Ibrahim & Reenie

by David Llewellyn

  Later, there were tests and scans. He was given the address of a charity for those with brain injuries, and encouraged to attend meetings. He walked from one side of Cardiff to the other, a round trip of almost eight miles, and met others who’d been injured. With some, the injuries were clear; their scars unmistakeable. Others had been left with no outside clue to the damage done, but damaged speech, or their personalities dismantled and carelessly reassembled. At first, Ibrahim refused to believe he was like these people, these clearly damaged people, but then the results of many tests came back.

  The scar was so small it would be invisible to the naked eye, they said. It was in the right prefrontal cortex of his brain, and just a fraction of a millimetre in length, but into that microscopic abyss his empathy, the very thing that won him so many red ballpoint ticks in school, had vanished.

  He spent hours looking at computer simulations of the brain, studying the canyons of the frontal lobes. The experts never mentioned the soul, but Ibrahim was sure that if there was such a thing you’d find it there, buried deep inside that soft grey jelly. Only now he understood that the soul was neither immortal nor indestructible. It was just as mortal, just as fragile, as every other part of a man. You can lose your soul, the thing that makes you human, and yet carry on living.

  The next time he saw Amanda was six months after the moment when he had no real answer for her, and even then it was only through chance. Their paths crossed on Ninian Road, as he walked home from the park. She stopped and talked to him, but the conversation stalled more than once, the silences drawn out and uncomfortable. He spent much of it looking at his shoes and the pavement, and Amanda smiled falsely; a crumpled, sad, defeated smile. She told him she was moving away after graduation, to London at first, then maybe Paris for her masters. He remembered dimly how they’d discussed visiting Paris some day – he wanted to see Notre Dame, she wanted to visit the Louvre – but they never did.

  She looked so beautiful that day, but in looking at him what could she have seen but something empty, a sketch of what he’d been before?

  They parted with a muted, solemn goodbye, and he said ‘See you later’, though he knew even then he wouldn’t.

  There had been no one since. By the summer when he should have graduated, his university friends had fanned out into the world, back to their hometowns or on to other cities. Ibrahim came to view the world beyond his flat as one of danger and hostility. He no longer understood other people, and it was clear other people didn’t understand him. He lost nothing by shutting out the world.

  Walking through Gloucester that night was a stark confirmation of this belief. It was a student night, he guessed. The crowds queuing up to get into bars and pubs looked young; seventeen, eighteen, not much older. Girls in tiny skirts staggering zigzags down the high street, heels like castanets against the paving slabs. Gangs of men in a standardised uniform of checked shirts, jeans and brown shoes bellowing tuneless, incoherent anthems. The gutters filled with polystyrene trays and plastic forks. On a Thursday night in Gloucester they were singing songs made unrecognisable by karaoke microphones and dancing in garish lightning storms of dry ice and disco lights.

  This was what he and his friends had hated most of all. The oblivion. No self-control, no self-respect. Just noise. Acting like beasts and dressing like whores. Pissing and puking in the streets. Poisoning themselves and dirtying themselves with such intent. It was hard to believe they weren’t doing it on purpose, a strategic insult to God, who had given them their bodies and their lives, the ultimate gift, only to be repaid in drink, piss and puke. It made sense to them, to Ibrahim and his friends, that these people could rain bombs on foreign cities without compunction.

  There were no innocent civilians in a culture like this.

  Moving from London had shifted his view. Meeting new friends from outside the community, realising they weren’t the mindless, complicit kuffar of his East London friends’ tirades. They drank, smoked weed and partied like any other teenagers. They were, in many ways, everything he’d been taught to hate. But they were his friends. And with Amanda, she was so different from the girls he’d known before – the veiled, unavailable sisters who helped them campaign; too fervent, too involved to be thought of in that way. It didn’t take long for him to realise he loved these new friends, loved Amanda, precisely because they weren’t like the friends he’d had before.

  Even so, after however many years had passed, a high street bustling with drunks still left him feeling an outsider, and an indignant one at that. He was glad to reach the far end of the high street, to leave the music and the noise of pubs and clubs behind him.

