Sami's Silver Lining

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘Not really,’ I say, but Ms Winter smiles and says she saw the birthday card I made for Romy, and that she thinks I have talent.

  ‘You have to believe, Sami,’ she tells me. ‘You have to care – you have to have something to say. That’s what art is all about!’

  ‘I think so too,’ I say.

  ‘We saw the flyer for your exhibition at the art gallery in town,’ Lexie is saying. ‘It looks fantastic!’

  ‘What’s going on in the Middle East and Europe is perhaps the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time,’ Ms Winter says. ‘It’s huge, and yet we turn our faces away and pretend it isn’t happening. Well, it is happening – you know that better than anyone, Sami – and it won’t go away just because we’d like it to. I’ve had a good life, you know, but this … it keeps me awake at night. I want to help, and the only thing I could think of was to do something art-related … a sort of retrospective exhibition.’

  ‘With all the profits going to Footsteps to Freedom,’ Lexie says. ‘That’s awesome. I mean, just one of your paintings must be worth hundreds of pounds!’

  ‘Thousands, actually,’ Ms Winter says thoughtfully, pouring out tall glasses of lemonade. ‘One sold for sixty thousand last year. People seem to like them; I really don’t know why. The art world can be very fickle. But my agent has been asking me for some time now to put something together, old work and new, and this gives me the chance to do that. At least the exhibition will do something good, something practical.’

  ‘It really will,’ Lexie agrees.

  ‘Thank you for what you are doing,’ I say. ‘Footsteps to Freedom is the charity that helped to bring me to Britain. Without them, I don’t know what would have happened to me.’

  ‘Oh, Sami, that’s amazing!’ Ms Winter says. ‘I have to admit I first contacted them after meeting you at the library protest. I don’t know your story, of course, but there are so many young people just like you – lost, displaced, running from countries torn apart by war or famine. They didn’t ask for any of this. Perhaps, like you, they have lost their families. Footsteps to Freedom helps those children. It’s such a good cause!’

  She sighs, sliding chocolate brownies on to little side plates that are probably antiques. ‘Sit down, sit down, please.’

  We perch awkwardly on the paint-stained sofa, clutching the ice-cold lemonade and the cake.

  ‘The thing is,’ Ms Winter continues, ‘I’m going to need your help. This exhibition isn’t just about raising money – it’s about raising awareness too. I’m planning a private view to start things off, and I thought that if the band could play in the foyer of the gallery, perhaps, that would be wonderful! I can pay a small fee, but I know you’ll have to ask the others.’

  ‘We’ll do it,’ I say.

  ‘No problem,’ Lexie agrees. ‘And no fee. It’s for charity!’

  I squeeze Lexie’s hand, smiling. She knows how much this means to me, of course. I’d do anything in my power to support Footsteps to Freedom, to raise money, raise awareness. Playing at the private view is the very least we can do.

  ‘We might even be able to work on a new song,’ Lexie says, glancing at me. ‘If Sami wants to …’

  ‘I want to,’ I say. ‘That’s a great idea!’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘A song can do amazing things. Move mountains, change opinions, open hearts – make people care. I think a song can make people care better than almost anything else in the world.’

  ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Ms Winter exclaims. ‘I can’t imagine writing about it all would be easy, but if you could … well, I’d love that. You’ve already done so much, Sami. You really have had an impact on the local community – opened our eyes, made us see!’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I say. ‘That’s … good. I think!’

  We drink the pink lemonade and eat the brownies and thank Ms Winter for what she is doing, and it’s only when we’re in the hallway again, about to leave, that she drops her bombshell.

  ‘There is one last favour I’d like to ask of you, Sami,’ she says. ‘It’s not something I do very much any more. I tend to work mostly from my imagination now, but in this case I think it would give a real focus to the exhibition …’

  ‘What would?’ I ask.

  ‘I’d like to paint you, Sami,’ she says.

  14

  The Muse

  ‘You’re going to be immortalized by a famous painter,’ Lexie teases. ‘My boyfriend, the artist’s muse!’

