happened?” she managed to ask. “To Elsa?”

  “She did get on the next train.” Miss Helena continued to look out of the window. “Though I didn’t find that out till many years later. It left Prague on the first of September, 1939, you see. It was the last transport to leave the city. There were a hundred and one children on it. But it was turned away when it reached the border. Sent back.”

  “Why?” Aya’s heart was beating fast, her head clearing with the sweet tea and the chocolate and the fresh air from the open window.

  “Because war broke out that very day. The borders were closed and there was no escape.”

  Aya thought of the girl in the picture, the girl with the pigtails, trapped in a city at war. She wondered if any of her own friends were still in Syria, still in Aleppo, where fighting raged on ruthlessly and relentlessly.

  “So Elsa stayed in Prague? Until
the end of the war?”

  Miss Helena smiled as she turned back to Aya, but her face looked tired and sad. “No, she was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, along with my parents. This is where the Nazis sent all the Jews. It was not a nice place. Very little food, much disease. Many died there. And those who did not, they were sent to the camps.”

  “The camps?”

  “So many died in the war.” Miss Helena’s face was creased with sadness now. “Millions of Jews needlessly sent to their deaths. My mother died in the ghetto; my sister and my father were sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz.”

  Aya was silent. The humming of the lawnmower outside, the buzzing of a bluebottle against the windowpane, the hammering of her own heart. “How did you … find out?”

  “When the war was over, I waited to hear from them. Weeks, months, I waited. Then Mr Robertson said there was a way to trace missing relatives. I think he probably knew by then, but I still hoped.”

  Miss Helena shook her head and Aya looked at her. So much of what she was going through, the older lady had experienced too.

  “After we found out … what had happened … I did not want to dance any more,” said Miss Helena. “I felt so much guilt. Why had I been given a chance of life when my parents, my own sister had not? For a long time, I would not dance.”

  Aya looked at her. “That is what I feel. How can I dance if my family are sent away? When so many of my friends have not made it?”

  “This is hard,” said Miss Helena. “Very hard. You have been given a chance for happiness when others have been robbed of theirs. When others continue to suffer. This is very hard.”

  “If Mumma and Moosa are deported, how can I stay?”

  Miss Helena came to sit down next to Aya on the bed, her voice different now – more certain. “For a long time I did not dance. But then one day I realised something. I heard a piece of music. It was a piece Elsa loved to dance to. My sister Elsa was a far better dancer than me. But she had been robbed of her chance. And that was when I realised that I had to make the most of mine.”