  With the evening getting darker, he navigated his way across the city, walking around the edges of a vast industrial estate, until he came to the long path running parallel to a dual carriageway. The path cut in two, studded by orange patches of light. Overhanging trees. A white railing blistered with rust.

  He heard the five men before he saw them; heard their voices, loud and raucous, laughing and cheering. The sound of an empty can thrown to the ground. He saw their silhouettes coming out of the orange light, five dark shapes; wraiths of smoke trailing behind two of them. Orange cigarette tips floating in the shadows, growing brighter when they inhaled. Another puff of smoke. He heard their footsteps. Hard shoes, formal shoes, the kind of shoes that would get them past surly nightclub doormen. But they were still silhouettes, and they remained silhouettes until they were almost upon him, and he saw their faces, and their eyes were all fixed on him.

  He veered to the right, to step out of their way, but the man on the far side of the group moved at the same time and when passing clipped Ibrahim’s shoulder with some force. There was no mistaking the intention behind it.

  ‘Oy. Look where you’re fucking going.’

  But he had looked where he was going, made a conscious effort to look where he was going. He had stepped out of the way, and still found himself in their path.

  He looked back at them. ‘Sorry.’

  The five men stopped walking.

  ‘What you fucking say to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ibrahim, this time a little louder.

  ‘You fucking staring at me?’

  There was no answer to that. He was looking at him, yes, but only because he was being spoken to. What answer was he meant to give?

  ‘He is, Si,’ said one of the others. ‘Look at the way he’s looking at you.’

  Ibrahim shook his head and carried on walking.

  Drunks. Just drunks. Mouthing off. Confident with their mates around them. Walk away. They’ll get bored with this.

  ‘Oy. Don’t you fucking turn your back on me.’

  Oy. That word again. He hated that word, more a grunt than a word, but he carried on walking. If he carried on walking maybe they’d just shout something – an insult, a vague threat – and go on their way, leave him alone.

  ‘Are you fucking deaf? I said don’t turn your fucking back on me, you fucking Paki.’

  He bit his lip. They wanted him to turn around, wanted him to react, but he wouldn’t. He carried on walking.

  ‘Where you from, anyway?’

  The voice was louder, now, and closer. He heard footsteps again, not just one set but the sound of all five men coming towards him. If he hadn’t walked twenty miles that day, if his right leg wasn’t throbbing with pain, he would have run. Forget shame. He would run away from them and not stop running until they gave up.

  ‘I said… Where. Are. You. From.’

  ‘London.’

  ‘London, eh?’ said the man, and Ibrahim could hear the sneer in his voice. ‘You don’t look like you’re from London. London’s in England, mate. You English?’

  There was no right answer to this, but they didn’t want an answer, or if they did, they didn’t care what it was.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to get to my hotel, so leave it out.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  He stoppe
d walking. He was tired. His heart beat at a gallop so intense he could feel it in his throat, and his mouth was dry. ‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ he said.

  ‘Look at the way he’s looking at you, Si.’

  The first man, the one who’d clipped Ibrahim’s shoulder, stepped forward.

  ‘Why don’t you just fuck off home to Paki-Land,’ he said. ‘This isn’t your fucking country.’

  The blow came from nowhere, and a dark kaleidoscope erased his memory of it. It took a second or two for him to realise he’d been punched, and when he felt something trickling down the left side of his face, Ibrahim’s first thought was that maybe the man’s hand was wet, and there was a split second’s dazed revulsion when he thought maybe that hand had been drenched in a drunk man’s piss, but when he put his hand to his face his fingers came away red.

  The second punch smashed into his nose with a crunch that seemed to echo in his head, like the splintering of a tree being felled, and his limbs were unstrung. He fell to the ground, landing awkwardly on his backpack, and something – the sharp toe of a shoe – hit him in the ribs and in the side of his head. The sound of the other four cheering on their friend grew faint, drowned out by a high-pitched whine and the thunder of his own pulse. Each new blow sounded as if it were being delivered under water.

