“Thank you.”
He hands back my voucher. I turn and head in the direction he pointed me, to a table in the far corner, housing a kettle and some mugs. There’s a couple of women behind the table, with their backs to me.
I walk over and cough to get their attention.
One of the women turns and both our mouths drop open in shock.
“Stevie!” she exclaims.
I want to run. I want to hide. I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Instead I open my mouth and force some words out. “Hello, Miss Kepinski.”
HAFIZ
Uncle Samir and Aunt Maria are still out and I’ve spent the past couple of hours going over our recent conversations for any mention of Mum. But there wasn’t any. I asked Dad how Mum was and he said OK. But he didn’t ask me if I wanted to speak to her. Why not? And why didn’t she want to speak to me? These are the questions that are filling my head when Stevie arrives.
“Hey,” she says as I open the door. She looks really fed up. She isn’t smiling and her eyes aren’t as sparkly as usual. She’s probably regretting that she offered to help me. She probably has a million other, better things she’d rather be doing. Like her homework. She’d probably rather be doing her homework than talking to me about what it means to be a refugee.
“I’ve had a really rubbish day,” she says, walking straight past me into the hall. “And it isn’t even eleven o’clock yet!” She looks at me imploringly, like she needs me to say something or do something to make her feel better. I’m relieved. At least it isn’t the thought of helping me that’s making her look so sad.
“Why? What’s happened?” I gesture at her to go into the kitchen, where she goes over to the table and plonks down heavily into a chair.
“I don’t think I can tell you,” she says, resting her head in her hands. “I have a horrible feeling that would only make it worse.”
“Oh. I see.” But really I don’t see at all. “Would you like a coffee?”
“Sure.” Her expression brightens a tiny bit. “What kind?”
I go over to the cupboard where Aunt Maria and Uncle Samir keep the coffee and tea. “Instant? Filter? Decaf?”
Stevie frowns. “Decaf is a swear word to me. Ditto instant.”
I laugh. “Sorry.”
“Could you make Syrian coffee? You know, like you were telling me about the other day?”
“Oh. OK. Yes, sure.” I look in another cupboard and bring out the silver coffee pot and matching small, silver cups.
“Wow. It looks so ornate,” Stevie sighs.
“Yes. We take our coffee seriously.”
Stevie watches as I put some coffee and cardamom in the pot and add boiling water. It’s so long since I’ve made coffee this way. It makes me feel happy and sad at the same time. I put some dates on a plate to serve with it. Did I ever tell you the tale about the date merchant and his donkey? Dad’s voice echoes in my head.
I pour some coffee into one of the tiny cups and pass it to Stevie and she takes a sip. “This is delicious!”
“Thank you.” Her happiness is infectious.
I offer her a date. She takes it eagerly and nods her head in appreciation. “Mmm, this is lovely.”
“Have another. Please.” I pass her the plate.
She eats another. There’s something about the way she eats so eagerly, so hungrily, that reminds me of the camp in Calais, and the way we all ate when we received our one meal of the day. I go and get some of Maria’s baklava and put it on the table. “Help yourself.”
Three cups of coffee and a plate of dates and baklava later and we are both buzzing from caffeine and sugar.
“OK then,” Stevie says. “Are you ready to be interrogated?”
“Interrogated?”
“For your video. Are you ready to be interviewed?” She puts her bag on the table and pulls out a notebook. “I jotted down some questions last night. I hope they’re OK. If they’re not, just say, and I can ask you some others.”
The happiness I was feeling fades slightly. I wonder what she’s going to ask me.
“Do you want to see them first?”
I shake my head. Probably best not to know in advance or I might not want to answer them.
“I also thought we could talk about Sanctuary by the Sea in the video. Ask people if they’d like to donate books for the library.”
I nod.
Stevie looks around the kitchen. “Where do you want to film it?”
“I don’t know. Shall we try in here?”
“OK.”
