by David Park
Far out to sea, like a smudge on the horizon, lurks the motionless shadow of a tanker and sometimes our splashes are accompanied by the screeches of gulls in a discordant duet. But we run on and, although I don’t want it, the stone pier is getting closer. Getting closer with every step, no matter how I try to slow our pace. And then unexpectedly she’s pushing on faster, determined to beat me, and I’m happy to let her, happy to trail in her splashing wake. So she’s waiting for me at the base of the pier, sitting on one of the black rocks that have been placed there as a breakwater.
‘What’s keeping you, slowcoach?’ she teases.
I don’t answer, because I don’t know how to start, but somehow instinctively she seems to sense what’s in my head and says that we should talk. So I sit beside her on the rock and we stare again out to sea, neither of us sure how to begin.
Eventually she asks, ‘What are you going to do about my dad’s offer of a job?’
‘I’m going to refuse,’ I tell her and study her face intently to see her reaction.
There’s a pause and then she says, ‘That’s good. Glad you didn’t let me down. I told him you wouldn’t accept.’
When I ask her if she’s sure, she tells me that she is, that it would never work. And I’m so happy, so relieved, that everything suddenly tumbles out about the wedding, about what I had witnessed with Judith, and I don’t know if any of it even makes sense but she’s nodding and that makes me bolder and I hear myself yielding to the most unexpected but powerful of impulses, saying, ‘Let’s get married here on the beach. You have to apply for a licence but others have done it. Look at it – it’s really beautiful. Some chairs, a bit of bunting, a little table for the registrar, some music.’ And she doesn’t start to scream, in fact she starts to laugh then asks, ‘And after?’
‘Hire the hall in the community centre, get some caterers in. We’ll let your dad look after that if he wants.’
‘How long have you been planning this?’ she asks, but she’s still got a smile on her face. Then she tells me that she’ll think about it, think about it while we’re running back along the beach to where we left our shoes, and then before I get a chance to reply she sets off, her feet kicking up fantails of sparkled light.
Yana
On the morning when our parents discovered Masud had gone, I pretended ignorance of his whereabouts. It hurt me to deceive them but I felt I had no choice. They found out soon enough after a series of phone calls revealed that he had left with some of his friends. I can’t think of that morning without hearing the wails of my mother, seeing once more her shaking hands above her head, my father’s frantic phone calls to relatives and people in authority to try and discover where he might be, so that he could go and bring him home, bring their firstborn son home to the safety of his family. But they never saw him again and spoke to him only once more, the week before they learned of his death – in a phone call made difficult by an intermittent signal. Killed in an air strike, killed along with three of his friends who had left with him.
The cold morning air presses tightly against my face almost as if I’m wearing it like a mask. I have a pair of woollen gloves to keep my hands warm. A delicate tracery of spiders’ webs trembles in the hedgerow in the breeze. The river seems almost motionless, as if uncertain about which way it should flow. On its surface float little spirals of fallen leaves. It feels as if the world is contracting into itself, shedding what it doesn’t need in preparation for the worst of the winter that’s coming. It snowed in the camp in Lebanon, adding to the misery, layering the tents and improvised dwellings with an additional burden that made the world feel cruel. As if it hadn’t given them enough suffering already. Two days of heavy snow and the diesel fuel needed to fire the oil burners running out. It felt as if the cold had simply bypassed my skin and seeped into my bones.
Only the pace of my running stops me shivering at the memory. They have given me warm clothing for the cold days ahead, but sometimes it feels as if I am wearing what belongs to someone else, living another person’s life. Living it but without the full knowledge or understanding of how it should be lived. Not understanding some of the expressions the people use, or the geography of the city, not able to anticipate the weather, and most of all never being fully at home inside myself. Sometimes it makes me feel like a stranger to the person I once was. Only the running is the same, a rhythm that links me seamlessly to who I was before and the world I have left. Masud used to tease me about it, saying it was a waste of valuable energy that could be used for other things. When I joined in the game and asked what other things he meant, he’d make up ridiculous things and tell me that if I connected myself to a dynamo I could generate electricity. Light up the darkness during the power cuts.
And there is something else that makes me not only feel like a stranger to myself but a stranger to others, because I can never tell anyone about some of the things I’ve seen. About the bodies in the rubble after the bombing, the fly-ridden bodies bloated and rotting in the sun that we passed along the road on the journey into Lebanon. The old and the newborn who died in the camp with the snow preventing their burial. The images are locked inside and have nowhere to go, flitting through my mind at unpredictable times like the shadows convulsed against the walls of the tent lit only by the oil-fired heater. Sometimes, when people look at me with ill-disguised curiosity, I think it’s not because of the colour of my skin or what I’m wearing but because they can see some of those memories projected across my face in all their grotesque detail.
