Breach

by Olumide Popoola

  ‘Money or I’ll leave.’

  ‘See how far that gets you.’

  He says it to frighten you. Red blotches have appeared on his face, highlighting his blond stubble. He is by the door; you are in the middle, the big steering wheel on the other side. He thinks he is clever, that you’re trapped. But you’re not stupid. The doors are unlocked, you watched him. ‘Make sure the doors are open,’ you have overheard the women say. ‘That way you can leave. When you decide to.’

  You have moved away from him. He reaches in his jacket, pulls out a wallet. The other hand doesn’t stop, he is still rubbing his thing, his eyes fixed on your body. He flips the wallet open and pulls out a note, all with one hand.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘You wanted your money.’ He slides down in the seat, legs open, knees flopping to the sides.

  You look at the ten-euro note.

  ‘What is this? For what?’

  ‘Did you think this was some glamour brothel, sweetheart? Ten euros, that’s the price here.’ His face is mocking you.

  You grab your hoodie and reach over the driver’s seat for the handle. He lets go of his penis, finally, and grabs you around your waist.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d take you out to dinner first, eh? Little spoiled slut, you are. You’re lucky I’m a nice guy.’

  He pulls you closer.

  ‘Just a little blow job. You’re a looker, you are. Beautiful, nice skin.’ You can feel his breath before the stubble touches your neck.

  ‘I’ll treat you, you’ll see. Might even give you another fiver, if you’re nice. I’m generous like that.’

  You push his arm away and climb over the seat, jump out, leaving the door open.

  Mariam is just coming down from the lorry’s cabin. She waves. You point the way you came and run towards the slope at the other end.

  ‘Hey!’ Behind you the guy is yelling.

  Mariam is catching up with you. You pull her to run faster.

  ‘No,’ you shout. ‘No! I told you. It’s not right.’

  It takes a while until you stop by the trees before you enter the camp.

  ‘Sorry.’ She starts crying.

  ‘You have to tell her. Someone else will have to help.’

  Mariam sits down. You let yourself fall back next to her.

  It is still dark but the light from the street is enough for you to see her face. There is nothing you can do. You wipe her face. At least it will still be quiet, quieter than usual, in the camp. Maybe you’ll get a bit of sleep, put some distance between yesterday and tomorrow.

  Mariam starts laughing.

  ‘That guy was lying with his face flat, hanging out of the cabin, shouting for you.’

  ‘His thing was out, he was probably still touching himself.’ You shrug. ‘He thinks I’m stupid.’

  You squeeze her hand.

  ‘It’s a start. But you can’t make it this way.’

  She opens her palm. The ten-euro note is damp from your sweat.

  Paradise

  No, my friend. No no no. Isaac waves a disapproving index finger and so Muhib drops his cigarette and grinds it under his boot. Even when he’s down, he can’t help smiling at Isaac. Such a kind guy. So serious for his age. But also funny. Of all the many people in the camp Muhib loves, he loves Isaac the most. At least at this moment he does.

  Isaac lifts the kettle off the fire and pours chai into two mugs. They sit in camping chairs, hunched against the cold, sleeping bags around their shoulders, Muhib tall and lean, Isaac small as a child. Mist chills the quiet camp and smudges the far trees and the factories beyond. Settling back into melancholy, Muhib sighs, but Isaac won’t let him get away with that either. He mimics the sigh and pretends to wipe tears from his eyes until Muhib laughs too.

  ‘You will find another girl,’ Isaac tells him.

  ‘No, Isaac, not like that girl,’ Muhib says. ‘I don’t sleep since she left. Three nights crying.’

  ‘And smoking,’ Isaac says.

  ‘Yes, smoking and crying for Rosalina.’

  ‘The Spanish girl?’

  ‘Of course, the Spanish girl. So beautiful, believe me.’

  ‘You have a big heart, my friend.’

  On his zigzag trek from Sudan to France, Isaac has picked up several languages, but Urdu is not one of them and so they speak in minimal English, a few blunt words warmed with use. Neither prays at a mosque but they have Allah in common and also the school. Soon, Isaac will unlock the door and Muhib will sweep inside and round the entrance before the first classes arrive. But for now they drink chai in the donated camping chairs and dream.

