‘Are you all right? Did they hurt you, Deborah?’
‘Oh my God, are you all right?’
We speak in unison, touching each other’s arms.
‘They hit you – Jesus Christ!’ I pull out my mobile. ‘Jesus, in broad day – I’m going to phone the police.’
‘No!’ he shouts, galvanised once more. ‘No police, please.’
‘But, Abdi! They assaulted you. They stole your hat. Christ! You have to stand up to these people –’
Abdi pulls away from me, starts marching down the street. ‘Do not tell me how to fight my battles, Deborah. I am not your child.’
Folk are gawping; I run after him, yanking on his arm. I swear to God, when he bowls round, dips his shoulder, I think he’s going to strike me.
‘Just leave me. Leave me!’
‘Haw! Haw. ’Scuse me there, big man!’
In my panic, I think the gang have returned. My arm lashes backwards, connecting with yielding fabric, then denser flesh.
‘Ho! Cool yir jets, doll! I’m no the enemy, by the way.’
A thin man is panting at us. I don’t think I hurt him, but he’s stooped slightly, catching his breath. In his outstretched hand, he brandishes the red hat.
‘Err you go, big man. Err your bunnet back, pal.’ It’s the Big Issue seller.
‘My hat? You found –’
‘Did they drop it?’ I am raw and furious and shaking. The safe air round us; ripped away, my skin with it. I am raw and furious and shaking.
‘Naw.’ The man stands upright. ‘Fucking decked the wee shite, so I did.’ He grins like a wizened pixie, presenting stained-brown teeth and a set of grazed knuckles for inspection. ‘Just weans, know? But you canny go round daeing that tae folk. So, err you go, big man. One hat and nae harm done, eh?’ He pats Abdi on the side of his arm.
‘Thank you!’ Abdi grabs his hand, shakes it vigorously. ‘Thank you.’
I turn my fury on our saviour, because he is part of it; all the shitty city street-crawlers are complicit in the stash of blades and crap and piles of steaming spew that is my home town. ‘You can’t just go round punching folk! What kind of a message does that give out? Abdi’s not from here –’
‘Nae shit?’
‘Well, he’s not. And you can’t solve violence with more violence. We need to get the police. What if those boys come back?’
A fluid shift; it’s not the wind, not even actual breath or motion, but I feel as if a sliding door has brushed quietly shut, where I am on one side and these two men, who are entirely strangers, cultural, geographical strangers, are on the other. A small nuance passes between them, erasing me.
‘There is no need for police.’ Abdi folds his arms. Regenerates. I could argue with him, I know I’m right. But I don’t.
‘Here, I’m no getting caught in some domestic.’ The Big Issue seller slaps Abdi’s back. ‘Stay well, big man – even though yir stuck wi Greetin Teeny here.’ And he ambles off, his satchel bumping from his hip.
Abdi turns to me. ‘Who was that man? Do you know him? Why did he call you Teeny?’
‘No, I don’t bloody know him. He’s just some Big Issue seller –’ My breath is catching in my craw, too-fast bubbles caused by my too-fast heart. Broad bloody daylight and they just –
Abdi’s frowning.
‘He’s homeless,’ I say. ‘The man’s a beggar. Sells these magazines as a kind of a job –’
‘Wait!’ shouts Abdi, running after the man. I follow, at a more sedate pace. Puffing out until I find my rhythm.
When I reach them, Abdi has his rucksack off, is unzipping the top pocket.
‘May I buy your magazine, please?’
‘Naw. Yous had your chance – but your burd there gied me a dingy.’
More puzzlement from Abdi. I’m going to buy him one of those Glesga dictionaries.
‘He means I turned him down.’
‘Aye, in your dreams, doll.’ The man indicates his empty satchel to Abdi. ‘Only joking, big man. I wisny lying. That really wis ma last one. They’re all done.’
Abdi is crestfallen. ‘Oh.’
‘You can gie me ten pee for a cup of tea if you want, but.’
‘OK.’
‘Here.’ I get in first, thrust a pound coin at the man. He considers it, shakes his head. ‘Naw, you’re all right, doll. I havny got change.’
‘I don’t need change. Just take it.’
