I collect my repeat prescription tablets, the only event to distinguish today from yesterday and tomorrow.
No news from the Red Cross.
***
My stomach is perpetually swollen, aching with suppressed tension. I go one, two days without eating, then, at sunset on the third, I walk down to the Indian takeaway on the corner and buy a lamb methi and naan, eat slowly at my bedroom window.
Often I have barely finished half before my throat tightens and I abandon the meal, toss the silver tray into the bin, stinking and overflowing, and throw out the naan for the birds in that cheerless back garden.
***
Doreen still calls me on my mobile but I do not answer. She leaves messages that I delete without listening to. I know she means well but I have no strength to deal with her cheerful enthusiasm.
My Eritrean contacts still phone, leave voice mails, but I have not spoken to any of them for a long time, and the calls are becoming less frequent.
I stare at my bedroom walls and hear the blood seeping through the wallpaper. When I close my eyes it stops.
***
My Somali housemate and myself are engaged in a game of casual nonchalance towards each other, though beneath the façade we both know what is at stake. We exchange pleasantries and pretend indifference, but I watch his every move and presume he too watches mine.
My tin of tea has become a decoy that I reduce spoonful by spoonful each day but never drink. I keep an untainted supply safe in my room.
***
I spend the evening of Eid ul-Fitr in bed. At midnight I dress and walk through chilly autumnal Manchester. An icy wind picks up as I kick my way through pavements thick with fallen leaves. At a street corner an Asian minicab driver is arguing with two scantily clad white girls and I have to fight the urge to shake him by his jacket lapels and order him home to his wife and children. I want to tell him what is at stake, how transitory and delicate his happiness could be. The women, too, seem unaware that their contentment hangs perilously on a tightrope, that the slightest unforeseen event could shatter their hopes.
The cabbie is standing in front of his car and I walk up between him and the women. They notice me at once and break off from their loud accusations of overcharging and dodged fares. They look at me expectantly, but I cannot express the enormity of what I am feeling and in the split second that I hesitate, struggling to formulate the right words, their curiosity turns to impatience.
What the fuck are you looking at? he says
Yeah, piss off, adds one of the girls.
Oh fucking hell, look at him. He’s blubbing like a fucking baby, says the other, and I realise that I am weeping, that I cannot stop the tears, that only I know what they mean. That I have failed to save these people. I turn round and retrace my footsteps, leaving them to their fate.
Inside my bedroom, the walls are still bleeding.
***
No news from the Red Cross.
***
I have started on the Old Testament. The tone is angry and frightening. I read in Exodus that The Lord is a man of war.
I follow the stories of God-ordained massacres, the genocide against the Canaanites and Amorites in Numbers, Moses’ slaughter of the Medianites, the butchery in Deuteronomy, the carnage in Joshua, the command in Samuel to kill Amalek and his people, in Psalms to deal harshly with all non-believers:
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
And then,
Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my
hands to war, and my fingers to fight.
Now where have I heard those self-same sentiments before?
***
Winter is upon us.
The first frosts coincide with the boiler breaking down. On Tuesday the Somali man told me he would report it to the council. He left three days ago but has not returned.
The Chinese continue to come and go, to cook and sleep in shifts. They rarely speak to each other, rendered mute by fatigue and cold.
Ice forms patterns of cruel beauty on the inside of my bedroom window panes.
I seek escape in my drawings, sketching desert edifices from the warmth of my quilt. My room is littered with drafts of my Sahel citadels, my Arabian fortresses, my Turkish castles, my ksour and mosques and palaces.
When I check my mobile I find sixteen missed calls, from my Eritrean friends, from Doreen, from the college where I am supposed to be studying. Working on my drawings, I hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing except what is in front of me. The temporary relief of oblivion.
***
Sometimes my walls seem scarlet, sometimes crimson. Always menacing.
***
Doreen appears at my bedside.
At first I think it is a dream. She is shaking me awake, telling me to get up. She draws the curtain and I see that it is the middle of the day. She disappears, returns with a mug of tea. She has added milk so I cannot drink it, but she insists so I pretend to take a sip. I stumble out of bed, my breath a cloud of condensation. I head for the toilet, urinate, swallow two pills.
When I get back, I see that Doreen has not stopped speaking since she arrived, her tone by turns outraged and sympathetic, though I am finding it difficult to pick out the individual words and am not sure whether she is talking to me or to herself. She tells me to dress, that she is taking me back to the Centre to get warm. She stands outside my door talking on her mobile, in the same indignant voice. I want to tell her not to trouble herself, that I am perfectly well, but my tongue lies heavy and leaden, an alien body squatting in my mouth.
I get dressed. When she comes back into the room, she looks at me sadly and points at my chest. I look down and see that I have forgotten to put on a shirt. I am naked beneath my jacket. When I rummage around for a tee-shirt, I realise how neglected my room is, the presence of a stranger helping me to see it through new eyes. My floor is several inches thick with soiled underwear, dirty cups, stinking curry trays, stale blankets, half-finished sketches, discarded books.
