Kiss the Dust

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘You haven’t got any choice in a refugee camp.’ Tara tried not to sound impatient. ‘Bedbugs aren’t so bad. There are worse things than that.’

  ‘Oh, really? Yes, I suppose . . .’

  Tara turned her head to gaze out of the window. Why couldn’t she talk about clothes and make-up and parties any more? She had an awful desire to shock Almaz, to tell her about the arms and legs she’d seen flying through the air in the bombing raids, and what it felt like to be swept down a flooded river in the dark, and how tired you felt after months of eating only the most basic kind of food, and how the camp latrines stank so much you wanted to be sick, and how the man in the cabin next to theirs had screamed and screamed in the night.

  ‘What grade are you in at school?’ she asked with an effort.

  ‘Same as you, I suppose.’

  ‘Except that I don’t go to school any more.’

  Almaz looked shocked.

  ‘Oh, but you mustn’t stop school. I mean your education’s so important. Daya wants me to do business studies. She did want me to be a doctor, but I’m hopeless at science, I really am. I might go into insurance or something. You get really well paid if you’ve got good qualifications.’

  ‘But I thought women couldn’t do that kind of job here?’

  ‘Yes they can. Mind you, there’s a lot of things women can’t do. It’s not like Sulaimaniya.’

  Tara detected a hint of disapproval in Almaz’s voice, as if she thought Sulaimaniya was too free and easy.

  ‘It’s much better in Sulaimaniya!’ she said, suddenly flaring up.

  ‘Oh, yes, I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Kurdish women are free, and they can do proper jobs and everything. You don’t get put in prison in Sulaimaniya just for talking to a man like you do here. And look at Kurdish clothes! We don’t have to cover ourselves up in these horrible long dresses, and chadors and everything.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Almaz, taken aback by Tara’s outburst.

  There was an awkward silence.

  Almaz picked up a comb and ran it through her hair.

  ‘Isn’t your brother a student?’ she said, trying to find a neutral subject.

  ‘He was.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’

  ‘He was called up.’

  ‘Is he in the army then?’

  ‘No. He didn’t join up. He’s in Kurdistan, with the pesh murgas.’

  ‘Oh, how awful. Poor him.’ Almaz was gushing extra hard in her efforts to sound understanding.

  ‘What about yours?’ said Tara, trying to respond. ‘You’ve got two older brothers, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Almaz. ‘They were really lucky. They were both studying abroad when the war started. Rezgar’s in France and Jwamer’s in Norway. I expect they’ll stay there till everything’s calmed down.’

  Tara clenched her teeth.

  You’ve got no idea, she thought. No idea at all.

  ‘Would you like to go shopping now?’ said Almaz brightly. ‘There are some lovely new winter clothes in. I’ve seen some fabulous sweaters in the bazaar at Reza Tabrizi’s. Everyone goes there.’

  Tara stood up with relief.

  ‘Yes, let’s go out,’ she said.

  Back in the sitting room, Teriska Khan and Auntie Noor were still sitting side by side, deep in conversation, while Hero, who’d eaten nearly as much as a grown-up, lay fast asleep on a pile of cushions.

  ‘Can I take Tara to the shops, Daya?’ said Almaz, lifting her chador down from the peg where it hung behind the door.

  ‘Yes, of course, dear,’ said Auntie Noor absently, and turned back to Teriska Khan.

  ‘Mind you’re back by five o’clock,’ Teriska Khan called after them. She smiled at Tara. ‘What a treat for you. Have a lovely time, darling. Have you got the money I gave you?’

  ‘Yes thanks, Daya,’ said Tara. She knew she ought to be more excited, but somehow, she didn’t know why, she couldn’t feel anything much.

  I’ve changed, she thought. I’m just not the same kind of person any more.

  It was as if something in her had died over the last few months. The young, careless part of herself had withered away. Something else would grow in its place, but it wouldn’t be the same. She wasn’t a child any longer.

