‘Debba!’
My mucky pup is thumping down the hall, streaking loops of coloured paper from her arms. ‘Aabo! It’s Debba!’
Ach, I’d meant to tidy away the plates, the glistening pork-meat. Can you have ham with a cup of tea? I think Debs would like it, but it’s the middle of the afternoon and I have no clue about pork-eating etiquette at Christmas. It seems, though, that you can gorge all day without delineation; for a two-week splurge you may drink alcohol with fruit juice at breakfast time, then eat chocolate for lunch. All this plenty.
All this plenty. Does it not make people sick?
‘Come in, come in.’ I am bright and cheerful, then stutter when I go to shut the door. There is more to come. Debs has company, a lady of a similar age oh oh it is Social Work. They have found out I hit my neighbour, Rebecca will be seized –
‘Becky-boo! Oh, I missed you!’
Debs bundles Rebecca up, they are two clutching monkeys who jig and pet.
‘Abdi!’ Still holding Rebecca, Debs reaches to cup my face, draws me in for a kiss. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you.’
The other woman leans between us. ‘Hi. I’m –’
‘Sorry, sorry. Abdi, this is my sister Gill. My wee sister.’
I shake Gill’s red-gloved hand. ‘I am so pleased to meet you. Please tell your husband I say hello. You are the lady who is helping us with school?’
‘Absolutely. You looking forward to school, Rebecca?’
‘Yes,’ she lisps, feigning coyness.
‘Don’t go all shy and silly, you.’ Debs tickles her. ‘You know Gill already. Remember when we saw Lara, then we went for lunch?’
‘Remember chocolate ice cream?’ says Gill.
‘Yes!’
‘Well, I know a really good ice-cream shop not far from here. Abdi, I wondered if Rebecca would like to go and get ooh . . . I dunno. A ninety-nine? A double nougat?’
‘Nougat! Nougat!’ my greedy daughter shouts. So much love and fun in my hallway; it is confusing.
‘Would you not like some tea first?’
‘Och, you and Debs can have a nice cup of tea and I’ll take this wee monster for a TREAT! How’s that?’ Debs’s sister addresses this to a near-bursting-with-glee Rebecca, so my only option is to say yes.
‘Great!’ Gill pauses, as though expecting further conversation. Neither Deborah nor I speak. I don’t understand, because there is a weight of anticipation compressing us all. What’s happening? This woman is Deborah’s sister; I can trust her, but why does she want my daughter for herself? Are Social Work outside?
‘Right. Well. Grab your coat, missy, and we’ll go stuff our faces, yeah? And you can ask me all about school and I’ll tell you how brilliant it’s going to be.’
Radiating smiles, an animated Rebecca is swung to the ground, takes Gill’s hand, and I am led inside my own living room.
‘Hey, Abdi.’
‘Debs.’
‘Will we sit down?’
‘How was your trip?’
‘Yeah. It was good. Good.’ She nods. Her brow buckles, her mouth opens. Closes. A troubled preface to whatever she must say – she is leaving us, that is it, she is moving abroad, ach I knew it. Why can nothing stay the same? Human beings are born to strive, that is a fact. But we need the peace of stepping stones; some occasional gap in which to rest and consider. Surely we might be granted that?
‘Deborah. Would you like some ham?’
‘Oh God, Abdi. I’m just going to say this and you must listen, please, and be prepared for a shock, a massive, wonderful shock, OK?’
‘OK.’
Slow, suspicious, the panic of another man.
‘Jesusgod, OK.’ She puffs and puffs, ties her scarf. Unites it. ‘Right, I’m just going to say this and I’m not going to stop. Right, so. When I went away, I went to Dadaab. To your camp because Rebecca told me she’d seen her mummy alive and I didn’t believe her, but I kind of did?’
All the while she is stroking my hand. The movements are big, too clumsy; my skin is beginning to chafe. My abdomen pulls itself in.
‘So I went and I checked and she’d only been injured, Abdi! Azira had only been injured, and I found her. I found her, Abdi. Azira’s alive!’
I am in a vertical shaft falling from dark to light to dark to light. In the humming dark come threads of distorted colour, they sing to me and the dark is growing bigger it is a black hole which mutates and spreads, I hear Deborah calling I hear Azira calling I hear my mother calling I hear Deborah sobbing, calling butbutbut a chittering yicker to bring me back.
