Dalila

by Jason Donald

  Dalila watches the side of his head. Daniel, I am so sorry, she whispers.

  Fights would break out in the cells, Daniel goes on. Some prisoners were worse than the guards. It was as if they took the beatings put onto them and put it onto others. That’s how they survived. Everyone avoided these inmates.

  He breathes in deeply. He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs. For many months I shared a cell with this older man. His name was Absolom. When the guards dragged him back into the cell after questioning his feet were bleeding and his trousers were wet, just like every other man. Sometimes he was punched by other inmates or his food was stolen, but mostly he was left alone. I began to watch him. Absolom didn’t smile very often yet he spoke with this look in his eyes as if he was about to smile. It was more than humour. There was a quality about this man that made everything outside of him incidental. I wanted to be close to him.

  One day a fight broke out in a cell next to ours. A man was stabbed. Later that night the man died of his injuries. I sat next to Absolom and asked him what he thought of the night’s activities. He said they were just men scrambling to stay alive and in their efforts they kill each other. They hadn’t yet learned to lose, that is what he told me.

  To lose? asks Dalila, unsure if she had heard him properly.

  Yes, says Daniel. Absolom explained it to me like this, he told me, It is the fate of every being to lose. It will all gradually slip away. You might fight and struggle. You may even see great signs to prove the world has a different plan for you. You may assure yourself that you are the first ever to face such problems and you, alone, will be the first to conquer them . . . and then you will lose. You will lose track of your plans and you will lose hope. Your health will leave you, your family members will pass and, finally, you will also be gone. Everyone loses. It is the single truth of our lives.

  Absolom then said, Those who are strangers to this truth refuse to accept that their fate is identical to those pathetic creatures who have lost so much. We might think they hate people, but in truth they fear the suffering they see in others. And their fear diminishes them, it makes them aggressive. It turns them into monsters.

  Daniel turns to her with a stoic expression. Every day I think about Absolom, he says. His idea was very powerful. I remember when I first came to the UK. I worried about the change that was happening. Somehow, from somewhere, I was being fashioned into a new person. He gestures to all the people in the waiting room, and says, For people like ourselves, while we wait for our papers, something else is happening. The way we are treated is not for nothing. Believe me, I have seen this. The enforced idleness, the stress we must live under, all of it is an effort to reduce our lives, to hide us away, to keep us out of their offices or universities or hospitals. Most of all they want to remove us, to send us away. Why? Because our suffering frightens them. Because they see what we have lost. Because they refuse to accept that they are just like us.

  Another number bleeps across the screen. All faces gaze up. A mother and daughter stand up and go to the nearest booth to report.

  I sometimes even wonder if Ubuntu is really about loss, says Daniel. If we understand that we’re all losing, then we can sit with each other in our loss. We may find one another through what we share. This is the greatest gift of Ubuntu.

  When I think of Mr Erdem, I remember how he walked, continues Daniel. He carried himself with dignity. Always composed and courageous. Even in his loss, he chose how to be, moment to moment. This is what truly shaped him. His wife, his daughters, his friends, he will be carried in their memories. He will become part of their stories and help them choose the manner in which to face their own loss. In this way, our stories inform the stories of others, on and on till we form the Great Story. Do you see, Dalila? This is not how we survive. This is how we prevail.

  Dalila’s first job at the Solidarity Centre is to make hot drinks for everyone. She wants to make proper sweet tea, with hot milk and cinnamon and maybe ginger. But they don’t have a pan for the milk. All they have is an old kettle, tea bags, instant coffee, sugar and stained mugs. She sets about washing each mug properly in the tiny sink while the kettle boils. She takes a drinks order from everyone in the room and then opens the front door and asks the huddle of men sharing a smoke if they would like a drink too.

  With a teaspoon, she presses the tea bag against the wall of the mug, making the tea as strong as possible, and then she pours in a dash of cold milk. It’s the best she can do under the circumstances. She hands out the drinks and goes back to the sink to wash some cutlery while secretly watching people sip their tea and clutch their mugs to keep warm.