Doreen pokes around amongst the detritus and emerges with a pair of socks which she hands to me. I am suddenly aware that she is holding herself in. She finding it hard to contain her disgust, and I am overcome with shame.
When I finish putting on my shoes and socks, she takes my arm and leads me away. On the threshold, I stop and run my fingers along the cold, damp wallpaper. I peer at my open palm, expecting to see fresh wet blood, but my hand, like my heart, is dry and empty.
***
Back in my room, discharged from hospital. The first few days I am alone in a single room, attached to a drip, days and nights a foggy blur of dozing and pills. They have changed my antidepressants and these ones make me even sleepier. I am also on antibiotics for a chest infection. The drip feeds me, bypassing my obstinate throat and disobliging stomach.
After a few days I am moved to a ward, a corner bed. Fortunately this requires interaction with only one other patient, a retired postman from Birmingham with ill-fitting dentures and mottled cheeks. He spends his days studying the horse racing section of The Mirror. He occasionally asks me to choose a winner, says I look like I have a lucky touch. His name is Terry and I find his accent too thick to pick up more than the gist of his conversations, though I understand enough to recognise the underlying loneliness.
He receives no visits.
Doreen comes to see me every other day. She brings me oranges and bars of chocolate, both of which I pass on to Terry after she has gone.
She sits by my bedside and tells me gossip about people I do not know, anecdotes about places I have never been to, comments on television programmes I have never watched. Her voice is gentle and soothing and I take in little of what she says, though the overall effect is comforting.
I ask her about the Somali, but
she has heard nothing. She tells me the house is empty following a police raid on the Chinese. It appears that most of them were illegals and are now facing deportation.
One day a doctor appears with a clipboard of questions. I keep my answers short and simple, give nothing away.
My Eritrean brothers continue to call. They want to see me but I tell them I cannot have visitors at the moment, that my infection is considered a risk to others. Their voices are bright and positive, and we make plans to meet up when I am discharged. We promise each other trips to London, evenings on the town. I agree to everything, anxious not to arouse suspicion.
Terry asks me to choose a horse for his betting hobby. He hands me the page of names from the newspaper and I point at one without looking. He makes a note of my choice, a beast called Loita Hills. Later he tells me the horse has won and tries to make me accept a couple of grubby banknotes, my share of the winnings, but I tell him my religion prohibits me from gambling. He looks offended and does not speak to me again.
Doreen tells me about her eldest son, her only unmarried child. He has always worked in a supermarket warehouse and was reversed over by a delivery lorry twenty years ago. Initially presumed dead, he was saved after a number of cranial operations. According to Doreen, he has never been the same since, transformed from a bright, happy-go-lucky clown to a moody, workaholic loner. Now in his forties, he lives alone in a two-bedroom house ten minutes’ drive from Doreen but, as she tells me with an awkward blend of sadness, pride and maternal love, he still calls in every morning for his lunchbox.
I want to hug her, for herself, for him and for me, but I say nothing.
Eventually, I am discharged.
When I get home, the boiler is fixed and the house is warm, stifling almost. They must have put the heating on override to get rid of the previous month’s dampness. I would like to turn the temperature down, off even for a time, but I am afraid of disturbing the thermostat’s programming, so I leave it as it is.
The house is empty, the Chinese room open but bare, the Somali’s door locked.
I make tea in the kitchen. The bin is still full, stinking of rotting waste, and the fridge, though almost empty, smells of sour decay. I make to start cleaning up but decide to leave it for the morning. I sit at the kitchen table, its surface sticky with grime, and let my mind wander. Hours pass.
Later, I feel sufficient courage to face my room. It seems smaller than I remember, the crimson walls pressing in, suffocating.
Someone (Doreen?) has tidied up, disposed of the decomposing curries, put away the soiled clothing and stacked my drawings into a pile on the chest of drawers. I have a sudden urge to cover my walls with these sketches, to conceal with my art the red menace beneath. I walk down to the corner shop to buy some tape to stick up my pictures. Outside it is dark and when I get to the shop I find it closed. I have lost track of time and my mobile tells me it is past midnight. I know I won’t be able to sleep with those bleeding walls, so I walk on to the all-night garage and buy a supply of chewing gum to use as adhesive.
It takes me half an hour to display my illustrations.
They cover a large enough area to take the edge off the bloody walls and when I crawl into bed having swallowed my tablets, I fall asleep quickly.
***
When I wake up this morning and survey my decorating handiwork, I feel a great sense of satisfaction, as if something significant has happened, as if we have turned a corner. Today when I pray, I sense for the first time in a long while that I have a direct line to God. I feel certain that this is connected to the Somali’s absence, as if previously he had found a way to block my prayers.
Outside it is icy though clear, the weak sun making no inroads into the night frost. The garden seems in sterile limbo between death and a new dawn and I take my tea out and stand on the lawn in the arctic sunshine. I wander down to the bottom of the garden and admire an ivy-clad tree that towers over the fencing. I spot a bird’s nest in one of the lower branches and climb up to retrieve it. It is empty of course, but a beautiful piece of engineering and I carry it into the house with me, lay it down gently on the table in my room.