  22

  The shopping expedition was much more fun than Tara had thought it would be. She started off being almost confused by the huge quantities of things to choose from. Auntie Noor might say that since the war had started you couldn’t find a thing in Teheran, but when you hadn’t been able to even go into a shop for months the mass of stuff to choose from seemed confusing. Tara had forgotten the feeling of browsing through racks of clothes, and picking out shoes and sweaters from tempting piles, and she didn’t know where to start.

  Almaz was easier to get on with once they were out of doors. She was obviously enjoying herself, pointing out things that Tara had missed, and hunting around for the right sizes. Tara started liking her a bit better.

  By the time they got back to the flat a couple of hours later, Tara had bought a pretty satiny blouse, a warm fluffy sweater with a pattern of flowers all over it, and a skirt that fitted her properly. Best of all she had some decent shoes at long last.

  When they opened the front door, everything seemed very quiet. Too quiet in fact.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said Tara.

  ‘Gone out shopping too, I expect,’ said Almaz unconcernedly. Tara started feeling uneasy. She didn’t like not knowing where Daya was.

  ‘Sh!’ said Almaz. ‘What’s that?’

  They both listened. There was a strange kind of animal noise coming from the sitting room.

  ‘Must be thieves!’ whispered Almaz, clutching at Tara’s arm. Tara shook her off and opened the sitting-room door.

  The lunch things had all been cleared up and tidied away, but Teriska Khan and Auntie Noor were back on the cushions where they’d been before, both fast asleep. Their mouths were wide open. Teriska Khan was snoring gently, her breath coming and going easily, but Auntie Noor was rumbling like a volcano every time she breathed in, and when she breathed out again it was with a mighty whistle.

  ‘What is it? Who’s there?’ hissed Almaz over Tara’s shoulder.

  Tara was shaking so hard she couldn’t answer. She stepped back, and Almaz plucked up her courage to peep in through the door. Then she caught Tara’s eye and clapped her hand over her mouth to keep in a shriek of laughter. They fled down the corridor to Almaz’s room, flopped down on to her bed and buried their heads in the cushions.

  ‘Did you see my daya’s dress all ruckled up? I could see her bra!’

  ‘Yes, half her buttons have popped open,’ wailed Tara. ‘Did you see my mother’s gold fillings?’

  ‘No, but I saw her tonsils!’

  This seemed so hysterically funny that neither of them could say anything for a good long time. At last Tara sat up and mopped her eyes. She felt better than she had done for months and months.

  ‘I’m going to put on my new clothes,’ she said.

  Five minutes later, she was looking at herself in the mirror. She could hardly believe her eyes. She hadn’t really seen herself for six months. In that time she’d slimmed down. Her cheek bones showed now, and her eyebrows seemed more arched and finer. She’d grown a couple of inches, and her figure had changed too. She had a proper bust, and her waist looked thinner. And her hair looked different too. At home she’d always kept it under some sort of control, with slides, or combs or something, and although it had been shoulder length her friend Khadijah at school, who was brilliant at hairdressing, had trimmed it for her regularly. She hadn’t been bothering to tie it back lately because it was covered with the regulation scarf whenever she went out, and anyway there hadn’t been a mirror anywhere to do it in. Now it waved and curled long and free, round her face and down her back. She wasn’t sure whether it looked silly or not.

  ‘Your hair’s nice,’ said Almaz. ‘I envy you.
It’s so thick. I have such trouble with mine.’ She looked in the mirror and patted it complacently. ‘It’s terribly soft and fine. Baby hair, Daya calls it.’

  Tara turned her head from side to side. Almaz was right. Her hair was nice. She tried pulling it back away from her face. It looked good. She mentally counted up the change she’d had from the money Daya had given her. There’d be enough for some clips and slides anyway. They cost practically nothing.

  ‘Does that sweater fit all right?’ asked Almaz.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ said Tara. She stretched out first one arm then the other to pull the sleeve of the blouse down so that the cuff showed.

  ‘Isn’t that wool rather hard?’ said Almaz, picking up a bottle of varnish and beginning to touch up her nails. ‘I can’t stand wool next to the skin. I’m funny like that. My skin’s really sensitive.’

  Tara didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t have to.

