This Is Where I Am (6 page)

I blink. See Abdi raise his hand before the painting. His arm drifts closer, I think his open palm is going to skim the surface, but it doesn’t.

‘Hoi!’ shouts a man’s voice. ‘You canny touch the pictures.’ The curator scurries over, blazer flapping with importance. ‘Ho! You! Step away fae the wall.’

Gallery-gazers turn to stare. Abdi freezes.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘This gentleman’s with me. He didn’t –’

‘Will you tell him no to touch?’ repeats the man.

‘I did not touch your painting.’ Abdi will not make eye contact with the curator. It makes him look like he’s lying, but I know he’s not. I was right beside him; it was more like he was stroking the air in front of it.

‘Any mair of your nonsense and I’ll have to ask you to leave.’ The curator waggles his walkie-talkie at Abdi. He turns to me. ‘Keep him under control, eh?’

‘He’s not a dog.’ I jouk my face close to his red-rimmed nose. ‘And anyway, what d’you expect when you’ve got signs everywhere telling folk to “feel your paint”. I mean to say –’

‘
That
is confined to one specific area of the interpretation centre. And if folk canny tell the difference –’

Abdi moves between us. ‘Please. I am sorry I touch your painting.’

‘Right.’ The curator steps back a pace. ‘Right. Well, just see that it disny happen again, OK?’

‘Yes. OK.’

I wait until the curator’s out of earshot, until the gawkers have returned to their perusal of art as opposed to drama. ‘Why did you say that? You didn’t touch the painting.’

‘I know.’ Abdi eases his thumb behind the padded strap of his rucksack, transfers it from one shoulder to the other. Gives me a half-smile. His eyes glisten. ‘May we carry on, please?’

‘You want to go?’

‘I want to see other paintings.’

We walk on through the museum in silence, broken by me going, ‘That one’s nice,’ and him going, ‘Mm.’ Under my skin, my heart is going haywire. Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed out. Abdi won’t look the road I’m on – he can’t be
that
transfixed with the Sioux Ghost Dance Shirt. I blether on about it for a while, telling him about its origins and its repatriation, then we leave that room and move to the next. I’m suddenly conscious this must all seem greedy. Piles of stolen property – that’s what a lot of this is. I watch him gaze at all the faded glories. The Refugee Council folk tell you that you haven’t to pry, you mustn’t ask ‘leading questions’. Well, what is a leading question?
What’s been stolen from you? What do you do with your days? What brought you here; to me, to Glasgow?

‘Oh, wait. You’ll love this one.’ But he is already gone.

He’s walking down the vaulted corridor, galleries opening on either side, and he is ignoring them. As you should. As you are drawn, intractably, along this narrow passage, by a thread of light that calls your name. I see it dawn on his face, the lines of cloud and sky and sea and cruciform arms, the billowing up and out and down of this sublime painting. Although it’s iconic, although you see its image on mugs and brollies, postcards and bags, it does not purport to be more than it is.

Quite simply, it is a vision.

I let him stand awhile. I’d forgotten how beautiful this picture was. Even the trace of the tear, a jagged half-square carved by a nutter’s knife, is beautiful. It speaks of visceral response. It’s like the painting kisses you, every time.

‘It’s called
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
.’ I don’t know why I’m whispering. ‘By a painter called Dali. Have you heard of him?’

Abdi shakes his head.

‘Do you like it?’

‘I do.’

His head rises a little on his neck. I hadn’t noticed it was bowed. Most people look up at the Dali, not down.

‘Do people pray here?’ he asks me.

‘Eh – no. I don’t think so.’

‘They should.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ I agree. But I don’t. Not really. I don’t want to argue with him, though; in fact, I’m glad if he still has the comfort of prayer. To me, it just got easier to stop asking.

‘Coffee?’ I chirp. The word tastes bright and harsh.

We go back downstairs to the basement café, another new development, honey-scraped from the dust. Previously this was stores. They’ve gouged out windows through the sandstone, broad curving windows that seem to have always been here. There’s a shop full of trinkets and postcards, beaded bags and Egyptian jewellery. Actually, it’s very pleasant. I buy two buns. Iced ones.

‘Is this place very old?’ asks Abdi, as I place the plastic tray on our table. His rucksack is locked between his knees.

‘Quite old. About a hundred, hundred and twenty years?’

‘Mm.’ He sips his coffee. Makes a face.

‘Is it not very nice?’

I think for a moment he’s going to ignore me. His lips and brow indent, as if he’s doing a wee calculation.

‘Do you mean
is
nice or is not?’

‘No, that’s what I was asking you.’

‘Yes, but is hard to . . . it is . . . not easy. This is how you say it? With the knot always?’

‘Do we? With a knot?’

Maybe he’s not used to sugar.

‘Yes, you do. You say “is not far” when you mean is close. You say “not bad” when you mean a thing is good.’

‘No we don’t.’

I see I’ve flummoxed him further with this double-negative. I shake my head.

‘Sorry. Doesn’t matter. Is your coffee good?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. OK. Would you like some of my tea?’

‘No. Thank you.’

Oh, this is awful. I have to say something.

‘Simon tells me you have a wee girl?’

Immediately, he brightens. That smile again; every so often, a kindling radiance.

‘Yes. Rebecca.’

‘That’s a lovely name. What age is she?’

‘She is four.’

‘Nice age.’

‘Do you have children?’

Yes no I did I was a mum and now I’m not, if I deny my baby then he didn’t exist but then he doesn’t exist and I imagine each possibility with which I can respond passing like colours through my skin.

‘No,’ is the answer I plump for in the end.

‘Ah.’