  Ibrahim curled up into a ball, his arms around his head, knees tucked in as close to his chest as he could get them, and he had a single thought as dark and final as any he’d ever had.

  Maybe this won’t end.

  And now the pain was coming through, as the fog of adrenalin began to clear. He felt his body being pummelled from all sides – there was more than one man kicking him now – as if the whole world had closed in and was mauling him.

  Maybe this won’t end.

  The air kicked out of his lungs. The taste of copper on his tongue. Something gritty (bits of broken teeth?) floating around in his spit.

  Maybe this won’t end.

  A final, sharp blow to his back, then a moment of quiet. The ringing in his ears faded, and he heard the traffic on the dual carriageway, and their footsteps getting quieter. When he dared to open his eyes again he saw the five men walking away, and he heard them laughing.

  He waited until they were gone before sitting up, and he spat a mouthful of blood onto the path. His body tingled in the aftermath of violence, different morse codes of pain ringing out from his torso and limbs. It took an effort to stand, an even greater one for him to walk. He placed his hand over the ruptured flesh of his eyebrow, and felt fresh blood leaking out between his fingers. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.

  The path ended where it met with a busy road, and further along he saw the large illuminated sign of the hotel. If he could just get that far. But what then? If he staggered, bleeding, into the hotel, then what? They might call for the police, or an ambulance, and he couldn’t go to hospital, or rather he wouldn’t go to hospital. If he could just stop the bleeding, he’d be fine. Rest a little, carry on. No need for hospital. No need for the nurses’ practised sympathy and the doctors’ arch concern. And the police. What would he say to the police? They were five gore, dressed like every other gora he saw tonight. And what was he even doing here? A long way from either city he’d call home, and if he told them he was walking to London they would think him mad.

  His left eye was closing up, the flesh around it swelling and pushing his eyelids shut. When he touched his face the skin felt distended and spongy, obliquely numb, as if it weren’t his own. He felt a rising nausea and a dizziness, the orange lights at the roadside dancing like sparklers around a bonfire. The weight of his backpack drew him to the ground, pulling him back, and he landed heavily, rolling onto his side. His mouth filled up with more blood and spit, and the congealed blood inside his nose turned every breath into a rattle. Though it was late summer and the day had been warm, he felt a crystal cold creep through his limbs, and he passed out.

  14

  ‘¿A cuántos kilómetros está Madrid? How many kilometres to Madrid.’

  ‘A cuantos… a cuantos kilometros esta Madrid.’

  ‘¿Dónde están las tiendas? Where are the shops.’

  ‘Donde esta… estan las… las tiendas.’

  ‘Oiga, por favor. ¿Para ir al aeropuerto? Excuse me. How do I get to the airport.’

  ‘Oy… oiga por favor. Fabor. Para… ir al…’

  ‘Quiero una habitción con dos camas para tres–’

  Natalie hit the stop button with her thumb and shook her head. That was enough for one night. She was tired, her concentration failing. She could focus on the road, or she could listen to Spanish Made Simple, the CD whose tutor spoke with too sensual and soporific a voice for this time of night.

  ‘¿Dónde están las tiendas?’ She said, to no one but herself, and with a greater degree of confidence than she had when answering the sultry, seductive voice of her faceless tutor.

  And what did this woman actually look like? She pictured an olive-skinned beauty with long black hair; raggedy skirt reaching her ankles and a crumpled white blouse tied around her breasts, exposing a smooth brown stomach. The kind of curvy, buxom woman who’d launch into an impromptu flamenco at the single clack of a castanet. Probably looked nothing like that. She might be plain, or even ugly. Perhaps she was pale-skinned, with hair the colour of damp straw; all bony, boyish shoulders and no tits.

  The CD was a gift of several Christmases ago, and it had languished at the bottom of a box, half-forgotten, for years. Since then the box had moved around – from cupboard to dark corner beneath bed and back to cupboard, a different cupboard, again – but the CD hadn’t left its case until now.