  Later in the morning she helps the volunteer with the mandala tattoo, Tracey, to sort through a new donation.

  This is all going to the Easterhouse flats, explains Tracey. But we need to sort it a bit first. Go through all these bags here and make three piles, women’s clothes, kids’ clothes and men’s clothes. Check there’s no mould on anything ’cause sometimes people just give us shite.

  When the clothes are sorted, Dalila helps Tracey and Abbi load the bags into a van. They also load up four boxes of tinned food, blankets, children’s toys and three bags of shoes.

  Let’s go, says Tracey, sliding the van door shut. She pulls the keys from her back pocket and gets into the driver’s seat. Abbi jumps in the passenger side and Dalila is about to ask if she can go with them when Phil comes outside and says, Dalila, sorry, are you busy just now?

  No.

  You see, thing is, we’ve got this gentleman who’s come in for the first time. He needs to fill in his registration form but his writing skills aren’t the best. We’re run off our feet and he’s been waiting an hour. I was wondering if you’d, you know, well, if you wouldn’t mind helping him fill it out?

  Ah yes, of course. Yes, I can do this.

  Great. You’d really be helping us out. Now, you’ll make sure you ask him all the questions listed here and then jot down his story. Make sure it’s all there.

  Okay. Yes, says Dalila, taking the clipboard and registration form. She follows Phil inside and he introduces her to the man.

  Dalila, this is Abit.

  They shake hands. Dalila sits down on the sofa beside Abit and rests the clipboard across her knees. She starts the interview with the basic questions and soon Abit is relaxed and talking freely, telling his story as she writes it down.

  Abit explains that nine years ago government soldiers attacked his village. The soldiers killed his family, burned everything. But he ran away. He was thirteen years old. The following day a small anti-government militia arrived at his village. They gave the survivors, who were sitting among the ashes, a choice. Either join the SPLA and fight against the corrupt forces of the Sudanese government or face execution.

  This was how he joined the war.

  Abit didn’t even have a weapon. He simply followed the militia, camped with them, and collected food from nearby villages as part of the war effort. They lived like this for a year and a half.

  When the fighting started, he huddled down and passed ammunition to anyone who had a gun. But their small band of rebels was soon overwhelmed and they were captured by government soldiers. Abit’s hands were tied behind his back. He was marched, with the few other survivors of his militia, to the nearest town. The town had no jail, nowhere to keep prisoners. In the houses, the windows had no bars, no glass.

  Abit pauses in the telling of his story and grins at Dalila. Me, he says, patting his chest, I am too, too clever for them. They don’t keep me. I run away. Abit chuckles and flings his arm out to show how far away he ran.

  By dawn the soldiers had caught Abit again. This time they didn’t put him with the rest of the boys. Instead, he was taken to a room furnished only with a wooden table.

  Those men, they put my arm like this, says Abit, and they take a nail gun. You know what is a nail gun?

  I know, says Dalila, cringing, but trying to keep her face straight.

 
They take a nail gun and put it like this, he says, shaping one hand like a gun and pointing it at the wrist of his other hand. They shoot two times, bah bah, through this part of me, he says, as he leans forward to show Dalila the scars on the side of his wrist where the nails penetrated both bones, pinning him to the table.

  He tells Dalila he vomited immediately. The soldiers left him there with one arm nailed down. The nails were too deep into the wood for him to pull them out with his right hand and because his bones were pierced, he could not rip though his flesh to free himself. He tried sitting down but there were no chairs and the table was too tall for him to sit on the ground and too heavy to push out of the room. The nails were side by side through his wrist, he couldn’t even swivel round to the other side of the table. So he stood, half slumped across the table.

  He stood like that for three days.

  His legs swelled up and his feet became painful to stand on. He watched the vomit dry out and become specks of half-chewed corn. Delirium set in. He spoke to his dead mother, who shouted at him and told him to Go out, leave, tend your goats. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t leave.

