Boy Overboard

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘You will have payment and a written apology tonight, Mr Nasser,’ he calls out the window.

  Mr Nasser stands glaring at us. I can see he still wants to report us to the police. I hope desperately that the thought of money will calm him down.

  The taxi engine has stalled, which it always does. By the time Dad has got it started again, Mr Nasser has gone into his house. Dad drives us down the street to our place.

  ‘You,’ he says to Yusuf. ‘Off home. I’ll be seeing your grandfather later.’

  Yusuf gives me a miserable look as he gets out of the taxi. As I hand him his crutches I give him a look to let him know how grateful I am for his help saving Bibi.

  Then I look at Dad.

  I’m hoping Dad isn’t as angry as he seems. I’m hoping he’s only been pretending to be angry for Mr Nasser’s sake. Sometimes, when Dad isn’t really angry, he gives us a wink to let us know.

  It doesn’t look good.

  Dad isn’t winking.

  6

  I stand in our living room, waiting for Dad to yell at me.

  I can hear him in the bedroom talking to Mum, which is a bit strange. You’d think he’d yell at me first, then tell Mum about it. Perhaps he’s asking Mum to help him yell at me. She’s a teacher, so she’s more experienced at yelling.

  Bibi punches me in the arm.

  ‘Sorry for causing so much trouble,’ she whispers.

  I rub my arm and give her a grateful smile.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘It was a great goal. You’re a better kicker than me.’

  ‘You might improve with practice,’ she says.

  I decide not to tickle her for being cheeky. ‘Thanks,’ I say. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps that’s how bakers get to be desert warriors. Practice.

  Bibi punches my arm again.

  ‘We have to tell Mum and Dad we only smashed one window,’ she hisses, eyes shining fiercely. Then she frowns. ‘They probably won’t believe us. Not now we’ve broken the law with me playing soccer.’

  ‘They might like the idea,’ I say, nodding towards the bedroom. ‘They might be glad you’ve been getting some exercise.’

  You’ve got to hope.

  Bibi doesn’t look even a tiny bit hopeful.

  Then Mum and Dad come out of their room and I don’t feel hopeful any more either. Dad’s face is pale and grim. Mum’s eyes are red and her lips are thin with stress.

  I brace myself for yelling.

  But it doesn’t happen. Instead, Mum and Dad put their arms round me and Bibi. They squeeze us both tight. I can’t believe it. A family hug. They must be pleased about Bibi getting the exercise. Wait till I tell them how good she is at kicking.

  ‘Jamal and Bibi,’ says Mum softly. ‘You know we love you very much.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, glowing with happiness and relief.

  ‘Yes,’ says Bibi. She sounds pretty happy and relieved too.

  ‘No matter what happens,’ says Mum, ‘you two are the most precious things in our lives.’

  ‘I know,’ I say quietly. It’s true. Mum and Dad’s parents are all dead in the war, and Dad’s brothers. There’s only the four of us left.

  Mum is crying. I can feel her tears on my head. I don’t understand. I’m pretty sure she’s not crying about the broken window. She must be thinking about our poor dead relatives. Now I’m thinking about them, my eyes start to fill up too. Not with painful tears, with the other kind. I’m just so grateful the four of us are here together, safe.

  Dad crouches down and looks at me and Bibi. I’ve never seen his face so serious.

  ‘We’ve got to leave this house,’ he says.

  I stare at him, stunned.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  Dad bites his lip and looks like he can’t believe it either. Then he clenches his teeth and carries on.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of the house,’ he says. ‘Tonight. And we can’t ever come back.’

  I feel like a landmine has just exploded next to my head. My brain can hardly take in the words.

  Then I realise what has happened.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I gabble. ‘Mr Nasser probably won’t go to the police. And nobody saw Bibi playing soccer, honest. We don’t have to leave.’

  ‘The landmine didn’t even go off,’ says Bibi.

  Mum stares at her. I can see Mum is having trouble taking everything in too. She gives a big sigh and a sob comes out with it.

