Or maybe it was administered deliberately, by whatever shitey scum Rula owed money to. And maybe that was why she couldn’t make it to Maxwell Park that night. And maybe, ultimately, that’s why she died. The policeman who meets us at the mortuary takes a couple of desultory statements, but his every tut and headshake suggests this is all ‘for the files’. ‘Tragic, isn’t it?’ he agrees, when Naomi reiterates that I work at the Refugee Council and how terrible it is when these poor souls have no hope. ‘What happens now?’ she asks, once she is assured of his sympathy.
‘They’ll hold a post-mortem.’
‘But after that?’
After that they hope Rula will be able to go home. There is a father called Vlad, perhaps, in a town called Tsentoroi in Chechnya. It’s Naomi that knows this, but me that pretends to. Why? Well, she briefed me in the car and she’s right: what purpose would it serve now to drag Naomi in? To punish her would just be vindictive. And it was me who saw Rula through my window. Me who has learned nothing from my past.
Me who did nothing at all.
14.
My new shoes creak. My belly is coated thick with porridge and my arms swing loosely by my sides. I have plenty of time. Over my head, a green canopy rustles; hundreds of tiny fingers waving me good luck. Birds preen and coo between the leaves – the fat grey ones are pigeons. Mrs Coutts calls them ‘rats wi wings’, but if you look closely they have iridescent necks of green and oil-swirled blue. And it is warm, still warm, and has been all this month. Last summer, my first in Glasgow, I remember only rain. It rained so hard I thought the streets would wash away, was glad for once that we didn’t live by water. Rebecca and I spent the days huddled by the window, searching for a patch of blue. I thought the seasons here would be consistent, like they are at home, but this summer is bursting with juice and warm light; it kisses my skin like a welcome friend. Mrs Coutts has made me a piece – a piece of what, Mrs Coutts? Just a piece, son. A piece and cheese. Rebecca and she waved to me from the window, waving and waving and me turning and waving until the blur of their hands was a pindot. This morning Mrs Coutts walked to ours, because I’m aye up at the cracka dawn, son. And it’s such a bonnie day. In future I will take Rebecca to her flat. It’s a fifteen-minute walk in the wrong direction, but this is nothing when your limbs are as quick and long as mine.
She is a good friend, Mrs Coutts. And so is Deborah, no matter what she has done. How to say this without invitation? Any words of consolation I might have gathered up for her were lost in the flurry of Geordie’s detention. She has been very unhappy since then. I thought, when she called last week regarding babysitting, that she was ill; her words were monotone and bereft. I should have asked what’s wrong? For sympathy only; for if she were to raise the subject of the little boy, I would say remember the stones and we would say no more. Gladly I will say no more. I would find it very difficult to offer convincing platitudes, an absolution for abandonment. Maybe one day I will tell her . . . nononot today I look at the birds the sky the ground. Maybe one day I will tell her about my little boy. Women are easy to be around: they listen, but do not try to solve. I unwrap my ‘piece’ – the slippy bread-wrapper in which it’s twisted is undoing itself as I walk. Sniff it. Ugh – vinegar. The sandwich is full of little onions, which make hummocks in the soft white bread. I put it back in the bag and lay it on one of the park benches. Perhaps someone else might like it. I can get something at work.
My first day at work! Five words that make me taller.
And breathless. For a year, I lived in limbo. Then I got my letter and they believed me and my life began again. Granted refugee status in December, given my mentor in January, a new home by May and this job by June. My college application’s been approved and I will begin there in September, to study for my Higher examinations. Without these, I cannot go to university and be a teacher and start to dig my own furrow for my roots. Proper, wholesome roots from which we can grow and grow and grow. For the first time in . . . I don’t want to count it, but I do, as I walk each step closer to my new job I count from the first time our village was taken over, to hiding on the edges of my old life and scrabbling and stealing and coming back and seeing . . . and running, running away and trekking to Dadaab and all those wasted years, not wasted for I saw my son born, saw my daughter born, and Sudan and back to Dadaab and and and – my pace is quickening, I realise I am running, that my hands are crunched and angry there is sweat on my back. I breathe, I slow. Not today, Lord. Please not today.
