A House Without Walls

by Elizabeth Laird

  I shuddered.

  ‘Wallah! Tariq, if they arrest him, the Hawk, I mean . . .’

  He nodded. I could tell he was really worried.

  ‘They’ll torture him on and on till he gives them all the names he can think of. And then they’ll come for Baba too.’

  I suddenly understood.

  ‘The bags by the front door!’

  ‘Yes. He’s ready to leave at a moment’s notice. To get out of the country.’

  ‘But he can’t leave us here!’ I wailed. ‘How would we manage without him?’

  ‘He’ll take us with him, silly. He would never leave us. I know he wouldn’t.’

  He reached under his bed and pulled out a backpack.

  ‘It’s packed and ready. You ought to get ready too.’

  My head seemed to spin. I stared at Tariq, my stomach churning with fright.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I whispered.

  He put his arm round me.

  ‘I am too, little sister, but I’ll look after you. I promise I will.’

  That night, I think, I began to grow up. Farah noticed, of course. No one knew me as well as she did.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ she asked as we walked home from school the next day. ‘You’ve gone all quiet.’

  I longed to tell her everything, but I knew I mustn’t.

  ‘Got a cold coming on or something,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Come home with me, then,’ she said, linking her arm through mine. ‘Mama will get you something hot to eat and boil up some camomile tea.’

  I hate camomile tea, but that wasn’t why I pulled my arm away.

  ‘No, I’d better get home. Don’t come too close. You might catch something nasty.’

  It was the only way I could warn her, but I couldn’t tell if she understood.

  Once at home, I went slowly to my room. The future suddenly looked scary. Surely we weren’t going to leave home? What if I couldn’t see Farah any more? It felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff and someone was about to push me over.

  My foot bumped against something bulky stuffed underneath my bed. I bent down and dragged it out. A backpack! New, and full!

  I began to pull everything out of it. Warm winter clothes, underwear, socks, vitamin pills. My hands started shaking.

  I looked up to see Auntie Shirin standing at the door. Her face was unusually gentle as she looked at me.

  ‘It’s just in case of the worst,’ she said. ‘It’s best to be prepared.’

  ‘If we have to leave, you’ll come too, won’t you, Auntie?’ I said in a wobbly voice.

  She sat down on the bed beside me.

  ‘No. I’ll go and look after your grandfather. You’re nearly grown up now, Safiya. You don’t really need me any more.’

  I understood then that I loved my Auntie Shirin. I wanted to cuddle up against her but didn’t know how.

  ‘I do need you! I do! I love you!’

  Awkwardly, she patted my back.

  ‘Come on now, habibti. There’s no need for all this fuss. Like I said, it might never happen.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  But it did happen. The very next night.

  I was already in my pyjamas and I’d just said goodnight to Baba, when a thunderous knocking came at the front door.

  We all froze in terror. Auntie Shirin was at the kitchen door, her hand over her mouth. Tariq had jumped up from the table, where he’d been playing a computer game. Baba, his face pale with horror, stood motionless, gripping the back of a chair.

  The knocking came again.

  ‘Safiya, Tariq, go to your rooms. Now,’ said Baba.

  ‘Baba, let me—’ began Tariq.

  ‘Now!’ barked Baba.

  I bolted like a rabbit into my bedroom. I shut the door, but left a tiny crack open so that I could watch what was happening.

  Baba muttered something to Auntie Shirin then strode forward and opened the front door.

  I thought I’d see stone-faced men in grey, coiled up like snakes ready to strike, who would take my Baba away. But there was only one man outside. His hand was raised to knock again, but as the door opened he almost fell in to the hallway. It was the Hawk, with his beaked nose and the eyes of a bird of prey.

  He darted inside and shut the door again. His face was terribly pale.

  ‘Adnan!’ he panted. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here, but I can’t trust the phone. I need those papers I left with you. Are they here?’

  Auntie Shirin sank down on to a sofa shaking with shock. Baba took down the briefcase from the hook behind the door and thrust it at the Hawk, who swayed with relief.

