Here I Stand

by Amnesty International UK

  Tell me, when you sit and stare at those walls, do you ever ask yourself when it happened, exactly where the turning point was? What caused the change?

  See, humanity has no colour, brother. It did not start with a colour; it will not end with one. Remember all those lessons we were taught – to share, to accept, to respect the other? Well, when did I change for you, my friend?

  When did you negate almost every aspect of my humanity until all you had left was my skin tone?

  When did I stop being human first and start being black?

  “My story is inspired by the tragic death of Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker in 2005, at the hands of racists. It is a re-imagination of the facts, an attempt to explore the emotions of the victim. I believe that empathy is the first line of defence against hatred and I want to live in a world where race matters less than eye colour. We are a long way off, but every step we take towards that goal is precious and welcome. My story is designed to make you think about what makes us human. I hope that it does.” Bali Rai

  WHEN THE CORRIDORS ECHO

  Sabrina Mahfouz

  It is a baby. A girl. Which is a good thing, so the family say. They don’t see how a single mother like her could ever control a boy. The baby is called Ayesha and she is bought many things, all pink. With bows and sequins and cute ironic phrases that aren’t ironic in any way.

  All of this prepares her for who she will need to be by the time she gets to nursery. At primary school, Ayesha has acorns thrown at her head by boys who she won’t kiss. When the acorns hit the pink metal clips that grip back her wild pieces of hair, it hurts a little but she says nothing. She has learnt not to talk with too much voice, as that is something nobody likes.

  Ayesha’s teenage bedroom is papered with Blu-tacked poster versions of happiness. There are boys from bands, their teeth blinding white and their hair slick with gel. But there are posters of female singers, too. Women she hopes to grow into, with globed breasts and bronzed skin, posing in shapes that make no sense, which makes sense to Ayesha, as the world is full of things that don’t make sense. Pink metal clips that gripped back wild pieces of hair now keep her sparkly headscarves in place.

  Ayesha spends most hours she’s not at school in this bedroom. Her mother doesn’t trust that the outside holds anything but pain for this girl she raised alone, so it seems best that she stays there, in that bedroom full of faces.

  The very same day that Ayesha meets the air, a baby boy called Zayd is pulled screaming into a hospital room, his mother crying tears of happiness that she has had a boy; now her husband will be happy with her, her mother will be happy with her. She is happy with Zayd and smothers him with a thousand kisses.

  He grows up wearing a uniform of blue, being told how much he is loved, adored. How much is expected of him. He plays with rockets, guns, swords and trains and can’t sleep at night with all the thoughts he has of his future life running through his mind.

  During the winter of Zayd’s first teenage year, the snow comes down in buckets. It has never set so well in the city. He puts on thick, warm clothes and big black gloves and goes out into the streets, whooping with the excitement that comes when a usually grey universe transforms, for a short time, into a sparkling white field. Along with some friends, he throws snowballs. They’re medium-sized balls. Zayd is small for his age and his hands can only hold so much snow. He mostly throws them at his friends, but it is much more fun when he throws them at passers-by. Some laugh, others swear. They don’t hurt – he mainly gets them on the leg. One of the strangers unexpectedly takes great offence at being Zayd’s snowball target. They tut, and phone the local police as soon as they turn the corner. A few months later, Zayd is the recipient of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, with strict conditions that he must be supervised by an adult at all times when in public. For the next two years. His mother cries from one eye. She told him not to play in the snow – she hasn’t yet bought his annual set of thermals.

  Three days before the fifteenth birthday they share, Zayd pours water from a bottle on to Ayesha’s shoulder in the canteen. The water trickles off the acrylic of her school jumper. It takes a while for her to notice the dampness as she stares blankly into the bleak selection of lunch dishes.

  Zayd is not sure why he did such a thing. He’s on his own and so is she. The people around them are busy getting their food so they can spend the rest of the lunch hour doing something more interesting than eating pizza. There’s nobody to laugh with at his action, or to impress with his audacity. They’ve never even spoken before. He has seen her some afternoons, when school is over and the corridors echo with silence, when they seem to be the only two people on a post-apocalyptic planet. She glides past him to her regular spot in the study room as he roams around aimlessly until he is found by an overworked teacher. Ayesha’s eyes never meet his, why would they?