I am back to being a fortunate man. The early swelling light is warm, my belly is full. I walk with purpose. Slowly.
For the first time in eight and a half years, I will not have to beg for my life. I do not think it’s possible for them to know the humiliation when they look at you. The gatekeepers. The people in the offices, immigration, housing, jobcentre, the handers-out of benefits and rights. They endorse or refuse your continued existence in so many ways, and you are powerless against them. You stand or sit with sloping back as they run their eyes across your face, your clothes, your carefully written-out form. Who is one human to judge another? And you see it in their small tight eyes; the assumption that we are there to cheat them, every one of us has come with the sole desire to exploit and lie and scrape our future on begrudged sand. How do you think a man can live like that? Do you think if I had any other option I would beg for scraps? Would you? It is not your money you give to us. It is the money society, in its kindness and wisdom, has decreed we may have. It is called ‘humanity’. Do you know this? When ‘humanity’ is a concept, it is fine, but when it is one human being deciding on another’s right to be human, then it’s petty and unkind. One day, I want to be like Debs, moving through the city in which I live so successfully and well that I have room for others too. I want my benefits to be self-manufactured, not given by the state – although I am so, so grateful that they were.
In front of me, I see an old man stooped over. He is sheltering by a tree, curled in on himself, and is puffing, puffing as if it’s his dying breath. I deviate from the path, go over.
‘Are you all right? Can I help?’
He jerks, then straightens.
‘I’ve nae mair fags.’
There is dank fear in his expression and I see that he is trying to light a cigarette. I cup my hands either side of his. ‘Try now.’ He hesitates, scared, I think, to be vulnerable, to lower his head in my presence. It is a thin, spindly snap of a neck that he has; his jaw is weak and grizzled. But the desire for his cigarette is stronger than his fear of me, or maybe, up close, I am not so bad, but anyway, he puffs and I cup and he puffs and I cup, and suddenly we have ignition!
‘Cheers, son.’ His eyes flicker briefly as he inhales, then, quick with the need to be always on guard, he opens them wide. Checks left and right and touches his cap before he shuffles off. As he passes beneath the trees and into the sunlight, his posture alters. There is a dignity to his walk, how his shoulders are braced to face the world. His gait reminds me of Geordie, who reminded me of my grandfather.
For a moment, I Iean my spine against the tree. Watch the shadow of the leaves dance patterns on the earth. Then I push myself off and continue on my way. I am begun again as a fish seller, but I hope this won’t be the end. As you drop stones, you can also find them. It’s how you cross rivers, standing on one, then the next, testing the weight, feeling the breadth and tilt with your feet. It may take time to get your balance before you can safely move to the next, but then you do. You must.
The trees on either side of me become lampposts. I am out of the park, and nearing the supermarket where I am to be inducted. My supermarket! This job is a mark of another human’s faith in me. It is a fine country, this, it is generous and sound in principle, if not always in the practice. At first, when I said about my new job, the lady in Housing told me my housing benefit would stop, that I should not take the job. I said the supermarket people told me I would keep my benefits because this is a scheme for those who have not
hing. They have made the hours, the pay, the training such that it should not affect what little income you have. The lady sniffed and shook her head. Then she also thought – although it was not her place – that my Jobseekers Allowance would definitely be stopped if I were to go to college in September. So I should not go.
‘You seem annoyed that I want to escape,’ I said and she called her supervisor, said I was ‘giving her cheek’.
I turn the corner – and there it is. My supermarket! Many windows, a black and yellow frontage, a long sloping roof and a little turret built to look like the kind of clock-towers you see on old halls and churches. But it’s the vibrant black and yellow that dominates. It is modern and traditional and I love it! I love this generous, unpredictable, light and dark and beautiful city. My shoes make a lovely clipping sound as I walk past the cars scattered in the car park. Maybe one day I will drive and have a car and drive in here like Richard and be their Regional Manager but I am going to be a teacher but I could be anything now! I suck another breath of bright morning air, swilling it to every pocket of my lungs. The door is cool and clean on my palm, I push it inwards, show my badge to the uniformed man as he says we arny open yet. Oh. Right. Away you go through to the back.
