This Is Where I Am (46 page)

My heart stops.

‘Rose! That woman. I think that was her. I think that was Azira!’

‘Who? Her? For the love of God, Debs, that lassie’s about twelve.’

‘No! The one doing the garden. When we were leaving the compound! The police compound. Oh, stop the truck. Hey!’ Banging on the sliding glass. ‘Hey, you, stop the truck! Go back.’

‘Debs! For Christ’s sake, get a grip! Omar, it’s all right, on you go.’

‘No, Rose, no.’ Shaking my frantic head. My hair is suffocating me. ‘I’m sure it was her . . . She looked right at me.’

‘Did she?’

‘Yes! No . . .’

‘And you’ve only just realised this now?’ Rose’s scar gleams as she leans to wipe the hair off my mouth. ‘C’mon, Debs. You’re tired, you’re upset. But you’ve got to let this go. You did your very best for her, but she’s gone. Azira is dead. You know that, don’t you?’

Just a window and a wall.

‘Debs? We really tried. But she was fished out a bloody river.
Deid
. It’s tragic, it’s awful. But you have to lay this to rest.’

As we speed by, the goat-girl scowls fiercely. She doesn’t even have hair, is shorn to baldness. No flicks. In fact, she is possibly a boy. I know that Rose is right. I know it, I know it, and it crushes me. Squashing my face against the hardness of the glass, I watch the world unfurl, blank and pink and spiked with green. As nondescript as concrete. Just longitude and latitude. On and on and on. My breath mists the window.

Far off to our left, another mirage begins to form. Shimmering, shifting. It’s the haze of burning kerosene. The false flatness of the airstrip.

‘But what will I tell Rebecca?’

‘Oh Christ, Debs, I don’t know.’

22.

Debs is sick. Ever since she got back from her holiday. All day, she’s in her house; she did not tell me she was back for a week. She is upset for Gamu, we all are, but I would have thought the injustice would galvanise her.
Wait till Debs gets back
, I tell Gamu.
She will sort it
. It was very difficult, this lady crying, and me awkwardly patting her back. The moisture from my hand staining like guilt. I hardly know Gamu, but I had been at Refugee Council for a seminar on voluntary work (this news I will share with Debs when she is better) when Gamu flooded into the office and deposited her news. One should not presume because we have a similar shade of skin and have both fled our homelands that we are kindred. To be truthful, I find Gamu a little coarse at times, all that chucking you under the chin and spooning endearments on you scares me. It is her cloak, I suppose, her crutch. It is that element of her personality she has worked to hone and project in her bid to be acceptable. That is one commonality all us refugees possess. Cast off without family or culture, we must decide what new person we are going to be.

Well. I am a father. I am a man who grieves his family, his wife. I am a man who has been given a new life, and opportunities to make it great. And I’m done with all these treatments. I rattle when I walk; the medicines are a gauze through which I blink at my world. Talking therapies are hollow. Being exposed to your greatest fear does not conquer it, it simply solidifies. You can weigh it now and carry it, pretend to lay it down. But you can never have the freedom of ‘imagining’ how you would react, the luxury of closing your mind to it because it is not real. A strange liberation in that.

Our Father. Reveal your glimpses for my world.

Oh, I wish Debs would talk to me. I thought we had built a friendship where you could fight and still be friends. I suspect the man she was meeting on holiday was unkind to her too. She doesn’t want to see people much – except Rebecca. Gaunt face lightening with my daughter in her arms. So I’m letting Rebecca stay there for a couple of days. She hates the nursery at college anyway. Complains they ‘baby’ her, that the crayons are rationed. When I told Debs I’d let Rebecca go to school after Christmas, she started crying. It was my best news. I had saved it up to make her happy.

I tell some of this to Sandrine – not about Deborah’s love life, of course, for that is none of my business. Sandrine and I sit next to one another in our English class, but are early. This has happened the last three times. So we go for coffee first, it is not a fixed arrangement.

‘Aren’t you worried about infection?’ she says. ‘If your friend is ill.’