  When she finally turns around, Zayd has gone; he won’t have lunch today. Ayesha looks at her shoulder and frowns, no longer surprised at how mean people can be for no reason. Just one more thing that makes no sense in this world.

  Later that day, when the damp patch on her shoulder has dried and Zayd’s stomach rumbles with emptiness, Ayesha is walking to her after-school spot in the study room. Her mother works until 6 p.m. and picks her up afterwards. The teachers agreed Ayesha could remain at school until then, as her mother spun some story about worries for the child’s safety, threats from the family. It was a cruel world – they understood. Ayesha is supposed to do her homework, cross some books off the reading list. But really she pores over comics. There’s nobody there to know, so she re-reads her weekly purchase again and again, the pages becoming softer each day. On Fridays she gives some of her saved lunch money to one of her few friends, who brings her a new comic each week. Her preference is for the traditional storylines, the outsider who has superpowers and saves humanity from certain doom. She never gets bored of this simple set-up. She loves how the colours are so bold, but blocked in by thick black lines. How the men are so manly and the women so womanly. The characters never seem to have parents; they are free agents, lonely but powerful.

  On this day she is sweeping her eyes over the last page of her comic, soaking in the climax of the story, a culmination of flirtations between the two main super-heroes, their lips touching finally, amidst the happy crowd of regular humans they’ve just saved from death and destruction. The door to the study room creaks open a fraction. She looks up. Occasionally the cleaner, Juliette, comes in to hoover whilst Ayesha reads. They chat briefly about the music they’re listening to at the moment, the lives of the singers that sang the songs, then they have nothing more to say and get on with their tasks. But it isn’t Juliette. Ayesha sees a boy-shaped shadow through the gap in the door, though it doesn’t open any further. She sits still, her hand spread wide over the last page of the comic as if she can cover up what she’s reading. She arches her back and the tips of her toes are on the floor, ready to jump up and run if she has to. She calls out, Hello? Her voice sounds high and scared, not what she intended. She decides to stay strong and silent, just like her mother constantly tells her she should. The door opens a bit more, the creak harmonizing with the soft buzzing sound emanating from the computers on standby around the room. Zayd strolls in confidently, as if he never stood outside the door as a shadow, as if he didn’t hear Ayesha’s high and scared Hello? He nods at Ayesha, sits down right next to her at the round table. Her hand doesn’t move from the comic but her eyes are on his; she doesn’t look down. He smiles at her and she realizes her head is upright. Surprised at herself, she quickly bends her neck and stares at the edge of the table, a piece of grey chewing gum escaping from the underside and peeping up at her. Zayd says nothing, just gets his phone out and starts making quick, erratic movements with his thumbs accompanied by spasmodic facial expressions and the occasional sigh or other non-verbal sound. Ayesha angles her eyes up slightly, watches him for a minute. He doesn’t look at her. Slowly, she removes her hand f
rom the comic and tentatively goes back to reading. They sit there like this until Ayesha’s mother calls to say she’s waiting for her outside. Ayesha packs up her things and leaves the study room, Zayd still twisting his face in time with his thumbs.

  The two of them continue like this for a few days, neither knowing that one of the days was their shared birthday. It was the same as any other day for both of them. They told nobody and nobody asked. Ayesha received some new headphones from her mother and Zayd’s parents gave him a voucher to buy some more games for his phone. They both had cake when they went home.

