by Anna Legat
He has found nice Western clothes in the wardrobe upstairs. They belonged to the farmer and he won’t have any need for them any longer. The farmer wasn’t big and neither is Haji. He is made of wire and bone. And, of course, sand. The clothes are well-fitting. He will take a spare set on his forward journey. He will blend with the background, looking just like all the other men in Italy. They are olive-skinned and dark-eyed, just like him.
Downstairs, in one of the rooms, a TV set is playing softly. Haji has been subconsciously aware of the hum of the television all along. Now, he sits on a settee facing the TV set, puts his weary feet up and looks at the screen. At first, his eyes are vacant, then he scowls and leans forward to see better. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be and he has to squint, but he is sure: he is looking at Boy! He would recognise those large, hungry eyes anywhere, any time! Boy is being tended to in a hospital bed while a journalist is talking to him with the help of a black interpreter. It’s in Italian and Haji doesn’t know what is being said, but he is so glad to see Boy alive and well. Even though the child is crying. Children often cry.
It has been a long and precarious journey north. Traversing Italy by train and in the back of many unsuspecting lorries, Haji has seen many wonders along the way, but the city of Venice is the greatest curiosity yet. It’s built on water. Such an abundance of water! Haji is fascinated. Every few metres he crosses another arching bridge and looks down on another canal, full of green water lapping against mossy banks. Seagulls rest on mooring poles. Tenements spring out of water, it seems, and some people have to travel in boats to get to their front doors. What a curiosity!
With the money he found at the farmhouse, Haji bought a writing pad and a pencil. It has been decades since he held a pencil in his hand. At first it feels awkward and his fingers are too stiff to get a decent grip, but soon it all comes back to him. With his rucksack by his side, he sits on some steps that are part submerged in water and sketches the piazza on the other side of the canal: the terrace of narrow townhouses with colourful shutters and the vibrant greenery spilling out of hanging baskets. White sheets are flapping on a washing line stretched between two first-floor balconies over a narrow alley. In his mind’s eye, or nose rather, Haji can smell the freshness of the wash day. If only he could convey that somehow in his sketch...
He always liked drawing and painting, not that he had any formal training in fine arts. He didn’t even know he was any good at it, not until he had travelled to Moscow to study. And it wasn’t fine arts, it was chemistry. Still, away from Kabul and the suffocating tribal mentality dictating that being a man he had to act like one, not like a feeble-minded woman, Haji discovered the finer things in life, like drawing and poetry, and the wonders of the exotic Orthodox architecture. In Moscow he found parks, museums, and places superfluous to man’s everyday needs, and yet, he soon discovered, indispensable. No one minded if from time to time he took himself out of lectures to walk the streets, marvelling and absorbing the magic of the city. He was free to spend hours sketching little street scenes and corners that captured his attention. Soon he introduced colour to his pencil sketches. Unlike sun-bleached Kabul, Moscow was buzzing with colours: strong, definite primary colours. Its beating heart was suitably red: Red Square. It was pulsating with life which was pumped into the arteries of wide roads that led away from it and into the greater body of the Russian capital. Through his drawings he grew into the fabric of the city and became its citizen, body and soul. He became a Muscovite.
Just like today, in Venice, Haji would wear Western clothes. He had long hair and sideburns. He fitted in and thought he couldn’t be any happier, until Svetlana breezed into his life and showed him the true meaning of happiness.
‘I like the colours,’ she said, ‘So vivid! I bet that’s what it looked like when it was built all those years ago.’ She was standing behind the bench upon which he was sitting, deep in work. He was using watercolours to add final touches to his rendition of the magnificent Pokrovsky Cathedral. He was gratified that someone noticed he had taken poetic licence with the colours of the domes and carved porches. And he was exulted to discover that that someone was Svetlana.
He stared at her for a while, lost for words. She wasn’t just any old girl – she was an apparition. Perhaps it was in the way the sunlight bounced off her gold-plated hair; perhaps it was the breeze that tugged at her summery dress and pressed it against her slender body, revealing her perfect shape. Perhaps it was the softness of her tiny hand when she offered it to him and said, ‘I’m Svetlana.’