My life.
My life.
There is a but.
‘You have to understand, Abdi, it wasn’t her fault. None of this was her fault.’
Warm flowers open, surge to liquid. All the times I have heard her calling! Beloved God who never fails me; I remake the world in the hollow of my skull, it is a million threads of delicate gold, a million distinct impulses. I can neither sit nor stand, am consumed by agitation butbutbut
There is a but.
‘Say again?’
She makes a noise; I hear her make a noise. It is gape and shape and ape I am hearing with the beat in my head. With the but.
‘She survived, but she was hurt pretty badly. She . . .’ Deborah sucks in her mouth. My hands are very slow, my brain detached; it floats outside, is watching me watching her. Sucking. ‘Afterwards . . . she tried to kill herself. Threw herself in the river. But someone found her. They took her to a man for help, or the man found her; I’m not sure. But he took her to another man. A . . . He hurt her too. They cleaned her up, gave her shelter, but this man . . . used her. You understand this, yes?’
He hurt her? He fucked her HE EE EE
‘He had her in his compound all the time you were here. She had nowhere else to go. She tried to kill herself. Abdi, Abdi.’ Debs is kissing my head, the murmur of her heart in her breast. ‘I am so, so sorry. It was nearly two years. You understand that? She has a little boy.’
Tear my head from my hands tear tongue from mouth and my guts my guts are spilling let me die Lord let me die I left her to be this ah. From outside of this world dull clunking words, hands pulling me and pushing me
STOP FUCKING PUSHING ME!
‘Abdi, please! Abdi, stop it! You’re bleeding, stop it!’ Debs pulling my fist sour with metal dripping blood and my knuckles, my teeth biting blood.
Let me die.
‘No. You will not die. You will face this and you will deal with this. Abdi. Look at me!’
She may have slapped me or my head strikes off an angle. Pain blooms in perfect circles perfect clarity. Perfect sense.
‘Was he scarred? Tattoos on his forehead? Or pale-eyes? Young?’
‘Jesus, I don’t know. Some rich man, who sells guns. She didn’t want it, but he made her. Christ, the main thing is she’s alive. Azira is alive. She’s arriving today, on a plane from Heathrow, and then they’ll come up by train. I’m going to meet her at the station. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you before. But you need to be there. And Rebecca. Maybe. Oh God, I don’t know. I know this is a terrible shock; you need time. But I didn’t find out until yesterday if we were going to get her out. Abdi, please. Can you be there for her?’
Deborah is pressing on my drumming fingers with the beat and the blood and the muscle rising and my breast rising. I am only flow and breath.
‘If you’re not there . . . She’s . . . Azira’s not in a good way, Abdi.’
I have grieved and mourned. I am grief, the thing relentless. Unable to set it down, until my flesh has grown around it. I have mourned death. Yet death itself is quick and clean. You are, then you are not. There is a resolution in that, an acceptance I have come to. But this? This is death then life. Then death.
We have many legends about the spirit, and there is one, of course, of a man who descends into the earth, to beg the darkness to return his wife. There is this story in every culture, I think, one that is fantastical, absurd. An
d so, so basic. How wonderful, you imagine. How beyond all words our lips can form would it be to hold that which you had lost, to regrow your limb, remake the dust into the substance it once was.
My wife lives! I want only to cradle bones and flesh that are mine, to make her never hurt again. To kill the people who harmed her. I will use my hands and teeth so I might taste their final pain. She is not her past. But a part of it is. There is her and there is it. Deborah said she would not leave it. That is my Azira. If it had been I who was felled, she’d have found a way to protect me. It. She is so full of love, she could not leave it behind. But it is a waste product; she will want to be rid of it. I know my Azira. There is adoption, homes, good grateful parents without issue who will remove it and we will never mention it again. Ever. Will she ever let me touch her?
Can I touch her? Oh God yes I want to run and scream.
My dead wife is alive.
I want to rush her by the hand and show her my world, every tiny detail she has missed. Remake her with our daughter, we will go to Kelvingrove and to the Science Tower, to the pub – and to Loch Lomond! I can show her my loch. Once she has gazed into its tranquillity, she will forget . . . she will forget.
It is not possible that the world is so made.
