All the grey is gone from Mum’s hair and she’s had the straighteners on so it’s lost its fuzziness. I haven’t seen her dressed up and with her hair done since she lost so much weight; she looks like a different person, all smoothed out and thin. And she’s done all this without me.
“Bohat payree lag re hay! You’re beautiful,” I tell her.
Mum checks herself out in the mirror as if she’s not sure, as if she doesn’t really recognize herself.
I wish it could be the three of us heading off to parents’ evening. If Dad was here I wouldn’t be in this state. I wouldn’t be in all this trouble and they could both be proud.
Mum covers her head and puts on her coat and shoes. She hardly ever wears them and they look brand new. Last of all she puts on her leather gloves.
“I am ready!” she says and holds her hand out to me.
Floor six. Let it get stuck right here… But I should have learned by now. The lift carries on
down
down
down
and I feel my breathing sharp and unsteady in my chest. I glance over to Mum and see that her hands are shaking, but I don’t reach out to her because I feel so unsteady myself. I can’t stand the thought that she will be disappointed with me. That she’ll find out I’m so behind with everything … that she might even blame herself. But worse than that, I’m too scared to tell her about this pressure in my chest that’s making me feel like the air is being squeezed out of me. What will Dr Chen write in her notes if we’re both ill? What will happen to us then?
I don’t remember the walk across the three roads between home and school. I feel floaty, as if I’m hardly here. I think Mum stops and talks to Mrs Asir and thanks her for the sweets. I think Mrs Asir walks with us for a while. I slip on the ice and I think she and Mum pick me up. It’s all gone hazy.
Then we’re inside the school and Mum’s asking me where we should go first. I look at my planner and my head starts to spin. We’re standing outside the lift when Sarah and her parents appear. I don’t meet their eyes, but I hear Sarah’s mum say something to my mum about how nice it is to see her and how well she looks. Mum says she’ll never make all those stairs with her sore hip and we get into the lift while Sarah and her mum and dad go off in another direction.
As soon as the lift begins to move, Mum starts humming a tune that she and Dad always used to sing to me at bedtime. It’s probably to calm herself down, but suddenly I can’t stand it any more. I see the whole thing play out right in front of me: Mum making a super-human effort to speak English, to be brave, not to show her pain and not to make me translate for her. Mum’s face crumpling as she realizes that her clever girl’s grades are slipping and that she’s spent the day in internal exclusion for pushing another girl over and walking out on a detention. The shame of it.
“Please stop humming,” I want to say, but the words that slip from my mouth are, “Lift me up, Mum. Please lift me up.” I raise my arms as I slump to the floor. “Please, Mum, lift me up.” My face tingles and my whole body goes numb. Mum is holding a bag to my mouth and I’m breathing into it, and slowly my head stops reeling.
I feel the lift lurch, the doors open and Mum’s arms around me as she struggles to help me up. Someone guides me along a corridor to a room. I am gently eased into a seat.
After that I have only a faint memory of someone offering me sips of water and hearing what Mum’s voice sounds like when she’s really in charge. Her words waft over my head like in a dream. Now here’s Miss Rose’s voice. She’s saying, “I understand. It has been too much pressure.”
“Mrs Sulimani…” Miss Rose’s words are as soft as feathers as they float through my mind. I feel tears wash my cheeks. Mum reaches out her hand to me and we sit together in Miss Rose’s office. I have the strangest thought that Miss Rose has turned into the robin flying busily in and out with twigs and feathers and words to build us a safe nest. I only catch a few of her words.
“Always willing to give support… My door is open…You are never alone… But of course, I know for myself, Mrs Sulimani, grief has a long fuse.”
“I think Mango really did recognize you. The way she climbed into the palm of your hand!”
Sarah and I are chatting about Mango mostly and jumping up and down to try and keep warm. My feet, hands and nose are ice blocks and the lift is a fridge-freezer.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I wish…
The lift door opens and Mum steps in carrying a tiffin-tin tower.
I can’t get used to seeing her out and about without me. It’s strange sometimes how words you didn’t even know you’d learned pop into your head. “My mum is dehors, dehors, dehors the flat without any help from me!” I want to shout out to the world.
“Sarah! Good to see you.” Mum smiles at my friend.
“You too, Mrs Sulimani.” Sarah peers at Mum around the tiffin tins.
“Mrs Asir has a terrible cold so I took her some food,” Mum explains. Then she shivers.
“It has been sooooo cold this year, but spring is just around a corner. I can feel it here.” Mum taps her chest. “Maybe soon we can go together on picnic in Hyde Park? Here! Warm hands, girls.”
Sarah giggles and places her frozen fingers below mine so our arms and hands are all intertwined.
Mum presses the lift button and the three of us carry on up.
I feel so stupid sitting in the waiting room with a box of Alphonso mangoes on my knee, but Mum insisted I bring them for Dr Chen. The old woman next to me keeps sniffing the air and licking her lips. I didn’t realize till now how honey-sweet they smell.
Dr Chen comes out of her room. “Niya, come on in,” she says, greeting me with a big smile.
I actually feel happy to see her.
“Mum made me bring you these,” I say, handing the mangoes over.