  ‘Alhamdulillah,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Baba.

  ‘The mukhabarat have got my assistant. He’s loyal, but he’ll tell them everything under torture. I’m getting out of the country now. Tonight.’

  ‘Your assistant? Does he know about me?’

  The Hawk shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. He might. Look, Adnan, I’m so sorry. I . . .’

  Baba almost pushed him out of the door.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s been an honour to work with you. But go now.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘We’ll leave too, of course.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  Baba actually smiled.

  ‘Better you don’t know.’

  They embraced quickly, then the Hawk vanished through the front door, which Baba shut smartly behind him.

  The rest of that night was a terrifying blur. I just remember standing at my bedroom door in my pink pyjamas and fluffy slippers, unable to move.

  Tariq burst out of his room.

  ‘Did I hear that right, Baba? We’ve got to go?’

  Baba looked suddenly helpless.

  ‘Yes. I . . .’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now! Now! They could be here any minute!’

  ‘Tonight?’ Tariq’s voice came out in a squeal.

  Auntie Shirin had pulled herself together. She put her hand on Tariq’s back and steered him to his bedroom.

  ‘Get your things, Adnan,’ she said to Baba over her shoulder. ‘And you, Tariq. Come, Safiya. I’ll help you.’

  ‘But we can’t go out now. It’s bedtime,’ I objected feebly.

  No one answered.

  ‘I wish you were coming with us,’ I said as Auntie Shirin hustled me to my bedroom and into my day clothes. ‘We won’t be away for long, will we?’

  She’d been reaching into a drawer to pull out a clean pair of socks, and she froze for a moment before she said, ‘Only Allah knows what will happen. Always say your prayers, Safiya, like I taught you.’

  ‘But where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Where’s safe?’

  ‘Jordan. You’re going to our cousins in Azraq.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of Azraq.’

  ‘It’s in the east of Jordan. Yasser and Zainab are your family, Safiya. They’ll look after you.’

  ‘But who’ll look after you?’

  ‘I told you. I’m going to your grandfather. My bag is packed too. I’m going to lock up here, and go to him right away.’

  Baba called out, ‘Come on! Hurry!’ and a moment later we were outside the house. Baba pushed me and Tariq into the back of a waiting taxi before diving into the front. Auntie Shirin ran after us and thrust our winter coats through the window.

  ‘We don’t need those. We’ll be too hot,’ I said, but Baba said, ‘Take them, Safiya. It won’t be summer forever,’ and that frightened me more than anything else.

  There was no time for more. The taxi sped off. The beam of the street lamp lit up the driver’s face as we turned the corner. He looked terrified.

  I looked back and saw that a light was on in Farah’s flat.

  I haven’t said goodbye! I thought.

  Then I realized something even worse.

  ‘Baba, we’v
e got to go back!’ I said desperately. ‘I’ve left my phone at home!’

  Baba didn’t answer, but Tariq said, ‘No point. You wouldn’t be able to use it, anyway. If you’d switched it on, they’d have got our location.’

  ‘But Farah won’t know where I’ve gone!’

  Baba turned round.

  ‘Tariq’s right, habibti. And don’t worry about Farah. She’ll understand.’ He was talking in an irritatingly soothing voice, as if he was speaking to a little girl.

  Tariq was more brutal.

  ‘The last thing Farah will want is to get a call from you,’ he said. ‘Do you want to put her family in danger?’

  That was when I started crying. I tried to do it quietly, but Tariq heard. He must have felt he’d been too sharp, because he put his arm round me and tried to pull me closer.

  ‘Hey, cheer up. I thought you always wanted to have an adventure.’

  ‘This doesn’t feel like an adventure,’ I said between sniffs. ‘It’s more like a disaster.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was a horrible journey from Damascus to the Jordanian border. We’d been sheltered from the war in our part of the city, but as we travelled south we could see how ghastly the destruction had been. Through the taxi window I saw miles of ghostly shattered buildings and piles of rubble where houses had once stood.

