Grow

by Luke Palmer

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It’s not time for the police yet. A small lie at this stage is necessary. Jamie doesn’t see through it, but he can see its edges; I think this is why he’s always wary of me. Whenever I see Ahmed, it’s the three of us, Jamie always arriving at the place we’ve arranged to meet a few minutes earlier than I do. He claimed he was quicker on his crutches than he planned to be, but since the cast came off a few weeks ago and he’s been walking almost normally again, he’s still always a few minutes ahead of me.

  Ahmed comes out of the toilet, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  ‘Only one urinal,’ he says to me. ‘So I used the cubicle, just like you said.’

  ‘Good work. You’re almost a native, mate.’

  And we all laugh.

  *

  I see Dana often.

  On bright days, when the ground isn’t too wet, we spread out an old tarpaulin in her garden and just sit together, sometimes talking, sometimes just watching the clouds. Sometimes, we watch the clouds until they start to fade, and watch our breath instead, clouding in front of us and drifting away.

  The crocuses have started to come up. Small green shoots blooming white, purple and pink, their little yellow stamen like tongues of fire. They’re just like Dana described, all those months ago. And there are snowdrops too, along the border, near the well.

  At some point, on one of the evenings when we’re lying there, her hand finds my hand and holds it.

  When we talk, it’s about what we should do. Despite her certainty before the holidays, she has little more idea than I do. Perhaps she knew that certainty from her was exactly what I needed. I’m grateful for that. We both agree that we’ll have to talk to the police – I know Jamie isn’t wrong – but we need to get our timing right. Phase one means different things for different people. There’s a lot of things that need to be ‘sourced’ – a coordinated list of items bought by different people from different shops, never more than one item per person. There are things to be booked and hired and organised and scheduled, to which the same rules apply.

  Carl’s keeping Dana at arm’s length, she says. She’s finding it hard to talk to him, and can’t work out what things are in place, and which aren’t. He only sees her at her house, turning up late at night, unannounced. I think that’s why she just wants to sit, or lie, and be quiet when we’re together. A short time after the hand-holding, she starts falling asleep leaning into my shoulder.

  I feel like we’re in stasis, as if time’s been put on pause for a while. For the last few weeks of January, even the teachers ease off a bit about exam preparation. Whether or not they’re as exhausted as we are, or whether they’re easing off now ready for a big push after half term I don’t know, but it feels like everywhere there is one long inhalation of breath.

  And, to tell the truth, I’m enjoying it. All this time with Dana, not worrying about what’s coming – almost avoiding it on purpose. We call each other over to every new bud or shoot that we find in the garden, both trying to spot the first new thing – tiny as it may be – when we open the wooden door at the end of almost every day after school.

  Mum thinks I’m revising in the library.

  In a way, maybe I am.

  But at the back of my mind, and Dana’s, we know it can’t last.

  It’s the supposedly ‘poetic’ part of Carl’s plan that this ‘act of love’ for his country will happen on Valentine’s Day, so we’re both aware that we don’t have much time. Despite that, we need the police to see exactly what’s going on when they make their move. Too early, and there’ll be no evidence. Too late, and…

  I can’t think about that.

  *

  Alan and Vince stalk the corridors at school like hyenas. They catch my eye from time to time, but we’re all sworn to avoid contact. It’s only on Thursdays that I see them. I can’t find an excuse not to go back to that classroom each week, and my heart pounds in my chest for the full hour as I sit at the back and try to work through the textbook. I have to keep everything as normal as possible. On the outside at least. Mostly I just stare at the words, none of them registering, and make a quick exit as soon as I can. To avoid being followed, I make random circuits of the school buildings before walking home.

  It’s on one of these circuits that I see Ahmed, on his own, in one of the IT labs in the technology block. He’s sitting at a computer, a screen of numbers in front of him, typing away at the keyboard. I watch him through the glass screen in the door for a few minutes, until he leans back in his chair, stretching.

  He smiles as I walk in.

  ‘Josh! Not detention, surely?’

  ‘No, extra Biology. You?’

  ‘Coding club.’ He looks around the empty computer room. ‘Great turn out, as normal.’ He’s pretty good at sarcasm.

  ‘No teacher?’

  ‘Miss Fring left a few minutes ago. She says as long as I’m out when the caretakers come, she’s happy for me to carry on.’

  ‘Oh. What are you doing?’ I look at the screen, but nothing about it makes the smallest bit of sense.

  ‘Nothing really, just playing around. Check this out.’ Ahmed opens another browser tab, shows me a video of a football match. I don’t recognise the kits. ‘Al Ittihad,’ Ahmed explains. ‘In the red.’

  The shots are mostly of the crowd, people waving flags, standing on concrete barriers and singing. Every now and then, a police officer or some military personnel with a baton, or a machine gun. The pitch is dusty, and I don’t get much sense of what’s going on. The camera only catches the celebrations for one of the goals.

  When the video finishes, Ahmed rubs his eyes. ‘We won 2 – 1.’

  ‘Well done. Where are they – you – in the league now?’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, really. It’s just … well, that was the first football match in Aleppo for five years. Last time I went to that stadium was with my father.’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to say. I put a hand on his shoulder.