She was so small he thought he could hold her on his palm, but it was she who took hold of him, and claimed him. She laughed, ‘Do you have a name?’
‘Haji. Haji,’ he stammered.
‘Are you an artist, Haji-Haji? I love beautiful things and your watercolour is beautiful.’
‘You can have it!’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly!’ She protested, but he could see it in her eyes that she wanted it. He whipped the painting from the easel and thrust it at her, a bit too hard.
‘Sorry.’
She didn’t acknowledge his apology – she was holding the watercolour with her small hands, her eyes feasting on it; Haji’s eyes feasting on her.
‘Can I draw your portrait?’ He dared to ask only because he was afraid he would never see this girl again, that, being an apparition, she would vanish like a puff of smoke and be gone; the memory of her would slowly fade away and one day he would wake up and be unable to recall her face. He was a stupid young man to have thought that. Svetlana was unforgettable. But he struck lucky – she agreed. That day, he sketched his first portrait of Svetlana as she was laughing, a little uncertain, a little nervous, her head thrown back slightly, her upper lip full and sinuous, and a streak of her blonde hair crossing her cheek.
Haji pulls out a waterproof pouch from under his shirt. It hangs on his neck and contains things most precious to him, things he could never replace. One of them is Svetlana’s portrait – the first one he drew of her. He holds it gently in his hand, not to damage it. It is very fragile – it’s nearly forty years old. He feasts his eyes on it all over again, like he did that first day they met.
They went for a walk in Izmailovsky Forest. It was bursting with new life and all those woodland sounds and colours, and with light seeping through the canopies of trees. Soon they were holding hands, and two years later they married and she came to live with him in Afghanistan. His Russian bride – his life in colour.
Haji replaces Svetlana’s portrait in the pouch and slides it under his shirt. He returns to his drawing. A middle-aged couple are standing behind him, casting their shadows over his sketch. In a strong American twang, the woman says, ‘Look here, Doug, awesome drawing! I wish I could draw like that!’
Haji turns to face them. He has to shade his eyes against the sun. Their features are indistinct, their bodies corpulent. He tears the page with the sketch out of the pad and hands it to the woman, ‘You can have it.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly!’ she exclaims, but takes the drawing. The man called Doug thanks Haji and wishes him a good day. Haji closes his eyes and lets the sun kiss his eyelids, like Svetlana used to.
IX
So now Ahmed knows what’s going on with Malik. He is training to be a train driver! Discipline has returned to his life. No more late nights languishing in front of the computer screen and scouring social media. No more moaning and groaning about the weather and the world’s seven plagues. No more beard. Yes, the long cultivated beard is gone from Malik’s face and once again he resembles your average human being. It is the face that brings Ahmed’s old friend back from the dead: youthful, soft, and round-eyed – a face you can trust when you’re lost and want directions in the street. That beard of his used to be a deterrent. It would put anyone off. It put Malik’s girlfriend off, though he would never admit that. He won’t talk about it either. He talks about other things. ‘The world needs train drivers, doesn’t it?’ Malik tells
Ahmed, laughing. ‘Look at all them striking on Southern Rail! Someone has to do the job. It may as well be me.’
‘If you say so.’ Ahmed tries to shrug it off. But he’s uncomfortable. Malik’s motives are unclear. Why is he doing this – this bizarre work experience project? He has now put his studies on hold and stopped attending lectures altogether. He says he’s taking a sabbatical, which would be OK. If it made sense. It’s not like Malik needs money to pay his way through college. His family are wealthy. So far they’ve been paying for everything. He didn’t even have to take any student loans. So why? ‘Did you tell your folks?’ Malik fixes him with a hard glare. ‘Why would I? It’s nobody’s business but mine.’
‘Shouldn’t they know you left uni?’
‘I didn’t leave, did I? I’m taking a break. Just stay out of it, yeah?’