  I laugh, because I never imagined I would be anybody’s boyfriend – yet here I am with my defrosted heart and all kinds of crazy ideas unfurling in my mind, ideas for a future I didn’t think I cared about. It looks like I do, after all.

  ‘I need to be at Greystones tomorrow at ten,’ I say. ‘What will my uncle say when I don’t turn up at the workshop? What will my girlfriend say when I fail to appear with flowers or chocolate bars?’

  ‘You never give me flowers!’ Lexie declares, in mock outrage, and I swoop down and pick a red poppy from the long grass. She puts it behind her ear and sticks her tongue out at me, and at that moment I know that in spite of everything that has happened I might just be the luckiest boy alive.

  ‘We have news,’ Lexie says when we arrive for band practice. ‘We’ve just been offered a gig on October the first, playing at the art gallery in town. Louisa Winter is having a private view for her exhibition – and all the proceeds from the paintings sold are going to a refugee charity, the one that helped to rescue Sami!’

  ‘Cool,’ Marley says.

  ‘It’s not paid then?’ Bobbi-Jo chips in. ‘I thought we were only looking for paid gigs? If we do things for free, people won’t value us!’

  ‘This is different,’ I say. ‘She offered to pay, but this is personal! Footsteps to Freedom are an international charity …’

  ‘You can’t let personal feelings get in the way of logic,’ Bobbi-Jo says scathingly. ‘If they’re an international charity, they can definitely afford to pay us. And if they can’t, that old artist lady definitely can – my dad says she’s probably a millionaire!’

  ‘Bobbi-Jo, that’s enough,’ Marley says. ‘Sami, mate, we’ll definitely do the gig. No charge. OK? Louisa Winter gives us our practice space for free. No way can we charge her, and that’s final!’

  ‘Thanks, Marley.’ I heave a sigh of relief. ‘The press will be there – TV too – maybe. It will be something good for us, I promise!’

  ‘I know, mate,’ he says. ‘We’ll do it.’

  Marley Hayes has a ruthless streak a mile wide, but beneath the ego he does care. He’s a complicated person, with kindness and arrogance battling it out inside him. Bobbi-Jo is a different case altogether. She’s determined to get her claws into Marley and hang on to his coat-tails for the rollercoaster ride to fame and fortune, and she doesn’t seem to care how many enemies she makes in the process.

  ‘We’re going to work on a new song specially for it,’ Lexie is saying. ‘Something with a refugee theme, to help raise awareness. Will you help?’

  ‘Of course I will!’ Marley says. ‘That’s great news! Exactly what we need. Something sad and dramatic?’

  ‘You’ll have your song,’ I promise him.

  ‘More tea?’ Ms Winter asks, pouring out a stream of a dark, woody brew that smells like bonfires into a chipped mug. ‘Do you want to rest for a moment?’

  In the background, a red vinyl-covered 1960s Dansette record player is crackling its way through a Kinks LP, and Ms Winter does a little dance with the mug of tea held high, before setting it down on a side table next to me.

  You might not think that standing still could be so exhausting, but after almost three hours of it I can assure you that it is. I sit down on an upturned wine crate and stretch my legs, roll back my shoulders, flex my fingers. I take a cotton handkerchief from my pocket and wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead.

  ‘Shall I open the window?’ Ms Winter asks. ‘Or put the fan on, perhaps? You must be baking. I do so want the
overcoat in the picture, though …’

  ‘I never take the overcoat off,’ I tell her.

  ‘You don’t? How interesting! Why is that, Sami?’

  I open my mouth to tell her that I can’t talk about this, but somehow different words slip out.

  ‘The coat was my father’s,’ I tell her. ‘He made it, back home in Damascus. It was a heavy coat to last through a hard journey, a European winter. It’s all I have left of him.’

  ‘Oh, Sami,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I shrug, reaching out to take the chipped mug of smoky tea.

  ‘It’s falling apart,’ I say, picking up a frayed edge of worn-out tweed. ‘Everything falls apart in the end, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Material things, yes,’ Louisa Winter agrees. ‘But the real treasures in this life are not material things. Memories, love, loss, courage, compassion – a lifetime of friends and family and little moments of magic, lost and found. Those things can last forever, in here …’

  She taps the centre of her chest, bony beneath today’s paint-stained denim overall.