  There were lots of starts and stops and changes from one taxi and bus to another, and there were terrifying checkpoints where we held our breath as stone-faced men with guns leafed through our papers. The last part, as dawn was breaking, was a trek on foot across a long stretch of desert to get to the border. I was so tired that I just wanted to curl up right there on the ground and go to sleep.

  The most worrying thing was that something seemed to have happened to Baba. It was like he’d broken inside. It really scared me.

  We’d just crossed into Jordan and were waiting for a bus to take us to Azraq when the worst thing of all happened. Baba had pulled out his wallet to pay for our bus tickets, when someone rushed at him out of nowhere, snatched it out of his hand and dashed off.

  Baba just stood there, frozen to the spot, but Tariq yelled, ‘Hey! Come back!’ and sprinted after the thief. He was only a boy and Tariq nearly caught him, but another boy put out his foot and tripped Tariq up, sending him sprawling on to the rough, gritty desert ground. The two thieves disappeared, laughing, into a crowd of people.

  Tariq limped back to us.

  ‘How much was in it, Baba?’ he said.

  Baba was white-faced and shaking.

  ‘All of it. All our money. And my bank card.’

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I wailed.

  Baba didn’t answer, but Tariq, who had been just as shocked as me, put his shoulders back as if he was about to pick up a heavy load and said, ‘I’ve got a bit of money. I think it’s enough for the bus.’

  But when he’d paid for the tickets we had nothing left at all. So that was how we arrived in Azraq. We’d travelled through the night and half the next day. We were exhausted, starving, desperate for a drink and a shower. And absolutely penniless.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I suppose I’d imagined that our cousin Yasser’s house would be like our flat in Damascus, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even in the town of Azraq itself, but on a patch of bare, stony ground about a mile away from the centre. It was painted a creamy colour and it had four rooms as well as a kitchen and bathroom. There was a breeze-block wall around a little courtyard that ran round the house. The roof wasn’t finished and there were steel rods sticking up from it, ready to be used if another storey was ever built on top. There were other houses dotted about quite close by, but only one shop, a general food store, a few minutes’ walk away across rough ground.

  Uncle Yasser and Aunt Zainab had two children, Fares, who was eighteen and had left home to study in Amman, and Lamia, who was nine.

  It must have been a shock for them when we turned up out of the blue. Uncle Yasser had written to Baba telling him that we’d be welcome to come if the war made us homeless, but I don’t think he’d expected Baba to take him up on it. We called them ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunt’ even though they were only cousins, and hardly knew Baba, after all. But family is family in the Middle East, and so they had to welcome us.

  We stumbled into the house, put our bags down and then I sort of collapsed with exhaustion. Someone (I think it was Aunt Zainab) took me to a bed and I fell properly asleep. Not even an earthquake would have woken me up.

  What did make me sit up at last was the smell of the most delicious food. It was dark outside. Evening already. I staggered out of the bedroom and followed my nose to the central room, where Aunt Zainab was setting out a meal on a tablecloth on the floor, in the old traditional style.

  I looked around, taking everything in. This house was quite different from our old home. There were no books or pictures and not much furniture, not even a table. There was a TV, but it looked old.

  The food, though, was wonderful. Lamb kebabs, aubergine stew and baby pastries with delicious fillings – the works. And Uncle Yasser had brought a big box of baklava from the bakery, little parcels of sweetness, stuffed with nuts and dripping with honey.

  Maybe it was because I was so hungry, but that meal was the best I’d eaten in my whole life. I just sat there, cross-legged on a cushion, and stuffed myself.

  But then, just as we were finishing, someone knocked on the metal front door, which made a horrible clanging sound.

  They’ve followed us here! I thought. They’ve come for us!

  I let out a scream and clutched at Tariq, who was sitting beside me and who had gone a funny green colour.

  Aunt Zainab laughed.