  Even when he’s not calling her, when his voice is not literally in her ear – and, good grief, he calls often enough – Julie keeps up a conversation with him in her head. Just look at this, Dad, she’s telling him, silently, as she walks down the main track into the camp. Not what you expected, right? So normal. Look – shops and cafés, families, a church.

  Julie smiles at everyone she passes on the track. She read on one of the helpful Facebook pages that outsiders should smile, so she smiles at them all: smiles at the young Sudanese men, gangly-tall, whisking along on bicycles; smiles at the Eritrean women darting in and out of the café-bar, even though she can’t catch the eye of any of them; smiles at Kurdish families in thick coats, big-eyed children peering out from under their hoods; smiles at the Afghan men behind the raw-plank counters of general dealers, selling headache pills, cans of Coke and Red Bull, biscuits and batteries. Traders on the new frontier.

  I wish you could see this, she tells inner Dad. Seriously, you’d reconsider all those things you’ve been saying if you could only see how everyone gets along, how considerate people are of each other.

  A woman asks Julie, urgently, where she can find a sleeping bag. Her orange lipstick is half wiped away, leaving her mouth approximate, as if blurred by motion. Julie has no idea where sleeping bags are given out, but luckily someone else helps with directions. As the woman hurries off, Julie hands her a flyer about the event in the theatre tonight. The Dome’s giant beach-ball shape is drawn on the flyer so everyone can find it. Julie gives out more flyers to a group of men nearby. They don’t speak much English and so, to explain what’s going to happen, Julie mimes playing a trumpet, a guitar, a piano, the bongos. Then she mimes dancing. Draws quite a crowd. They applaud when she curtsies. The sun comes out. Even more people accept flyers. Smiles all around.

  Well, to be honest, it’s men who accept the flyers. Julie’s mission is to encourage more women to attend, but so far she has seen few and actually invited only the woman with the blurred orange mouth. She would like to invite the young Eritrean women, but they scurry by so quickly. She reached her hand out to one of them earlier, a girl as petite as Julie is, her hair cresting in a grown-out Mohican, but the girl jumped aside as if Julie might strike her and that was so alarming and then embarrassing that Julie hasn’t dared to approach another woman since, except to hand flyers to the husbands or sons or fathers or whoever they are.

  Someone has planted a row of boulders along each side of the gravel path, about the size of human heads, and several people – well, men actually – are seated on these rocks in the sun. Julie finds one to sit on too. If it wasn’t for the small crowd that clapped her over there, she’d give up right now. Really, she ought to be helping Marjorie, her tiny timid aunt, sorting donations in the warehouse with other volunteers. Really, inner Dad interrupts, she ought to be at home preparing her first university essays, instead of traipsing along with bloody Marjorie to Calais. But she’s in neither of these places, doing neither of these dutiful things. Instead, she’s leaning back against the wooden side of someone’s shelter, stretching her legs out, tipping up the toes of her hiking boots to stretch her calves. Probably, she should be at yoga camp in Wales with her mother, but no, she’s watching a man walk by in thin blue cotton shalwar kameez with a khaki anorak over the top, talking with his friend. She’s w
atching his feet go by in worn leather sandals, like an extra from a desert film who’s wandered on to the wrong set. She’s wondering how he will manage in the cold that already bites from the shadows. She’s addressing her father, proposing that he rethink his whole position on refugees and (please, Dad!) welcome the desert man as soon as possible to a council house of his own. With heating.

  Outside the school, Muhib is practising, knee to knee with his flute teacher, a German woman with pink-dyed dreads, an orange dress and a nose ring, both of them peering down at the chords written in a book by their feet. Muhib is wearing clothes that his volunteer friends brought especially for him, stylish clothes: black stretch pants, a black and gold T-shirt and a black hoodie with sleek fat-toothed zips over the pocket. People say that Muhib is so friendly, so generous, so enthusiastic, so open. They don’t say, because it’s awkward, that he’s handsome. And ‘Muhib’ is not, of course, his real name. Muhib means ‘loving friend’, though, so it’s a good name for him.

  ‘Tonight, you play with us?’ the flute teacher asks him. ‘In the Dome?’