  I nod, my heart beating hard. Every person carries those secrets, I realize. Everyone has a parcel of happy and sad inside of them.

  ‘You don’t need the coat to remember your father,’ Ms Winter says. ‘You’ll never forget him, coat or no coat. Am I right?’

  ‘You are right,’ I say, and some of the pain slides away from my shoulders, away from my heart.

  ‘Is the sketch working?’ I ask. ‘Is it good?’

  We have already tried four different poses. Three abandoned drawings made with charcoal on A1 Ingres paper now litter the studio floor, with the fourth still in progress.

  ‘Maybe,’ Ms Winter says, frowning. ‘Almost. But not quite. I want something strong, iconic. I want to show you striding across Europe in your tattered coat …’

  ‘Playing the flute,’ I say. ‘With the kids running along after me, like in one of the picture books the teachers had in Thessaloniki. The Pied Piper, I think. Little Amira in her mud-stained princess dress and broken fairy wings, Nazz and Joe, always together, always laughing …’

  ‘Did they come to Britain too?’ Ms Winter asks.

  I shake my head. ‘Joe got ill and was taken to hospital. It was pneumonia. He … he didn’t get better. Nazz disappeared after that. We never heard what happened to him. Amira … she didn’t talk much, didn’t eat much. She’d been separated from her family somewhere in Greece, and the sadness just ate away at her. She got sick too …’

  I sip tea from the chipped mug, tea that takes me back to places I never wanted to think of again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I never usually talk about it. Not to my social worker, not to Lexie, not to anyone.’

  ‘I can see why,’ Ms Winter says. ‘But it must be very difficult to hold all that inside you. Sometimes, talking can help.’

  I shake my head.

  It just wasn’t possible at the start to speak about the past, no matter what Ben, my social worker, said. My aunt and uncle have never pushed me to talk; they are endlessly kind and good to me, but they are quiet, reserved people with no time for counsellors or soul-baring.

  ‘Forget the past, Sami,’ Aunt Zenna once told me. ‘There is too much hurt there. You have to let go, move on.’

  Sometimes, though, the past creeps up on me unawares and I find my cheeks suddenly wet with tears, my heart so heavy I think it will break. I try to forget, but still I long for everything I have lost.

  ‘Have you tried putting it down on paper? Writing it down? Drawing it?’ Louisa Winter is asking me. ‘That could help. Some things cannot be buried, ignored. You must face it, Sami, acknowledge it. It’s a part of you. Don’t let the darkness eat away at you from within.’

  I nod, my throat burning with all the things I need to say and yet cannot.

  Across the studio, the Dansette record player crackles to a halt, and there is silence.

  I take the notebook from my pocket and hand it over to Louisa Winter, watch through a blur of tears as she reads my story.

  15

  A Story to Tell

  I go to the studio three more times in the space of a week.

  The Dansette record player ploughs through ancient LPs by The Beatles, the Small Faces, The Mamas & the Papas and, of course, Ked Wilder as Louisa Winter makes endless charcoal and pastel roughs, and finally a longer study in chalk and charcoal of me playing the flute. When the preliminary drawings and paintings are done, she takes photographs with an old-fashioned Polaroid camera – endless pictures from every angle.

  At first I feel vulnerable, way too visible after years of trying to hide, but after a while I learn to switch off and allow my mind to drift away. I’m back in Syria, playing football in the street, watching the stars on the roof with my dad’s arm wrapped round my shoulders. I’m in the camp on the Turkish border, watching the worry lines on my mother’s face etch deeper each day, seeing my little sister’s eyes fill up with fear. I’m in the camp on Kos, my heart broken into a million pieces, shivering in a tent in Thessaloniki with Nazz and Joe and Amira, walking through countries I never even knew existed until I had to cross them. I’m playing the flute, walking ahead while the little kids follow, wondering still if I am keeping them safe or leading them into danger and realizing I can never know for sure.