‘I’m no wanting it, fuck. I didny jump in for a reward.’
‘Indeed. Thank you again. Anyway. I am . . . My name is Abdi.’
The man nods. ‘Dexy, pal. Pleased tae meet you.’
‘Decksy?’ I say.
‘As in “sexy”, but wi a D. D for dong.’ He gives a leery wink and taps his forehead. ‘Be seein ya, folks. That’s me away tae get pished now.’ Nudging my elbow as he goes.
Abdi and I walk the length of Sauchiehall Street, down towards George Square. Neither of us speaking. If we were a machine we could reset, but we are just two bruised, surly people. Why? Why them, passing us, right then? If he hadn’t worn that hat . . . Abdi has his God. Perhaps he’s thinking how lucky he is, that God sent those boys to him. In absorbing their blows, Abdi has saved some other, weaker soul, while all I am thinking is I hate this bloody city. I hate it and I love it. When its vital, raging energy is channelled well, it’s a wonderful place. Maybe Abdi’s thinking how he met the nice Big Issue man, how God made it so that they met and maybe I should be thinking not to judge a book by its cover because I am a teacher and LESSONS MUST BE LEARNED! I flex my fingertips. A flurry of wind sends a newspaper scudding by my feet. The updrift scatters the pages, each leaf rising in various directions. Tattery birds in flight. I think there’s no sense to be made of it at all. But we insist on weaving a narrative.
Beside me, Abdi clears his throat. Gruffly, he says he’s sorry, and he doesn’t think I treat him like a child. I say I’m sorry too, that we got a fright. He agrees. Makes a joke about his hat being so desirable, and we’re fine, fine, fine again. I need to be fine, because I’m dreading this. Another bout with officialdom. The Homeless office is quite close to Marks and Spencer’s. I’ve told Abdi I’m going to buy Rebecca a pair of wellies after. Apparently they’re going fishing this weekend, although he’s a bit vague on the ‘where’. I gave them the rod to take home when we were at Loch Lomond, gave Abdi all the hooks and flies and stuff – he said he’d work out what to do. I’m glad it’s going to be used again. I think it was Callum’s dad’s.
When our son was born, and the nurse went: ‘It’s a boy!’, Callum leaned his face into mine. I can remember the rasp of his cheek on me, the two-day stubble of our two-day labour, his coffee-breath, eyes glazed with tears and delight. ‘It’s a boy, Debs. A boy! I’ll be able to take him fishing! God, I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Him passing our son into my unreal arms, the three of us, holding each other in a heart-shape. My husband was bright with joy and I was blessed. When it becomes too much, when the loss runs through me like a burning wire, I remember I was blessed.
‘Debs? Are you all right?’
‘Yes! Yes, I’m fine.’
Abdi takes my arm. His face is grave. ‘Are you sure? You look like you might cry. I am sorry, very, very sorry. I should not have shouted at you.’
‘It’s not –’
‘Is it those boys are still scaring you? Do you want me to go to the police? I will if you think I should.’
‘No, don’t be daft. I was just in a wee dwam.’
‘Dwam?’
‘Daydream. It’s Scots for daydream. Reverie?’
‘Ah. Di-wam.’
Mouthing it, considering it like flavour. I like when he does this. Weighing the word, or computing it. I picture a flashing wheel of words inside his head, where he stores new treasures, cataloguing them alongside his existing selection.
‘Your Scottish words are much more descriptive than the ones in books. That word sounds swoony and
sleepy –’
‘Swoony!’
‘Sorry. Is that wrong? To feel faint?’
‘No. It’s perfect.’ Without realising what I’m doing, I reach up and pat his cheek. My skin on his, another boundary blurred.
‘Oh look,’ I burble gladly. ‘That’s us at the Housing.’
‘Good.’
We stand outside the pale stone building, united in our cause. Abdi unzips his rucksack. Removes a notepad and pen.
‘You don’t have to write anything for them, Abdi. Don’t worry – I can do all the talking.’
‘No.’ He hoists his rucksack into place. ‘It is for to take notes of what they say.’
Good on you, pal, I think.
8.