  When the soldiers came back they lifted his arm and hacksawed through the nails. He was too weak to walk and his fingers were going green, so they dumped him near a refugee camp.

  When I was better, smiles Abit, I run away from that place. After many months, I get a boat and arrive to Cyprus. Then I run away to Italy. After Italy, I run away to UK.

  The Home Office rejected his claim, stating that he should return to Cyprus and claim asylum there, since that was his point of entry into the EU. He was placed on Section 4 support and forced out of his hostel. That support has now stopped too because he refuses to report to Festival Court every day.

  They want to catch me, Abit says. Put me in those blue vans and send me away. But, me, I’m too clever. I move here, I move there, I sleep in the park.

  He smiles at Dalila, and for the first time she wonders if he is flirting with her. She writes the word DESTITUTE under the form heading Current Address.

  Abit winks and says, They not catch me. I run away.

  That evening, Dalila turns off the TV and sits replaying moments from her day in the silence of her flat. She sets a few potatoes on the stove and while she waits for them to boil she gazes across the city lights and the sparse stars above. One of the first assignments she had at college was to interview someone and write a report. She chose Muthoni’s aunt, an elderly widow who had sold fruit in the markets, raised five children, buried a husband, travelled to Uganda, worked in an orphanage and built a house, among many other jobs and adventures. As she pictures sitting under the trees with this old woman, the heat of the dappled morning sunshine comes back to her. She remembers Muthoni being impatient, wanting only to gather a few stories, write them up and pass the assignment. But Dalila had been really challenged by the instructions of her tutor. Listening is giving, their tutor had said. Give people time to invite you into their stories. And so she sat with pen and paper on her lap, spellbound by the stories of Muthoni’s aunt. It was a privilege to be there, to be invited into those private memories, to hear about her sufferings, her yearnings. It was one of the most intimate things Dalila had experienced. Days after she had handed in her assignment, she still carried those stories around inside her, feeling more connected to the old woman than Muthoni seemed to be.

  Dalila turns off the stove, drains the hot water and soaks the boiled potatoes in cool water. She brings salt and lemon to the table. Her mind replays Abit’s story from earlier in the day. She imagines him nailed to that table and sees again that odd smile on his face at the end of the interview.

  With a pinch, she dips some warm potato into the salt and lemon, and sits chewing, licking her fingers in the dimly lit kitchen. She liked Abit. Sitting next to him on that sofa, listening and writing, she could feel his story pass through her, yet at the same time it tethered itself to her, and her to him. It was a sense of being perfectly placed in the world.

  Her minds drifts to Abbi and then to Phil, as she eats some more potatoes. Phil has been so helpful to her, she thinks. Tomorrow she’ll go back to the centre, meet more people, listen to their tragic stories. This might be the way, she thinks. If she is ever to have a hand in this world, this might be it.

  Dalila returns to the Solidarity Centre most days. Sorting through clothes and making tea becomes her routine. Now and again she bounces a baby on her knee while the mother reports. She interviews newcomers and shows them how to sign into and out of the logbook. Phil teaches her how to type up the interviews into the database. She listens to the many complaints about housing. Broken windows, mould through the wallpaper, damaged plumbing, stinking carpets, broken heating, water dripping from the ceiling; the complaints come every day. She writes each one down, taking note of the name and address, and then emails the complaint directly to the responsible Housing Association. But still the complaints come. One woman, Nawal, comes to the centre for three days running. She enters the centre looking exhausted. Her oldest child immediately sits down on the carpet, opens a book and begins quietly colouring in while the baby in the pushchair cries and cries.

  Everything is still broken, says Nawal. Yesterday they didn’t come. It’s the same, the water is coming through the roof. The heat is broken. I cannot keep my children there. You must tell them again. Tell them to come today. Now.

  I emailed them yesterday, says Dalila, but I will tell them again.

  Have they still not fixed the leak? interrupts Phil.

  No. Nothing, says Nawal. It’s cold for three days, my children are getting sick.

