A little girl in a pink frilly dress and shiny white shoes was running after him. Syed Ali jumped out of the car and swung her up into his arms.
‘Yes! It’s in the case. On the back seat. Bring it inside.’
The boy wrenched open the car door and saw Rashid. He took a step back. His father laughed at his surprise.
‘That’s Yasser, the jockey. Take him to the kitchen, Abdullah. Tell them to give him something to eat.’
Shyly, Rashid stepped down from the car. The two boys stared at each other for a moment, then Abdullah reached past Rashid and reverently picked up the sword case.
‘Here, give it to me,’ said Syed Ali, putting his daughter down. ‘You might drop it.’
He went into the house with the children running after him. It was getting dark now, and from the open door light streamed out into the garden. It disappeared as the door swung shut.
Rashid didn’t know what to do. He looked towards the driver, who had lifted the car’s bonnet and was poking about inside the engine.
‘Go on in,’ the driver said. ‘They won’t eat you. Anyway, you can’t go wrong today.’
Rashid walked slowly up the steps, his face hot with embarrassment. He put his hand out to pull the door handle, but as he did so someone pushed the door open, nearly knocking him over.
‘What are you hanging about out there for?’ demanded Abdullah, turning round and going back in. His heart in his mouth, Rashid followed him.
It was cool, almost cold, inside the house. A vast expanse of shiny white marble floor lay ahead. Rashid followed Abdullah down a short corridor, which opened out into a huge spacious room. To the left was a long white table with eight white chairs drawn up to it. To the right were cream coloured sofas and armchairs. Lamps on little tables cast circles of warm yellow light. In the middle of the room, a fountain played, the water splashing down on to coloured pebbles in a pool.
Paralysed with shyness, Rashid stood motionless, not knowing where to look or what to do.
A woman came out of a door at the far end of the room. Her carefully plucked eyebrows rose in surprise at the sight of Rashid.
‘Who’s this?’ she said.
‘It’s Aba’s jockey, Mama,’ Abdullah said. ‘Have you seen the golden sword? It’s brilliant!’
The woman looked briefly at Rashid.
‘He should be in the kitchen. He looks half starved.’
The little girl, who had been kneeling up to one of the sofas, playing with a doll, suddenly wailed in frustration.
‘Sweetie, what is it?’ the woman said, and the little girl held up the tiny spangled dress that she had been unsuccessfully trying to force over the doll’s head.
‘You’re not hungry are you, Yasser?’ Abdullah said carelessly. ‘I’m not. I’ve had my supper. Let’s go and play.’
The kitchen door swung open and through it came a smell so delicious that Rashid almost thought he would faint. A man appeared, an apron stretched over his comfortable stomach. He beckoned to Rashid.
‘I not - eat - today,’ Rashid found the courage to say to Abdullah, leaving him to follow the irresistable summons of the cook.
The meal that was set in front of him on the kitchen table was the most sumptuous he had ever eaten. There were lamb meatballs in a rich tomato sauce, rice glistening with butter and studded with pine kernels, stuffed vine leaves, a stew of aubergines and beans and flaps of bread still warm from the oven. The cook laid a plate out with a spoon and fork.
‘Are you from Pakistan?’ He spoke in Punjabi, with the accent of home.
‘Yes!’ Rashid nodded, relieved. He had found an ally, then, in this strange place.
‘Proper little champion, aren’t you?’ The man was spooning out the rice. ‘The driver was telling me. Rode like a demon, he said.’
Rashid sat down and picked up the spoon. He scooped up a meatball and put it in his mouth, but he wasn’t used to eating with cutlery and the sauce dribbled down his chin. The cook was watching.
‘You don’t have to use the spoon. Eat with your fingers.’
Rashid ate as fast as he could, cramming the food into his mouth as if he was afraid that it would be snatched away.
‘Here, go easy. You’re not in a race now. Make yourself sick, you will, if you gobble it all down like that.’
Rashid sat back at last, his eyes glazed with satisfaction. The cook handed him a glass of Pepsi. He drank deeply, gulping the unfamiliar sweet, bubbly liquid down and handed back the empty glass.