  After a few seconds, Ahmed shrugs me off, closes down the window, and the screen of numbers and code flashes up again. In the bottom corner is what looks like a chat box, but I don’t get a chance to read it before Ahmed shuts down the computer. I get a slight feeling that there’s something Ahmed doesn’t want me to know about. ‘Ready to go?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were into this stuff.’ I gesture at some computers in general.

  ‘Sometimes it’s useful.’

  There’s a pause while I stand in the doorway, unsure of how to leave.

  ‘Hey, I think we go the same way home, right?’ Ahmed shrugs on his coat, picks up his bag.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  We walk together between the school buildings, not speaking. Me and Ahmed get on great online, or texting. But this is the first time we’ve been alone together in real life, and for some reason it’s awkward. As we head for the main gates, one of the recycling bins has rolled out of place and sits partly blocking our path; we both stop walking at the same time to let the other one through the gap. We laugh, but not because it’s funny. It’s a stuttering laugh, and I get an odd feeling that we’re carrying something between us. Like we’re both held down by this immense weight. That it’s somehow shared.

  We fall silently back into step with each other as we head towards the main road, picking our way around the puddles on the path beside the school drive.

  ‘Hey, check that out.’

  I can’t see what Ahmed has seen, but he immediately vaults the handrail at the side of the path. Slowly, in a low crouch, he crosses the drive, heading for the uneven row of fence panels on the other side where the gardens of the neighbouring houses all end. Then I spot it. On top of one of them, at about eye height, sits a small brown bird with a red chest. A robin.

  ‘I have seen them sometimes in Syria, but they aren’t so brave as here.’ Ahmed looks back at me as he talks, his eyes alive in the early evening light. ‘They
live in the hills there, in the woods. But now my mother has them visiting the garden. They sit on her spade as she digs. Their song is the same though.’ Ahmed whistles a few squeaky notes and creeps a little closer.

  The bird on its wooden perch jumps about a bit, puffing out its fuzzy little chest and tilting its head to one side, letting out a few high trills of its own song.

  ‘He’s checking you out,’ I laugh. A real one this time. Not a stutter.

  ‘Yeah, he likes me.’ Ahmed stands straight, satisfied that he’s close enough. He holds his empty palms out towards it. ‘Sorry, buddy, no worms.’

  A few more notes of song. The robin raises its tail, leans forward.

  ‘Apparently they sing for territory. They don’t like other people stepping on their patch.’ The robin bounces up and down a few more times. Ahmed turns back to me, ‘Maybe he thinks I’m trying to steal something from him.’

  Ahmed’s movement is too quick, too sudden for the small bird. It pitches forward and flies low over our heads to a nearby hedge. I flinch involuntarily as it passes just a foot or so above me.

  Ahmed is smiling as he climbs back over the rail. ‘They were my father’s favourites.’

  ‘Yeah, mine too.’ I hesitate for a second, then say it. ‘Do you fancy a walk? I want to show you something.’

  FIFTY SEVEN

  I don’t know why I decide to bring Ahmed here, now. A part of me is screaming that it’s not the right time. Every step we took was more difficult, Ahmed finding it amusing that I wouldn’t tell him where we were going. Me trying to smile back.

  And now we’re standing in front of Dad’s tree.

  Even though the evenings are supposed to be getting longer, there’s not much light left in the sky now. I see Ahmed notice the ‘Woodland Burial Ground’ sign as we walk in. He says nothing as we pick our way across some slightly soggy ground, up a slight incline, and stop at the frail-looking rack of branches.

  ‘Dad, Ahmed. Ahmed, Dad.’

  ‘Hello Mr Milton.’

  Ahmed smiles. I smile back. I don’t know if he’s playing along, or if we both are. He turns around, looking back down the slope.

  ‘It’s a beautiful spot.’

  I turn and do the same. Ahmed’s right. The small lights of town are glowing beneath us, and you can see beyond them to some low hills. The sun going down behind them lights the horizon a deep orange. I’ve never looked this way before.

  ‘And it’s a sycamore tree, yes?’

  I nod, remembering the name as he says it. Something in me opens with the naming of it.

  ‘We have a similar tree back home. It is known for its long life and the shade it gives. It’s a good choice … for a…’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Look, it’s budding.’

  He takes hold of a thin branch. At the end, a tiny, dark green spear-tip has pushed up through the bark.

  ‘Do you know how he died?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yes. Jamie told me. But I think you’d rather tell me about how he lived.’

  And I do. I tell him about Christmases, about his taste in music, about when he used to watch me play football, about the cats and how they’d sit on his shoulders at meal times and how Mum would get angry, about the holiday we went on the year before he died: America, the drives, the huge beaches, the size of the forests. I talk for about twenty minutes without stopping. Then we stand in silence. It’s the most comfortable silence I’ve shared with anyone in years.

  An understanding silence.

  Ahmed speaks first. ‘My father would have liked it here, I think. We don’t do this at home. Maybe we should. We weren’t really “practising” Muslims, my family. We rarely went to mosque, just at Eid. And we haven’t been to a mosque since we arrived here. I guess we’re Muslim in the same way most British people are Christian.’