‘They have the right to know.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Ahmed, you’re like a fucking broken record. Get a life! Just stay out of mine.’ He slams the door behind him.
Ahmed leaves a few minutes later, the usual time he does so every morning. He catches the 8:53 bus from just outside the building. As he climbs up the stairs from the flat to the street level, he finds that Pippa is waiting for him. She is standing at the top of the steps, pressing a white envelope to her chest. Her eyes are burning with excitement. Despite the chill she is wearing only her flimsy blouse, which may be enough in her well-heated flat but offers no resistance to the biting cold outside. Her legs are bare, though she has slippers on.
‘I’ve just missed Malik,’ she tells Ahmed. ‘I saw him from the window, shouted after him to wait, but he was gone. Must be late for school, I thought.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘You don’t go together, like you used to?’
‘No. Different places, different directions, I’m afraid. But how are you doing? You all right?’
‘Oh, we’re fine! We’re better than fine!’ she gushes. ‘We’re walking on air!’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear that.’
She is gazing at him, expectant and delighted, hoping he’ll ask more questions – the usual, neighbourly chit-chat. But Ahmed is already late for the bus. ‘I’ll see you later, Pippa. Send my regards to Harry, won’t you?’
‘Oh yes, of course. He’s upstairs. A bit of a cold. God knows how he got it. I call it man flu. He considers himself bed-ridden,’ she chuckles.
‘Malik wasn’t feeling too good last week. Maybe Harry has caught his bug.’
‘Ah!’
‘Well, I’d better be going.’
‘Yes, of course! I’ll see you later!’ She turns, her little smile friendly and warm. She has this knack of warming up his heart every time he sees her. Little old ladies have this effect on Ahmed.
‘Oh dear!’ She rushes back, ‘Oh dear, dear! What a fool I am! I forgot why I came here in the first place... The letter,’ she presents the white envelope she has been clutching close to her chest. ‘We wrote to Will, you see?’
‘Great!’ Ahmed is definitely late, his hope of catching the 8:53 now gone. He may as well stay and listen. He’ll walk and give the library a miss. It’s not the end of the world. The walk should do him some good.
‘It took us several attempts,’ Pippa shakes her head, bemused. ‘Would you imagine writing to your own son being such a mission impossible? Well, it was! It was a torture! We didn’t want to get a word wrong... It’s so important – our first contact! Dear me, I’m still shaking just to think about it.’
Ahmed doesn’t know what to say so he smiles and nods.
‘In the end, after much deliberation, we decided to invite him to come and visit us. An open-ended invitation, you see, not to put him under any pressure whatsoever. Harry thought we had to make it clear that we didn’t expect him to come – we just hoped... You see, I’d rather if Will knew how much, how much I really want to -’ her voice crumbles.
‘How much you want to see him?’ Ahmed finishes the sentence for her.
She nods. ‘Would you mind awfully sending this letter off for us? Harry being bedridden...’
‘Yeah, no problem.’ He takes the letter and glances at it. It bears an address in Australia, written in a beautiful hand.
‘We put a first-class stamp. He should get it soon,’ Pippa beams. ‘Thank you, Ahmed. Very kind of you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ He puts the letter in his backpack. Of course, now he will have to swerve by the Post Office to pay for the postage to Australia. The first class stamp won’t take the letter beyond Dover, but Pippa doesn’t need to know all that technical detail. ‘I’ll send it on my way to uni. Consider it done.’
The nearest Post Office he can think of is in the Co-op on a fairly new estate, just two streets away. It will be a diversion from his route, but that’s the least he can do for an old lady in a flimsy blouse and a pair of slippers, an old lady who is a good friend. It is the other friend of his that Ahmed fears he can do nothing for. He suspects there is something sinister brewing under the surface of Malik’s transformation. There is an ulterior motive behind that whole absurd idea of Malik becoming a bloody train driver, and that motive doesn’t bare scrutiny. What reason on this earth would Malik have to abandon his degree, a decent engineering degree, in the name of learning to drive a train? One thing springs to mind. Should Ahmed be calling the police?