Dr Chen picks one out of the box and smells it. “Ooh, delicious. I always think if sunshine had a smell it would be like that!” she says and places the box on the side. “That’s too kind. Thank her for me, won’t you?” Then she looks down at her notes. “Actually I can thank her myself. I’m seeing her tomorrow anyway.”
We begin our review of all the “joined up help” we’ve been getting at school and at home.
I know why Mum’s given Dr Chen a box of her favourite mangoes – because for the first year since Dad died it finally feels like we’re going to have a summer.
“I sat in a school reception one day while waiting to give a talk, and a young girl of around thirteen arrived late. She said she had been taking her mum for a medical appointment. The receptionist replied that she would call home and check. The girl explained that her mother never answers the phone because she’s not confident with her English. ‘She needs me to translate.’ The receptionist made a note of this and the girl carried on in to school. All through my talk I thought of the exhausted-looking girl and wondered how her day was going.” Sita Brahmachari
A SUICIDE BOMBER SITS IN THE LIBRARY
Jack Gantos
He is a boy and he is bored. He is wearing a lovely new red jacket which conceals an explosive vest which has been cleverly sewn into the jacket’s lining. He is a little warm but his commander has instructed him not to undo the jacket, and to sit still with a peaceful face, and to wait for orders. He has been told to fear nothing and that he will be perfectly safe in the library. Not even the secret police will think to look for him there, since he cannot read. The boy is obedient, and so he waits. It is hard to sit still, because of the excitement of the day and the honour he has of being chosen to blow up an enemy of his people. With his hand in his pocket he is holding a mobile phone. When it rings he is to answer it and listen. A voice will inform him of his target, where, God willing, he will detonate the bomb and step into paradise.
To pass the time, the boy imagines his target. He is hoping it is the leader of the people he hates because he has been taught to hate him and all his people. They are impure. God willing, he will find a place to stand by
the side of the road, and when the leader’s car passes in front of him he will whisper his final prayer and trigger the bomb. Perhaps the voice on the mobile phone will send him into a place of worship where the people praying are praying to the wrong god, and he will cleanse the world of them while he soars upwards like a bird into an eternal paradise beyond the sky. Or perhaps he will be sent to a checkpoint where enemy soldiers wait to inspect his people for weapons, and the moment they pat down his red jacket he will whisper his final prayer and look them in the eye as they vanish into a red mist of nothingness. Or he could be sent into a market where many enemy women and children and farmers and merchants gather. He will stand in the middle of them and courageously whisper his final prayer.
Now the heavy door to the library opens and another boy enters. He walks to a shelf of books. He carefully inspects them. After choosing one he sits down at a small desk. He opens the book and begins to read. He is smiling. He laughs out loud. Now he covers his mouth with his hand and laughs silently to himself. The suicide bomber wonders what it is about reading a book that makes the boy smile so widely. Then a girl enters the library. She too chooses a book to read and sits down. Soon she is sighing. Then she squints at a page and cries out as if someone has sneaked up and touched her shoulder. She closes her eyes and presses the open book against her face as if it were a mask. The suicide bomber wonders how a book can cast a spell and turn the reader into its puppet. Then a young man comes in with a very small boy. He sits the small boy at a desk, then, taking his time, chooses several books from a shelf. When the young man sits down he begins to read out loud to the small boy, who listens. It is a story about a lost pet that is hungry and lonely and missing its home and good food and a hot bath and the warm lap of its owner. The small boy points at the pictures in the book. The young man points at them too. They both look a little sad. Where could the pet be? How did it get lost? Did it take a wrong turn? Will some nice person find it and give it shelter and food? Will it ever find its way home again? The small boy looks under his desk for the pet. He wants to give it a new home. The suicide bomber glances under his own desk. He wants to ask what happens next in the story but he has been instructed to remain silent because books will master him just as they have mastered his enemies. He has been taught that books create a false life in a godless world that should not exist. Books cannot be trusted when only God has the key to paradise. And so the suicide bomber turns his face away from the readers and does not see the young man turn the final page in the story, nor does he see the small boy’s joyous relief that all ends well.
Soon even more people arrive and choose books, and before long the library is crowded. The boy sits in the middle of the room. He is the only one without a book. He feels uncomfortable. He prays he can soon blow up, when abruptly his mobile phone rings. At that exact moment everyone in the room stops reading. They raise their eyes above the pages and stare fearfully at him. He lowers his face and listens to the voice of a man instructing him where to go, and then he stands. He weaves around tables and chairs and the people whose eyes have been dragged back to their books by a dark chain of words. He wonders, have the books captured the people? Or perhaps the people have captured the books? He wishes he had the answer, but there is no time to waste on questions that God does not care to answer.
The little suicide bomber walks out of the library as instructed. He walks for a long time down a crumbling road. He does not see the man following him. He passes blown-up houses. He passes burnt-out trucks. The man keeps an eye on the red jacket. The boy passes crying children. He passes angry men. He passes ruined families on their knees, sobbing in anguish. He stops for a moment and looks at a starving dog. It has suffered enough. Everything has. And when everything is broken, he wonders, are you winning or losing? Only God knows.
