The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  About an hour later, a beautiful yellow-haired girl smiled at Avtar as if she’d been waiting the whole day just for him to walk into the college registration office. She looked like one of those white girls that used to come on the television, selling Sunsilk or Amla Shampoo. He managed a weak smile and tentatively presented his folder. He hoped he’d removed all the grass stains.

  ‘Welcome to North-West,’ she said, unclipping the folder, going through his papers. ‘Computing with Security Systems. I hear that’s a good course.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Avtar said, just about understanding.

  She asked him where he was from and he said India, and then she said they had him down as making his own accommodation arrangements, and he said that, yes, that was true.

  ‘Not a long way, I hope?’

  ‘Ilford?’ He showed her the address Massiji had written down for him.

  ‘Lots of early starts if you want to make your nine o’clocks, then!’ She laughed, which permitted Avtar to laugh too.

  She photostatted his visa and passport and Avtar watched her filing the copies into a metal cabinet. She handed him various things: maps, a student union application form, an events listing, his timetable, a pass with his name and picture on it – to give him access to the Mathematical Sciences building, she explained. All this he gathered into his folder, thanking her, keen to leave before they reneged and shipped him back home.

  ‘There is a strong college Indian Students’ Society, which does a lot of good work helping students adjust to – ’ she struggled for the word. She seemed to want to avoid saying England – ‘a new approach. They’re still open. It’s just down the corridor if you’re interested.’

  He thanked her again, inadvertently bowing his head a little, and turned to leave. He couldn’t believe it had been so easy. No interview, no questioning, no police. At the exit, he thanked her once more, only to catch her staring at the cracked heels of his naked feet. He felt suddenly embarrassed and, clearly, so did she.

  ‘It’s just down the corridor,’ she said again, pointing.

  The corridor – an open-air walkway, really – was a low corrugated roof protecting a slabbed concrete floor. To his left were doors and classrooms, while the right opened onto a half-empty car park. There were several squat buildings: Materials and Metallurgy, Blocks 3F to 4B, the Tony Baker Building. So this was a real college. He imagined impossibly clever people in spectacles behind each of those doors, being groomed for a rich and employed future. And here he was, amongst them. If his parents could see him now. Behind him, a voice called out, ‘Hello?’ An apna, Avtar knew, before he’d even turned around. A plumpish middle-aged Indian, in fact, in woolly, dark-coloured clothes. His round glasses balanced on top of his shaved bald-grey head.

  ‘Ji?’ Avtar said.

  ‘Foreign students should come see us.’

  Avtar tracked back and followed the man into a classroom plastered floor to ceiling with detailed maps of India and huge images of students on elephants. Across the wall ran a banner: NWL IndiSoc Back to Roots Annual. The desks were arranged into a horseshoe, as if for a meeting. The man sat down and started pulling out great sheaves of paper from a nearby cabinet.

  ‘First day? . . . Please sit.’

  Avtar didn’t.

  ‘I’m Dr Amarjit Singh Cheema. General Secretary of the International Society here at NWL. Of which IndiSoc is one part. We offer foreign students support and guidance. Language courses. Visa advice. Accommodation tips. Pastoral care. Et cetera et cetera.’

  Finally, the doctor seemed to find his papers and slapped them on the desk and looked up at Avtar.

  ‘We have an excellent mentoring programme.’

  Avtar nodded, smiled. He wanted to get out of here. This man was an Indian and a doctor to boot. He’d work out everything. ‘I’ll come tomorrow, thank you.’

  There was a pause, and something like a question mark appeared in the man’s face. Avtar could feel himself being studied, filleted.

  ‘The annual fee is very reasonable,’ the doctor said, but the tone of his voice seemed to convey something altogether different. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked, switching to Panjabi.

  ‘Amritsar.’

  ‘Your elders?’

  ‘Nijjar.’

  The man’s face softened pleasantly. ‘My mother’s people are from there. So you’re Doabi?’

  Avtar nodded, said ji, Chachaji, and the doctor laughed.

  ‘Nice, very nice.’

  He put the lid on his pen and closed the door and told Avtar to sit, and this time he did.