An apology! I have never had one of these before, I don’t quite know what to do with it. Do I hold it like a baby, or slam it down and demand another, better resolution? ‘Sorry’ they have said – I counted three times. ‘Unacceptable’ was another word she used, the homelessness lady, as she was scrabbling in my file and tap-tapping her computer keyboard. It seems that I had fallen through the mesh, slipped like a silver fish to be lost again in the waves.
‘This should never have happened; we have systems.’
Debs glances at me, eyebrows raised. What a terrible word is ‘system’. It is all rigid, inhumane structures, much like the building in which we live. But all is well, I am back on the housing list. At the top, where I should have been, she says, before Belinda went off sick. Belinda’s name is mentioned in the hushed regretful tone of a woman already dead. The lady started doing this when Debs first raised her voice. They spoke very rapidly, many jagged splinters I couldn’t follow, and I wondered if Belinda really was so ill, or if the lady was using her sickness as a cudgel to silence Debs. It didn’t work, though, Debs insisting: ‘That’s all very well. However, your job is to manage your staff and maintain a proper service. Irrespective of how under the weather they – or you – might feel.’
My head down low; I wish I had not come. These people have power – you cannot speak to them with so little respect. Soon, the order will come to throw us from the building, and maybe Debs will offer cash and the guards will go and we will start again. Or maybe we will be beaten.
Both women are speaking in a curiously polite and brittle way. I keep my focus on my shoes. My one foot is dancing all by itself, small insistent jerks which makes the toecap flap. I need new shoes. Rebecca needs new shoes. I am on the list; can we not just go? They might have rooms in here, places where they put you, to wait. And it is in the waiting that the torture begins. They make you wait so long, you are begging for it to begin, for a clean slice of pain to cut through cloudy terror. But they will not beat us here. The lady has said ‘sorry’. Sometimes, though, people say ‘sorry’ crisply, as an interrogative, or it can be the ‘sorry’ which is not all at, but which arrives to preface ‘I absolutely disagree’, or to suggest the finality of discussion over and the guards being called. The old man at reception, in his braided suit and white peaked cap, is not a threat. There was a sign there, I noticed, and it is replicated in this interview room:
Our staff aim to provide a courteous and helpful service at all times. However, we deserve the right not to be intimidated, abused or threatened. Such behaviour may result in clients being asked to leave the premises. Failure to do so may result in police being called.
To call the police, however, would be a great threat. And maybe they will beat us.
Maybe it will be like when I tried to strike that policeman in Dadaab, and they took me and stood me in the sun. My arms tied with wire above my head, then they swung me round so I was upside down. Laughing, laughing as they beat me with wooden poles and cut my feet, scraping red earth from the ground and rubbing the grit of it into my wounds. Leaving me strung in their station yard.
‘Mrs Maxwell, I appreciate what you’re saying, but you have to understand –’
‘No. What you have to understand is –’
I watch my shoe flap as if it too wants to add to the conversation. They were Kenyan police; the UN soldiers rarely ventured inside. I think it was three days I hung there. Each time I drifted, they would burn me with cigarettes. Tell me that they were fucking my wife; I would writhe and scream and they would burn me some more. Enough, I screamed. Enough. If I had known Azira was hiding, I could have borne it all. Mrs Mursai had helped her and the baby to get away, passing them to her sister, and from her sister to her uncle and his wife, who were in another part of the camp. Suspended in the bastard sun, I did not know. All I knew was what had happened, what they were telling me was happening.
‘Look, Mrs Maxwell. Are we broadly in agreement?’
‘Apparently.’ A note of lightness enters Deborah’s voice. One could almost call it smug. (This is a recent word to me, but a very fine one, combining as it does the ugliness of the ‘uh’ with a thuggish ‘g’ and the slyest of cat smiles.) I relax a little in my chair, but this is a mistake.
Compressed, it rushes at me; a long fine filament of light. I shut it out, the fierce brilliance of her eyes, blinking a thousand crystals, cut, cut, cutting through.
She had been crying. She tried to hide it, but I could see. Azira had been gathering firewood. Usually I went with her, subjecting myself to catcalls and comments.
You lost your dick, Abdi?
