Hostage Three

by Nick Lake

  I don’t know if I make Abdirashid understand, but I don’t think it matters, either. I am talking about Farouz, his brother, and that is the important thing.

  When I have finished, he looks level at me for a while.

  — I help you, he says. I have money.

  This is so the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard that I literally don’t know how to respond. Because, yes, he has money, but it’s my dad’s money or the bank’s money, which more or less amounts to the same thing. And now the brother of one of the pirates who took us hostage, with guns, is trying to give it back to me!

  — It’s OK, I say. Don’t worry. I don’t need money, thank you. I’m resitting one of my A levels, then I’m going to college.

  — A levels? College?

  I make a show of playing the violin.

  — To learn, I say. Learn more.

  Abdirashid nods his understanding, looks out at the darkening sky above London. The stars are just starting to come out. He takes a cigarette packet from his pocket, flicks the bottom with a fingernail, and a cigarette jumps out into his fingers, like a magic trick. He lights it, then offers the pack to me.

  — No, thanks, I say. I don’t smoke.

  And as I say it, I realise it’s true.

  Abdirashid opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. Takes a moment.

  — Farouz . . . was happy? he asks finally. Before . . . before he die?

  I think of when I was lying in Farouz’s arms, looking up at the sky, my body glowing.

  I think of him laughing.

  I think of him showing me the stars, the enthusiasm in his voice.

  And I am glad, because this is an easy question to answer, and there are other questions he could have asked which would have been more difficult.

  I take Abdirashid’s hand.

  — Yes, I say.

  And it is something I can say with confidence. It is something I know. As I say it, as I say that word, yes, I feel like there is a weight that has been pressing down on Abdirashid’s shoulders, and now it looks like at least some of it is gone; he is standing straighter already.

  This is the thing: people think that magic doesn’t exist, but it does, all the time. We use spells every day: the spell of forgiveness, the spell of thanks. Abdirashid put Farouz under a kind of spell. He saved his younger brother’s life – he cast on him a spell of loyalty, which Farouz only shook off by dying, by saving Abdirashid in return. I think Abdirashid knows this, and it explains a lot of the weight that was pressing on his shoulders.

  But I have just given him the spell of moving on, despite everything, and, more than anything, he seems grateful.

  — Yes, I say again to Abdirashid. He was happy.

  Water rushes and courses over me in the shower on the yacht, the morning of the handover.

  — From before the war? Farouz says. A story of me and my brother?

  — Yes, I say.

  — OK. OK, I have one. This story happened before we left Mogadishu, he says. In 1990 maybe, or 1989. So I was six, I think.

  I close my eyes, listening to Farouz speaking, to the long spell of his voice. Shampoo foams in my hands.

  — We knew the rebels were coming, he says – even us children. But we tried not to know it. At my school, there was a concert. The orchestra played for the parents who were all in the audience, and the children who could play well also did solo pieces. I was one of those children. I mean, I didn’t play that well. I was only six. But my father was a professor of music – he made me play from when I was small, so I was better than most children of that age, I suppose. Abdirashid, too, he was made to play the piano, but he was always more of a rebel; he had stopped already.

  That day, at the concert, I was supposed to play some simple music on my oud. I don’t even remember what, I was so young. Some folk song, I suppose.

  But, Amy, I was scared. I did not want to play on that stage, on my own, in front of all those people. It was a hot day, I remember, and as we entered the hall I was sweating. My parents must have been with me, but I don’t remember them. I mean, I don’t see them when I picture this event. I only see Abdirashid.

  What happened was that I left my family in the seats and joined the other children on stage. We played a few things, which was fine, because I was with other people. Then a girl stood up with her clarinet, and walked to the microphone at the front of the stage. I listened to her, but all I could hear was my heart thumping in my chest. My hands would not stay still.

  Eventually, the time came when I was meant to get up myself. But I could not move. I was hot, sweating, but I was also frozen, like a piece of meat, hard and still. The teacher was telling me that I had to go to the microphone, but I couldn’t do it. The stage lights were blazing, it seemed like, cooking me in that seat, and there was nothing I could do about it. Usually, when I held my oud, it was like it was alive, like it was shaping itself to fit my body, not the other way around. Now it was a dead weight in my hands.

  I was aware of all those people out there, waiting for me to play, though I couldn’t see them because of the lighting, and I felt afraid, as afraid as if they had gathered to see me killed, not to see me play my instrument.

  That was when Abdirashid left the audience and climbed up on to the stage. He walked over to me, took my hand and helped me to stand up. Then he led me to the microphone.

  OK? he said to me, not in a hurry, just calm and gentle, even though so many people were watching. We were standing in a circle of light. It was impossible to see the audience, but I could sense them out there, breathing, the way the sea respires at night, invisible.

  No, I told him. I want you to stay.

  There was a music stand in front of the microphone, and someone had already put on it my sheets. Abdirashid nodded at me, then he took the music off the stand and held it out, so that I could read it. He smiled at me for me to start.

  But we had not seen the teacher, who had come up beside us. She always wore a headscarf, this teacher, and was always glaring under it.