A frosted puff of breath distracts me, comes past my nose. It’s mine. There is my glove, and the sleeve of my coat. Second-hand but good as new. There are my feet. Transfigured. They are the feet of a husband. These limbs, this brain is connected to the earth and flesh and heaven. I look up from the glittering pavement, see slate-grey clouds, their bellies full of cold. See an angular street of broad sandstone blocks with the occasional darkened window, but mostly joyously lit. Pinpoint silver lights, beats of colour, garish livid Santas and snowmen with flashing hats. Uprooted trees propped on carpet, hung with baubles, topped with stars and angels and how do you choose? What is it that they celebrate? Intercession versus blank celestial observation? I don’t recognise this road. I think I’m lost. I want to be lost.
Beneath distant marching skies I plough the streets. Rebecca has gone to Debs’s house. I didn’t see her again – I am ashamed to admit Debs put me to bed like a baby. Sat and stroked my brow and wept with me until I asked her to leave. Promised her I would do nothing stupid.
Stupid refugee. Other men fuck your wife.
Blessed Lord. You have given me back my wife.
But to ask me this, God? To ask me this? And how can she love me? I let go of her hand.
Sweat rises, then cools on my skin as I circle and stomp ever nearer to my destination. Or perhaps I am spinning away.
You’ll walk to Central Station? But it’s miles, Abdi.
When I was a boy I would walk for ever. My mother would make me patties and I would wander with the camel herders, then slip off when they reached the pass. An occasional stream – no, a burn – trickled the length of where the mountains dipped and met. The sparse water was delicious; I would pretend it had magical powers which gave me further impetus, and I would walk and walk until nightfall, and always find my way back home. Once, in the rainy season, I saw a rainbow there that was circular. Tiny water droplets splitting sunlight in a coloured ring. Revealing its embrace. It struck me that all rainbows must be circular, but we only concern ourselves with the half we can see. And, if they are circular, they have no end.
‘Assalamu alaikum.’
A low greeting creeps from shadow. Makes me jump. I search for the source of it. There is a boy, squatting in a boarded doorway. He cups his hands, catching the beginnings of the sleet.
‘And also with you,’ I reply. ‘Wa’alaikum Salam.’
He has offered me a politeness: it is customary to shake hands.
‘Hey you are cold, cold, cold.’
‘Cole?’
I shiver. Make a brrr noise.
‘Bêë ni. Cold.’
‘Here.’ I give him my gloves. ‘Put these on.’ Wiggle my fingers to show him.
‘E se.’
‘These are gloves. You must have gloves here. Don’t lose them!’
I wrap my arms round my body, trying to mime keeping safe. ‘You keep them. They are good.’
‘Gud.’
I think he must be Nigerian. What words of Yoruba do I know? ‘Odaa. Good. OK . . .’
From far away, a clanging commences. It is one bell, two bells. The boy and I suspend our pidgin exchange, waiting until the ringing stops. Seven. I have to decide where I will go. What would it be like to keep walking on and on and never be still? Or sit in this doorway with this boy, my pale bones knitting? Inertia or momentum – whichever I choose there is a train grinding its way from London and it bears.
It bears scars.
My rucksack lingers on my back. I free my arms from the straps. There is a five pound note in the inside pocket: I still must buy Christmas crackers for the table. Celebrate with loud bangs.
‘Here. Take. Buy coffee.’ I pretend to sip.
‘Co-fee?’
‘Kaffa? Kahwa?’
He nods.
‘It tastes different here. They make it different. Is all different here.’ I point at the pitiful hang of moonlight. ‘Even the moon is smaller. But you have the streetlights.’
We consider the bundled clouds and the uneven light. I take out a pen, and one of Rebecca’s drawings of her hand. ‘Tomorrow . . .’ on the reverse of the picture I scribble the address of the Refugee Council, ‘tomorrow, you go there.’ Tapping urgently on Cadogan Square. ‘They odaa. They good. Um . . . Good? Help?’
‘Bêë ni.’ The boy folds up Rebecca’s drawing until it is a neat square in his hand.
‘In fact, you take this. Put your things inside.’
On the damp-sparkling pavement, I empty out my rucksack. Apart from my mobile and my keys, there is little to retrieve.
‘Please. Take.’
The boy seems unsure. I come a little nearer. He retracts.
