All the Tomorrows

by Nillu Nasser

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  Q. Does writing energize or exhaust you?

  A. Thinking about writing—when I am longing to get to my desk and life intervenes—exhausts me. It feels like inertia. There is something unpleasant about it. But writing itself, it energises me. Writing is breath. It is infinite possibility. It is a sanctuary away from the 24-hour news cycle. I write to untie the knots in my head. It is the ability to explore my thoughts without rushing and without worrying about their impact (that’s for the publication stage). It is a comfort and I’m very grateful to be able to do it.

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  Q. You are running the 100-yard dash with a new writer. What writing or publishing wisdom do you offer?

  A. I’m not a runner, so after the race is over, and I have peeled myself off the floor, I would tell the writer that writing is not a sprint but a marathon. Everyone runs their own race, but there are helpful things you can do along the way. Find your writer tribe: friends who are encouraging and understand the joys and frustrations. Start a blog. The blogging community is saturated but blogging isn’t always about being read. For me, it was central to toughening up my mindset. Blogging teaches you the discipline of writing regularly and forces you to be brave enough to publish your words. Find your gurus. There have been so many for me along the way: Julia Cameron, Susan Kaye Quinn, Chuck Wendig. Most importantly, finish your projects and seek feedback. As long as you are moving forward, a word, a skill, a rejection even, you are winning.

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  Q. What can we expect next from you?

  A. I’m signed with Evolved Publishing for three literary fiction novels. My pace for novels tends to be about one a year. My next novel, Hidden Colours, tells the story of a circus performer and a journalist, and is set in Berlin. It’s about fear and belonging, violence and fixed viewpoints. I’m at the point in the process when the web of connections is becoming clear. It’s exciting. I also try to submit two short stories a year to anthologies. Depending on my success rate, you can expect to read those too! To be the first to hear about my books, sign up for my newsletter.

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  In a city that thrills like a kaleidoscope, refugees struggle to rebuild the rubble of their lives.

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  CHAPTER 1

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  Nestled in the far-east corner of Treptower Park, past the abandoned funfair with its rusting dodgems and the Ferris wheel overcome by climbing ivy, stood a midnight blue and bronze tent. It didn’t look like much—particularly tonight, when the inky sky blotted out the stars—but each evening at the stroke of seven, the circus came stutteringly to life.

  From the moment the circus materialised, it transformed the landscape. Once in full flow, the emerald grasses vibrated with the rhythm of the house band. The winds carried peculiar scents far afield. Nostrils twitched when exotic odours replaced altogether familiar ones. Walking deep into the park, the waft of smoking sausages on summer barbecues or the tang of wet autumn earth disappeared, leaving only the scent of sawdust, sugared almonds and a fog of incense.

  This was a circus for all seasons. Whether birds chirped in the park, great gusts of wind rocked the boughs, snow crunched underfoot, or thunder pulsed across the Berlin skies, the big top beckoned like a mirage. If curious individuals followed their feet towards the tent, they found sticky trestle tables outside it, where adults clinked glasses and children slurped pink concoctions through winding straws.

  Here and there, between the patrons, clusters of performers lingered in full costume: young women in shimmering leotards with plumes of feathers attached to their rears; a clown with a magnificent bowtie that seemed to increase and decrease in size as you watched; stilt-walkers who roamed the lawn in between faded dinosaur figures and could be confused for great oaks. Neither the performers’ faces nor their accents stemmed from Europe. A strangeness pervaded this circus, an other-worldliness. The circus people gathered at the banks of the River Spree to play stones, a ritual to dispel their nerves. They disrupted the calm surface of the river with a flurry of ripples, and became animated at the sound of an eerie gong to summon them to their starting positions.

  Tonight, a sparse crowd filled the tent amidst a jumble of fairy-lights, sawdust and clattering seats. Close to half of the stands stood empty. The immigrant circus, as it was known locally, was no longer Berlin’s newest curiosity, but no matter. The spectacle didn’t dim. Three girls in long flowing skirts paced through the tent, holding jasmine-scented incense sticks aloft, their hair in swinging pony-tails. Parents shushed their excitable, popcorn-popping children. A group of women celebrated a hen night and attracted the attention of four boozy men sitting in the row behind.

  The microphone boomed as Emir the ringmaster, rotund and buoyant, his moustache thick like a bristle brush, entered the ring. He plumped out his ruffled shirt and tipped his tatty top hat. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, welcome to the circus. We’ll dazzle you, we’ll enchant you, we’ll make you rub your eyes in wonder. You’ll be transformed by what you see. It’s showtime!”

  The performance commenced with a display from gleaming horses which galloped into the ring unaccompanied. The audience gasped when the three girls in their midst set aside the incense sticks and climbed onto the rafters. They leapt and, for a moment, appeared to pause in flight before landing on the bare-backed steeds, racing around the ring until beast and beauty became a whirr of hooves and skirts. Wild applause whipped through the big top.

  There followed a giant man, more nimble than he looked, leading a troupe of goats in a merry dance, and the goats danced in pairs, courting each other, and seemed to waltz and tango, such was their magic. Next, a woman slid down aerial silks, bending her limbs at impossible angles with the gracefulness of a willow tree before cocooning herself and disappearing a breath later.

