No Ballet Shoes In Syria

by Catherine Bruton

  “She did keep saying what a waste of time it all is,” said Lilli-Ella.

  “She says stuff like that when she’s nervous,” observed Grace.

  “Nervous?” said Dotty.

  “She was worried – at the audition.” Aya said. Ciara hadn’t said anything about how her audition had gone in the days since it had happened. In fact, she had barely talked to Aya at all.

  “She hasn’t got anything to worry about,” said Dotty, pulling a face. “She’s totally in there. She knows it. We all know it.”

  Aya shrugged, remembering how terrified Ciara had seemed in the class, and what her mother had said when they arrived at the audition.

  The door opened then and Ciara came in, her face pale and her eyes red, as if she’d been crying.

  “Are you OK?” asked Blue.

  “Fine.” Ciara sniffed. “I just need to get on with this show, then I can go home.”

  “You don’t look great,” said Lilli-Ella, looking concerned.

  “I just have hay fever, OK?” Ciara snapped.

  Aya looked at her. Ciara’s face was blotchy and her eyes were flat and blank. She wanted to say something but Ciara just turned away.

  The community centre was filling up and when Dotty peeked down the stairs she reported that nearly all the seats were full. “Dad says it will be standing room only soon! Come on, you lot. We need to be ready to give our public a performance to remember!”

  Chapter 45

  Miss Helena opened the show by introducing Sally from Manchester Welcomes Refugees, who spoke briefly about the work of the charity and how people in the community could help. Then the girls performed their Nutcracker piece. It was funny to step out on to the stage and see the audience assembled on chairs. So many unfamiliar faces, but a few familiar ones too: the food-bank ladies, Mr and Mrs Massoud, and Mr Abdul, who was sitting next to Miss Helena, looking very pleased with himself. Even the tired-looking caseworker had a smile on his face today.

  When the music started, Aya forgot about them all and just enjoyed herself. She played just a small role in this piece, with Ciara taking the lead, but it felt so good to dance again, with her new friends around her, in a place she was starting to be able to call home.

  They received stampedes of applause at the end, and they all came off stage on a high, giggling and laughing as they pulled off one set of costumes and changed into another. One of the younger classes was on now, performing a tap dance routine, with Blue, Lilli-Ella – and Mr Abdul. They were all wearing top hats, which kept falling off in rehearsal but which somehow, miraculously, seemed to stay put in the real show.

  Then the little girls were up with the cat dance that Dotty and Aya had taught them. Margot lost her tail and little Ainka entirely forgot the moves and just stood there smiling and wiggling, but the audience loved it.

  Then the little cats all remained on stage to accompany Dotty in her musical theatre medley. She had been working on it on her own and hadn’t shown it to anyone, so this was the first time that Aya had ever seen her friend perform quite like this. First she was Sillabub the young kitten, singing of her hopes and dreams, then she transformed into Gus, the old Theatre Cat, paws shaking with palsy and old age, then Macavity – the Mystery Cat – the master criminal and daredevil, delighting the audience with his exploits. With each transformation she danced a different style, the steps reflecting the character of each cat so perfectly it made Aya gasp.

  Then the music changed and Dotty shape-shifted one more time – now she was Grizabella, the shabby old grey cat, lonely and tormented by memories, singing to the moon. You could have heard a pin drop in the community centre as Dotty sang, the plaintive notes soaring, full of loss and longing. When she finished there was absolute silence for what felt like forever, and then the audience were on their feet, stamping and cheering. Aya realised that she had tears running down her face, and when she looked at her friend, she saw Dotty did too.

  She looked out at the audience to see if she could catch a glimpse of Bronte Buchanan, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  By the time they reached the interval, all the dancers were high as kites. They peeked out at the audience, who were buying teas and coffees and cakes and raffle tickets, talking animatedly.

  “They are all loving the show,” said Mrs Massoud, who had come backstage to join them before getting ready for her own performance. “And who can blame them – it is wonderful, wonderful!”