  ‘It’s not that,’ says Mum. ‘It’s not any of that.’

  ‘Then why do we have to leave?’ I say frantically. ‘Is it the brake lights on the taxi?’

  It’s not fair. The government shouldn’t persecute a person just because their brake lights are temporarily out of order.

  ‘It’s not the brake lights,’ says Dad quietly. ‘It’s something much more serious than that.’

  I knew it. The army petrol Dad bought from that other taxi driver. Dancing donkeys, he only did it once. He was desperate. You just can’t be a taxi driver without petrol. Passengers hate it when you switch the meter on and then ask them to get out and help you push the taxi.

  Mum takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes and I see she’s got chalk dust on her cheek.

  ‘It’s the school,’ she says quietly. ‘The government has found out about our school.’

  Suddenly it hits me. I look around the living room. All the school stuff has gone. Normally our living room is a fully equipped school for eight kids. Blackboard. Floor mats. Books. Paint brushes that we’re always squabbling over because there are only three of them.

  All gone.

  ‘How did the government find out?’ I ask, my voice wobbly with shock. But I already know. School transport. The other girls in the class can’t be seen walking to school so they have to be transported in secret. Someone must have seen Dad picking Anisa and Fatima up at their houses. Or dropping them back in the afternoon. It’s always been a big risk, doing that every day, even though Anisa and Fatima always travel in the boot.

  Mum is staring at the place on the wall where her beloved blackboard used to hang. Now I understand why she’s crying.

  Dad puts his arms round me and Bibi again. I can feel him trembling.

  ‘We don’t know how the government found out,’ he says. ‘We just know they have. Someone I trust told me an hour ago. It’s too risky to stay. We have to pack up and leave right now.’

  7

  I’m so angry I could punch a tank.

  I don’t because there isn’t a tank in our living room. Plus I’m in too much shock to punch anything.

  Dad’s in the other room, rolling up the prayer mats and packing them into a bag. Mum’s taking a picture I painted in class off the wall.

  This can’t be happening.

  We can’t just be abandoning our home.

  Dad only finished replacing the cracked mudbricks in my room last week. He promised if I’m good I can have lino on the floor.

  I don’t want to go.

  Bibi doesn’t either.

  ‘If that camel dung government comes round here,’ she hisses, ‘they’ll get a faceful of rocks.’

  She kicks the living room wall. Mum grabs her and hugs her tight. Bibi’s shoulders slump and her whole body starts shaking.

  ‘Mum,’ she sobs in a tiny voice. ‘I’m scared.’

  I know how she feels.

  I can see Mum just wants to hug Bibi for several hours, but instead she goes over to the candlestick cupboard. She takes the candlestick out and unwraps the old blanket from around it. Even though the room is getting gloomy in the dusk, and the candlestick is a bit grimy with soot and wax, it glows in her hands. Specially the precious stones.

  Mum turns to me and Bibi.

  ‘This will keep us safe,’ she says.

  Bibi stops crying. The candlestick’s been in Mum’s family for hundreds of years. Her ancestors used to burn a candle before they went into battle. Mum has always told us that as long as we’ve got it, we’ll be safe. And it’s
true. Mum has burned candles through some really long air-raids and we’ve never had a scratch, except for the taxi.

  I wish she’d burn a candle now so we don’t have to leave.

  Mum gently wipes Bibi’s eyes and nose with her sleeve. That’s one of the great things about Mum. She doesn’t mind wiping up dribble even when it’s not hers.

  ‘Jamal,’ says Mum. ‘Go into your room, pull your curtain down and fold it into a knapsack. Pack your clothes into it and whatever else will fit.’

  I stare at her, praying she’ll change her mind and say we can stay.

  ‘Now,’ she says.

  It’s the voice she uses in class when I’m daydreaming about soccer or when Bibi’s getting carried away in a debate. But we’re not the ones getting carried away now. They are. Dad’s in their room, stuffing clothes into a bag. Mum’s heading into Bibi’s room to get Bibi started on her packing.