I know too that my attitude to people has changed and is marked by suspicion. There were stories of people who settled old scores by betraying their neighbours and then stole their property and possessions. And my family had been deceived by those who had taken money to drive us across the border and then never appeared. Left us standing for hours in the dusk, watching as bats pierced the dark skies, black pulses between the stars. Issam falling asleep in his mother’s arms. The slow trudge back to our home, conscious with every step of our father’s simmering anger and humiliation. The deception made more bitter, not easier, when we learned that others had been similarly deceived by the same people.
An old man on the towpath, walking a tiny dog, raises his cap to me as I run past. A female jogger says ‘Hi’ but I barely respond to either of them. Who can be trusted? Who is not motivated by greed or selfishness? How can I know for sure who wishes us well and who wishes us harm? Already I am experiencing doubt about telling the woman in the library about my family – the woman in the running group called Cathy. What good can come of it? Better to keep things to myself, to run alone like this. To not look anyone in the eye and hold myself close to the edges of everything.
The river is stirred by the rising wind, with little eddies threading its surface and quivering the reeds that border the banks, their seeded heads leaning in as if whispering to each other. Some of the trees still cling to a few leaves that have reddened into a slow smoulder of fire. I’ve never seen trees with such a host of colours and don’t want to think of their branches finally bare. And there are other secrets inside our home as well as the one I hide about knowing that Masud was going off to fight. Issam hasn’t been told about his brother’s death, the brother he idolised and about whom he speaks every day. My parents say he is too young to be told, that it will hinder him adapting to his new home, but sometimes when I argue that he needs to know I see the sadness in their eyes and understand that the telling, the putting it into the permanence of words, is too unbearably painful a prospect for them. But it means that every day we hear him ask when Masud will join us, asking if he is minding our home for when we return.
And yet of all of us Issam has been the one who has fitted in most easily, loving his new school that has been good to him and provided him with new friends and new interests. He has started to play on the football team and learned new computer skills, got invited to other children’s birthday parties. He’s even been away on a school trip to an outdoor adven
ture centre. But it’s obvious he misses Masud terribly, misses him as we all do. It is our mother who struggles most, not finding her language lessons easy, worrying about her extended family and friends with whom she has mostly lost contact. Not knowing how to mourn in a strange country, bereft of her son and without the comfort of the rituals that serve to salve grief. She treasures the few photographs she managed to carry with her on our hurried flight, clasping them like sacred objects. Hers is a journey into exile that has no sign of ending and some nights, when it’s time for Issam to go to bed, she sings the old songs to him, as if she hopes they might filter into his dreams so he doesn’t forget the land that once was ours.
Suddenly a dog starts towards me, barking until its owner pulls on its lead, and then the man says, ‘Sorry, luv. Don’t mind him. He wouldn’t harm you. Just likes the sound of his own voice.’ I run on, a little shaken, the moment giving me renewed speed as I seek to put distance between myself, the dog and its owner. And each step makes me feel something different on this morning, as if I’m not running further into my future, however uncertain that might be, but rather deeper into secrets and what is hidden.
It was something I was going to have to reveal before the spread of the war, but now, after everything that’s happened, it’s even more difficult because they rely on me, so perhaps it can never be shared with anyone. But I have known for a long time that I don’t want to give the rest of my life to baking and the family business, that I can’t contemplate the fixed parameters this offers. I have always been willing to help, to do the things that need to be done – no one can say I have ever been lazy or thought myself above the daily labour. But I can’t give the rest of my life to the endless flare of oven heat and reddened hands, the kneading and making, the constantly selling something to others. What I want for myself isn’t fully clear but I know I want to go to university, to learn new things, things that will be important in the years to come.
The only other person who knew what was in my head was Masud. He had encouraged me, told me to be like the kite we flew, to rise up above our confines and see the world beyond. But told me also that I could do this and still stay attached to my family, that there were deep bonds that could not be broken. I wanted to tell my parents when the time was right. But now there is no right time, because they need me more than ever, depend on my ability to speak the language. So while part of me knows that I have escaped from the terror, another part feels trapped in a future that is not the one I want.
The wind shivers some lingering leaves from the trees. One of them floats languidly down across my path. I stop and pick it up, stare at its burnt-ochre colouring, trace the leaf’s veins with the tip of my finger. It seems cruel that in the moment it’s most beautiful it comes closest to death. Sometimes I try to tell myself that Masud is not dead because no body was ever returned to us. That he might be hiding somewhere or taken prisoner, even that he made it safely over the border into Lebanon or Jordan. Although I know there is little chance of any of these hopes being true.
I start to walk. Suddenly running seems a deception, just a way of avoiding the realities that govern my existence. I slip the leaf into the pocket of my jeans. In the distance a plane sews a vapour trail through the sky. I wonder where it’s going, then wonder too whether my restlessness will serve to make me a poor daughter, a poor sister to Issam, and stop me finding any sense of contentment in my new home. I remember the little birds in cages our elderly neighbour kept hanging from his garden wall and how he cried when he released them after the first wave of bombing. What happened to them? Did they take wing and find a safer home, or are they still in endless flight looking for somewhere to build their nests?