  Now it was a part of the new Natalie, one of many ingredients that would go into making a new, improved Natalie; one ready to take on the world, meet new challenges, try new things; such as learning a foreign language.

  Was that a cliché, the kind of thing people in her situation did? Reinvent themselves? She reminded herself this wasn’t reinvention, it was self-improvement. There was a difference.

  And so she took the CD from its case, making sure it was the only CD in her car, and began listening to it during every journey; to and from work, to and from the shops. She’d even tried listening to it during the night, in the belief that some Spanish might seep into her brain via a kind of nocturnal osmosis, but found it simply kept her awake.

  A friend told her there were classes, night classes, at a primary school near where she lived. ‘They do everything,’ this friend said. ‘Spanish, French, German…’ But Natalie wouldn’t go. She pictured herself sitting in a classroom, on the tiny, plastic classroom furniture, and embarrassing herself before a room of adults, people her age, all of them watching her, waiting for her to slip up. Here, in the relative privacy of her car, where other motorists might think she was talking to someone on her phone, hands free, she could repeat each line with a wavering, irregular confidence; invest her all in mimicking the tutor’s Iberian purr. In a room full of her peers she knew she would fail, that the words would fall out in that Gloucestershire drawl she’d spent a lifetime trying to mask, that she would sound like yet another sunburned, monoglot Brit on holiday.

  ‘Dondee esta la player, pour favor?’

  This shouldn’t have been so difficult. Her grandfather was Italian. Picking up another language, just as he had done, should have been second nature, a genetic memory. Why couldn’t she just stop being so bloody English?

  It had been an ambition of hers for some time, learning a foreign language. She dreamed of walking into a bar or restaurant in Barcelona or Madrid, placing her order in flawless Castilian. Then, all the shame of her upbringing – so very, tediously British and introspective – would evaporate. Many of her colleagues, fellow nurses, were from such interesting places. West Indians, Africans, Filipinos. She was grateful, sometimes, for that quarter of her that wasn’t Anglo-Saxon.

  And what a story that was. Captured in Sicily. Brought to Britain as a POW. Met a lo
cal girl and married. Settled in England. Lived happily – well, pretty much happily – ever after. What did Natalie have to compete with that? Four (disastrous) years in London. A few foreign holidays. She’d once had four numbers on the lottery. Once saw George Clooney standing outside Fortnum & Mason’s. At least, she thought it was him. It looked like him.

  Those colleagues of hers, they could tell some stories. The kind of things you can’t quite imagine, things you’ve only ever seen on the news. And when they talked about Gloucester it was with a strange fondness that was endearing and sad at the same time. Natalie had spent much of her life thinking it a dead-end town – pretty enough, but provincial, twee and insular; in a way, a microcosm of the whole country.

  To hear people who’d survived civil wars and massacres describe Gloucester – grey and dowdy old Gloucester – you’d think it was paradise. The kind of place you’d run to, rather than from. It made her realise just how spoiled she was. Not just spoiled as in affluent, but spoiled for choice, spoiled for offers, for promises. Spoon fed stories of success practically from birth, all those images of celebrity, wealth and glamour. Against all that – all those rooftop bars, indoor swimming pools, gala openings and parties that made the society pages in the paper – Gloucester never quite cut it. If you hadn’t come to it from a place of horror, Gloucester was average, nondescript. Famous for nothing but cheese and serial killers.

  It hadn’t seemed so bad when she was with someone. Then it was easy to look at the city with charitable indifference; neither its biggest fan nor its greatest critic. Now she found herself noticing everything, every flaw, every shortcoming. Time had slowed right down. Days became long. Being with someone, sharing her life with someone, burned time so effectively. Afternoons spent doing little passed quickly. A whole weekend could be structured around the smallest thing, a sunny afternoon’s daytrip. Now she was alone, a weekend away from the hospital had become a vast desert of time, bleak as a salt plain beneath an unforgiving sun; something approached with dread and apprehension.