  The last time I go to the studio, the studies and Polaroids are pinned up all around us, and a huge stretched canvas waits, propped against one wall, the basic shapes already mapped out in thin sepia paint.

  ‘I have everything I need,’ Ms Winter tells me. ‘Thank you, Sami. You’ve been a wonderful model … you wear your heart on your sleeve. Or, to be more accurate, your eyes give away so much of what you’ve been through. I just need to shut myself away to capture it in paint now. That’s the difficult bit, and also the exciting bit!’

  ‘You don’t need me to model any more?’ I check.

  ‘No, no, you’re free again, Sami, with my very great thanks,’ she says. ‘I thought we’d just have one last cup of tea, one last chat. The thing is, I have a confession to make. The other day, when you left me your notebook to read …’

  I frown. I left the notebook with Ms Winter for a couple of hours that first day: the time it took to go to band practice. I collected it again on the way home, and it’s in my pocket now.

  ‘Yes?’ I say, watching the old lady pour tea, setting the mugs on a wine crate beside one of the paint-stained sofas.

  ‘Well, I suppose the best thing is to show you,’ she says, picking up a cardboard folder. ‘I was very moved by your pictures, your words. I wondered what those little ink sketches would look like outside the notebook, and I took the liberty of scanning a few.’

  She hands me a small print on heavy, cream-coloured paper: an image of tents from the camp in Turkey.

  ‘Imagine it in a small frame,’ she says. ‘Plain, simple, strong. Imagine your drawings and your words, stretching around one of the small rooms at the gallery, telling your story, Sami.’

  As she speaks, she hands me more sheets of paper: my mother and my sister in their life jackets; a boy walking alone along an empty beach beneath the stars; two boys grinning as they share a bowl of rice; a little girl dancing in a tattered princess dress, wearing broken fairy wings; a boy stitching ring pulls and sweet wrappers into the lining of his coat.

  Outside the notebook, away from the crowded pages, the images have a power and impact that even I can see. Could they really be framed, shared? Ms Winter shows me a couple of sheets with just words, setting the pages down, alternating them with images, to show how she’d display them.

  ‘Are you cross?’ she asks me. ‘I should have asked permission, I know, because these words and pictures are so very private and personal. But that’s why they hold such power – that’s why they matter. I hope you understand why I scanned them, but I promise I haven’t shown them to another living soul, and if you’re angry …’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I
say. ‘Just surprised. Amazed.’

  Ms Winter grins. ‘Oh, thank goodness!’ she says. ‘Because I think these images tell a story that has to be told, Sami. It has to be told and it has to be seen, and it would change people’s minds and hearts, change the way they see refugees. The question is, are you willing to do that? To share your work, let people see?’

  I frown. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘How …?’

  Ms Winter smiles. ‘My exhibition should pull in a good crowd,’ she says. ‘I haven’t shown my work for a long time; the critics will be interested, the public too. It’s a big deal for Millford’s art gallery, a big deal for the charity. And if we had a small room set aside for your work – the true story of a boy who survived one of the hardest journeys of our time …’

  I blink, still trying to make sense of it.

  ‘My work in an art gallery?’ I check.

  ‘If you are willing to let people see,’ she says.

  ‘Is it good enough?’ I ask. ‘Would they want it?’

  ‘I am certain they would want it, Sami,’ she tells me. ‘And yes, it’s certainly good enough. When the exhibition is over and things settle down a little, you and I will have a chat about art colleges. Because that’s something you should be thinking about, young man.’

  I shake my head. ‘I can’t … I just don’t know how. What if …’

  ‘What if I said I’d take care of it for you?’ Ms Winter says. ‘I’ll scan the words and the pictures, clean them up, print them out, get them framed. I’ll ask the gallery to set up a space for you, a side room or a small enclave within the main exhibition. I would be so very grateful, Sami. It’s what the exhibition needs to give it heart and soul!’

  My eyes blur, but I’m smiling as I wipe the tears away. I don’t think I have a choice, not really. I have to do this, for my father, my mother, my sister, for Nazz and Joe and Amira and all the others who didn’t make it. I have to do it, for all those still adrift, lost and desperate, on their own journeys.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I will.’