  You cannot be here, she said to Abdirashid. This is a Year Two concert. Persons from other school years cannot stand on the stage.

  Abdirashid did not flinch or blink. He held out the music on his flat palms. I am not a person, he said to her. I am a music stand.

  On the yacht, in our time, Farouz pauses, and is silent.

  The shower is a rushing in my ears.

  — Are you still there? I say.

  — Yes, says Farouz.

  — What happened after that? What did the teacher say?

  — I do not know, says Farouz. I must have played the piece, I suppose. I just remember Abdirashid telling the teacher he was a music stand, staying with me on that stage, in that circle of light.

  I close my eyes, as Farouz tells me this, as the shower washes over me. My senses merge: his words are all over me; the water is talking.

  Suddenly, there is a prickling feeling in my head. It’s like pins and needles in my mind – it’s like there’s something inside me, some emotion, that I have been sitting on for months, curled under me like a forgotten limb, dead, and now it is coming back to life, blood pouring into it, hot like tears.

  And the thing that is making it come back to life is Farouz, and the idea of leaving him behind.

  Don’t leave me, I think – stupidly, because, in fact, it’s me who’s going to leave, and there’s no way it could be any other way.

  And then real tears start to spill out, merging with the water, merging with the words from Farouz’s mouth. And I’m surprised because I never cry, never even did when Mom died, but there I am pouring tears, just absolutely pouring them, like a container that is overflowing.

  — Are you OK? asks Farouz.

  — Yeah, yeah, I say. Just got some water in my mouth.

  Which must be pretty unconvincing when there I am sobbing, but he doesn’t ask again.

  I think, we won’t ever see each other again after today.

  Bu
t it’s OK, it’s all right.

  Because I have his stories, little pieces of him, and they are inside my mind, and I will be able to remember them whenever I like. It’s the same with my mom, I realise, just as the hot water begins to run out, and my skin tingles with the cold. I have my memories of her, and I can put them next to Farouz, in my mind, and take them out whenever I like and look at them.

  Mom and Farouz, they will be my hostages. I will carry them around inside me, secretly, and never let them go, and only ever keep them safe.

  My mom was wrong, and then I was wrong, I think.

  I turn off the water and stand there, steaming.

  My mom was wrong when she said we would meet again in the stars. We don’t even have to wait that long. She’s here, inside me.

  I was wrong when I thought that because so many things reminded me of her, it would be like she was always dying, over and over again. It’s the opposite, really, I realise now. She wasn’t just a body – she was a person, spreading out in time, into bank accounts and email addresses and a thousand holidays and Christmases, spreading into my mind; and because I saw her nearly every day before she died, all those days are stored inside me, all those images, and they will never, ever go away.

  Everything that has happened is still happening, and will always happen, over and over.

  These, then . . .

  These are just three:

  On a stage, in a circle of light, a boy is holding out his hands to his brother, and will always be holding them out, and on those hands is music.

  In the middle of Richmond Park, my mother is laughing, and will always be laughing, at a table that shouldn’t be there.

  On the deck of a luxury yacht, Farouz is standing, and will always be standing, breathing in the stars.

  This, then . . .

  This, finally, is the end.

  And . . .

  At the same time . . .

  It will never be the end.

  Listen.

  You’re the voices in the dark,

  so the world can’t all be gone.

  There must be people left.

  I’m going to tell you how I got here,

  and how I got this bullet in my arm.

  I’m going to tell you about my sister,

  who was taken from me by gangsters.

  Alone and in darkness, trapped in the rubble after the Haitian earthquake, one terrified teenager holds on to life.

  Read on for an extract from In Darkness by Nick Lake . . .

  I am the voice in the dark, calling out for your help.

  I am the quiet voice that you hope will not turn to silence, the voice you want to keep hearing cos it means someone is still alive. I am the voice calling for you to come and dig me out. I am the voice in the dark, asking you to unbury me, to bring me from the grave out into the light, like a zombi.

  I am a killer and I have been killed, too, over and over; I am constantly being born. I have lost more things than I have found; I have destroyed more things than I have built. I have seen babies abandoned in the trash and I have seen the dead come back to life.

  I first shot a man when I was twelve years old.

  I have no name. There are no names in the darkness cos there is no one else, only me, and I already know who I am (I am the voice in the dark, calling out for your help), and I have no questions for myself and no need to call upon myself for anything, except to remember.

  I am alone.

  I am dying.

  In darkness, I count my blessings like Manman taught me.

  One: I am alive.

  Two: there is no two.

  I see nothing and I hear nothing. This darkness, it’s like something solid. It’s like it’s inside me.

  I used to shout for help, but then after a while I couldn’t tell if I was speaking through my mouth or just in my head, and that scared me. Anyway, shouting makes me thirsty.

  So I don’t shout anymore. I only touch and smell. This is how I know what is in here with me, in the darkness.

  There is a light, except it doesn’t work. But I can tell it’s a light cos I feel the smooth glass of the lamp, and I remember how it used to sit on the little table by my bed. That is another thing – there is a bed in here. It was my bed before the walls fell down. I can feel its soft mattress and its broken slats.