  I go into my room, but my arms are too heavy to lift up to the curtain. Instead I just stare sadly at the things that won’t fit into a rucksack. My tanks made out of hand grenade cases. A bleached bone that Yusuf reckons is the leg bone of a fighter pilot who crashed in the desert and got eaten by scorpions. My cardboard soccer balls, the ones I made before Dad bought me a real one.

  After a while I hear Dad come out of his room and go down to the cellar.

  I follow him.

  Halfway down the steps I stop.

  In the flickering candlelight I can see Dad standing at his oven. The oven that was his father’s and his grandfather’s too.

  Dad loves that oven. That’s why he gets up at 3am each morning and bakes bread even though he hasn’t got a bakers shop and has to sell it in the taxi.

  Dad is stroking the warm bricks. I can’t hear what he’s whispering, but I can see the sadness in his face and I realise he’s saying goodbye to his oven.

  Then I see that Mum is down here too. She’s got the spade and she’s digging a hole in the dirt floor of the cellar. Piled up next to the hole are the school mats and books and paint brushes. And the blackboard in pieces.

  Mum’s burying our school.

  My eyes fill with tears again to see that. This time they’re painful tears. Mum and Dad look so miserable.

  None of us want to leave.

  I see something on the cellar floor next to the pile of school stuff. It’s my painting, the one Mum took off the living room wall, the one of me scoring a goal in the World Cup final.

  I go down the steps and pick it up and peer at it in the gloom. In the painting I don’t look like a baker, I look like a desert warrior.

  I dry my tears.

  Suddenly I’m determined to do it.

  Find a way for us to stay.

  8

  ‘Overboard,’ chuckles Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘They’re saying he’s gone overboard.’

  I stare at the TV, puzzled. I’ve been watching the match, but I haven’t really been thinking about it. I’ve been trying to think of a plan so we don’t have to leave our home.

  On the screen, a Liverpool player is being sent off by the referee for kicking the Chelsea goalkeeper in the head. The referee is angrily showing him a red card. The crowd is booing. The commentators are talking excitedly.

  It looked like an accident to me. The Liverpool striker was attempting a spectacular scissor kick and the poor Chelsea goalie’s head got in the way.

  ‘Overboard,’ chortles Yusuf’s grandfather, his long beard jiggling with amusement.

  I wish he’d laugh a bit more quietly. Bibi’s asleep. If she wakes up and finds Mum and Dad aren’t here she could get panicked, even though they’ve just gone to warn the parents of the other kids from school. Yusuf’s grandfather’s cellar is a pretty scary place for a little kid. Specially the souvenir Simpsons tea towels from London stuck all over the walls. In Afghanistan, if a person’s skin goes yellow it means they’re probably going to die.

  I glance over at Bibi. Luckily she’s still asleep. And Yusuf has dozed off on the mattress next to her.

  ‘Why are they saying the Liverpool player went overboard?’ I ask Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘There’s no boat there. It’s a soccer pitch.’

  ‘Ah,’ chuckles Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘You ask hard questions.’

  That’s the problem with watching soccer on Yusuf’s grandfather’s illegal satellite TV. I don’t speak English so I can’t understand what the commentators are saying. Luckily Yusuf’s grandfather does because he lived there once.

  ‘In English,’ says Yusuf’s grandfather, ‘the word overboard also means to do something that is bold, wild, dangerous and daring.’

  I’m not sure exactly what he means.

  ‘For example,’ he says, seeing my frown. ‘If a desert mouse urinates on the electrical wiring of an anti-aircraft gun, hoping to make it fire and shoot down a plane so he can see if there’s any cheese in the pilot’s lunchbox, that’s going overboard.’

  Now I understand. My heart is beating faster. I stare at the screen.

  ‘Do you want me to take Yusuf up to his own bed?’ asks Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘So you can have the mattress?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m not tired. I’ll watch some more soccer if that’s OK.’

  I’ve got too much to think about to go to sleep. You don’t feel like sleep when you’ve just decided to go overboard.