He might be wrong. Malik is his friend. Malik is not the type.
They’ll have to talk first. Tonight.
The estate is bustling with life. Every parking space is taken, cars glued to the kerb and double-parked in the middle of the road. The morning school run. Mums are walking their children to the school gate, pushing prams, chatting, letting the children run free, cross the road and climb the playground apparatus on the school grounds. A couple of girls are hanging upside down on parallel bars, their skirts wrapped around their heads. A boy has climbed up to the top of the monkey bars and refuses to come down. A line of children has formed beneath; some are shouting at him to get down – it’s somebody else’s turn. Malik smiles at the memories of his school playground in Worcester. He was that boy on top of the climbing pole, claiming supremacy over the world.
‘What you staring at?’ A hostile male voice brings him back to earth. A big man, bald and scruffily dressed, has rounded upon Ahmed. He has a little girl with him, holding her small hand in his big paw. The girl is also gazing at Ahmed with a round-eyed and round-mouthed curiosity.
‘Nothing,’ Ahmed mumbles and starts walking away. He has obviously aroused some suspicion: a man without a child hanging around a school. People are paranoid these days.
‘Pervert!’ the man shouts after him.
A few pairs of eyes burn into Ahmed’s back.
‘What you doin’ here? Get out! Go back home! We voted you out!’ Every word is a lash. Ahmed picks up pace. He is running. He doesn’t want to run but his legs aren’t responding to his will. He is running away, like a beaten dog.
He seeks shelter in the Co-op. He slows down and starts catching his breath. His heart is pounding. He tries to calm down, look normal and act as if nothing is amiss. He feels like everybody’s eyes are on him, but when he dares to look he finds customers minding their business – the business of shopping, something one ordinarily does when in a shop. But to Ahmed it seems like they are only pretending not to notice him, not to know. Deep down they’re willing him out; they’re willing him to go back home. And they don’t mean Worcester. There is a conspiracy of hostile silence around him. They’re watching him.
He joins the queue for the Post Office counter. He is convinced that the woman in front of him has shifted slightly forward when he stood behind her. Has he stood too close to her? Has he invaded her space? Does she resent his physical closeness?
The woman reaches the front of the queue and heads to the next available teller. A light displaying number 2 flashes and Ahmed follows the arrow. He buys the extra postage for Pippa’s letter, pays cash, tells the teller he doesn�
��t need a receipt. He doesn’t even notice that the teller is a gorgeous young Asian woman, and that she is smiling at him. She likes him, but Ahmed doesn’t know that. He thanks her without looking up, and leaves.
He hasn’t gone to lectures today. Nor did he bother with the library. He has spent the day loitering aimlessly about town. It feels like he is hung-over. His temples are throbbing and he is thirsty as hell, but he can’t bring himself to do anything about it. He is just walking. A weak thought has crossed his mind that he should report this to the police, but he banishes that thought faster than it can take any tangible form. He wouldn’t be able to take the humiliation of making the complaint. And how would he explain being there in the first place, watching the kids play? He keeps walking.
The first touches of Christmas have sprung up in shop window displays. They are erecting stalls for the Christmas market. Buskers are performing on street corners, their clashing tunes sparring in mid-air, taking a stab here and there with a higher note, louder bass, faster beat. The streets are rippling with shoppers for the best part of the day; then it all starts dying out towards the evening when the shops close. Wandering the emptying streets feels less safe. Sometimes Ahmed is forced to meet somebody’s eye. It’s discomforting. The crowd moves from the shopping precinct and into the pubs. Young men chat outside pubs with young women dressed in pink fairy dresses and bunny ears. Hen and stag nights mingle. Cigarette smoke wraps itself around them. A homeless man with his best friend,, aa black Staffordshire terrier with a greying snout, , has made himself comfortable by the entrance to a posh French restaurant. A waiter from the restaurant is asking the man to move on but the man is having none of it. He tells the waiter to go and fuck himself.