Is the back at the top? I assume it is, make my way to the rear of the store. On every side of me: shining towers of food. Huge rows of bottles, tins, whole pyramids of eggs. Refrigerators that are longer than a truck, full of different types of milk. I see goats’ milk – they have goats’ milk in Scotland! – and resolve to buy some and am pulled on by the smell of fresh bread and my excitement, past the floury piles of rolls, past the buzzing cabinets of – I pause – dips and hummus? – until I reach a wide door masked with plastic sheeting. It is positioned between a counter heaped with fish and sea-smells and another of garnet-bright meat. As I hesitate, because to go inside will mean going behind the actual counters, a florid man appears in the gap. Red hair, red face, red arms visible beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his overall – which is white with pale-red staining. He nods at me.
‘All right, pal? You the new start?’
‘Yes. I am Abdi Hassan.’ I extend my right hand towards his. Each time I do this is fraught – once a man refused to shake it because Nae offence, pal, but yous wipe your erses with your hands, don’t you? This man wipes his hands first, before he clasps mine.
‘Maloney. Kevin Maloney. Pleased to meet you. I’ll be your supervisor when you’re in the store.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Come away through, Abdi. Come and meet the boys.’ He pushes the plastic strips back and we go in. ‘Have you been at the college yet, did they gie you an overall?’
‘Eh . . . no. I go to college on the Wednesday. This Wednesday it starts.’
The room we enter is broad and echoing. It contains silver metal tables and silver metal shelves. Silver metal doors with vast spear-shaped handles line two of the walls; every wall is tiled in white, is shining, scrubbed and dazzling in piercing artificial light. Other lights – round blue lights – hum, spaced at regular intervals near to the ceiling. There are people in white coats and hats working quietly at one table, precise movements of weighing and wrapping, while a younger man sweeps left and right, left and right methodically across the floor. It is cleaner than any hospital, but with the same faint smell of blood.
‘Nae worries,’ says Mr Maloney. ‘We’ll get you kitted out here then. A white coat’s a white coat however you get it, eh? Only don’t say that to a doctor!’ He butts me with his elbow. ‘Aye. We had one of your lot last month.’
‘My lot?’
Yes, I do mean my voice to be that way. Clipped, but not yet discourteous. I aim for a tone of censure, the way I would warn Rebecca that this is her last chance before Aabo gets cross. I am only following orders – good ones, I think, if this is really to be my rebirth. As Mrs Coutts was foisting my piece on me, she suddenly frowned. Pinched my cheek with her finger and thumb. Now, don’t you take nae snash the day, son. You hear? A bit of banter’s fine, but don’t let them talk down to you, right? You’re a fine handsome lad, and you probably know mair about all the fish in the sea than they do.
‘Aye,’ continues Mr Maloney. ‘Another boy on the apprentice scheme. Didny stick it, but I’m sure he left his overalls and his knives, so you’re welcome to them. I doubt the college charges you much, but if you can get them here for free, so much the better, eh?’
‘Thank you, Mr Maloney.’
This good man takes my jacket, gives me a locker and a white coat, then escorts me round the room. Each stop along the way is punctuated with names and introductions. There are six, maybe seven men and a couple of women, but only two others who seem to be working with fish. I am shown where they – we – prep, where they store, where they receive, where they create.
‘Aye, I encourage the lads to experiment a bit. You canny sell the fish right if you don’t know what to do with it, know? And the boss loves it if we do something a wee bit different from the other stores.’ Mr Maloney raises his voice. ‘Local, distinctive and –’ pausing, lifting his arms to conduct the response which is shouted from all quarters:
‘Quality guaranteed!’
The boy with the brush gets carried away, flings his white hat in the air along with his shouted refrain.
‘Right, you, pick that up. Oh, and you’ll need a bunnet an all, Abdi.’
He is giving me a small cake? I search my brain for where I’ve heard this word before, see the boy scoop up his hat and remember the man with the magazines and those boys and the chasing. It is a hat, of course it is.