  ‘You think I can do that?’

  ‘For sure, Muhib. Come on, man – one song?’

  ‘That will be very amazing,’ he tells his teacher, and she grins.

  He picks up her phone and frames a photograph of her with the merry ‘School’ sign painted on the wall behind her head. A notice on the door requests that people not photograph the school, but that’s to protect the refugees from thoughtless snappers; it’s not meant for the regulars like the flute teacher who’ve put in the time, who’ve chosen the Jungle, the real troopers.

  It’s not a wonderful smell. But not offensive, really. Like a full laundry basket perhaps. Stale, with notes of cold wet concrete, Marjorie thinks. At her trestle table, they’re sorting the shoe donations by size. Maybe that’s why she’s noticing the smell today, come to think of it. To one side, they pile Impossibles: broken or inappropriate shoes, including a pair of red stilettos. This morning, someone found a wedding dress packed in a trunk with other donated garments. Is that an insult? Marjorie wonders. Offloading your unwanted tat? Or might it be a romantic notion? You never know – someone might want to marry in a refugee camp, might not want to wear a bulky parka and donated trainers to their wedding, might want a white gown and even some red stilettos. In what she refers to as her middle years, Marjorie takes a more elastic line on weddings and marriage than she used to. Much to abhor, of course, in the gender inequalities of the institution, but the younger generation seem to like a wedding, even the lefties. Not to mention mad heels. Let it go.

  Another thing to let go of, if she can: some guilt or doubt nipping at her gut, just under her ribs, concerning her niece. Is her brother correct? Has she brought Julie along because Julie wanted to come, being eighteen now and allowed to make her own decisions? Or is Julie here as another salvo in Marjorie’s long-running war with her right-wing brother? Marjorie doesn’t doubt her own true affection for the girl and doesn’t care that much about her brother’s opinion, but she loathes the idea of anyone – especially herself – using someone else for their own ends.

  Her hands have stopped shoe-sorting. She gazes down towards the other end of the warehouse – and cavernous is the right word: it’s a vast metal cave – to the shadows of people and vehicles crossing the open gates, making the sunlight flicker. New arrivals seeking signed permission slips to go into the camp. Ever more vans full of donations: sleeping bags, kids’ toys, tents, food, every size of jacket, woolly hats, stout boots. Some tat, but not too much, really. And in here a hum of voices, the efficient stride of organisation, the rattle of trolley wheels over the gritty concrete floor. Marjorie smiles to herself. This comforts her, the meld of big-heartedness and discipline. A tall, grey-haired man walks past her trestle table, forehead furrowed in concentration as a young and multi-tattooed woman with a clipboard explains his task for the day.

  Up on stage, the flute teacher jumps onto a chair to seek out Muhib’s face in the crowd. Under its beehive hexagram panels, the Dome buzzes with voices and laughter. Muhib sees her – who can miss those pink dreads? – and slips through the crowd to the front.

  ‘Yeah man, be close by,’ she yells at him over the tuning of instruments.

  Feedback squawks from a speaker as two grinning boys sprint from amps to mixing desk, bouncing on their rubber soles. Muhib nods to the guy on the xylophone, one of his Ethiopian buddies. To the side of the stage, turned away from the crowd, an older man blows notes on a saxophone and the clamour slowly dies away and it all begins.

  Muhib watches the musicians, watches his teacher, watches her lips make the flautist’s pout, grips his own flute, swallows. To walk up there – will he be able to do it? Will he remember the chords? Ha! Will she even remember to invite him up on stage, engrossed as she is?

  She does, she remembers. First in German and then in English, she tells the audience that her student – so talented! – is going to play. ‘Give a big hand, people!’

  From the stage, because of the way he holds his head to play, he sees the face of one girl, a girl he hasn’t met before, her hair in plaits, smiling at him, and he plays especially for her.

  ‘My hands were shaking, believe me!’ he tells her afterwards, this English girl. So sweet. Such green eyes. And her hair, which looked blonde from the stage, turns out to have red in it. ‘What is that called in English?’

  ‘Ginger,’ she says, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Beautiful ginger!’

  *

  Marjorie sees him before Julie does.