  ‘How much did it cost you?’

  Avtar looked down to his knuckles.

  ‘Listen, I’m Indian. I might have been born here but I’m Indian and I want the people of my country to prosper.’

  So Avtar told him and the doctor nodded and asked Avtar what course he was doing and whether he intended on actually doing any of it or if he was just going to disappear like most of them did.

  ‘I’m here to work.’

  ‘But there is no work. It’s drying up. Pfft!’

  ‘I’ll find something.’

  ‘You kids . . .’ He sighed, and, removing his glasses, rested his chin on interlocked hands. ‘Work, by all means. But you’ll be in a much stronger position if you also pass your first year. Then the college will protect you. But if you fail . . . Well, the college will kick you out and you’ll have no choice but to disappear. And for how long can you really hide?’ He advised Avtar to keep up with the course. He might not be able to make the lectures – he understood that – but he should definitely improve his English and get the textbooks from the library: ‘They’re free. Think of the long term, Nijjara. If you leave here with a diploma, just think what you could do back home. If you’re lucky, you could even stay and bring your family over. You shouldn’t waste this chance.’

  They had a cup of tea – with cloves and fennel and elaichi – and the doctor listened as Avtar told him the story of how his grandparents had moved from tiny Nijjar to Amritsar city. Until recently, his papa used to take the family back there every summer. Avtar had always liked the bull races best.

  ‘Do they still happen?’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘Ha! My mother still talks about them. You should come to our house. Mataji will light up when she knows someone from her village is here.’

  ‘How often do you go back, sir?’ Avtar asked.

  ‘Me? Oh no, no, no. I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to, but with one thing and another . . . And the kids weren’t ever interested.’

  ‘Life is busy here,’ Avtar offered.

  The doctor made an agreeable sound and his gaze shifted away from Avtar. For a long while he stared at the large bookcases beside the whiteboard, at the ordered ranks of books upon books upon books. A lifetime of them. He looked back at Avtar and smiled sadly.

  Avtar received by post three waxy-paged and thickly dog-eared computing texts. Dr Cheema had also included books on learning English, with accompanying CDs. Attached to the package was a note saying that Avtar was to remember their chat and be sure to visit him and his family at their home once he was settled in. Avtar folded the note and slipped it into an elasticated pouch on the inside of his suitcase. He couldn’t imagine someone being as helpful to a newcomer in his own country. He ran his hand over one of the textbooks, over the laminated image of lightning bolts forking wildly out from a computer screen. He was sitting at the kitchen table in Massiji’s house. Randeep was sleeping a few feet away on the sofa. He opened to the first page and began to read.

  He studied for two hours every morning, rarely getting further than a few paragraphs. By seven, Massiji would be downstairs preparing for her shift at the 24-hour supermarket. She’d make them a breakfast of paratha with achaar, and foil-wrap some more to keep them going for the day. Not long after, they tidied away their blankets and left the house too, before Jimmy bhaji and Aki pehnji woke up.

  Doctor Cheema had been right: work really was drying up.
In two weeks the closest they’d come to finding anything was a half-hearted promise from a Muslim cash-and-carry owner who said he’d keep them in mind for the Christmas rush. They’d already exhausted the streets of Ilford, Barnet and Poplar in their search, and following a tip from an aunty-type shopkeeper they’d even spent two days traipsing around Southall and Ealing, and then Hounslow, looking for some phantom gurdwara she said was being built.

  ‘She must’ve misunderstood,’ Avtar said, as they got off the bus at Ilford.

  They waited on the concourse, on a bench, until they were certain Massiji would be home. Randeep seemed withdrawn. Avtar wondered if it was his cousins, and how they were always avoiding him. Or maybe it was his father. Last night, on the cheap mobile phone Massiji had bought them, Lakhpreet said that he’d had ‘an episode’. Should he ask Randeep about it? It might help. In the event, Randeep got there first.

  ‘Your father’s quite old, isn’t he? I remember him now. Total white hair. Very slow on the stairs.’

  ‘That’s him,’ Avtar said, a little irked at the description.