‘I had not thought,’ I reply. Now, I am worried about infection. If Rebecca if she was there are jags she must get, many jags before school. If anything were to happen to my daughter, all the manufactured posturing of
ABDI REBORN!!
would be revealed as smoke and ash.

Sandrine fingers her scarf, watching me. Scarves are her crutch, I think. Every day a different colour. Today her neck is wound with bright yellow and green leaves.

‘I’m sure it will be fine. It is more of a malaise Debs has, yes?’

Sandrine is from the Ivory Coast, I worry I have used this French word incorrectly, but she nods. Sagely. ‘And your little girl – she loves this woman too?’

‘Too?’

‘I’m sorry. What I mean is, she is happy to be with her?’

‘Yes. Very happy. Rebecca loves her, very much.’

I think of the force with which Rebecca propelled herself at Debs, the expectant charge that wired her little body as we neared the house. Quivering like a tethered foal waiting to bolt. My cheeks feel hot at the confusion of before. I must resolve it; this is part of my reinvention.

‘When you said “too”, did you mean that I also must love Debs?’

‘Oh, no. I’m sorry.’ Sandrine dips her head. ‘It is my mistake. You talk of her with such pride and affection.’

‘Sandrine, she is my friend. Only my friend.’ The side of my hand glides upwards, connects briefly to her chin so I might hold her gaze directly. Hot coffee flavouring my tongue. I am amazed at my bravery, and at the little – no, the wee – blaze of light glowing off her skin.

‘Come,’ she says. ‘We will be late for class. And today it is Shakespeare. Again.’

‘My joy is unconfined!’

‘Is that not Twain?’

‘Yes.’ A little sigh escapes. I must try harder to give big smiles.

Our lecturer is a horrible woman. This is not a random malice I feel, I have come to the conclusion after several observations. She is big-jawed and square. Sniffs, continually. Rolls her phlegm with a rasping sound and deposits it in her gullet. Not nice. She drones in a monotone, enlivened by the occasional spike of sarcasm or vitriol. We are a class of mixed abilities, and it’s clear she has her favourites.
Quite right, Malcolm. Farida – do you have any idea what book we’re reading?
This, I believe, is a cardinal sin for a teacher. Am I jealous of her? Yes. When she stands before our class and talks her incoherent nonsense, yes. It pains me that this woman has the job of shaping minds, and clearly despises it.

‘OK, class. Turn to page forty-three. Now we’re not gonny have time to finish this before Christmas, so what I’m gonny do is bring in a DVD. It’ll give you the gist of –’

My hand is up.

‘Yes?’

‘Could we not simply read more quickly in the classroom? It seems we have been on this scene for several lectures.’

Her hands fold themselves into hooves, and she leans on her knuckles, on her desk. Rarely does this woman come out from behind her desk.

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. Also, I wondered if we might study some other literature after Christmas. It says on the prospectus that we will cover a range of writers and styles.’

‘I’m sorry if we’re boring you, Mr Hussein.’

‘Hassan.’

‘Potato, po-tah-to.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘So tell me. What other writers would you recommend for our curriculum? Bearing in mind that we’re studying Eng-lish lit-er-ature, and that Shakespeare is the finest exemplar of English literature in the known world. Or would you disagree?’

Her tone is less slovenly when she is engaged. I have noticed this before. It is a warning sign, like when a snake retracts the bluntness of his snout. He appears to retreat, when in reality he is building his momentum.

‘I wondered if we might read some Scottish writers, bearing in mind that these are the Scottish Highers we are studying for?’

‘But we’re doing Eng-lish literature.’ A dramatic tossing of her head. Clearly, for the benefit of this tableau, I am cast as the imbecile. Ah, but maybe I am a mongoose to your snake, Ms Irvine. (That is Kipling, but I paraphrase.) There is an animation to me that is not unpleasant. In fact, it is sparkling. Tension pulls at the strings of my neck and wrists. Muffled in her scarf, Sandrine conceals – a cough? Mirth?