I look again at the river, which now seems to have shaken itself into a deeper, fuller flow as if woken from its slumber; at the trees on either side of it beginning to bend and rustle as the wind sifts through them; and all the world seems stirred into sudden motion, a motion that I need to be part of. So I start to run again, remembering Masud’s words and believing that it is the only way I know to light up the darkness.
Cathy
It’s the first time I’ve seen Maurice with his clothes on. And he looks quite dapper in his Marks and Spencer way. The first time, in fact, I’ve seen any of my running colleagues in their ordinary clothes, apart from Yana who comes regularly to the library. Around my kitchen table sit Maurice, Brian, Zofia, Elise and Yana. I’ve brewed up a pot of tea and plated up some bought shortbread that I’m hoping they might think I’ve baked. Also on the table are lots of pamphlets, computer printouts and writing materials, so it’s all businesslike. I’m happy to let Brian the accountant lead, as he has the most direct experience, although it’s useful that Maurice knows his way round local government and still has good contacts. And while it’s clear that Brian and Maurice have plenty of relevant knowledge, it’s also evident that Zofia has the best practical experience of setting up a small business, seems to know the inside track and, despite not being here all that long, has an intimate insight into what’s happening in the city.
Yana is understandably nervous but she accepts a cup of tea and a bit of shortbread that I suspect has been sitting in my cupboard slightly too long, which embarrasses me when I remember her family are bakers. At first Brian is explaining things and offering a way forward in a very simplified style, talking too slowly and deliberately, but as soon as Yana speaks and asks some pertinent questions, he seems to realise that he’s not speaking to a child. He’s going to help her family with a business plan, find the right agency, get the complicated forms filled in, and Maurice is going to help with the figures. And talking about figures, it’s obvious he’s lost weight, has confined himself to a single piece of shortbread, although that might be a judgement on its quality rather than his self-discipline. It’s left a little sprinkling of sugar across his chest that I have to stop myself brushing off.
Zofia has contacts in the restaurant trade that she can sound out and also thinks she knows where there might be some premises that could be rented cheaply. My contribution is to make more tea. When I place the fresh pot on the table, Elise is floating the idea of online crowdfunding, but when it’s explained to Yana she says her father couldn’t accept it, couldn’t accept any more charity than he’s received already because he is a proud man. We try to explain there’d be lots of people out there who want to help, that it’s not really charity, but she seems fixed in her opinion so we don’t push it any further.
When the business part of the evening is finally over, our talk inevitably turns to our last week of running and the coming parkrun. We’re chittering nervously, like children about to take our end-of-term exam, and I tell everyone that I’ve found the longer runs really hard and haven’t managed one without having to walk a little. Elise and Maurice say they’re the same but then I offer the hope that on the big day the crowd of people we’ll be running amongst might give us the extra encouragement we need to complete it. Pauline has told us that we’ll be fine, that she’s going to run with us and it’s not the time that’s important, it’s doing your best and finishing. And when we complete our run it isn’t over, because we’ll wait at the finishing line and encourage home every single one of our group. That’s made me worry that I’ll be the one keeping everyone waiting, that they’ll have to send out a search party for me.
And then, as everyone starts to pack up, Yana stands and says that her father has invited us all to their home, that he’d like to meet us and say thanks. It will be two nights before our Saturday final run. I think we’re all a bit surprised but it’s not an invitation anyone wants to refuse. Before he goes Maurice asks me if I want a lift to Yana’s parents’ and I say yes, then forget myself and brush the white sugar beading off his jumper.
Yana’s house is small but tidy and her parents greet us like we’re long-lost family members. Her father speaks a little English but formally welcomes us through Yana’s translation. Then he makes a joke about Yana running so much, telling us ev
en as a young child she would disappear and the whole family would be out looking for her. Brian suggests they should have fitted her with a tracker but the joke gets lost in translation and then we’re brought into the kitchen. On a table is a spread of vividly coloured sweets and pastries with a rich golden glaze, candies and sweetmeats. There is other food, some of it with intensely vibrant, spiced colours, and we ask Yana to talk us through it. She points to what she calls Aleppo pistachio, to shawarma with lamb, hummus, falafel, pitta bread and salad. We all instinctively pull out our phones and take pictures.
It all tastes delicious and makes us think that the city must have a place for food like this. And for perhaps the first time I begin to think that they could really make a go of things. Brian says it’s just as well we have time to recover before our Saturday morning run, as he helps himself to a second portion of the falafel. Yana’s parents look on with obvious pride, taking advantage of any moment’s respite on our part to make new offerings. We also meet Yana’s little brother Issam, who’s a little shy at first but then chats about his school in good English flavoured with a local accent. Afterwards we drink strong but sweetened coffee.