  Ayesha puts her new headphones in as she sits with her comic. Zayd feels this is a silent snub. He decides to embrace the possibilities of being fifteen – only three months left of his ridiculous Anti-Social Behaviour Order, which keeps him imprisoned at school after-hours until an adult from home is free to “supervise” him in public and pick him up. He can almost taste the freedom and it tastes like, well, like Ayesha’s lips, although he’s shocked at himself for thinking this. They’ve still never spoken, but she seems to him the most perfect human in the world. The way her almond eyes stare so intently at the pages of her comics, as if she’s studying a secret book that tells the true history of the world. The way her headscarf is always so neat at the back but the front is constantly ruffled, her hair poking out and the seams lopsided from where she rests her hand on her head whilst she reads. She never smiles at him, but she doesn’t look at him like he’s rubbish, either. He really, really likes her. He waves his fingers in front of her eyes and she turns to look at him as if they’re already mid-conversation. He raises his eyebrows, unsure of what to say. She takes one headphone out and the tinny sound of a female singer becomes audible. The corners of her lips turn up slightly. Yes? she says. Her voice is lower than he expected, strong but with a tone of apology. New headphones? he says, uninspired. She nods. I got them for my birthday. He nods back. Happy Birthday. It was mine the other day too. He feels more confident now. Oh? What day? Ayesha seems genuinely interested and Zayd replies as if he’s telling her the answer to a question that has haunted her for years. It was last week, Thursday. Ayesha takes her other headphone out from her ear and scrunches up her brows. What the hell? That’s my birthday too! Her choice of words and the excitement in her voice surprise Zayd, but he keeps his expression as neutral as possible. Play it cool, play it cool, he says to himself. No way, well, like, I guess that means we share some sort of fate, right? He can’t believe he said that. How cheesy. But Ayesha smiles. Yeah, I reckon. That’s proper amazing. We were born the actual same day. What time? Zayd doesn’t know what she means. What time were you born? He has no idea. He shakes his head, sorry that he can’t answer every single question she could ever ask him. Ask your mum tonight – what time and where? I was born at 8 p.m., Royal London. Imagine if we were in the same ward at the same time! Zayd nods, shellshocked that they are finally having a conversation. He can’t remember the last time somebody was excited to talk to him. Ayesha puts her headphones back in, signalling the end of their chat, but she’s pleased. She feels safe with Zayd now, something about sharing a birthday makes him feel more familiar than he felt five minutes ago. He’s like family. Yes, she thinks, like a cousin or something.

  A few weeks later, when Zayd and Ayesha’s friendship is noted by observant teachers and typed into the Ones to Watch box due to the strange hours they keep and their quiet, introverted personalities, Zayd gives Ayesha his carton of apple juice in the study room after school as he always does. His mum became obsessed with making sure he got his five-a-day following his snowballing ordeal. She was told by one of the advisors that children with healthy diets tend to display less anti-social behaviour. She stuffs his schoolbag with tangerines and cartons of fruit juice every day. He doesn’t like apple juice: too sweet. He prefers water and eats salad at lunch, but his mum doesn’t believe him. Ayesha loves apple juice but is only allowed water, as her mother believes it is the only drink that will keep her skin clean and clear – and in a few years, when her mother finds her a good man, she will have to have clean and clear skin. Ayesha doesn’t mind, she knows her mother is just scared she will end up alone, like her. And besides, the thought of a good man is quite a nice one. This exchange of a water bottle for an apple juice carton amuses and pleases the two friends. It is secretive and disobedient, but it hurts nobody and once again shows how well matched they are, that they each have what the other needs. As Ayesha sips the juice through the straw, Zayd shows her the new game on his phone. It’s a brain training one – they usually are – to do with guessing long words from only two letters. Ayesha isn’t very interested but smiles when Zayd shows her that he is the top player in the region. Suddenly embarrassed at his boasting, Zayd quickly asks Ayesha to tell him about her comic. She begins to retell the story, becoming more animated as she goes along. Ayesha tells him how glad she is that for once it is a female superhero saving the day, that there isn’t a love story, that there isn’t even a main male character, which is rare. Ayesha hadn’t thought about it until she began to say this, but she realizes what a nice change it makes. Zayd asks to see this female superhero. Ayesha passes the comic over and Zayd looks at the muscly blonde woman with pale skin whose breasts pour out of the neckline of her superhero suit, and he raises his eyebrows, hands the comic back. Wouldn’t you rather have a superhero who looked like you? he asks her. Then he worries he’s overstepped the mark. These comics are precious to Ayesha – he doesn’t want to take away whatever magic she finds in them. But Ayesha nods. I’d never thought of it before, but, yeah, I guess that would be cool. Wouldn’t ever happen, though. You know that. Zayd wants to prove her wrong. He gets up and goes over to one of the computers, gesturing for her to follow. Ayesha laughs as he types female Muslim superhero into Google. Articles come up about young Muslim girls who have left the country to go and fight in foreign lands for organizations that are not thought of kindly. They read some of these, intrigued by the stories, the thought of even leaving the school gates unaccompanied unimaginable for them.

