It is very pleasant.
‘Your English is good,’ I say, eventually.
‘I try. Is much better – I have been here almost one year. And I have no choice. No one here speaks Somali.’ Was that his tongue, peeking from between his teeth? I think it was another hint of humour, I do, and I seize on it.
‘Aye, but we don’t speak English here either. We speak Glaswegian.’
A polite cough, then more crinkling round his eyes. ‘You do not speak. You –’ he makes a squawking noise, miming wings with his elbows.
‘True,’ I laugh. ‘We screech. So’ – and I don’t even take a breath in – ‘why did you come to Glasgow?’
It’s not meant as a challenge, it absolutely isn’t, but his smile wipes clean.
This is a minefield. Should I apologise, if I apologise will that make it worse? ‘If you don’t want to talk about it . . . I don’t mean . . . I don’t mean what happened, I mean – why choose Glasgow?’
At last, he bites his bun. Speaks with crumbly enunciation. ‘I was sent here.’
‘Yes, but why specifically here? What made you go for Glasgow?’
He swallows. ‘No.’
‘So, how – sorry. I don’t understand. Why Glasgow? Out of all the places you could have ended up? Why did you choose Scotland?’
‘Before I come here, I do not know there was place called Glasgow. I knew place called Yookie.’
‘Yookie?’
‘Yoo – kay.’ He says it patiently, like he is my translator. ‘But not Scotland. Not Glasgow. I do not know Glasgow until they put me on bus and brought me here.’
‘I see.’
But I don’t, and I think he understands this, because he carries on.
‘I was in camp in Kenya for many years, then they sent me to Sudan. Then Sudan sent me back to Kenya and Kenya sent me to Yookie.’ Another bite. ‘And Yookie sent me here.’
‘So you’d no idea you were coming to Glasgow? Do they not . . . give you any choice?’
I thought it would be like council houses or something; you know, you get to ask for a two-up two-down with a garden, and they go: oh, not sure about that, but we can give you a nice four-in-a-block with a back court. Would you like to see it? And you go, oh well, OK then – and you have a wee look, but you know you get at least two or three bites at the cherry before you have to decide.
‘We are told we have to get our things and go on bus. It is long enough away to sleep?’
I nod.
‘And then, we wake up here. The man says to me it is Glasgow. I say I do not know Glasgow. He tells me: “You do not want to, mate,” and then he takes us to where we live.’
‘And they didn’t say why you’d ended up here?’
‘No.’
I try to think how I would feel, dumped on the rim of a city in a country I’d never heard of.
‘But they must’ve shown you round, eh? I mean like an orientation? They can’t just drop you in the middle of somewhere you’ve never heard of and bugger off . . .’
He carries on eating his bun.
‘Did they tell you where shops are and schools, and how you can get places and what you’re meant to do?’
As I’m saying it, I’m thinking of a conversation I had once, with Sally, a fellow teacher. We often sat together in the staffroom, exchanging moans about Garry Black in third year, or catching up on the three-way shenanigans between the Drama staff (so dramatic, they were). Chatting in that cloistered confidential way that makes you imagine you are friends. I remember her getting quite exasperated with me.
But surely they give you, I don’t know – a caseworker or something? And you’ll get nurses, like those Macmillan ones for cancer. There must be grants too. They won’t just leave you to flounder, Debs. Don’t be silly. Your consultant will know who to speak to. There must be research and support groups and–
And a refusal to accept that, actually, you’re on your own.
Yes. There must be that, at least in the initial stages. That’s what keeps you going, the assumption that it will get better, it has to. I shut up, pour a little more tea. ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me, Abdi? About Glasgow, or . . . how I can help you. Can I help you?’
Pathetic. I am not good at . . . people. Can I help you, sir? More tea, vicar? How about a mealy-mouthed mentor bandaging whatever gaping wound it is you carry?
‘Yes.’ He fishes a letter from his pocket. ‘Can you read this, please?’
Punctual and practical. A model pupil. I take the letter. It’s from Social Work and Education.