  ‘A nice man. He made the bus driver wait for me once because my suitcase was heavy.’

  Avtar smiled into his jacket, imagining the scene. ‘Yeah. He’d do that.’

  Randeep turned, stared. ‘You miss him,’ he diagnosed.

  ‘Oh, I miss everything. Why?’ he went on, passing it over, ‘Do you miss your father?’

  Randeep looked away, blinking, and Avtar regretted the question.

  The sun had almost set, and they watched as another busload set out from the concourse.

  ‘Any paratha left?’ Randeep asked.

  Avtar showed him the foil balled up in his fist. ‘Have you called those numbers Vakeel Sahib gave you?’

  ‘There was only one,’ Randeep said. ‘It’s too far.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He said Scotland.’

  ‘How far’s that?’

  Randeep shrugged. Avtar walked over to the fag-holed timetable on the lamppost. Birmingham. Bristol. Derby. Edinburgh. Glasgow. Gravesend. Leeds. Manchester. Newcastle. Wolverhampton. But no Scotland.

  ‘It’s not on there,’ he said, sitting back down.

  ‘Because it’s too far.’

  ‘But if that’s where the work is . . .’

  They waited another half an hour and returned to the house. The daughter, Aki, was in the kitchen, pouring hot water from a kettle into a white plastic pot. It looked like noodles.

  ‘We have noodles in India, too,’ Randeep said.

  She frowned, nodded, sat down to eat. Randeep wondered if it would be rude to ask if they might have some. Probably, yes, but not as rude as not offering some in the first place. Perhaps it was the effect of being brought up without a father. She glanced across to him and abruptly got to her feet and went upstairs, taking her noodle pot with her and muttering something about Pakis always fucking staring.

  Massiji arrived late, with a paper bag of courgettes which she stewed into a quick sabzi for the boys. They ate two, three, four rotis, and for dessert a thickened-up bowl of milky semiya.

  ‘All that walking around must make you hungry.’

  ‘It tastes so good. Like home.’

  ‘Better than home,’ Avtar said.

  ‘Bas karo. I’m happy simply to have children to cook this for.’

  Jimmy came thundering down the stairs in his tan stud-rind boots and reached for his leather jacket.

  ‘Are you going out, too?’ his mother said, in a voice disappointed and exasperated.

  ‘Just to the pub. Won’t be long.’

  ‘Your sister’s already gone. Why don’t you two spend some time with your cousin and Avtar? They look for work all day and have to sit here getting bored by me all night.’

  Randeep protested – they weren’t bored, Massiji, that wasn’t . . .

  ‘They’re eating,’ Jimmy said, as if they weren’t sitting just across the room.

  ‘They’ve finished,’ Massiji said, and there was a strained look on Jimmy’s face as he failed to summon a comeback.

  Randeep and Avtar stood awkwardly at the bar, holding pints of cola up by their necks while Jimmy shot pool with his friends. Aki had been there too, but led her friends out as soon as she saw the boys enter. ‘PMS,’ Jimmy had said and Randeep had looked at Avtar, who’d shrugged.

  Avtar wondered if this place was like that 1771 club in Jalandhar, with its secret upstairs gambling room. It didn’t seem to be. He couldn’t see any stairs, for one thing. Just lots of tables and around the tables lots of friends and couples of all different colours laughing and drinking. Women laughing and drinking. Indian women freely laughing and drinking. He imagined some impossible future in which he and Lakhpreet were settled with good jobs in Ilford and coming here together after a long week at work. The thought was funny. He sipped his drink.

  ‘I’d never let my sisters come here,’ Randeep said, because this was horrible. This was dirty and vulgar and he could feel the smoke sinking into his clothes. He was glad Jimmy had told him not to wear the tie.

  A young black man appeared beside Randeep at the bar, waving a note to get the barman’s attention. Kaleh, Massiji said, were everywhere in Ilford, and the first time the boys saw one walking towards them they’d fallen silent, until the man passed by and Randeep whispered how frightening they looked. But he’d never seen one up close, right here beside him, like now. Their skin was so smooth, he thought. Not a blemish, no variation in tone, as if a machine had played some part in it all. He wondered how it would feel to touch. And that hair too. Like it had been stitched onto his head with silver thread. The man turned towards Randeep, a hard look in his eye. Randeep smiled, tight-lipped, edging a little closer to Avtar. Secretly, he watched the black man pay for his drink and rejoin his black friends at another pool table.