  ‘You’re pretty,’ said a voice from the door. Both girls turned round. Hero was standing there. She’d obviously just woken up. She still looked flushed and rumpled, and there were marks on her cheeks from the folds of the cushion she’d been lying on. She was looking at Tara, but Almaz didn’t notice that. She smiled, pleased with the compliment, swung her legs off the bed and advanced on Hero enthusiastically.

  ‘Oh, what a little darling you are!’ she said. ‘Sweet little thing! Come on, let’s dress you up too.’

  She tried to take Hero’s hand, but Hero wriggled away from her, ran to Tara and hid behind her, holding on tight to her new skirt.

  Almaz laughed.

  ‘I’ve got just the thing for you,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She opened a drawer and took out a bright green nylon blouse with pearl buttons down the front. It looked several sizes too big for Hero.

  ‘Come on, lovey,’ she cooed, reaching out a hand towards Hero. ‘Try it on. You’ll look so sweet. Just like a little princess.’

  Hero looked at her for a long moment and took a firmer grasp of Tara’s skirt.

  ‘I can’t stand green next to the skin,’ she said solemnly. ‘I’m sen-sensitive.’

  Tara had to turn her face away.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ said Almaz. ‘Come here! Almaz will brush your hair for you and put in a pretty ribbon.’

  Hero edged herself further round behind Tara. Almaz dug into a drawer and pulled out a length of slightly crumpled blue ribbon. She dangled it in front of Hero.

  Tara felt a tug on her arm, then Hero slid her fingers down till she found Tara’s hand, and held on to it tightly.

  ‘Tara’s prettier than you,’ she said firmly. ‘Tara’s really really really pretty.’

  Almaz put the ribbon down.

  ‘You’re a bit pretty,’ said Hero kindly.

  Almaz laughed, but the laugh had a tinkly sound in it.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said.

  ‘Hero,’ began Tara, trying hard not to laugh. She felt for the sake of politeness she ought to stem the flow. ‘Why don’t you go and—’

  But Hero hadn’t finished.

  ‘I don’t want your ribbon,’ she said. ‘I got baby hair. It’s terribly soft and fine.’

  ‘Hero!’ said Tara desperately. ‘Run and see if Daya’s awake. I’m sure it’s late.’

  ‘Daya is awake,’ said Hero. ‘She wants you. We’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ said Tara, unzipping her new skirt.

  ‘You didn’t ask me,’ said Hero, aggrieved. ‘Why are you taking your clothes off?’

  ‘Because . . . Oh, I don’t have to, do I? Of course, they’re mine. I can wear them back to the camp.’ Tara pushed the pile of old clothes lying on the floor with the toe of her new shoes. ‘I suppose I’d better take these back with me, though I never want to see them again.’

  Back in the sitting room, Teriska Khan didn’t seem in any real hurry to go. She and Auntie Noor seemed to have taken up their conversation where they’d left off before they fell asleep. Teriska Khan was looking anxious.

  ‘I’m sure Soran will find a way to . . .’ she was saying.

  ‘No, really,’ Auntie Noor stood up, and shook out her skirt. ‘I don’t want to worry you, but they don’t usually let people stay near Teheran for long. They send everyone on to that camp down in the desert I was telling you about. The conditions are frightful. It’s much worse than the one you were in up in the mountains. Hero would never survive it. And with your health the way it is now . . . Perhaps you should try to go abroad, out of Iran, at least until the war’s over. After all, it can’t last for ever.’

  Teriska Khan stood up too.

  ‘We’ll see what . . .’ she began. Then she saw Tara. ‘Oh, you look lovely!’ she said. ‘What a nice sweater! And the skirt! How much did all that cost?’

  The drive back to the camp seemed very short. It was amazing, thought Tara, how quickly you got used to things again. There was the fruit stall, exactly the same as it had been this morning, but it looked quite ordinary now. The fruit looked smaller, less magical. Teriska Khan had a bagful of it on her lap, which she’d stopped to buy at the little shop at the bottom of Uncle Daban’s building. The shops and the buildings looked different too. They were nothing extraordinary. Just shops and buildings, after all. Even the traffic didn’t seem so scary now.

  Baba and Uncle Daban were having their usual conversation about Kurdish politics in the front of the car. Tara couldn’t be bothered to follow it all. Anyway, Hero was demanding all her attention.