I take my phone from my pocket. I feel nervous all of a sudden but I’m not sure why. It’s just me and Stevie, I remind myself. If I don’t like how it goes I don’t have to show it at school.
“How are we going to film it?” Stevie asks. “Should I hold the phone? Or do you think we should rest it on something?”
“It’s OK. My uncle gave me this. He uses it when he’s FaceTiming with overseas students.” I fetch a small tripod from the kitchen counter and attach my phone to it. Then I switch the phone camera to video and try different positions until I’ve got my chair in shot. “Right. It’s ready.”
“OK.” Stevie clears her throat. “Hi, I’m here with Hafiz Ali, who has just started at Lewes High and is a Syrian refugee. I was wondering if you could tell us, Hafiz, how and when you became a refugee?”
Stevie
Hafiz looks so uncomfortable. Maybe this was a dumb idea. Maybe being filmed is making him feel even more self-conscious. He leans back in his chair, then forward. He coughs and pushes his long hair from his face. “I – I became a refugee two years ago,” he says, looking at me, then the camera, then down into his lap. “The war in Syria was getting worse and worse. So many people were getting killed or injured. My best friend, Aahil…” He breaks off and looks back at me. “Aahil lost both of his legs in a rocket attack. So my parents decided to pay for me to go to Europe. To come here to the UK, to stay with my uncle and aunt. They thought it would be safer for me.”
I nod. I decide to ignore the next question on my list and ask one of the new ones that has instantly sprung into my mind. “When you say your parents paid for you to go to Europe, what do you mean?”
“They paid the smugglers.”
“Smugglers?”
“Human smugglers. The people who help Syrians cross the border into Europe.” He gives a little laugh. But something tells me that whatever he’s thinking about isn’t at all funny.
“How much did they have to pay them?”
“Thousands of dollars. Most of their life savings.” Hafiz sighs.
“Wow. So, why didn’t your parents come with you?”
“They didn’t want to leave my grandma. She’s very old and frail. She wouldn’t have been able to make the journey.” He looks really stressed now. I decide to change course.
“Which countries did you travel through to get here?”
“We went by land into Turkey and then by boat to an island off the coast of Greece.”
“When you say ‘we’, who do you mean? Who were you travelling with?”
“A friend of my dad’s, our next-door neighbour, Adnan.” Hafiz sighs again. He’s looking even more uncomfortable now.
“Are you OK?” I whisper. “Do you want to stop?”
He shakes his head.
“Could you tell us a bit about the boat journey? What was it like?”
He swallows. “It was hell.”
Crap. I shouldn’t have asked. “I’m sorry. Let me just…” I look back at my notebook for another question.
“The smugglers don’t care if you live or die. All they care about is your money,” Hafiz continues. “When we told them that the boat was getting too crowded they beat us with sticks to get us to sit back down. They wouldn’t let us get off again. They just kept forcing more and more people onto the boat and then…” He looks down at the floor. “Then, when the boat capsized, there was no one to help us.”
“The boat cap
sized?” A shiver runs up my spine.
Hafiz nods. “Yes, midway through our journey. There was a storm. The sea got really rough. We had been given these orange what-do-you-call-them – life jackets – before we got on but they were so flimsy, they didn’t do a thing. They didn’t help the people who couldn’t swim. I lost all of my belongings that night, apart from the clothes I was wearing and what I had in my pockets. But I was one of the lucky ones. The woman next to me…” He tails off into silence.
“Did she drown?” My voice is barely more than a whisper. I’m dreading his answer.
Hafiz shakes his head. “No.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Her baby did.”
HAFIZ
Something weird has happened. Something I really wasn’t expecting. Now I’m finally talking about my memories from that night, I don’t seem to want to stop.
“Her baby drowned,” I say again. And now I’m not just speaking to Stevie or the camera on my phone, I’m talking to the whole school. And most of all, I’m talking to Price and Priya. I want them to know exactly what refugees have been through. I want them to see that it isn’t about greed or wanting to steal things from others, it’s about being so desperate you’d risk your own life, or the life of your baby. “When the waves crashed into the boat they swept her baby away. Other people too. Adnan, the man I’d been travelling with. He drowned as well.” I glance across the table at Stevie. Her eyes are shiny with tears. It snaps me back to reality. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” I stand up and switch off the camera.
She shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
We both sit there for a moment in silence. The only sound is the faint drip-dripping of the tap. I feel weird. Light-headed. I don’t know if it’s all the coffee or the relief of finally having spoken about the nightmare that’s been haunting me for months. But should I have spoken about it to Stevie? I look at her, try to work out what she’s feeling. She’s staring at the coffee pot, deep in thought.
“I’m sorry if that was – if it was too much just then,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Is that why you don’t like the sea?”
I nod. Then I sigh. “It’s weird because I used to love it. It’s where I’d always go when I wanted to feel happy. When I wanted to feel free. We live – lived – right on the coast, in a town called Latakia. I loved swimming – when I wasn’t playing football. My mum said I was part human, part fish. But now…”
“It must have been so scary. I can’t even imagine. And that day we went to Brighton, I made you go onto the pier!” She looks mortified. “I’m so sorry.”
“No. It was good. You made me confront my fear. Well, kind of. Inside the arcade it was easy to forget about the sea. The claw is a great distraction.” I grin at her, trying to lighten the mood.
“Before I came here today I was feeling really sorry for myself,” she says quietly. “But now … now I feel so lucky.” She puts her notebook back in her bag. “Do you fancy getting out of here for a while?”
“Sure.”
“Good, because I have an idea.” She stands up, causing all the bangles on her wrists to jingle. “And I think … I hope it might be a good one.”
Stevie
I think my idea might be a good one for precisely fifteen minutes – the time it takes for me and Hafiz to leave his uncle and aunt’s house and get on the bus. As soon as the bus begins winding its way along the road out of Lewes I start worrying that my idea is awful. But I had to do something. It was so heartbreaking to hear about what happened on the boat and see how it’s affected Hafiz. I don’t want him to be afraid of the sea for ever. I want him to love it again. And if anywhere is going to make him love the sea again it’s Cuckmere Haven.
I first came to Cuckmere Haven when I was a little girl. I can’t remember exactly how old I was but I know I was heavily into the Mr Men at the time and I was inseparable from my cuddly Mr Tickle toy, so I’m guessing I was about five or six. My parents and I had come to Eastbourne on holiday and one morning, Dad announced that we were going on an adventure. Dad was so good at creating excitement out of nothing. He could make even a trip to the post office seem like the most thrilling thing ever. But Cuckmere is so magical he didn’t really have to work that hard.
By the time Hafiz and I get to Cuckmere the weather has changed dramatically. The sun is still shining but a strong wind is blowing huge iron-grey clouds across the sky. I lead Hafiz into the valley and onto the footpath that winds beside the river – the river that will eventually lead us down to the sea. I wonder if I ought to warn him now or let the valley work its magic first.
“This place is awesome,” Hafiz says as he drinks it all in. The shadows cast by the clouds are scudding over the hills to our left. The river is sparkling. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“You’re welcome!” I’m starting to feel nervous now. What if my plan backfires? What if he sees the sea and starts freaking out? “There’s something I need to—”
“Look at that sheep!” Hafiz points to a sheep grazing on the grass to our right. Unlike the others, its wool is pure black.
“A black sheep. My spirit animal,” I quip. Maybe I shouldn’t warn him. Maybe it’s better to say nothing. We walk on in silence. The wind grows stronger. It’s the kind that blows right through you. My hair becomes alive, whipping in long thin strands around my face. I think back to this morning at the food bank, to the horror of seeing Miss Kepinski there. And I picture the wind blowing all of the shame out of me. I turn and look at Hafiz.
“This river – it is leading to the sea?” He looks at me questioningly.
“Yes,” I say, preparing to turn around and leave. But he nods and keeps on walking.