  Godsake, says Phil. He phones the Housing Association and argues with them for twenty minutes. When he slams the phone down he tells Nawal, Okay, so they are coming this afternoon. Can you be at home from two to six?

  Yes, says Nawal, I will go home now. Thank you, Mr Phil. Thank you.

  As the evening draws in, Dalila pulls on her black puffer and beanie. She waves a goodbye to Phil as he chats on the phone and gives Abbi a shoulder-bump hug. Ducking under the half-closed shutter, she steps out into the still, cold air. Someone grabs her elbow, pulling her, and in the quarter of a second it takes for her to turn she assumes it’s Abbi or one of the volunteers, catching her before she leaves. Has she forgotten something? But as she looks back, the face of Markus appears behind her.

  Come, he says, we go. Back to work.

  What does he mean? she finds herself thinking, as she stands stunned and blinking, before the weight of recognition, of dread, lands on her. She pulls her arm in, but he doesn’t let go. She tries to yank her arm free, sets her feet and tugs again, harder, and then, as if of its own volition, her open palm push-punches Markus on the mouth. She rips free of the grip he has on her puffer jacket. But he’s quick. He snatches her wrist, pulls her in and locks his hand around her neck, shoving her against the wall, lifting her to her tiptoes. Her free hand fluster-flails about his face and she kicks, aiming for the groin but her basketball boot connects with his knee. He grunts as his balance falters but his fingertips dig deeper into her throat and she kicks again, kneeing him right in the chest. They break. Markus stumbles back. Dalila collapses against the front door of the centre, gulping air back into her lungs. She should be on her feet. She knows she has to get to her feet.

  Mr Kennedy will have you back at work, says Markus. I must bring you.

  My uncle? spits Dalila, scrambling to her knees. I don’t work for that pig.

  Now you do. You have debts.

  Markus rushes at her and Dalila screams, trying to get up and run, clambering right into Abbi.

  You okay, sister? says Abbi, glancing from her to Markus.

  Help, she shouts, her voice rasped and desperate. This man is—

  Markus lunges again, grabbing at Dalila’s jacket, but Abbi wedges between them. Hey! Hey, you don’t do that, shouts Abbi. He gets up into Markus’s face and the two of them edge into the street, glaring at each o
ther.

  If you are smart, you will step off, says Markus.

  Ayeee! Ha, ha, laughs Abbi, smoothing his hand down across his beard. What you will do, fat boy? You will rob me? You want to punch my face? Is already broken! Ha! Come. Do it, says Abbi, splaying his arms as he dances and taunts Markus further into the street. Maybe you want to kill my dead family? Too late, fat boy. So what you gonna do?

  Markus retreats further back, pulls out his phone and takes Abbi’s picture. He snaps photos of the centre and Dalila and Phil and two centre members who have come out to see what’s going on. Dalila instinctively turns her face from the violating little eye on his phone.

  People will come for her, Markus says, pointing at Dalila. And now they come for you, too.

  At this Abbi gets even more animated, stomping and war-dancing in front of Markus. I know fire and hunger and death, he shouts. But you? You only know chicken nuggets, baby boy. So, bring to me the Devil! It will be nice to see him again.

  Leave him alone, Abbi, says Phil, walking into the street. I’ve called the cops, they’re only blocks away. No need for you to get into trouble.

  As Abbi dances he flashes his splayed fingers in front of Markus’s face, making him flinch. In that instant, Abbi snatches the phone out of his hand and hurls it against the wall. Dalila ducks as bits of glass and plastic casing shatter against the wall above her. The phone splits, scattering onto the pavement by her feet.

  Abbi, that’s enough! shouts Phil. Just step back.

  Abbi and Phil stand in the street as Markus paces back and forth, each man waiting for the next move. Dalila’s urge is to run. Shifting round, crouched, so only her fingers and toes are on the wet pavement, she is ready to sprint but held by the thought that she might be safer with her friends.

  You better go, says Phil.

  Tomorrow I will come again, sneers Markus.