  Miss Helena and Miss Sylvie appeared then and were smiling too. They beckoned Aya, Dotty and Ciara into the office and shut the door. “Girls, I have some news for you,” said Miss Helena. “Are you wanting me to tell you now or after the show?”

  “It depends what the news is,” said Dotty, looking at the envelope in Miss Helena’s hand and grimacing.

  Miss Helena surveyed her with serious eyes. “Dotty, the school have accepted you, but—” she paused and the “but” seemed to hang in the air for what felt like an eternity “—they want you to join their musical theatre programme.”

  Dotty let out a gasp. “I – I didn’t know they even did one!”

  “It’s a new initiative, starting next year,” Miss Sylvie explained. “For dancers who they think are better suited to the West End than the barre. And after what I just saw on stage, I think they are quite right!”

  “That’s… OMG, that’s awesome!” Dotty looked elated for a second before her face fell. “Only, my mum…”

  “Your mum is thrilled for you, darling!” said a voice from the doorway. Dotty turned. Her mother was dressed in a tutu, her hair pulled sharply back from her face and framed with a tiny tiara of feathers. She looked exquisite – and she had tears in her eyes.

  “You aren’t … disappointed?” Dotty looked at her anxiously – the way she looked at the invisible figure in her dance, Aya thought. Pleading, hopeful…

  “Disappointed? No, I couldn’t be prouder – or happier,” laughed Bronte Buchanan. “In fact, I rather think they know my daughter better than I do.”

  “Really?”

  “Watching you on stage just now – darling, you told a story and you made the audience’s hearts soar and break with yours. That was true artistry!” Bronte Buchanan gazed at her daughter with fierce pride in her eyes. “I am only sorry, darling, that I spent so long making you follow my dream rather than letting you chase your own.”

  Dotty ran into her mother’s arms and Aya watched them holding each other tight, and felt a glow of happiness so bright she felt as if she might burst too.

  But then Miss Helena was turning to her and Ciara, and her stomach contracted hard. So many good things had already happened to her. She barely dared hope this dream might come true too.

  “Girls,” she said, a broad smile in her twinkling old face. “Congratulations, my dancers! You have both been offered a place on the ballet programme.”

  The words didn’t seem to register properly at first. Could Miss Helena really have just said that she was in? That she was going to the Royal Northern – with Dotty too?

  “And, Aya, you have been awarded a full scholarship for board and training,” Miss Sylvie added.

  Aya’s heart soared! She couldn’t wait to run downstairs and tell Mumma. But for some reason – just in that first moment – it was her father’s face that she could see in her mind’s eye. Dad telling her to follow her dreams and never let go.

  “I am absolutely delighted for all three of you,” said Bronte Buchanan. “And I can’t think of anyone who deserves that scholarship more!”

  Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre, Bedford

  After they arrived in England they had been taken to the detention centre in Bedford. A journey in a police van along grey motorways, through concreted underpasses, past tower blocks and rows of houses.

  At the detention centre they had been given a family room with proper beds, and assigned a caseworker who would help them with their asylum application, and help them access medical care and legal support. But there were
problems with the papers. And everyone talked so fast in English that Aya had not been able to keep up, and Mumma kept crying. Moosa was always crying too, clinging to Aya all the time, screaming if she let him go.

  And they wouldn’t let Aya go with Mumma when they interviewed her. Even though Aya said Mumma spoke no English. Everyone was kind enough but they didn’t seem to understand. Or they didn’t really listen. Not to her – because she was a child. And there were so many other people in the centre – all with the same stories, all looking for refuge. All wanting to be heard.

  All looking for a home.

  Chapter 46

  There was one more thing to do. Before the dancing began again after the interval, Aya had agreed to tell her story. Miss Helena had suggested it and Sally had helped her to write it. Mr Massoud had made a slide show of pictures to represent some of the places she had been on her journey.