Dear Mr Hassan
Thank you for your letter dated 17 September.
Well, we’re only at the start of the next year. That’s not too bad.
Please note that registration of Primary 1 pupils due to start school in August of this year will take place in the first week of February, and will be carried out by the Deputy Head Teacher of the relevant school. However, as discussed, and following the letter we received from your GP, no decision will be made on your daughter’s placement until you have first made arrangements to meet with the educational psychologist as first intimated to you in August of last year. Please note that any further delay in arranging such an appointment may result in a delay to this process, particularly as a further referral to our Pre-School Assessment Centre may be required. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
How many times could you recycle the same few words in the one paragraph? Abdi watches me, his bun forgotten. A scattering of crumbs rest on his chin, caught in whorls of curling stubble.
‘This means Rebecca cannot go to school?’
‘No, no, they’re not saying that at all. What they’re asking is . . . they want you to see a kind of doctor. Has Rebecca not been –’
‘I have seen doctor. He says Rebecca is well.’
‘Yes, but this is another doctor, one who’ll talk a bit more to Rebecca herself, find out if something’s . . . och, I don’t know – upsetting her maybe?’
When I was a teacher, this bit was always hard. Suggesting to a parent that their child might need ‘a wee bit help’. I’m wondering what it is: trauma? Problems with concentration, displaying inappropriate behaviours –
‘Rebecca does not talk.’
Abdi’s hand is shaking as he drains his unpleasant drink. A quietly horrible thing to see. I try to look away from his shaking skin. It’s too intimate when our public bodies display our private truths. Callum’s hands would shake terribly. The greater his paralysis became, the more his hands would tremble. His hand and his fingers, laced stubbornly through the handle of his cup, and the brown liquid spilling. How flat and round the brownness of it was as it skittered down the edges of his cup and I suddenly remember: here, it was here in Kelvingrove, sitting by the old tearoom up the stairs and this is why the place upsets me.
It’s not Rula, and it’s not the stupid heads at all.
It’s me, insisting that of course there’ll be a lift, and how it would do him good to get out, now we have the new Zafira and the folding chair – of course no one’s looking, don’t be stupid. Saying it more crossly than I meant. Terrified of the power and weight and length of the car, and then there not being a lift, not then, not a proper one. Just a goods hoist, and they’re very kind, the curator folk. They sling us in – Callum’s chair and his knees pressed against the lattice grille, the curator talking to me, always me, above Callum’s head, the awkward sliding of us out. The limitations of where we can trundle to, and what time do we want the hoist back down, because you have to be accompanied, you know. So we decide on tea. Tea and a scone in the old-fashioned salon that used to be in the museum, up on the first floor. But there are three small steps. Three shitty steps, don’t you know, little ones that you would never normally notice, pointless, decorative absurd humps of stone that bar our passage and make us sit out in the corridor beside some marble statuary. I insist, insist that we’re having tea, and I leave him there, parked nose-up to a statue (lest he
pose a fire-risk), to queue for tea and scones.
I fumble with tea and plates and change, then scurry back to my husband, my beautiful fine husband encased in his shell. His neck is locked, his eyes fixed on the marble forms before him: a bereft father and his motherless child. I arrive just in time to see the tears run freely down Callum’s perfect cheek. And him, unable to wipe them dry. It’s me, me who spills the flat brown tea. I’m doing it now, in fact.
Funny, how I’d forgotten that.
‘Honestly, don’t worry,’ I’m saying to Abdi, who’s staring at me. ‘It’ll be fine. Trust me – I used to be a teacher. I know . . . I have a friend who works in special needs –’
‘You are teacher!’ Spontaneously, he reaches for my hand, claps the back of it, once, and then retreats. That glow is back about him. ‘I am teacher,’ he beams. ‘I may teach Rebecca. Can I do that here?’
I was sure Abdi was a fisherman. I’m positive Simon told me that.
‘I think school would be good for her, Abdi. She’d make friends there.’
‘I think this too. But if they will not take her –’
‘No, they will. We’ll get it sorted. Have you had other letters from Education? From the school? Has school written to you before?’