  I smell blood. There is anpil blood in this place, on me and all around me. I can tell it’s blood cos it smells of iron and death. And cos I’ve smelled blood before. I grew up in the bidonville – it’s a smell you get used to.

  Not all of the blood is mine, but some of it is.

  I used to touch the bodies, but I don’t do that anymore. They smell, too.

  I don’t know what happened. I was in bed minding my own zafè, then everything shook and I fell and the darkness started. Or maybe everything else fell.

  I’m in Canapé-Vert Hospital, this I know. It’s a private hospital, so I figure the blancs must be paying for it. I don’t know why they brought me here after they killed Biggie and put this bullet in my arm. Maybe they felt bad about it.

  Yesterday – or possibly it was longer ago than that – Tintin came to see me. It was before the world fell down. Tintin must have used his pass – the one that Stéphanie got him – to get out of Site Solèy through the checkpoints. I wonder how Stéphanie is feeling now that Biggie is dead, cos she’s UN and she shouldn’t have been sleeping with a gangster. She must have really loved him.

  Tintin signed my bandage. I told him it’s only plaster casts that people sign, not bandages, but he didn’t know the difference. Tintin doesn’t know much about anyen.

  Example: you’re thinking that he signed his name on my bandage, but he didn’t. He signed Route 9, like he writes everywhere. Tintin doesn’t just tag. He likes to shout, Route 9, when we’re rolling in the streets, too – Route 9 till I die, dumb stuff like that. I would look at the people we were driving past and say to him:

  — You don’t know who these people are. They might be from Boston. They might cap you.

  — That’s the point, he would say. I’m not afraid of them. I’m Route 9.

  I thought Tintin was a cretin, but I didn’t say so. Old people like my manman say Route 9 and Boston used to mean something back in the day. Like, Route 9 was for Aristide and Boston was for the rebels. Now they don’t mean anything at all. I was in Route 9 with Tintin, but I didn’t write it anywhere and I didn’t shout it out, either. If anyone was going to kill me, I wanted it to be for a good reason. Not cos I said the wrong name.

  Anyway, when I was rolling with the Route 9 crew, I didn’t want the Boston thugs to know me. I didn’t want them to know me till I had them at the end of my gun, and they would have to give my sister back. I tried that in the end. It didn’t work out how I wanted it to.

  In the hospital, after Tintin wrote Route 9 on my bandage, he shook my hand. It hurt, but he didn’t notice.

  — How are you? he asked me.

  — I got shot, I said. How do you think I am?

  Tintin shrugged. He got shot a couple of years ago, and Biggie and Stéphanie arranged for him to come here to get sewn up. For him, it obviously wasn’t a big deal. But that’s Tintin. He’s, like, so full of holes, so easy to hurt, that he stops the world from hurting him by hurting it first. If he found a puppy, he’d strangle it to stop himself liking it. He knows I got shot, too, before, when I was young. But I don’t remember that so well.

  — Everyone in the hood be giving you props, blud, Tintin said in English. Tintin was one of those gangsters who talk all the time in English, like they’re from the hood or something, the real hood, like in New York or Baltimore. You was cold out there. Vre chimère.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just said:

  — Word.

  This is what American gangsters say when they want to agree with something. I said it so that I would still sound like a player even though I couldn’t care less about that thug shit anymore, for reasons which you will learn for y
our ownselves. But that seemed to be OK, cos Tintin nodded like I had said something profound.

  — Leave here, you’ll get a block, gen pwoblem. Maybe be a boss one day your ownself, Tintin said. You killed those Boston motherfuckers stone dead.

  Now I shrugged. I didn’t want a block. I wanted all the dead people to not be dead anymore, but that’s a lot to ask, even in Haiti, where dead people are never really dead.

  Vre chimère.

  A real ghost.

  Chimère is for gangster in the Site. Chimère cos we melt out of nothing and we go back to nothing after. Chimère cos we die so young we may as well be ghosts already. You’re thinking, strange thing to call yourselves; strange thing to have a name that means you’re gonna die young. And yeah, it’s a name that the rich people came up with, the people who live outside the Site, but we took that name and we made it our own. Same as thug. Same as bandi.

  You wanna name me a chimère? Too late. I already named my ownself.

  Anyway, now I think it’s kind of a good name. Now, I think, maybe I am a real ghost. Not a gangster, but a dead person.

  Sometime today or another day, I heard people shouting from far, far away in the darkness. It sounded like:

  — . . . survived?

  — . . . alive . . . in there?

  — . . . wounded?

  I shouted back. You can guess what I shouted. I shouted, yes. I shouted, help. I shouted those words in French and English. I shouted in Kreyòl to tell them there was an accident and I was hurt. Then I thought that was a dumb-ass thing to shout, cos this is a hospital, so of course I was hurt, and it must have been anpil obvious there had been an accident, with everything fallen down.

  But nobody answered and the voices went away. I don’t know when that was. I don’t know when it’s night and when it’s day, or even if night and day exist anymore.