  Standing up on stage as herself was much harder than doing it as a snowflake or a sugar plum fairy. She could feel the whole hall staring up at her – so many neighbourhood people who didn’t know her from a stranger. Who saw her as the other girls had once. As a refugee. An asylum seeker. A migrant. Not a little girl. Or a dancer. Not one of them.

  But once she started talking it was easier than she had thought. Perhaps because she had told the story before – in dance – so remembering things now was easier. Perhaps because they were here in England, and they could stay. And because Mumma had agreed to go and see a counsellor to help her feel less anxious all the time … and Moosa was going to start at nursery … and because Aya had been offered a place at the Royal Northern… Because they had a future now, and that made it easier to talk about the past.

  When she got to the bit about Dad – in the ocean – she stopped and her voice cracked. She wasn’t sure she would be able to go on. But then Dotty appeared by her side and took her hand. Aya turned to her friend and smiled. Then she took a deep breath and went on.

  “We still don’t know what happened to him,” she said. “Dotty’s father – Mr Buchanan – he is helping us, to see if we can trace him. There are organisations that help reunify families and they think that it is possible. That if he is alive we might one day be able to find him. But we don’t know.”

  After she told her story she came off stage. And to her surprise it was Ciara who was the first to give her a hug.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realise…”

  “It is OK,” said Aya. “You have your things too.”

  Ciara shrugged and her eyes filled with tears. “My parents are splitting up. My dad is moving away with his new girlfriend. I know it’s not the same as your dad but…”

  “But you miss him?”

  Ciara nodded.

  “I … understand this,” said Aya. Neither of them said anything for a moment, but the two girls looked at each other with a new understanding.

  “Maybe … I mean, if we are going to school together…” Ciara hesitated. “Can we be … friends?”

  Aya smiled. “I would like that,” she said. “Very much.”

  Chapter 47

  Bronte Buchanan was going to dance the last piece of the night, but Aya was given the slot before hers. The girls had done their pop song medley dance, and Mr and Mrs Massoud had performed a beautiful waltz. Then Dotty and Ciara had performed their audition solos and now it was Aya’s turn. She felt oddly calm as she went on the stage with each of her objects – so different to how she had felt in the audition. And this time when she danced the piece, she danced it as a celebration of the past – not mourning for it, but bringing alive the things that had brought her to where she was today.

  From Aleppo … the container … the camp in Kilis … the beach in Izmir … the journey across the Med … the tents on Chios … the detention centre in Bedford … then arriving in Manchester, where she first heard the sound of piano notes filtering down from the window upstairs…

  She could feel the tears streaming down her face as she danced, but it didn’t hurt – at least, not too much. And as she looked out across the room, over the sea of faces, she thought she saw the door to the community centre open, thought she saw the figure of a man in a blue raincoat slip in at the back, a man with a rough beard, a small scar on his chin and her father’s almond-shaped eyes.

  She knew he wasn’t really there; it wasn’t really Dad. She knew he might never return, never walk through the door and back into her life, but she allowed herself to see him then, allowed herself to dance for him – for Dad – for one last time.

  “We made it, Dad,” she told him with her eyes and her fingertips. “We made it and we are safe,” she said with the graceful curve of her arms. “We will never stop waiting for you – looking for you. Even if you never come we’ll never let go of you – of our memories, of our past,” her dance seemed to say. And she could see him smiling back, almond eyes bright with tears. And she was on her toes now, leg extended high behind her in an arabesque, her whole body curved in a perfect line flowing from fingertip to fingertip – past to future.

  “So I’m going to follow my dreams, Dad. Make something beautiful out of all this ugliness,” the sweep of the dance seemed to tell him. “Because – we made it, Dad. We found – home.”