Come kiss my balls while you’re at it, pretty chick.
But it wasn’t safe for her to go alone. Being in the midst of Dadaab was frightening enough, being at its lawless borders was horrific. Men gathered women as women gathered wood and water. Stealing from them, raping them. And it wasn’t just local Kenyans who came to harvest the dispossessed. Some of these men were my people, gone crazy, I suppose, with the waiting and the lack. If you have no form to your life, what are you? An animal, it would seem. That day, though, I had to stay behind. Our baby girl was very ill, sick with the fever the Mursai children had had the year before. The fever that had killed our son. His little body would hold nothing inside it, not food, nor milk, nor faeces. Every half hour, we would feed him water on a spoon, but it was in vain. I had held Azira, and she held our boy, and we watched him pass from this life. Our firstborn. For some minutes, I had shielded them both, hushing Azira’s sobs, but then Mrs Mursai heard and began to wail, then it was the other women gathering, and the separations of women and men, the ritual washing. Of all our friends and neighbours, it was Paolo, the man from the school, whose kindness struck me the most. He brought us meat and a stolid cake. He understood our need to celebrate death the same way we celebrate birth, even though it was not his way. It was a hollow festivity. Neither Azira nor I could thank Allah for very much.
‘How will he be judged, Abdi? When he is so little? Such a tiny, tiny leaf.’
As Muslims, we believed each person would be judged in the afterlife. We believed, then, that a tree representing all Muslims grows at the boundary of Heaven and Earth. Each of us is a single leaf on that tree. At Muharram, when the angel shakes the tree, those whose leaves fall will die within the coming year. My boy must have been very special to live less than two years.
This little one before me was even younger. How could she fight the same fever? I watched her tiny mouth pout and struggle for its air, the fist that clawed to dissipate pain. But this time, I was wiser. I knew a man who knew a man who said he could get us medicine. Crystals that would firm up my baby’s stools and replenish the vitamins she was losing. The medicine would cost us money, of course, money we didn’t have. Tucked under the straw on which we slept was a woven reed box. Inside was hidden my mother’s two remaining bracelets; intricate carved work, fit for the elder’s daughter she had been. For these, you could get money. I was hoping we could negotiate, man to man. Khadra would never deal with a woman, Dires said. I had only spoken to Khadra once before, years ago when we had just arrived. Striding imperiously through the main square, followed by his several wives. ‘You!’ he called to me. ‘You are new here, yes?’
‘Good, good. I am Khadra. Whatever you need, I have. You understand?’
Khadra means lucky or fortunate. Seeing him in his clean white robe with his wives and his comfortable belly, I thought, yes, you are well-named, sir. But I didn’t understand then, not really. When my son took ill, Azira queued for hours, waiting to see a doctor. If only I had known about bribes and favours and how you circumnavigate the tides.
Anyway, Khadra was late, Mrs Mursai was out, and we needed wood to boil the baby’s water. Azira said there was a group of women going, and one of them kept a fruit knife inside her wrap. For the firewood, Azira smiled. So I let her go. When she returned, Khadra still hadn’t come and our daughter was barely moving. Her whimpers had ceased, her eyes were glazed in a netherworld of neither shut nor open. I thought at first Azira was crying only for the baby, and then I saw grazes on her cheek. The collar of her dress torn.
When you are unprepared for the arrival of your most buried fears, the full violence of them is terrifying. I think I seized her, was shouting over and over What happened? And her, sobbing at me and reaching for our baby: Has the man not come? Has the man not come?
The man never came. Perhaps he would have if I hadn’t done what I did next. It was police, Azira told me. Police who demanded a fee for the wood.
That is Kenyan wood, bitches. We can charge you with theft, you know. We were lucky up until then, we had avoided their attention. The Mursais had been waylaid before they even got to the camp, made to hand over all their money and every possession they owned before police would allow them passage. They told Dires Mursai they would imprison him for ‘unlawful presence’ if he didn’t pay. Then they whipped him and said he was an Al-Shabaab terrorist, that he would be executed. Until then, Dires had been a doctor who thought he was rescuing his family. Now he smoked khat all day and beat his wife.
This Is Where I Am Page 11