  So, the evening hurtled forward at break-neck speed, the circus-goers cheering and quietening by turns as the artists turned their tricks into spectacle.

  High above the unfolding acts, Yusuf shook with nerves, as he did every night.

  Emir reclaimed the microphone, his voice a foghorn of exuberance. “Next up, it’s the man—nay, the star—you’ve been waiting for! He can leap. He can somersault through the air. He can land like a cat. Our resident acrobat, Herr Yusuf Alam!”

  Not for the first time, Yusuf wondered whether the performers should change their names to be more palatable to this audience.

  Less strange.

  For Yusuf and the motley troupe who had become his family, the circus wasn’t merely a performance. The big top that flared above them might have been an inanimate object, but it symbolised the chance of a new life. After he’d fled Syria, he hadn’t thought he’d ever find another home, until the circus found him. The performers forged new ties because without each other, they had nobody. The circus had become a lifeboat, as if they were still making the treacherous journey across the globe away from disease, war and uncertainty. As if the twinkling lights of the tent amounted to the North Star.

  If only the city kept her arms open.

  He’d arrived in Berlin two years ago, an alien being adrift in a foreign landscape with its own stinking history of violence and hatred. Grief knotted with gratitude at the centre of his chest. Two years had passed since he’d seen his mother and filled his belly with her stewed curries that stained his fingers. Two years since war threw their lives off track and imposed its will on them as if they were nothing more than flies.

  “And here he comes!” said Emir the ringmaster, drunk on energy.

  Yusuf locked away the errant though
ts that flooded his mind and slipped into his acrobat’s skin. He smoothed down his costume and stepped out onto the beam, high above the spectators. The moment of jumping always overwhelmed him. Each time he jumped, his experience divided into two halves: the fear of falling and the joy of flying. Sometimes, when he leapt through the tent with his acrobat’s grace, the weightlessness of flight—for a nanosecond—removed the burden of his memories. Tonight, not even the thought of momentary release helped. He didn’t want to do this. He scanned the crowd. The faces of strangers blurred into a mist. His heart clamoured in his chest.

  Will I ever be safe?

  He wobbled. The roar of the wind at the top of the tent echoed in his ears as he regained his composure. He balanced, body taut. Better to pause and let the crowd imagine him falling for an instant. He blinked to shake the image from his own mind, his legs suddenly like jelly.

  Yusuf leapt, and when he did, the spectators held their breath—a suspended moment, like after the shells landed in Syria. He somersaulted through the air, spinning like a top, and a shower of stardust raced after him, microscopic particles twinkling in his wake. He gave himself to the freedom of the fall, although he quivered with fear and his people were dying, still. When he landed, dust swept into the air, reminding him of the dry earth at home, which sometimes became wet with rains or blood.

  The audience burst into applause.

  CHAPTER 2

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  A billowing cloud of sawdust floated to the ground. Yusuf stood in the glare of the spotlight and bowed low to the stands to acknowledge the crowd’s rapturous reception, though he didn’t care for the wild applause. He longed for a greater connection than this, to be rooted in this country and bonded to its people, to shed the skin of his own ragged history. Pearls of sweat pooled between his shoulder blades. He bowed once more, lycra slick against his skin, to those who had no idea how lucky they were with their white faces, here in the most powerful country in Europe.

  The house band swung into action in a rousing melody of Middle-East poetry meets Berlin hip-hop. Inside his body, cavernous parts echoed with the energy of the music, igniting a sense of urgency in him. Yusuf’s blood ran quicker with the beat and he darted to the edge of the arena. The tambourine, goblet drum and fiddle vied for attention with Najib’s beat-boxing, lips alive at the microphone, dead eyes above.

  He sent a silent message to Najib. Focus.

  Right now, it was showtime. This magical, fragile home of theirs couldn’t afford any complaints. The circus needed to excel. They needed all their concentration, all their tricks and spirit to outperform their competition and attract visitors.

  Emir the ringmaster clapped his hands, and the lights blacked out. The tent fizzed with anticipation. The lights flared and in came the twins, sequinned from head to toe, riding bareback on their horses, dove-tailing, leaping, turning slow, sensual flips, though their father would have turned in his grave. Zul the Clown bumbled into the ring, feigning flatulence to the hilarity of the children, his polka-dotted flat cap turning on his head of its own accord. Next, a lute rang out through the air, sweet and clear, as Amena, Aya and Aischa returned. Resplendent in the new costumes they had sewn, they performed a folk dance with spinning skirts, casting threads of gold into the air. Meanwhile, Esme—pretty in a ruched moonlight gown, her hair shrouded by a headscarf—offered warm chunks of manoushi bread and baklawa to the audience.

  Onwards continued the show, like clockwork.