  ‘There’s your handsome friend,’ she says, pointing up at the restaurant window.

  Marjorie has parked her van and they’re heading back to the hostel. At the Afghan café in the camp, Julie had faced the door, hoping he’d walk in, hoping she’d spot him over her plate of spicy beans. And now it turns out that he’s been here in town this evening instead, eating with his volunteer friends. She can hear them laughing through the open window, above Marjorie’s head, sees one of them throw his arm around Muhib’s shoulder. Perhaps the pink-haired flute teacher is there. Probably she’s the one he’s in love with.

  ‘Do you want to go in and join them?’ Marjorie asks her.

  ‘God, no.’

  How humiliating that would be, trailing around after him. With her aunt too. A pair of ginger mice.

  But now Muhib has seen her and leans out of the window. ‘Come, Julie,’ he calls. ‘Come!’

  So she does. She climbs onto the railings and reaches up her hand and he and his friend lift her into the restaurant through the window, laughing, to land on her bum on the wooden floor. When she’s right-side-up again, Julie shouts down to Marjorie, ‘See you later!’ and Marjorie waves back.

  Muhib’s English friend is laughing. He cuffs Muhib’s shoulder.

  ‘Oy, Romeo,’ he says, ‘you’re the one who’s meant to climb.’

  Marjorie wishes she still smoked. There are times when a good novel or a sudoku or a bowl of cereal just isn’t enough. Her feet throb from the long hours in the warehouse, but are they resting, elevated on the narrow hostel bed? They are not. Is she sleeping the requisite seven and a half hours before tomorrow rolls around? She is not. Is she sitting in her tracksuit on the hostel staircase, listening for sounds of her niece returning at (checking her watch yet again) 2.34 a.m.? Yes, she is. Waiting and worrying and running disaster scenarios, like any aunt might. Abduction, rape, drugs. How about too much fun? Is that a risk? What if Julie never comes back? Even in her imagination, Marjorie refuses to picture herself walking into her brother’s office, refuses to script what she’d say. Well, bad news about Julie. Disappeared without a trace.

  But seriously, who would she ask for help? What would she say? She can hold her own on a picket line, Marjorie can. Diminutive as she is, she can march and confront and demand with the best of them. If only she found everyday life less intimidating.

  Oh, honestly, she tells herself. This is all perf
ectly normal. Julie’s a young woman. Innocent and overprotected, maybe, but this is what youth is for: adventure and passion. It’s only that I wanted her to fall in love with justice, with activism, not some boy.

  One cigarette couldn’t hurt. Wasn’t there a vending machine downstairs?

  The guy seems to be asleep in his camel coat, a thick scarf round his neck and a balaclava over his face, out here in the early sunshine, but Muhib knows he’s awake and guarding the entrance of the bar, like he always does, from the opposite corner of the track. The guard pulls one mittened hand out of his coat pocket for a brotherly fist bump.

  ‘All good?’ Muhib asks him. The guy rocks his head. Could mean yes, no or maybe.

  ‘For me,’ Muhib tells him, ‘all is very good, my friend.’

  The guard’s eyes seem to close. But he’s still listening, still keeping watch. He doesn’t sleep, this one, all night and well into the morning.

  ‘For me,’ Muhib says, because he must tell someone, ‘this was the best night of my life.’

  He seats himself on a stone beside the guard. From here, it’s easy to see anyone approaching the bar, with its giant squirrel mural. It’s a good position. Muhib will be able to spot Julie no matter what direction she arrives from.

  But soon, instead, he sees Isaac. Muhib jumps up, eager to tell his friend about his new love, his leaping heart, their plans to meet. But Isaac is distracted.

  Muhib takes his friend’s anxious face in his hands.

  ‘What is the problem, Isaac?’

  Isaac smiles as if he might cry. He’s leaving, he tells Muhib. The French government is offering new chances to Sudanese refugees. A rest in another town, a review of his case, possible asylum. Isaac has agreed to climb on a bus with others to be driven somewhere else in France, he doesn’t know where. Some people, Isaac reports, are saying it’s a trick and that they will be deported. But it’s a chance, and he can’t see any more chances for himself here in Calais.