  ‘Auntie Noor’s house is nice,’ she was saying, ‘especially the toilet. But I like our house better.’

  ‘So do I,’ sighed Tara. ‘Ours is much bigger.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Hero. ‘We’ve only got one room. Auntie Noor’s got lots and lots.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Tara. Then she understood. Hero was talking about their hovel in the refugee camp.

  ‘That’s not our house,’ she said. ‘Our house is at home. You know, in Sulaimaniya.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ said Hero vaguely, watching a man on a bicycle loaded high with boxes and bundles, trying to weave his way through the traffic.

  Tara was shocked.

  ‘Don’t you remember home?’ she said. ‘Our lovely house, and the beautiful kitchen, and the garden and everything? You used to play in the garden all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hero, not really listening. ‘That’s what I like. At our house you can go outside, and I can play with Nazim and Raz. We’re going to play with the mud again tomorrow. We’re going to make little houses.’

  Tara picked her up and put her on her knee. She couldn’t bear to think that Hero had forgotten home already. She hadn’t thought about it much before, but she could see now that Hero was having just as hard a time as everyone else. She’d always seemed so bouncy, so pushy in asking for everything she wanted, so full of confidence, and able to twist everyone round her little finger that it was easy to forget how much she was missing too. She’d been three when they’d left home, and now she was already four.

  I was at kindergarten when I was her age, thought Tara. And I had my own nice bed, and lots of toys, and a proper house to live in, and I used to go to parties.

  She gave Hero a little squeeze.

  ‘Next time we get a permit I’ll take you shopping with me,’ she said, ‘and we’ll get you something really nice.’

  Hero sat up and looked at her excitedly.

  ‘I want a dress,’ she said. ‘I don’t want a green blouse. I want a pink dress and it’s got to have little sleeves and lots and lots of little flowers all over it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tara. ‘There’s got to be a dress like that somewhere in Teheran.’

  ‘And I don’t want brown shoes like the ones Baba got me yesterday,’ said Hero. ‘I want shiny black ones, and I want big bows on them and sparkly bits on the toes.’

  She was still describing the socks, ribbons, jumpers and nightdresses she wanted when the
car stopped outside the refugee camp, and they all had to get out and report to the sentry at the gate.

  23

  Winter, 1984

  A few weeks later the snow, which had come months earlier in the mountains, arrived in Teheran. The first fall surprised everyone. Tara opened the creaking rough door of their little room and looked out on to a cold white world.

  ‘There, you see,’ said Teriska Khan. ‘Noor was quite right to make us get proper winter shoes and sweaters. You’d better put on those gloves Almaz gave you when you go and get the water. I can’t imagine why you made such a fuss about accepting them. It was very kind of her to think of it. And sensible too.’

  Tara didn’t say anything. Daya was right of course. Almaz and Auntie Noor had been kind. Too kind. Every time any of the family came back from a visit to the flat, their bags were stuffed with handed-on clothes, jars of cosmetics and all kinds of little luxuries.

  She pulled on the long regulation dress over her bulky woollen sweater and tied the scarf over her head. Then she draped the new chador with the embroidered edging (a cast-off of Auntie Noor’s) over it all, opened the door, picked up the clanking enamel bucket by its freezing handle and started plodding through the snow to the standpipe.

  At least we won’t be here for long, she thought, but it wasn’t much of a comfort. The alternatives seemed so scary. She couldn’t bear to think about that camp in the south that Auntie Noor was always talking about. Daya wouldn’t have a chance in a place like that if she got ill again.

  She filled up her bucket and started back, her fingers numb with cold. She should have worn Almaz’s gloves after all. What was the sense of being so proud when you hadn’t got anything left to be proud about?

  At least breakfast was something to look forward to now that they could go out and buy things in the shops. Tara still hadn’t started to take for granted the luxury of honey with her bread and sugar in her tea. She was on her third glass when Kak Soran stood up, and began to put on his outdoor clothes.

  ‘I must get going,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to be in Teheran when the offices are opening. There’s still a lot of paperwork to see to and you have to wait for hours everywhere.’