‘OK, OK.’ I move, make more space around him. ‘You keep your things safe in that, yes? And tomorrow –’ I lay my head on pointed hands, ‘after sleep, you go to Refugee Council, OK?’
‘O – K. Insha’Allah.’
‘Good luck, my friend.’ I check my mobile phone. It is 7.05pm. The train from London arrives in ten minutes. I have no idea where I am.
‘You know train?’ I ask the boy. ‘Train?’
A half-shrug.
‘OK. Is good.’ I raise my hand. ‘Odaa. Ma’ asalama.’
‘Ma’ asalama.’
In the gutters, the sleet is turning brown. The brittle crunch underfoot becoming slippery, drainpipes muttering, running with icy flow.
‘Excuse me –’
A woman turns up her collar and hurries on.
‘Excuse me,’ I ask the next person. A man lugging a box of full bottles.
‘Canny really stop, mate.’
‘Please. Which way is Central Station?’
‘Eh. That way.’ He juts his chin to the right. ‘See when you get to the river, go straight across the bridge, then swing a left, OK?’
‘Thank you. Um – how far?’
‘It’s a straight road. Twenty minutes maybe?’ he calls behind him.
Find the river. Many times I have thought of death, but Rebecca has held me. I have asked Debs to say nothing to her about Azira, yet. Would preparation help? It is not helping me. Children are resilient.
Oh.
Shards of conversation form into sense. Debs said Rebecca knew. She knew, yet she did not confide in me. What manner of clumsy father have I been? Of course Debs will take her; my baby will be waiting there, now.
Unexpected brightness of headlights, the road unravels; I lurch, return to the pavement. There is a long dark glow of gleaming hardness; I find the centre of it, align myself. Strings of streetlamps, furrowing. I inhale, gathering all the thick night air. March straight through the heart of this city.
In the blackness I am eyes and teeth, but my speed makes me visible; people move, respectfully, as I
pass, always keeping to the centre. Windows blurring, traffic flashing. I smell the river before I see it. Find my elegant, swinging bridge, which pings with the thud of my shoes. Breathe cooked fat and sick and alcohol, push past revellers who are celebrating the birth of Our Lord with shrieks and pink bare legs. It is a quarter past. I begin to jog, but my feet slither from me. Azira will arrive and I will not be there. Rebecca will be confronted by a ghost. The city writhes with people and noise, a discordant carnival of trumpet bands and elbows barging, the shiny bounce and bump of full-stuffed plastic bags. I jog faster, tense my fists. So many buses shunting, slowing. I squeeze between two of them, sprint across the stop-start street.
Central Station lurks in a tunnel, over tawdry shops and a chip restaurant, its Victorian elegance obscured. I slip under a square, modern arch, find the escalator to take me up into the concourse; it is not fast enough; I leap and slide through bodies. Reach the top. Scan the shiny hall made livid with Christmas lights. It is twenty past, nearly twenty-five past. We are to meet beside a bullet? Debs says there is a giant bullet, near the door to Gordon Street, I am running and looking for a lump of metal when I see –
I see Azira.
I see the curve of my daughter and the stoop of my wife. Bound in a ball of joy. Unmoving.
It is real now. To my God, I give a prayer. I am Thomas. I witness it is real. Huge flares of drumming seize my heart. I melt, re-form. Am balanced and am light. I see Azira’s long hand, her graceful folds. Whirls of people navigate me, each with their definite lives. I see the vulnerability of her neck exposed. My feet will not work and then they are running running while the space expands; I will never reach them.
I am there. This is where I am. With my arms out wide and my wife inside them. Our daughter at our feet.
I have no words.
We touch each other’s lips, relearn each other’s skin. To feel her skin . . . I am aware of Rebecca, of my Deborah shushing her and shushing some dark package which is passed from her to Azira. Brushing me. Azira accepts it calmly as I flinch, I put out my hand to repel this thing, to push it from me, but I cannot touch it. Azira moves the bundle closer: it is her offering, I understand, without meaning to. Without meaning to, my hand nudges the shawl. Falling from brittle curls, a cautious swell of cheek. A damp black eye which blinks above the cheek. It has lashes. Thick lashes. I see the down on his skin catch the radiance that beats through bright glass. His wide black eyes. He is afraid.
This Is Where I Am Page 37