  Afterword

  When I was eleven I adored Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes and Pamela Brown’s The Swish of the Curtain, and was so fixated on Lorna Hill’s Sadler’s Wells ballet books – each of which I had read at least ten times – that eventually my mum decided enough was enough. She prised my tattered copy of Veronica at the Wells out of my hands and gave me a pile of new reading material, which included The Silver Sword, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, and The Diary of Anne Frank. That was when I discovered that there was a new kind of book to love – stories that could open your eyes, change the way you saw the world, make you ask questions, expand your horizons, enrich your soul – switch on lightbulbs in your head!

  As an English teacher for the past twenty-five years I have had the great privilege of introducing kids to those ‘lightbulb books’ – the stories that expand their capacity for empathy and challenge their preconceptions about the world; that help them look at and come to terms with the most difficult issues of growing up in the world today.

  And so as an author those are the books I have tried to write.

  As the world watched the migrant crisis beginning to unfold I knew it was something I wanted – needed – to write about. Hearing Judith Kerr, the author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, speak about the parallels between her story and the current situation in Syria, I had my own lightbulb moment. I would write about a child displaced from their home by war in Syria, fleeing across Europe, and seeking asylum in the UK. A story that was a modern version of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and The Silver Sword – a story that would make young readers look beyond the labels of ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ to see the child behind.

  When I discussed the idea with my editor at Nosy Crow, we were both conscious of the difficulties of writing about events that are happening now – complex, potentially troubling issues that we would be asking young readers to confront without the distance of history. I have a quote from one of my favourite writers, Alan Gibbons, above my desk: “I never enter a dark room unless I can light the way out.” That’s what I wanted to do – to confront difficult issues, in a way that didn’t offer glib solutions or whitewash the truth, but which did offer the consolation of hope.

  A charity local to me, Bristol Refugee Rights, holds a drop-in at a community centre where dance lessons are also held. I found myself imagining a young Syrian girl, just arrived in the UK, disorientated, not knowing if she’d be allowed to stay, watching a ballet class through a half-open doorway, seeing girls just like her friends from home, longing to be back at her own dance school. The story began from there.

  I contacted Bath Welcomes Refugees and other refugee resettlement projects who helped me with research, and I spoke to members of the Syrian comm
unity who had come to Britain, as well as reading many, many accounts and transcripts from child refugees, but I did find myself struggling for a long time with the voice. Aya’s voice eluded me – sometimes she was there, sometimes she slipped away from me, and tying together her past narrative with her present was particularly challenging. Until I realised that of course it would be – dealing with the past and reconciling it with the present is hugely difficult for many of these children. I made the decision to tell the story of Aya’s life in Aleppo – her experiences before and during the war, her flight through Turkey, in a container, in refugee camps, crossing the Med in a storm – all in flashbacks interspersed between the story of her experiences as a young asylum seeker in the UK. At first the two stories are distinct, but gradually dance becomes a medium for Aya to work through complex suppressed memories and the two begin to come together. As she becomes more able to talk about the past and grieve for what’s lost – coming to terms with what may have happened to her father – she is also able to begin to let go of the guilt and look to the future.

  Telling Aya’s story felt like a big responsibility. Sometimes I wondered if it was my story to tell – and I hope that in future years we will see stories of child migrants told by those who lived through it. But it didn’t feel like this story could wait. It has to be told now – to this generation who are growing up now. Because when you turn on your TV and see a story about a Syrian refugee who has escaped the horrors of war, only to be attacked in a school in the UK, you realise why it is so important for this generation of young readers to question the toxic definitions attached to words like ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ – to see the child, not the label.

  But I hope this story might also be to young readers what Ballet Shoes and The Swish of the Curtain and the Sadler’s Wells series were to me – the stories of following your dreams that I adored and read over and over; that I read to my children and still pick up as old favourites today. My mum doesn’t take them off me now! She knows that the moment she pressed those lightbulb books into my hand, she helped me grow up as a reader – but it was the love of both kinds of books that made me a reader for life. If No Ballet Shoes in Syria can do that for any young readers, or if a child like Aya can read it and see themselves represented on the pages of a book – their story told, in which they are the heroine, not just a victim – then I will have done what I set out to do.