My mind is buzzing, full of newly-hatched plans. I make a second pot of tea, fetch a scrap of paper and a pencil, then sit down to begin a ‘to-do’ list.
Before I can start, I become aware of the state of the kitchen. I find bottles of cleaner and bleach under the sink, a bucket and mop outside the back door, and set to work on the table, the floor and bin. As I scour the sink, I feel the therapeutic benefits of cleaning, enjoying the sweat on my brow, the strain on my arm muscles. Still not satisfied, I fetch a black bin bag and begin removing all the packets and tins from the shelves. I toss everything out, half-empty jars of coffee, old cereal boxes, packets of instant noodles, cans of peas, herbs, stock cubes, pasta and rice. I am ruthless, sparing nothing except my tea tin, sugar, the cutlery, pots and pans.
I remember the fridge and attack it with bleach after emptying it of its contents. A second bag is required for the margarine and eggs, the mouldy cheese and curdled milk carton. I hardly notice the foul stench and work in a frenzy of concentration until, finally pleased with my efforts, I stand back and admire the naked simplicity of my kitchen. Only now can I relax enough to make a start on my project list. My first action, I think, should be to buy a gift for Doreen to express my gratitude. My second to contact my Eritrean friends to set up a get together to celebrate my release from hospital and my new-found dynamism.
I have a marvellous idea. I will purchase some Ethiopian jazz CDs, those produced by your favourite artists, and a CD player. I have a strong sense of certainty that if I commence playing your music, it will act as a kind of aural beacon, signalling to you my whereabouts, helping to bring closer the moment of our sweet reunion.
I make another decision. I can no longer abide the appearance of my room, even with my display of sketches, so I add a tin of paint to my shopping list. I check my room for cash and am relieved to find my savings intact, hidden inside a pair of socks in my wardrobe, then make haste for the city centre. I burn with impatience on the bus ride into town, buy a portable CD player, visit three different music shops in order to locate an initial collection of four disks, collections by Tesegue-Maryam Guebrou, Getatchew Adamassu, Alemayehu Eshete and Lemma Demissew. I sense your approval. I feel sure that this will hasten your return.
I cannot think what to buy for Doreen. After nearly an hour of searching, I settle on a ladies quartz three-piece set consisting of a watch, matching bracelet and heart-shaped pendant.
I get off the bus at the retail park a mile from my home, stand in front of the paint aisle in a DIY superstore, unable to choose a suitable colour to paint my walls. Eventually I pick an unassuming, soothing eggshell blue. I add a brush to my basket, then struggle home with my purchases eager to start broadcasting your music and to set to work on my bedroom walls.
As soon as I get through the front door, I sense that someone has been inside the house. The kitchen looks as scrubbed as I had left it, but something is altered, the angle of a chair perhaps, or the position of a dishcloth. I approach the Somali’s locked bedroom door and put my ear to the smooth surface. Silence. I realise with a jolt that I have left my own bedroom unlocked. I open the door with dread and survey the mess with my senses attuned for the slightest signs of disturbance. How could I have been so careless?
It is impossible to assess the damage, he is far too clever for that, and I realise that I will have to take drastic measures. I fetch a black bag from the kitchen and begin the same process of ruthless cleaning that I carried out earlier. Out go most of my possessions, gifts and cast-offs from my Eritrean friends: the handful of DVDs, the portable television I seldom watch, a Hand of Fatima key ring and several novels. They all feel tainted.
I collect up armfuls of soiled clothes. The washing machine in the kitchen has long-since stopped working and I can
not summon the patience to seek out a launderette, so I fill a bath with hot water, add detergent from the kitchen, then heave the clothes into the soapsuds to soak. Back in my bedroom, I cannot relax. I fetch the hoover from under the stairs and run it around the filthy carpet. I strip my bed, add the bedclothes to the bath, wipe my table, scrub the skirting. I yank off my sketches from the wall, but before I start the re-decorating, I need to finish the room’s purification.
It is almost bare now, nothing remaining except the Qur’an, my architectural works, the Bible and the bird’s nest. I cannot bring myself to throw these out but I have left my mobile on the table, and I know he will have tampered with it, so reluctantly I add it to my bin bag.
Before it goes, I check it one last time for messages. I see that there is a voicemail from my solicitor. The message is short and to the point – my appeal has been heard in court and rejected. There is the possibility of a further appeal, but she would need to see me before that to discuss how we could build on our current case. I have nothing more to add, I think. Nothing more to give. I put the phone into the bin.
At the bottom of the wardrobe, I have kept my case file, all the documents I have collected from my solicitor and the Home Office, and this too I decide to dispense with. Then I remember the bathroom. My bathbag lies where I have left it on the shelf above the basin. It looks untouched but how can I take any chances? Out goes my toothbrush and toothpaste, the soap and paracetamol. With the greatest unwillingness I add my medication to the rubbish. It is too great a risk to take.
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