  Eventually Ayesha suggests clicking on images instead, and after scrolling through a few pages of heavily made-up eyes peeking out of a niqab, finally there it is: a leaked prototype of a new Marvel comics character, their first female Muslim superhero. Ayesha and Zayd high-five.

  The head teacher’s office seems so small with all these people standing around the sides. The head herself looks diminished beside these suited people who stare and never smile. Zayd and Ayesha sit in the middle, confused, unable to give the outsiders what they want. Nothing the two teenagers say changes the questions they’re asked again and again. Ayesha’s head spins with the words being fired at them – extremism, family, war, terror. And then they ask, Does your mother know? Ayesha begs them not to tell her mum about the comics. She won’t like them one bit, nor the fact that Ayesha buys them with her lunch money. One of the questioners laughs unsmilingly as he gets out two pairs of handcuffs, which glint in the sun shining brightly through the window of the office, making the headteacher’s face a blank circle of light. That is the very least of your worries, young lady, he says.

  “Recently there’s been a lot of talk from politicians and commentators about the importance of intrusive, presumptive policies such as the current Prevent strategy, obliging schools to report students who show any signs of being ‘vulnerable to radicalization’ to the police, without providing staff with proper training as to what these signs might be. Ayesha and Zayd are the loveable, inquisitive teenage characters who came to my mind when thinking about how these strategies negatively affect young people’s everyday lives and freedom.” Sabrina Mahfouz

  I BELIEVE…

  Neil Gaiman / Chris Riddell

  “I wrote this after the Charlie Hebdo murders. Watching people killing other people because they were scared of and threatened by ideas seemed so wrong that I thought I would write what I thought and felt. I sent it to Chris, and he took my thoughts and made something beaut
iful.” Neil Gaiman

  THE IMPORTANCE OF SCREAMS

  Christie Watson

  I’ve always loved airports. People’s faces. The emotion as they meet the eyes of a loved one. I like to imagine the stories: the son returning from a gap year, the grandparents from Australia seeing their grandchildren for the first time, a couple in love reunited after a work trip. I like watching the hugs, the kisses, the tears.

  My husband, Labi, and I wait at the back of a crowd, peeking through gaps. I hold his arm. Our eyes search for her, but she is nowhere to be seen. Heathrow arrivals hall. The August heat is visible. In front of us is a layer of men in suits with cardboard handwritten signs, followed by families huddled together; all looking expectantly at the doorway, where people mill out, tired-eyed, pulling cases or small children behind them. The airport is filled with chatter and shouting and babies crying. A stag party bellow out past us, all wearing black T-shirts with Magaloof 2016 printed on the front, and on the back a different name for each of them: Big Dog, Nobby, Bat Crazy. Everything rotates in and out, from the people to the smells: mustiness followed by sweat then bleach returning to mustiness. A toddler in a bright orange jacket weaves his way through his family’s legs, making patterns in the air. I watch him until his mum grabs his arm and pulls him towards her. Another child squeals loudly and chases his sister.

  When I first hear “Eeeeeeee, eeeeeeeeee!” I don’t recognize her voice, but Labi rolls his eyes – Here we go – and then we see a short old-woman version of him appearing through the doors. His mum is wearing a red curly wig that I’ve not seen before, and a thick winter coat. She clutches a plastic bag to her chest. A security guard is walking next to her pulling two large clacking cases that are wrapped in plastic.