  ‘They’re fast, hain na? All the good runners are kaleh. Do they have their own language? Like ours is Panjabi?’

  Avtar said he didn’t know, though they seemed to be speaking English.

  ‘Look how smooth their skin is. Why is that?’

  Jimmy left his game of pool to ask if they needed a top-up. ‘Sure you don’t want a knock?’

  Randeep asked if he knew any kaleh and what they spoke and ate and why their skin was so smooth.

  ‘Black don’t crack. E-vo-loo-shun, innit. Thought Mum said you were clever?’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Like?’

  The black man bounded over, his eyes bulging monstrously. ‘You got some beef with me, man?’ He was pointing, his face inches away.

  Randeep lurched back, shaking his head.

  ‘You dotting me for time. Dot me to ma face.’ He stepped closer. ‘To ma fuckin’ face.’

  Avtar moved Randeep behind him, protecting the kid, and Jimmy placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘He’s fresh man, fresh. Lights out.’

  ‘Nang that. This Simon sidepart simpleton . . . What, we taxed your fucking Co-op?’

  ‘Allow it, nigger. He’s learning. The rents were freshening up one day gone. Yours and mine. Same ends now, though, right? Same fucking drum. Right?’

  A pause, then a chin-jut. ‘Standard, standard.’

  ‘Hectic,’ Jimmy said, emphasizing the syllables. He turned his back to the man and slurped the foam from his beer. This seemed to be some sort of message because the black man nodded and he and Jimmy touched fists, which Randeep thought must be an agreement to fight later.

  On the walk home, Randeep was still shaking, his lips trembling. ‘I’m just cold.’

  ‘I don’t know why you freshies stare so much, man. Might be all right back home but it’s proper rude here, you know? People get really offended.’

  ‘Sorry, bhaji.’

  ‘Allow it. And don’t look so . . . so defensive all the time. It gives you guys away like shit in a shoe. The way you lot stand close to the edge of the platform, eyes fixed on where the train’s coming from. The way you quickly take a lo
ok at everyone on the bus as you walk down the aisle. The way you stand so straight, as if your ankles are tied together. Spot you guys a mile off. Just chill,’ he finished, drawing out the word.

  The boys nodded, not really questioning why these were things they ought to be trying to hide. Avtar had thought it was his clothes, his hairstyle, his sockless feet that had given his foreignness away to Dr Cheema. But it seemed alongside the cosmetic changes there was a whole system of other things to correct.

  All night he heard Randeep rustling about on the other settee: smacking his pillows, throwing his blankets on and off, sometimes facing the room, sometimes not.

  ‘Arré, these things happen, yaar. Don’t dwell. Go to sleep. And for God’s sake let me sleep as well.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that. I’m hot-cold. I might not be well.’

  Avtar sighed and brought the blanket over his head.

  ‘I think I will ring that Scotland number tomorrow,’ he heard Randeep say.

  Somehow, Avtar kicked the blankets off at five o’clock for his two hours of study. He sat on a dining chair, the plastic clammy against his thighs, and set about untangling the wires of his headphones. He’d do an hour of Better English and then an hour of his course.

  The sky was turning light grey and Avtar was still muttering along to his CD, as Aki came through the front door. He lifted away his headphones and let them hang around his neck. She’d been saying something to him.

  ‘Hahn ji?’

  There was a liquid look in her face, as if she was struggling to coordinate eyes, mouth and brain, and – Avtar now noticed – her feet seemed to be constantly adjusting themselves. He felt an immediate rush of disgust.

  ‘I said, I suppose you think I’m bad.’

  ‘Ji?’

  ‘Bad. Do you think I’m bad? Do you think I’m nothing but a gorafied cow?’

  Avtar said nothing. He’d probably not said five words to her in the time he’d been here. It wasn’t his place.