Abdi holds my gaze that pretends to be inscrutable, but is really belligerent. Do
not
feel sorry for me.

‘You are alone then?’

Christ
. Tea, scalding the delicate puffiness of my mouth. The bluntness of his question stinging more.
And
he made me swear again. This is going terribly badly. I think I want to leave. I make myself swallow the bitter-hot tea. ‘I – my husband is dead, yes.’

He says nothing. Nods.

‘Yup. Dead and buried at forty-nine. Isn’t life a blast?’

The nodding stops.

‘Your wife?’ I figure this will be all right, since he started it. Abdi picks up his coffee cup once more, but doesn’t drink.

‘Apart from Rebecca, I am alone.’

For a while, neither of us speak. We each shift our buns around their plates, mine with a neat nibble either side, his untouched. It’s very hot in here, and clattery. Echoes of metal through the kitchen hatch, the smack of trays on trolleys. And yet they’ve hung fine art on the bare brick walls.

It
is
very pleasant.

‘Your English is good,’ I say, eventually.

‘I try. Is much better – I have been here almost one year. And I have no choice. No one here speaks Somali.’ Was that his tongue, peeking from between his teeth? I think it was another hint of humour, I do, and I seize on it.

‘Aye, but we don’t speak English here either. We speak Glaswegian.’

A polite cough, then more crinkling round his eyes. ‘You do not speak. You –’ he makes a squawking noise, miming wings with his elbows.

‘True,’ I laugh. ‘We screech. So’ – and I don’t even take a breath in – ‘why did you come to Glasgow?’

It’s not meant as a challenge, it absolutely isn’t, but his smile wipes clean.

This is a minefield. Should I apologise, if I apologise will that make it worse? ‘If you don’t want to talk about it . . . I don’t mean . . . I don’t mean what happened, I mean – why choose Glasgow?’

At last, he bites his bun. Speaks with crumbly enunciation. ‘I was sent here.’

‘Yes, but why specifically here? What made you go for Glasgow?’

He swallows. ‘No.’

‘So, how – sorry. I don’t understand. Why Glasgow? Out of all the places you could have ended up? Why did you choose Scotland?’

‘Before I come here, I do not know there was place called Glasgow. I knew place called Yookie.’

‘Yookie?’

‘Yoo – kay.’ He says it patiently, like he is my translator. ‘But not Scotland. Not Glasgow. I do not know Glasgow until they put me on bus and brought me here.’

‘I see.’

But I don’t, and I think he understands this, because he carries on.

‘I was in camp in Kenya for many years, then they sent me to Sudan. Then Sudan sent me back to Kenya and Kenya sent me to Yookie.’ Another bite. ‘And Yookie sent me here.’

‘So you’d no idea you were coming to Glasgow? Do they not . . . give you
any
choice?’

I thought it would be like council houses or something; you know, you get to ask for a two-up two-down with a garden, and they go:
oh, not sure about that, but we can give you a nice four-in-a-block with a back court. Would you like to see it? And you go, oh well, OK then
– and you have a wee look, but you know you get at least two or three bites at the cherry before you have to decide.

‘We are told we have to get our things and go on bus. It is long enough away to sleep?’

I nod.

‘And then, we wake up here. The man says to me it is Glasgow. I say I do not know Glasgow. He tells me: “You do not want to, mate,” and then he takes us to where we live.’

‘And they didn’t say why you’d ended up here?’

‘No.’

I try to think how I would feel, dumped on the rim of a city in a country I’d never heard of.

‘But they must’ve shown you round, eh? I mean like an orientation? They can’t just drop you in the middle of somewhere you’ve never heard of and bugger off . . .’

He carries on eating his bun.

‘Did they tell you where shops are and schools, and how you can get places and what you’re meant to do?’

As I’m saying it, I’m thinking of a conversation I had once, with Sally, a fellow teacher. We often sat together in the staffroom, exchanging moans about Garry Black in third year, or catching up on the three-way shenanigans between the Drama staff (so
dramatic
, they were). Chatting in that cloistered confidential way that makes you imagine you are friends. I remember her getting quite exasperated with me.

But surely they give you, I don’t know – a caseworker or something? And you’ll get nurses, like those Macmillan ones for cancer. There must be grants too. They won’t just leave you to flounder, Debs. Don’t be silly. Your consultant will know who to speak to. There must be research and support groups and–

And a refusal to accept that, actually, you’re on your own.

Yes. There must be that, at least in the initial stages. That’s what keeps you going, the assumption that it
will
get better, it has to. I shut up, pour a little more tea. ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me, Abdi? About Glasgow, or . . . how I can help you. Can I help you?’

Pathetic. I am not good at . . . people.
Can I help you, sir? More tea, vicar? How about a mealy-mouthed mentor bandaging whatever gaping wound it is you carry?

‘Yes.’ He fishes a letter from his pocket. ‘Can you read this, please?’

Punctual and practical. A model pupil. I take the letter. It’s from Social Work and Education.

Dear Mr Hassan

Thank you for your letter dated 17 September.

Well, we’re only at the start of the next year. That’s not too bad.

Please note that registration of Primary 1 pupils due to start school in August of this year will take place in the first week of February, and will be carried out by the Deputy Head Teacher of the relevant school. However, as discussed, and following the letter we received from your GP, no decision will be made on your daughter’s placement until you have first made arrangements to meet with the educational psychologist as first intimated to you in August of last year. Please note that any further delay in arranging such an appointment may result in a delay to this process, particularly as a further referral to our Pre-School Assessment Centre may be required. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

How many times could you recycle the same few words in the one paragraph? Abdi watches me, his bun forgotten. A scattering of crumbs rest on his chin, caught in whorls of curling stubble.