  ‘What a little rabbit you are, Safiya! Scared of a knock on the door?’

  Uncle Yasser got up and frowned at her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said kindly to me. ‘Just a delivery I’ve been expecting.’

  I went scarlet with embarrassment and let go of Tariq’s arm. He was trying to smile, and Baba’s hands were shaking as he picked up his glass. Lamia looked at us scornfully.

  ‘It takes more than a knock on the door to scare me,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it does, darling,’ said Aunt Zainab. ‘Now you go off and play. Safiya will help me clear up.’

  I saw how it was straight away. Aunt Zainab had waited nine years for Lamia after Fares was born. Now she was her mother’s spoiled little darling. There was no chance that Aunt Zainab was going to spoil me. In fact, I could tell she didn’t like me.

  Maybe I wasn’t easy to like? I wasn’t pretty and girly, like Lamia. There’s something . . . well . . . awkward about me, that doesn’t exactly make me popular. I don’t like it when people are mean and I tell them so. And I’ve got a bad temper. When something riles me, I go off like a firecracker. Anyway, Aunt Zainab resented me, right from the start.

  I tried to help her, even though I didn’t know what to do. We’d had a cleaner in Damascus who came in every day to mop and dust and do the laundry. Auntie Shirin didn’t let me help her with the cooking or shopping either.

  ‘Go and do your homework,’ she’d say, if I ever offered to help her. ‘You’ll only get in my way.’

  Aunt Zainab was quite different. After the first few days she started ordering me around like a servant, while Lamia looked on, smirking. Luckily, she was at school most of the time.

  There was no point expecting Baba to stick up for me. He was too depressed to notice anything. He’d suddenly gone from being well-off and important to living on the charity of a cousin he didn’t really know. It was as if he’d been thrown into a deep, mucky pond and didn’t know how to swim.

  He’ll start getting better soon, I thought.

  But he didn’t.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Once we were in Jordan, the Syrian war seemed strangely more real than it had at home. Bomber planes sometimes roared overhead on their way to
destroy Syrian cities. They made my stomach turn over.

  Azraq was full of refugees. A lot of them had been sent to the huge camp outside town. It looked like a horrible place, with straight lines of bright white cabins marching across miles of dusty desert. No one ended up there if they could help it.

  Not that I had much time to think about Syria and the war. Aunt Zainab was on at me all the time.

  A few weeks after we’d arrived, she wanted me to do her shopping.

  ‘And don’t be lazy and go to Abu Ali’s little shop across the way,’ she said one morning, counting some money into my hand. ‘It’s not far to the proper grocer’s on the main road.’

  Luckily, Tariq was there.

  ‘I don’t think Baba would like Safiya going so far on her own, Aunt Zainab,’ he said politely. ‘I’ll go with her.’

  She shot him a sharp look, then nodded. She even looked a bit guilty.

  ‘Of course! What was I thinking of? You’re not a child any more, are you, Safiya? For a moment I was forgetting . . .’

  Forgetting what? I thought. That I’m not your servant?

  Tariq kicked out at loose stones as we walked down the dusty track towards the town.

  ‘What’s she doing, sending you running around the streets on your own?’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous! Baba would be furious if he knew.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know, does he?’ I answered bitterly. ‘He doesn’t notice anything anymore.’

  ‘I’ll look after you,’ Tariq said in a superior kind of way. ‘But you’ve always got to do what I tell you.’

  Back home I’d have thought of a neat way to cut him down to size, but it was different here. I did need someone to look out for me. Azraq was a funny sort of in-between place. Thousands of people had flooded in from Syria, and long-distance trucks passed through all the time. A young girl on her own, walking along the main road, would stand out like a flaming torch. I’d never felt so vulnerable.

  Tariq was still fuming about Aunt Zainab.

  ‘She treats you like a slave!’ he went on indignantly. ‘I hated it yesterday when she made you wash the floor, then said you hadn’t done it properly.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone had noticed. Or cared,’ I muttered.