‘So, if you’ve any ideas for marinades and that – gies a shout, aye? Wee Cammie there came up with a stoater, didn’t you, pal?’
Is a stoater like a bloater? I have been swotting up on my fish.
‘Aye. Salmon steak with ginger, lime and chilli.’
‘Magic, so it was. Anyway, Abdi, that’s for later. The now we’ll be concentrating on the basics – your hygiene, your safety, your customer service, the produce we sell, how we prepare it. I mean, you’ll no actually be on the shop floor for a while yet.’
‘I understand.’
Mr Maloney speaks more quietly, so it is just him and I in the conversation again. ‘Aye, I’m sorry about that. We have to go through all the hoops: it’s company policy, particularly with this new scheme. I think they’re shiteing themselves that some homeless laddie’ll cut off his fingers cause he didny get the “knives are sharp” input. Mind, I’m expecting great things from you. I hear you’re a fisherman.’
‘I was, yes.’
I am surprised he knows this. And pleased.
‘Kind of fish you deal in?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What sort of fish did you catch?’
I reel off the most common: tuna, sardine, swordfish, marlin, mackerel, lobster. I have prepared for this: looked at pictures on Mr Google, learned the English names, and no, I did not catch all these fish as a matter of course. Indeed, I’ve never fished for lobster, but occasionally they curled inside our nets. Outwith the coastal areas, few Somalis eat fish, far less spiny great crustaceans. These things go for export, and we were subsistence fishermen. What we didn’t eat, we’d sell, so we fished for what would sell quickest. My friends deemed me arbiter of this. Coming from a nomadic tribe, to my mother’s coastal homeland, I’ll admit I was disgusted at first. To eat fish is to show that you are not a good herdsman, yet here was my hooyo’s family gorging themselves on everything slimy and rank. I soon learned. Firm flesh, good colour, no smell. That’s what sells best.
‘So, you’ll have filleted plenty?’ Mr Maloney asks.
‘Of course.’
He gestures to the pale-grey fish that lies on the marble slab beside us. It looks like mackerel with its mottled belly. ‘Show me.’
I stare at the fish and its extinguished eyes. Come on, Abdi. Do your worst. I will feel nothing anyway.
My fingers contract. They are cold, co
ld, cold. I flex and I swallow. Today is an induction. This action I have done a hundred thousand times becomes a clumsy horror. What if I forget; fail this simple test? My job, my stability, my stature as a newly working man is predicated on my memory of tiny bones. The fish pouts its disdain. It is obvious: neither it nor Mr Maloney think I am capable of the job. Often, on the beach, we would use the razor-edge of a seashell, or a thin sharp piece of rock. The knife which rests beside my little dead friend is silver as the fish. It is slim and light, with a fine sleek blade to it. I think it could do the task itself.
First, I wash my hands. I suspect this part is also my induction: do I think like them? Am I clean? The two other men have ceased chopping. Watching me, quite openly. A trace of fishscale smears the bigger one’s chin. I dig my nails into the fish’s tail, lift it to eye-level and slit the belly with the little knife. Hook my finger inside, a gentle tugging twist and there – the skeleton laid bare. I present it to Mr Maloney.
‘Aye, very good. Probably better if you keep the produce on the board, though. Health and Safety, know?’
I do not, but I will go on to hear much about Health and Safety from Mr Maloney.
‘What about salmon? You can do the pin bones and that?’
‘I do not know a pin bone.’ There’s no point in lying; the next test may be to point one out. Debs has given me much advice, but the most useful – seeing as she knows very little about fish – was when she told me: if I don’t know, I should ask. Ask once, Abdi, that’s fine. Everyone’s got to learn. But when someone’s shown you or told you – make sure you don’t have to ask again.
‘Here, watch Sam. Man’s a master with the beast.’
‘Aye, shame he’s shite wi the burds, though!’ calls Cammie.
‘Your wife wisny complaining last night.’
‘Piss off.’
Mr Maloney taps a knife on the counter. ‘Right, lads, that’s enough.’
This Is Where I Am Page 21