“I don’t want you to hate it any more,” I say quickly. “If any place can make you love the sea again it’s here. Trust me.”
“I do,” he says quietly.
“Oh. Thanks.” I feel almost giddy with relief. The footpath twists round to the left and in the distance I can hear the sea. The whoosh of the water perfectly harmonizes with the rush of the wind.
A
river
runs
through
the
island
of
you.
I let the words drift away on the wind like autumn leaves. This is definitely not the time or place for me to start writing a song. There’s a little tree up the slope from us, its branches bent over at a right angle away from the sea. The weather gets so wild here the tree has become permanently fixed in this position.
“What’s that?” Hafiz asks, referring to a square-shaped, concrete construction on the side of the hill.
“It’s a bunker from the Second World War. The Germans were planning to invade Britain along this part of the coast, so the British army built them as lookout posts. Do you want to go inside?”
Hafiz nods and we head off the path and up the hill. As we get close to the bunker I have a sudden flashback from out of nowhere. My dad, carrying me on his shoulders, my Mr Tickle toy dangling from my hand. “We’re going to see the house where I lived when I was a little boy,” he’s saying. I hear Mum giggling. “Danny, please!” I stand still and watch Hafiz go down the stone steps to the entrance of the bunker. I see my dad picking up a stone, carving something into a wall. I blink hard. Am I imagining this? I don’t know where these thoughts are coming from. I can’t tell if they’re actual memories. I follow Hafiz down the steps and into the bunker. The floor is covered in cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. The cool, dark air smells acrid. Hafiz goes over to the window – a small rectangular slit in the concrete. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I know that it looks out over the sea.
“Are you OK?” I ask, going to stand next to him.
He nods. “It actually doesn’t feel so bad, looking at it from in here.”
“Good.”
He turns to face me. “It’s strange, isn’t it, thinki
ng of the soldiers who would have been in here all those years ago?”
I nod. “Yeah. I wonder how it must have felt, waiting and watching for the Germans to arrive.”
“Really creepy I reckon – especially at night.”
I look around the small, concrete bunker. I picture Second World War soldiers, nervously smoking cigarettes, staring out into the endless darkness for any sign of the enemy.
“But the Germans never did arrive,” Hafiz says.
“No.”
“The soldiers were lucky.”
Sunshine is pouring through the slit in the wall, onto Hafiz’s face, which looks so beautiful it makes me want to take a picture but obviously I can’t for all kinds of stalker-related reasons. So I look at the wall instead. Someone has scrawled KILL THE POLICE on it in dark blue ink. Then I see the outline of a heart carved into the concrete. I move closer and I can barely breathe as I trace my finger over the faint grooves of the letters that have been carved inside: STEVIE + SADIE. Me and Mum.
HAFIZ
I stare out at the rectangle of dark grey sea through the slit in the cold stone wall. For some reason I feel OK looking at the sea like this. It’s like looking at a picture. A picture framed in solid concrete. But how will I feel when we leave this place and walk down to the bay? I don’t have to go, I remind myself. But if I don’t, I’ll look weak and pathetic in front of Stevie and I don’t want that, especially as she’s trying so hard to help. I’ve never seen a place as wild and beautiful as this. She was right: if anywhere is going to help me overcome my fear of the sea it’s here. The wind, which has been whistling around the bunker, dies down for a moment and I hear something else. A sniffing, gasping that sounds like crying. I turn and see Stevie leaning against the wall, her face in her hands.
“Stevie? Are you OK?” I take a step towards her.
She nods but she doesn’t take her hands away from her face. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I just – I saw something…”
I look around the bunker. It’s hard to see anything in the gloom. All I can make out are a couple of empty beer bottles and the ends of cigarettes. Maybe she doesn’t like litter. Maybe it really upsets her to see a historical place like this all messed up. Although bursting into tears would be a bit of an overreaction. “What was it?” I ask, unsure if I should step closer, put a hand on her shoulder or even give her a hug.
Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow Page 14