  ‘That’s fine,’ says Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘I’ll watch with you. Until your parents get back.’

  The next match is Charlton Athletic fighting for survival. If they lose this game against Manchester United, they’ll be relegated out of the English Premier League and their lives will be full of shame, misery and grief.

  While they play their hearts out, I carry on trying to think of a plan.

  I wish I could go to the city and get the government out of bed and tell them what they’re doing to our family. How they’ve made my mum cry. How they’ve stopped me getting lino. But I can’t. I don’t even know where the government lives.

  Manchester United are playing magnificently as usual, and Charlton are struggling bravely. Very bravely. They score the first goal. Their fans roar. And that’s just in the stadium. I know that all around the world other Charlton fans are watching TV and cheering and weeping and hugging each other. At this moment they’d do anything for their brave Charlton warriors.

  Suddenly it hits me.

  A plan.

  Just as suddenly the TV picture goes fuzzy. The government has banned TV, so Yusuf’s grandfather has installed his illegal satellite dish on a wrecked military communications tower at the edge of the village where it won’t be noticed. Trouble is, the picture goes fuzzy every time there’s a sandstorm or a plane flies over or a jackal scratches itself in the desert.

  Tonight I don’t care because my brain is already going overboard.

  ‘If I get very good at soccer,’ I say to Yusuf’s grandfather, ‘do you think the government will forgive Mum and Dad?’

  Yusuf’s grandfather looks at me. I can see he’s not sure what I’m on about.

  ‘If a person gets really good at soccer,’ I say, ‘so good that he inspires the government to start a national team, so good that he helps them do really well in the World Cup, do you think the government would stop being cross with that person’s parents even if that person’s parents had been running an illegal school?’

  Yusuf’s grandfather stares at me for a long time.

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if they stayed a bit cross,’ I say after a while, ‘as long as they let that family live in their own village without bullying them.’

  Yusuf’s grandfather reaches across and grips my shoulder. He’s never done that before.

  ‘Jamal,’ he says, his voice sort of thick. ‘You are a good boy. But things are very difficult for us. Our people are not liked by many of the other people in this country. This has been going on for hundreds of years.’

  I nod. Mum taught us this in school. Yusuf’s grandfather knows a lot for a person whose TV only p
icks up the sports channel.

  ‘Our problems are many,’ says Yusuf’s grandfather. ‘They started long before this government.’

  A tear is rolling down his cheek into his beard.

  I stare at him and suddenly I realise just how important my plan is. If I can become the star of the Afghanistan national soccer team, perhaps that’ll make all of us more popular, not just me and Mum and Dad and Bibi. Perhaps none of us will ever be threatened or bullied or killed again, not by the government or anybody.

  It’s a good plan.

  A really good plan.

  But to make it work I need practice.

  9

  This is the perfect way to get extra soccer practice.

  Wait till everyone in the house is asleep, then sneak outside and dribble down the middle of the street like I’m doing now.

  The neighbours are all asleep too so you don’t get arrested and imprisoned. Unless you make too much noise. You know, cheer your own ball tricks or describe your own footwork in a loud commentator’s voice.

  I’m not doing that.

  Silent skill, that’s me.

  Off the foot, onto the knee, onto the head, back onto the foot.

  It’s also a really good way for a person who can’t sleep to take his mind off things he’s a bit worried about. Like why Mum and Dad aren’t back yet. Out here he might be able to see if they’re in any danger. This moonlight’s almost as bright as Manchester United’s stadium with the electricity switched on.

  Foot, knee, head, foot.

  Hello Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, I didn’t see you there. A place in the Manchester United youth team? I’d be delighted. Thank you very much. You’re right, Sir Alex, that would make the government a bit embarrassed they’d tried to persecute our family.

  ‘Jamal, what are you doing?’

  A voice, hissing at me out of the shadows.

  I freeze, my legs trembling, my guts knotted. I peer into the gloom.

  ‘You’re playing soccer in the street,’ hisses the voice.