  The girls danced not five feet away from him, round and round, and their movements hypnotised. Yusuf’s eyes blurred and he retreated into a memory of his mother. He recalled the comfort of her calloused hand on his face, how it would linger there as if he were a child and not a grown man. How he missed her, even surrounded by his new family. His mother had wanted him to be a surgeon or a lawyer. She’d stayed in the land of their ancestors, too old and tired to make the journey, too reluctant to give up her past. She didn’t know how her remaining son contorted himself into shapes and spun through the air to please strangers. Even now, he could almost feel the vice-like grip of her fingers on his arms, the salty tears threading a pathway across the creases of her skin. Her parting words to him had been branded into his psyche.

  Do what you must to survive, but never forget who we are.

  He owed it to her to make a go of this life. All around him, his fellow performers dazzled with colour, song and razzmatazz, spirit and skill. He knew happiness here, especially with the circus in full motion, with his newly-made family in a flurry of activity around him and the satisfaction of a seamless show. Here, in the tents, the performers controlled their world.

  Soon it would be time for the finale when the performers flooded the arena once more: the acrobats, clowns, stilt- and tightrope-walkers, leaping horses and dancing goats. The world would shrink to a point inside the big top, and all around there would be the energy of a dozen planets and colours stolen from Allah himself. It would feel like a wedding in Syria, when the village came together and his face hurt from smiling, his feet ached from all the dancing, and his cheeks flushed with heat. The finale was when the circus most felt like home, when they were together like they belonged. Misfits and broken people who had only become whole once they found their way together like magnets.

  Suddenly, a shout pierced through the serenity of the lute.

  An audience member called out, puncturing the dream-like trance of Amena, Aya and Aischa’s dance. Again it came, brash and unapologetic, a dose of reality crashing into the fantastical realm they had toiled to create. Anxiety bubbled in Yusuf’s stomach and his eyebrows snapped together as he strained to hear the precise words.

  The man lurched forward in his seat, red-faced and drunk, although they didn’t serve alcohol here. “Go on, you monkeys! Dance!”

  Yusuf’s skin prickled with fear. The disrespect shown to his friends—to them all—wounded him deeply, but they could neither censure nor retaliate, powerless as they were.

  The man hadn’t yet finished, and the audience around him looked away, aghast. “Dance, dance ‘til you drop, then we can put you back in your boats where you belong. Rats, the lot of you!”

  Yusuf itched with the need to restrain him, but how could he when bound by the rules of gratitude for being allowed to live in this country, and by the rules of hospitality to a paying member of the audience? He looked to Emir’s impassive face at the side of the ring. How far would they allow insults to go before taking action?

  The girls continued dancing as if they were dolls, not real flesh capable of hurt. Esme—an Afghani girl, who was sweet on Yusuf—stood closer to the fray. The man’s shouts startled her and she dropped her tray of food over herself and into an audience member’s bag. Her moonlight dress dimmed, and she flushed and stooped to undo the damage, all the while whispering apologies to the woman she knelt before. The man crowed and settled back into his seat, pleased with himself.

  A ruckus like this set them all on edge and chased the magic away. Bad enough that circus attendance had been dwindling. Worse, disturbances such as these had increased and had resulted in additional scrutiny from the Interior Ministry. With any luck, no one with any clout had been there to witness it. The Interior Minister’s aide, all corkscrew curls and a hooked nose, had been an increasingly regular visitor to the circus in recent months, and that in itself had raised concerns.

  Yusuf swivelled and blinked to adjust to the glare of the lights.

  Damn.

  His heartbeat accelerated and his palms grew sweaty. There sat Rex Silberling himself: Interior Minister, the Chancellor’s right-hand man, and architect of the circus. Tonight, his aide flapped next to Silberling as he sat still and grim-faced in his house seat, power rolling off him in waves. She motioned to Silberling’s security men not to intervene in the disturbance: the drunk man had already settled down.

  Yusuf sighed. Politics turned on a pin. They couldn’t risk displeasing Silberling, lest he withdraw his patronage. Lest he decided to in
vest his energies elsewhere.

  His mind spun through a reel of the latest indignities the circus had suffered: their own waste found strewn in the tent; the horses released from their paddock at night; crude images of buxom girls in compromising positions graffitied on the sweets wagon; the laughter of teenagers running away in glee.

  But his circus family—refugees all—had survived worse. The band’s energy leapt a notch, and the plaintive sound of the sousaphone jolted Yusuf into action. Never mind the disrupter in the crowd or the frowning presence of Silberling. It was time to take to the stage. In they all ran, beasts and performers alike, springing, turning, waving to the crowd, singing for their supper. Silberling, too, became merely one of the audience as the performers threw batons into the air and the goats danced and skirts became a whirr of colour. The girls threw small squares of tissue paper into the stands, which, in the blink of an eye, transformed into sapphire butterflies flecked with copper. The men blew into their cupped hands and bubbles emerged and floated away, growing ever larger, until they popped over the heads of the audience in a burst of raindrops.

  “Isn’t this just fantastic?” said Emir into the microphone in the midst of them all, his shirt straining across his belly as he hopped in excitement from one leg to another.

  The final moment approached, in which Emir pulled a lever that released a flurry of multi-coloured foils over the audience, never failing to make the children squeal with delight, a parting surprise the girls would later painstakingly gather up for tomorrow’s performance.