Then his smile wavered. He felt horribly ill. His stomach heaved as the gaseous drink met the unaccustomed richness of the food. Beads of sweat sprouted from his forehead and he gripped the edge of the table. Then, just when he was afraid that he was going to throw up the whole delicious meal, the wind burst up from his stomach and out of his mouth in a violent resounding belch.
Abdullah came to the kitchen door just in time to hear it.
‘Does your mother let you do that?’ he said, with a mixture of envy and contempt. ‘Mine’s furious when I do.’
Rashid, feeling much better, slid off his chair.
‘Come on,’ said Abdullah.
He went across to a door at the far end of the room behind the fountain. Rashid, following him, stood on the threshold, gazing in wonder. There was a bed in one corner, and a child-sized desk in another, with a little chair drawn up to it. On the desk was something that looked like a TV screen. A young woman with a dark African face was folding clothes and putting them away in the big cupboard that ran along the whole of one side of the room.
‘Go away, Meseret,’ said Abdullah. ‘We’re going to play.’
The woman went out silently.
‘She from Sudan?’ asked Rashid, thinking of Salman.
‘Who? Her? I don’t know. Ethiopia, I think. Do you know computer games?’
Rashid, not understanding, said nothing. Abdullah sat down at the desk and began to move a lever sticking up out of a pad. Pictures and writing appeared on the screen. Fascinated, Rashid stood behind him, watching. There seemed to be a fight going on. Monsters with green faces were running about. Now there was a boy with a gun. Red streaks of light were shooting out of the gun. They exploded when they hit a monster.
‘Pah! Gotcha! Ye-es!’ Abdullah was calling out, his whole body moving with the lever.
Absorbed in the game, he had forgotten Rashid, who stood watching for a while, then lost interest. He stepped back, and looked around the room.
There were camels everywhere. Cartoony pictures of camels with big eyes and silly smiles hung on the wall. A stuffed camel lay on the neatly made bed on top of a pile of other fluffy animals and teddy bears. A string of wooden model camels, linked by a brass chain, marched along the window sill.
Then Rashid saw that Meseret, the maid, had left one of the cupboard doors half open. There were shelves inside, spilling over with toys. Holding his breath, he tiptoed across the room, eased the door fully open and stood gazing at the marvels within.
There was a toy helicopter taking up one whole shelf, with a pilot in its cockpit. On the shelf below were some plastic guns, a couple of tanks and a box full of soldiers. Below them were roller skates, balls of different sizes and a round globe, mostly coloured blue, but with odd shapes in other colours patterning it.
But straight ahead, on a level with Rashid’s eyes, was a jumble of toy vehicles, too many for the space, crammed in on top of each other. He could see buses, trucks, an ambulance, a police car, SUVs like Syed Ali’s, hatchbacks, limos, sports cars, saloon cars, white cars, black cars, green, blue and yellow cars. And a red car.
Rashid looked over his shoulder.
‘Ee!’ Abdullah was saying. ‘Pow!’
Rashid dared to put out a finger and touch the red car. It was a little saloon with four doors and grey seats inside. The painted metal was silky smooth. He leaned in to look more closely. The car had proper rubber tyres, like real ones, and the inside was perfectly modelled, with even a miniature stee
ring wheel. Very slowly, holding his breath, he let his hand close round it, then eased it out of the cupboard. He held it, exploring it reverently, touching every part. When one of the little doors swung open under his probing fingers, he gasped with delight.
He wanted to try out the wheels and squatted down on the floor, put the car down gingerly and pushed it across the shiny marble. It ran with perfect, satisfying ease.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
There was a final burst of noise from the computer screen and a scraping sound as Abdullah pushed his chair back.
‘What are you doing? That old thing? That’s nothing. I’ll show you.’
He began to pull the cars off the cupboard shelf. They rained down to the floor around Rashid.
‘Where is it? Meseret never puts things away properly. Oh, it’s here.’
He brought out a car that was four times the size of the red one. It was black and had yellow numbers painted on the doors. A long stick-like thing poked up from the roof. Abdullah put it down on the floor and scrabbled again in the cupboard, emerging at last with a small square plastic block.
‘Watch this.’