‘Yes. And I know is in February I must go, I wrote it down, and I am to go to school next week, but then this letter comes.’
I read it again. You’d think the Education department would write coherent letters.
‘All they want to do is check that she’ll manage. She doesn’t speak – at all? Doesn’t speak English or doesn’t speak Somali?’
He shrugs. ‘It is . . . I can speak for her.’
‘But she can hear OK? She hears you speak?’
‘Oh yes. She hear everything. We learn English together, she is clever, clever girl.’
‘OK, well, what you need to do is contact this educational psychologist – see the number here? You phone them, they’ll tell you when you and Rebecca should go and see them, and they’ll make sure she gets to the right school.’
‘I can go with her?’
‘Of course you can.’
He visibly relaxes. ‘I thought they would take her . . . she . . .’
I can tell he’s struggling with choosing the right words.
‘She doesn’t like to be away from you? Well, of course not. She’s in a strange country, away from home.’
‘Yes. No. With some people. If she knows them . . . I . . .’ He shakes his head, and I see tears there, poised on the point of becoming real, and we both pretend not to notice.
‘She is good, clever girl.’ He offers it up like a plea.
‘Och, we’re both teachers, Abdi. You know how clingy wee ones can be –’
‘She was always good friendly. Very happy girl and I cannot . . .’ Staring into my head. Not my eyes, but drilling into my mind, grasping through like I’m driftwood for him to seize. I have no idea what this little family has been through. All I can do is sit there, with the sugary taste of icing on my tongue. Too intense, I can’t bear it, but, just as I’m about to turn away, he breaks his stare.
‘I cannot help her,’ he finishes softly.
‘Would you like me to phone the psychologist for you?’
Is that a leading question?
His shoulders slump, and he fingers the top of his rucksack. ‘I would like that. Yes.’
‘OK, then. I will.’
The high planes of his cheeks slacken. I recognise a fellow teeth-gritter. Then he finishes off his bun.
4.
‘Your fish is ready!’
Rebecca gallops in from her room. There’s a smudge of black on her cheek, a dash of green on her knuckles. Felt-tipped pens; a present from Mrs Coutts. I resolve to find a higher shelf to keep them on.
‘Mucky pup!’ I wipe my daughter with the dishcloth.
She giggles.
‘Mucky pup!’ I repeat, and she purses her lips up like she might make an ‘M’.
Her Sunday School teacher told her she was a ‘mucky pup’ after craft-time, when she had glue on her hair and chin. I looked up ‘pup’ in my dictionary afterwards – it means young dog. She called my little girl an animal! But I’ve learned, so many times now, that what you have to study most is the inflection. It’s how the words are given, not what they are, that forms their full meaning, and Miss Blake-call-me-Sophie is always gentle. You can tell from how Rebecca runs to her and takes her hand. Miss Blake speaks frequently through laughter, and always with warmth. A ‘pup’ is just a baby, and it’s striking how amusing people in Yookie find animals to be. You see that on the cards they send one another on their birthdates. You see calendars brimming with fat little kittens, and framed pictures of dogs in strange hats. Yet I also see boys throw stones at shivering curs. I still see dead meat hang on hooks and bleed on slabs.
Still, I decide that to be a ‘mucky pup’ is a nice thing. It makes my baby laugh. And I thought if we spoke sometimes in English . . . it is a different language. If it is a different place . . . If she thinks the past is made anew . . .
‘Here are your fishes, my little mucky pup.’ I slide the crisp orange slabs on to her plate. They’re labelled on the packet as ‘fingers’ but I cannot call them that. ‘And your nice green peas.’ She looks suspiciously at the garish green. ‘They’re yummy. Look, Aabo’s going to have one.’
She picks up the buttons that make the television work. Mrs Coutts calls these buttons a doofer, but then, Mrs Coutts often speaks a language of her own. I doubt doofer is the correct name. It’s another word that makes Rebecca laugh. I grab it from her. ‘You can have doofer when you eat your peas.’ She scowls, I shrug. She eats.