  I smile, nod.

  Ahmed casts his eyes around again, takes in the other trees of various sizes, their branches swaying almost imperceptibly in a light breeze. The sun has dipped below the horizon. There’s a last streak of crimson on the bottom of the furthest clouds. ‘But I like this idea. It’s a beautiful place. We didn’t get to bury him, my father. We never will. We left home before we even knew for sure that he was dead. We still don’t, not for certain. So every day it feels like we’re burying him again. Digging him up in the mornings and burying him each night. Sometimes it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Nothing to bury, nothing to mourn.’ I murmur the words.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing. Something a friend said. Do you dream about him?’ I ask.

  ‘My father? Never. Well, not yet. You?’

  ‘No. Not yet. Do you know who … did it?’ It feels invasive, asking this.

  ‘It isn’t a person, or people. There isn’t really a Who, I think. Just a What. It was the same What that killed your dad, I think. Just … hatred. Nothing but a deep, ugly hate that takes away what other people have. What other people love. People attach reasons to it, try to make sense of it, but there is no sense. I can see why people get angry.’

  Ahmed pauses. He bends down and brushes a hand against the grass. Satisfied it’s not too damp, he sits, facing out over the town, the sky almost dark now. ‘Being in the UK is hard. I don’t expect you to understand how. In the big cities it can feel better, I guess. Maybe we’re more invisible in a big crowd of people, easier to ignore. But here? How do you put it? In the arse end of nowhere? We stick out like sore thumbs. Everyone looks at us. And those that don’t look directly at you have this way of not looking at you that almost says “I’m not looking at you because if I look at you it will show that I’ve noticed you”.’

  ‘Why would they want to not notice you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe, with things as they are, the way it’s always in the papers, we’re impossible to not notice. So maybe people are trying to be kind and not draw attention to it when they see me. But I feel them fizzing with it when they walk past me. Like they’re electricity. Like it takes so much energy not to notice.’

  ‘And because everyone notices you, it makes you feel completely alone.’ I think back to all the times I walked into a room and brought silence with me. The eyes of everyone in a room flicking over me, checking where I was, checking that I was on my own. And I remember the eyes that stayed averted, made a show of ignoring me, or pretending not to notice.

  ‘Yes, you feel completely excluded. You understand this?’

  ‘After Dad died, when I came back to school, it was like everyone was looking at me, but no one would meet my eye. They’d see me coming down the corridor and deliberately not look at me, even if there was no one else around. I’d never felt so completely on my own.’ I sit down next to Ahmed, the orange glow of the town’s lights reflected in his eyes.

  The thing that we carried here together, the weight I felt less than an hour ago; it’s gone. It’s gone completely and I feel lighter than I’ve felt for a long time, so I want to really mean the thing I say next. I’ve never meant anything so much in my life. ‘I’m sorry about how I was. That first time we met. And about everything—’

  ‘I can see why you…’ Ahmed cuts me off, but his eloquence quickly reaches the obstacle of my recent past.

  ‘Why I what? Has Jamie said anything?’

  ‘No. Jamie’s said nothing. Look, what I was doing earlier, on the computer. I’m part of a group, a network, OK?’ He laughs, ‘It’s not as CIA as it sounds, it’s mostly just talking about fantasy football leagues. But we also report on anti-Muslim behaviour, and we share our data with the police. Apparently, it gets shared with the government too, for policies and things. But I’m not sure about that. It’s mostly about keeping safe, letting others know what to look out for.’ Ahmed fiddles with his shoelaces as he talks. ‘I got a message a few weeks ago from a guy, and I was using the school computers to check up on something.’

  ‘What, like hacking?’

  Ahmed smiles, ‘Well, maybe. Like I said, it’s not
as James Bond as that, but there’s VPNs and proxy servers and I could go on at you about the number of backend issues this school has got. But you’d get bored, I think. Don’t worry, it won’t get traced back to me.’

  ‘Who will it get traced back to then?’

  ‘No one. Or… No, no one.’

  I know Ahmed’s not telling the whole truth here, but I’ve never been good with technical stuff, so I let it go. ‘And …?’

  ‘And, this network I’m in, we all track those groups like the one Alan’s brother is running. Those deep, ugly hate groups? And…’

  Shame washes over me like an ugly, slick wave. ‘You found me.’

  ‘I found your email address. Your school one. And that link. Not that I needed it; I could have got to that page of videos anyway. Like I said, it’s handy being good with computers.’

  ‘I’m…’

  ‘With all the running I’ve done, Josh. All the people who’ve chased me, spat at me and my mother. All the people who have smashed our windows or painted words on our garage, I know what being scared is like. Our journey to the UK was easier than some, but it still wasn’t easy. I know what fear looks like. So I know that look you have. I know you’re not one of them.’ Ahmed’s words can’t lift this new weight that’s pushing down on my chest, however kind and honest they are. ‘In first school, I remember being pinned down by older kids and forced to swear allegiances to their beliefs, to the right “sort” of people. Playground stuff, really.’