Under Rashid’s astonished eyes, the car began to move by itself, careering across the floor. It hit a leg of the bed and bounced backwards, landing on its roof.
‘Turn it over,’ ordered Abdullah, pressing the buttons on the block.
Rashid put the little red car down carefully on the rug beside the bed, then set the black car on its wheels again. At once, it took off. He began to chase it, running back and forth across the room while Abdullah made it hurtle away from him in all directions, shouting with laughter. Rashid began squealing with excitement too. The car seemed to be alive. However hard he tried, Abdullah always managed to get it away.
At last it came to rest, wedged between a plastic stool and the wall. Rashid dived for it, slipped, fell on to his stomach and slid the last few metres across the shiny floor.
‘I can do that,’ said Abdullah, throwing the console aside. He lay down on his stomach and propelled himself across he floor, flailing his arms like seal flippers. He stopped when he reached Rashid and clambered to his feet, red in the face from the effort.
‘Watch this,’ he panted. ‘I can get all the way to the door in one go.’
He took a few running steps then pushed himself into a slide. His feet, clad in socks, moved effortlessly over the polished marble. Impressed, Rashid tried to copy him, but his feet were bare and they stuck to the floor.
Abdullah slid over to the cupboard, pulled open a drawer and grabbed a pair of socks.
‘Put these on. I want to race.’
Rashid felt shy again. Abdullah’s socks looked new. They were made of thick, expensive cotton and were perfectly white. Someone might be angry if he put them on. The Ethiopian maid might see, or Abdullah’s mother, or Syed Ali himself. They might think he’d done something wrong.
‘Hurry up!’ Abdullah said crossly. ‘Put them on!’
Rashid sat down and put the socks on. He’d never worn socks before. They felt comfortable but odd, enclosing his thin hard-soled, calloused little feet in a strange softness.
Abdullah yanked him to his feet.
‘Beat you to the window.’
Rashid, who had raced four camels that day, and had no desire to race again, cast a longing look at the scatter of cars on the floor.
‘Come on!’ Abdullah was shouting. He was sliding off already.
Rashid bit his lip and copied him reluctantly, taking a couple of running steps, then letting himself go in a slide. Surprised by the ease and speed of it, he nearly lost his balance, but regained it with a wild thrashing of his arms and ended up at the window just behind Abdullah.
‘To the wall!’ shouted Abdullah.
This time they started off together, and Rashid, lighter and infinitely more agile than the heavy, unfit Abdullah, reached the cupboard first. Abdullah scowled at him.
‘You cheated. To the door!’
Rashid saw the scowl.
I didn’t cheat. You’re just lazy, he thought.
But sliding was fun. He wanted to do it again. Laughing out loud, he shot from one side of the room to the other, beating Abdullah every time.
‘To the bed!’ shrieked Abdullah at last. Desperate to win, he set off before Rashid had a chance to start. The mat by the bed caught his foot and made him stumble. He fell with a thud, and yelped with pain.
‘I landed on something. It dug right into me. It hurt.’ He reached underneath his thigh and brought out the little red car. ‘It’s your fault. What did you leave it there for?’
Pettishly, he threw it across the room. It hit the wall and crashed to the ground. Rashid ran anxiously to pick it up. The doors had flown open. He shut them carefully and then saw that a crack now ran across the tiny windscreen.
‘Broke,’ he said.
He turned away, afraid that Abdullah would see in his face the fury he felt for the spoiling of the little car.
Abdullah had recovered from his fall. He lumbered to his feet. The door opened and Syed Ali looked in.
‘Abdullah, come and say goodnight to your mother. Meseret’s coming to put you to bed. Yasser, go to the kitchen.’
The little girl’s voice, whining with tiredness, echoed from some distant room. Abdullah followed his father out of the room leaving Rashid alone. He put the car down while he peeled off Abdullah’s socks and placed them carefully on the bed, then he picked the car up again.
His heart thumped.
‘You’re mine,’ he whispered to the car. ‘They promised me a car. You’re going to be mine.’
He slid it into his pocket.
In the kitchen, the cook was slumped in a chair by the table, yawning. He got to his feet and nodded to Rashid to follow him.