Deborah will telephone the child-doctor for me. It is like stones being taken from my chest. I have heard the expression ‘breathe easier’ before – Mrs Girdwood said it after church, when we were sipping tea and she was talking to another lady about a robber who pretended to be from the council, and was tricking his way into people’s homes. The lady had told Mrs Girdwood the police had a description, and Mrs Girdwood had said: ‘Well, we’ll all breathe easier when he’s caught.’ Often, I don’t ask them to explain phrases. It interrupts the conversation, and singles me out. Plus, I like the challenge: me and my thoughts, wrestling with all the possible connotations as I unpick words like knots in my net. ‘Easier’ was ‘more simple’, so it was ‘simple breathing’, which implied to me breathing that had been difficult before. But I’d never thought of it as an obstruction. I had decided it was to do with holding the air inside your lungs, because you are terrified to breathe out. Like when you shake behind the thick trunk of tree, in whose branches you are perched, your face crushed tight against its bark and your head squashed low, immobile and you feel your head melt and the pressure is of underwater with the force of not-breathing in case the soldiers down below pause in their gutting of your friends – and look up to find you.
When they go, you can ‘breathe easier’. That to me was the definition. But when Deborah read my letter and said she would help, I felt a lightness in my lungs. I hadn’t known they were . . . congested? Being crushed? It was a strange, free feeling when she offered to help. Like a crouching jinn had been removed from me. I kiss my munching girl on her forehead, steal a bite of fish. It tastes, and smells, of paste.
Deborah and I were both ‘easier’ after that. I know I’d embarrassed her, when that guard shouted at us, but it did not diminish my pleasure for the Kelvingrove. The museum wasn’t boastful. It made me feel small as well as full. No coins were exchanged for entry, no bribe was passed to leave. It simply stood there with its doors unlocked and its visitors passing through. Like a temple in which Glasgow kept her history. She chose what of creation to display to the world. In Somalia, people always praise the new. The higher and shinier a building in Mogadishu, the greater it is revered. You can cram more people inside, you can shake your fist at the unblinking sky and say: ‘We are nearly there, beside you. Ha!’ I noticed,
though, that Deborah only delighted in the objects that were made, not the ones that were taken. Several times she had apologised, alerting me to signs and explanations. I just wanted to look at the art.
‘You understand?’ she had persisted. ‘A lot of this stuff is stolen. You know? During wars maybe? Or when Britain was “pretending” to help countries.’
I think I annoyed her. ‘If it was war, then much of this “stuff” would have been destroyed. At least it is here.’
‘But that’s not the point, Abdi,’ she began. Then, immediately, she stopped. Rubbed her nose. I noticed she’d painted some of that pigment on her face, very faint, but you could see it gathering in powdery flakes where the bulge of her nostril was. I think we were both thinking the same thought. You are going to lecture me on war?
Even knowing so much of Kelvingrove was filled with plunder, I loved it. Glasgow is both barren and rich, it is poor and it is bold. In Somalia, one wealthy warlord would live here and he would put up gates and guns. Next time, I will bring Rebecca. Tell her we are having a feast. She’s finished her peas and fish, has her hand outstretched for the doofer.
‘You want cartoons?’ I ask. She nods. I press the red button and the house is filled with noise. I go to the fridge to get some milk, pass the shelf above the fireplace. My mother would have . . . I grope for the phrase I heard Mrs Coutts use. What was it again? It seemed to encapsulate all her great excitement . . . And then I seen that boy off River City. You know the shell-suit one? I tell you, I was fair beside myself. Yes. To find a fire that needed no wood or flame, kept ever-ready in a home that needed no building. My mother would have been fair beside herself. I lift the picture frame that sits on the shelf, wish beyond almost anything that my family’s faces were inside it.
On the way out of the museum, Deborah had asked me to wait in the foyer. ‘Foyer’ – I didn’t know that word. She told me it was the hall between the basement and the grass outside, and that it was French. ‘Sometimes we use foreign words like everyday words.’
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