He walks away, thinking of the faces of the readers in the library. They were not ruined. They were happy. They were safe. Whatever power lived within those books did not hurt them. He keeps walking. The man keeps walking. The boy is walking faster now. He is thinking faster. He is thinking that he must prepare himself for a new life. He raises his eyes towards paradise. He whispers a hopeful prayer he knows by heart. He watches the words rise from his mouth. He cannot read them, but in his heart he wishes words could make him laugh and cry and sigh and give him the courage to do what he must. The man behind him is also thinking about what final words he will tell the boy.
Now the boy stops. It is time. He gathers up a deep breath and turns down a path. It is the wrong path and it is rugged and the boy jumps over hard ruts and ridges of mud. The man is alarmed and quickly follows, but at a distance. The boy comes to an orchard and walks between shattered trees full of singing birds. He steps into a shallow stream and cools his feet as he moves on. Finally, he arrives at a smooth black rock. He turns his head but sees no one. But the man has followed him quietly, like a shadow, and he hides behind a larger black rock. He thinks that maybe the boy is lost. The boy keeps looking up into the sky. Clouds pass overhead like waves on an ocean. Nothing can stop them. Nothing can stop the boy from thinking. Something inside of him has changed. Now his thoughts have become a book only he can read. He picks a stone up from the loose earth. He holds it tightly in his fist. He thinks that if he blows the stone into a hundred pieces, each piece might be smaller but it will be just as hard. The next suicide bomber could blow up the smaller rocks a second time and the pieces would be even smaller but still just as hard. It is the same with life, he thinks. He could blow it up a hundred times and it would become a hundred times smaller, and yet remain just as hard. From a safe distance the man watches the boy. He is troubled. He thinks this boy may be too young because he is still thinking like a boy. Only a grown man can will himself not to think. The man looks into the sky. He prays. What should he do next? He listens to the harsh command and now it is time for him to act. He picks up his phone.
The boy answers. The man speaks. He says it is now time for the boy to return to the path that will lead to infinite pleasure. The boy says nothing. He closes his eyes so hard that his mind becomes an infinite pool of black ink. From that pool every pen could be filled, and any thought could be written, and any question could be asked. The book inside of him writes a question in his mind. What were those people doing in the library? he asks himself. He knows there is only one way to answer that question.
The man closes his eyes. He prays the boy will return to the correct path and fulfil his destiny. He prays that he will not have to press a special number on his mobile phone that will detonate the bomb. The boy drops the rock from his hand and stands up. He is hot, and very cautiously he slips out of his red jacket. He looks around. In the distance he sees the man. The boy turns and runs. He does not stop.
At the library they heard the explosion. Some readers ran out into the street and looked up into the air. They gasped. They cried out. They pointed towards a dark blossom of smoke. Then, from the uncurling petals of ash, a red jacket floated upwards. It floated above the tallest trees and beyond the naked mountains and their snowy peaks and then it was never seen again.
Until years later a man sits alone in a library. He is reading a powerful book. Every time he turns a page, the page turns up inside the man. First, he laughs. Then he sighs. He moans. He cries. He sets the book down and wipes his eyes. He looks out of the window and remembers where he came from. He says a prayer for those left behind.
Suddenly his mobile phone rings. His breath quickens. It is his young son. He tells the boy exactly where to meet. The man stands up. He holds the book in his hand as he heads towards the door. The librarian waves to him. He smiles and waves in return and then hurries out of the library and down the sidewalk. He walks quickly. He looks left and right. The boy is not at the meeting spot. Where is he? He calls him on his mobile phone. He doesn’t answer. Perhaps he has been captured, the man thinks. He panics and dashes around a corner.
There is the boy. He is wearing a red jacket and walking very, very slowl
y. His face is pressed into a book. He is reading the last page. When he finishes he sighs and lifts his eyes. He sees his father standing on the corner. He is smiling. The boy smiles too as he raises the book over his head. “This is a good one!” he shouts.
A page turns.
“I was reading up on Denis Diderot, who wrote a good bit on religious fanaticism – a subject which is presently fuelling international terrorism. There were several quotes by Diderot, which I wrote in my journal. ‘People stop thinking when they cease to read,’ and ‘From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.’ The one that started me to write this story, however, was: ‘But who shall be the master, the writer or the reader?’ (Denis Diderot, 1796).” Jack Gantos
SCHOOL OF LIFE
Elizabeth Laird
Everything was boring. Pointless, stupid and boring. School was driving me crazy. I hated the teachers, and the teachers hated me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my best friend, Maria, had walked out without a word to me. She was there one day and gone the next. No explanation, no goodbye, and no answer when I called her phone. As for home, what can I say? It was as bad as it had ever been, my mum shouting at me and my stepdad laying into me with his fists. I couldn’t wait to get away.
There was only one person who listened to me and seemed to know how I felt, and that was Andrei, my stepdad’s cousin. He used to come round to our place all the time.
“Ignore them, little Katya,” he would say when my mum and stepdad drank too much and began fighting. “Look, I’ve got something for you. This’ll cheer you up.”
Here I Stand Page 7