The servants’ quarters behind the house consisted of a row of small rooms running along the back wall of the property, beyond a strip of concrete and network of washing lines. They had no windows. The door of one was open and through it Rashid saw the driver, dressed now in a white vest and long cloth tied round his waist. He was sitting on his bed reading his Koran.
The cook pushed open the door of the next room and switched on the light, a shadeless bulb hanging from the ceiling. A bed took up most of the space in the tiny room. A few clothes hung from nails on the walls. The only other items were a battered kitchen chair and a suitcase pushed under the bed.
The cook had placed a pillow and a folded blanket on the mat beside the bed.
‘You sleep there, all right?’ he said, with a gigantic yawn, climbing on to the bed.
Rashid nodded. He too was overwhelmed by utter exhaustion. He lay down on the mat and pulled the blanket up over himself. His hand closed round the bulge that the car made in his pocket, and he shut his eyes and slept.
18
Rashid started awake as the loudspeaker on the minaret nearby crackled into life and the muezzin began to chant the dawn call to prayer. He sat bolt upright in a fit of panic. Where was he? Had he overslept? Had the others already gone out on the night exercise? If he’d slept in and stayed behind, Haji Faroukh would lose his temper and send Salman for the plastic hose.
Then he heard a cough and looked up to see the cook swing his legs over the edge of the bed. Rashid jumped up, scooping his blanket and pillow into a bundle, and moved back out of his way. The toy car shifted in his pocket and his heart leaped guiltily at the thought of what he had done.
The cook, who had been so friendly the night before, was sleepy and grumpy now.
‘Never enough time to sleep,’ he was muttering. ‘Keeping me up till all hours, then expecting breakfast on the table first thing.’
He stumbled off to the toilet.
The household slowly stirred to life. Rashid sat on the string bed outside the back door, swinging his legs, waiting to be told what to do, while the cook busied himself in the kitchen, the driver took a cloth to polish the car to a new brilliance and fr
om the grand rooms within came the wails of the little girl, loud complaints from Abdullah and the irritated voice of Syed Ali.
Rashid went to peep in through the kitchen door. The cook saw him and beckoned him inside, setting some bread, yoghurt and an egg down in front of him. Rashid could only nibble at this unusually lavish breakfast. His stomach was still protesting from the feast of the night before.
The door burst open as he sipped the hot tea the cook had given him, and Meseret came in, biting her lip and scowling.
‘What now?’ the cook said sympathetically.
‘That little monster. Moaned to Madam, didn’t he, that I hadn’t put his toys away properly. He’s got it in for me.’
The sound of an argument came from the other side of the kitchen door.
‘It’s not fair, Aba!’ came Abdullah’s raised voice. ‘Why can’t I go to school in our own car? I don’t like going with Ibrahim. He teases me all the time. And his driver’s lousy. He stinks.’
Syed Ali’s voice was too low for Rashid to hear. He caught sight of Meseret, who was pulling down the corners of her mouth, waggling her head and making a silly face.
‘It’s not fair!’ she said in a squeaky voice, imitating Abdullah. ‘I don’t like going to school with another spoilt, fat, rich little brat. I want to be a spoilt, fat, rich little brat all by myself.’
Rashid giggled. The cook, snorting with laughter, gave her the plastic beaker full of warmed milk that she’d come in for, and she went out, letting the door slam behind her.
‘She’s a one,’ the cook said. ‘Here, little champion, you’d better go out and wait by the car. Syed Ali will be off in a minute and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
Rashid slid off his chair and went out through the back door, running down the passageway at the side of the house to where the car stood on the driveway at the front, conscious at every step of the stolen toy banging against his thigh. The driver acknowledged him with a silent nod, then went back to his endless polishing.
Rashid leaned against the wall and waited. From the road outside the big double metal gates came the sound of a car drawing up, and then the beep of a horn. The watchman opened it a crack, spoke to someone outside and looked back to the house. The horn beeped again. Abdullah came reluctantly down the steps. His heavy schoolbag, dragging from his hand, bumped against his round thigh. He caught sight of Rashid and scowled.
Lost Riders Page 15