‘Yes,’ I continue. Shoulders broadening, expanding wider than the air around me. ‘But surely this denotes texts that are written in the English language, not those which are confined exclusively to being written by persons originating from the country of England?’

Her small, dead eyes shutter. I await the sly transmission of her forked tongue, which I will tie in copious knots.

‘Maybe we can discuss this later, Mr Hussein, otherwise we’ll never get past the scene you find so objectionable. Right, class. Page forty-three, please.’

Denied.
(This is not from Shakespeare, but a film which Dexy insisted I would enjoy.) The class embarks, once more, into
The Merchant of Venice
. I try to pay attention as Ms Irvine speaks of
misbelievers and cut-throat dogs
, but find I am thinking of this film. It was very funny, about a man who loves music and has a friend called Garth with whom he produces a most amateur television show. They play hockey, lust after beautiful girls, see a rock band, stab do-nuts. It zooms with puerile humour and catchphrases, many of which have lodged in my brain through Dexy’s copious repetitions. When I bring him some
anjara
with his tea, he bows and winks at Rebecca. ‘Cakes and aw? Man! We’re not worthy!’

I cannot think it was Dexy who would take my certificates. If he was truly in need, surely he would have helped himself to my books or my little television? What use would my memories be to him? More than that, it’s not his way. He is not duplicitous.
There’s nae side tae him
, said Mrs Coutts after she met Dexy on the stair.
Cheeky wee runt, mind
. (I believe he called her ‘doll’.) He is settling well, into his job. Mr Maloney gave him my white coat and a set of knives – which he makes him keep in the store. Once or twice a week, Dexy comes after work to say hello. Occasionally he brings some sell-by food, or sweeties for Rebecca. And he never asks to smoke. Soon, he will be moving from his hostel, to share a flat with two other apprentices. I want to tell Debs all of this good news. I don’t care that she promised to help get new certificates. It’s my fault for not keeping them safe. I convince myself I dropped them – at the Barras possibly when I was buying Deborah’s vase. Maybe, as I sit and contemplate Shylock, they are being sold as curios on that very stall, packaged up with musty books.

‘Ah. Now. There’s a phrase.’

There is a change in Ms Irvine’s inflection that causes me to pause. Look up. As if her pronouncement is directed at me and only me.

‘
Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart
. “Scum of the heart” – isn’t that wonderful? Now, what Shakespeare’s saying here is that wanting stuff we can’t have makes us jealous. It makes us do bad things, even when people have been good to us. Especially, actually, when folk have been good to us. Because we end up wanting to have everything they have. All the nasty stuff inside us is drawn up to the surface, and we get angry. Violent. Greedy.’

And it is now that her tongue appears. Pink and pale, it meets her lips. Traverses them and slides back inside.

‘Just think about it nowadays. All they asylum seekers, for instance. Our taxes paying for everything they need, all their travel, putting them up in nice flats, then before you know it they’re on the phone back home, going
Come on over. It’s free money here, free hospitals, free schools
. Then more of them come, and they start to get sneaky . . .’

All of the class is listening; they are more transfixed by this piece of social commentary than by any meditation she has delivered to date. But it is an uneasy rapture. Even the dimmest eyes flit from her to me. A collective breath is held. By my side, Sandrine shifts uncomfortably. Her hand is on her scarf, twisting it as she twists and turns her knees, her feet. In the movement of the yellow flowers, I see another twist, livid like barbed wire. Recognise it as a scar, one made by a chain.

‘Ms Irvine.’ I am on my feet. ‘Perhaps we should return to Shakespeare? I understand your knowledge of the world is limited, but perhaps your knowledge of the Bard is limited also? Let me enlighten you with some of his other quotes:
In time we hate that which we often fear. Antony and Cleopatra
.’

She makes a snorting noise. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed? It may have escaped your notice but we’re no studying
Antony and Cleopatra
, Mr Hussein.’ Folds her arms. ‘As I was saying –’