by Kate Clanchy
‘What did you do?’
‘I went up there.’
‘You did? The tree?’
‘My knees won’t let me,’ says Mrs N, which wasn’t what I’d meant. Going up the tree is very unlike Miss B, actually, because it is such a personal, irregular thing to do. Miss B usually plays it by the book.
‘I couldn’t think what else to do,’ says Miss B defensively. ‘And anyway, he came down.’
But to exclusion. Permanent exclusion. The record of the colour-coded file, so carefully kept by Miss B, clearly says where Simon is at, and it reads: Last Legal Chance. In bringing a knife to school, he has blown it.
We all realize, in the next weeks, how much we turned to Simon, how alive he was, the quick thing in the slow room. And how kind, too. He’d romanced us all, drawn us all into the story he was telling this year, which was about reform, a new life. Turnaround: an inspiring story. I needed that story too; and now Simon and Royar will both do their GCSEs in isolation, unsupported. Neither will do well.
But I ask Simon to come to the poetry reading anyway, personally, on his own account, as a free sixteen-year-old individual, not a representative of the school. And he turns up, stands swinging on his toes in the gilt-wood lobby of the city hall, wrinkling his elderly forehead, looking, honestly, as if he has come to mend the drains. Vikki and Dave flutter round him, Tom stands adoringly by his side, and they are all pleased as punch with the book. Then we go into the reading room: a handsome formal hall, set out with a low platform and light padded chairs, the kind they set out for weddings, and Simon sits down and weeps and says he will go no further.
‘Simon,’ I say, ‘are you really not scared of knives but totally scared of a bunch of posh chairs?’
And he grins and says, ‘It’s what you’re used to, Kate, ennit,’ and consents to stagger onto the platform. He reads, and is a huge, huge, helium-and-champagne success, and we all find ourselves asked to a reception with a famous author where Simon deals with everyone with grace and aplomb, directing all compliments to Miss B – you don’t know what she has to put up with – and me. When I go over to him, he grins over his plate of olive hummus and quails’ eggs and says: ‘I’m glad I’m not posh really. You have to eat terrible food.’ And then I don’t see him again for seven years.
Over those seven years, I meet all the girls from the IU again. Each is in a crowded, female place – the beautician’s, the nail bar, Primark, the doctor’s, the nursery school, the drop-in centre, the library – but I recognize each one without difficulty. Beside them, each has a baby. Teen mothers, living on benefits, mostly alone. In the noughties and the teens, a word is coined for them: pram face. The country turns against pram face in those years; efforts are made to speed up compulsory adoption, benefits are slashed, the Daily Mail monsters them regularly. In response, the teen pregnancy rate falls and the adoption rate goes up, but not by much. The problem Kylie presented in the IU continues to be a common and insoluble one.
Before I worked in the IU I disbelieved in pram face. That is, I knew teenagers had babies and also saw them leave schools in which I worked, but I did not believe that any one of them had done it as a choice. But all the IU girls did; they all got pregnant at least semi-deliberately and all the people I know who work closely with girls like this are also aware of pregnancy as a frequent and almost inevitable happening.
The IU girls did it to contribute to the family home, to be like their families, or because even six months in the council mother-and-baby unit as you waited for a flat was better than living in an unhappy home. They did it because they didn’t know anyone who had done it differently, and middle-class choices such as university seemed completely unreal. They did it because they weren’t willing to reject everything about their own upbringing, especially when people from different backgrounds had not been helpful to them. They did it because they wanted someone to love, and because they believed, as we all do, that they could make a better job of it than their own mothers. They did it because it was the only route to a bit of independence and status realistically available to them. They did it because they weren’t stupid, not because they were.
And so did Royar, come to think of it. Nesrin fills me in eight years on. He hasn’t joined the army. He hasn’t held down a job. But he has two children with the same, much older mother, and Nesrin likes them.
Seven years later, I meet Simon again. I am in the line for the outdoor swimming pool; he is on his way out, a roll-up cigarette tucked in his teeth, his belly more middle-aged and his forehead more wrinkled than ever. He is walking a pushchair full of damp three-year-old and has a bigger child in hand. He seems pleased to see me. We talk about Miss B, then he says, indicating the toddler, ‘This one’s mine.’
‘Where’s the mum?’ I ask.
‘At home,’ he says. ‘You know her. Kylie. I’m still with her.’ He has a twinkle in his eye, a knowing grin. Simon, who always had my do-gooding measure. ‘That one,’ he says, indicating the older child, by now halfway up a tree, ‘he’s not mine, but I’ve brought him up because he needs a dad.’
So this is Simon’s baby. The baby of the long-ago cold morning in the IU. He looks fine, koala-clinging to his branch in shorts and T-shirt. He looks like any six-year-old. Any kid.
‘Well done,’ I say, sincerely.
‘I couldn’t leave him behind,’ he says, ‘could I?’
Miss B and I discuss it over coffee. She is getting married and I am to read a poem, but we brush pass that, as we always do, to talk about the IU, about that year. About what happened, and what was the good?
Our girls, says Miss B, mostly had their babies at eighteen and twenty, not sixteen. That’s not turnaround, but it is something. It’s better than fifteen and sixteen. And it is a most intractable problem, the Kylie problem. David Cameron, for instance, found this out when his ‘troubled families’ initiative collapsed, having spent a billion pounds and helped just 1,600 people into work.
‘But lots of those families,’ says Miss B, ‘probably did better than they might. And the IU kids did do better than they might, much better. It just doesn’t show up well on data.’
Simon is working in a bar, which is probably not anywhere near realizing his very considerable potential. So how do we reckon it up, the amount of love that he is managing to give to Kylie’s baby, the loss it may have taken from his own young life, against the slowing it might cause in the spiral of deprivation, the speed at which the koala-child might end up in the IU? As for where that love came from, or the extent to which the year in the IU may have helped release it, or what was passed to Simon the day Miss B so uncharacteristically climbed the tree – who can say?
‘I think it’s huge,’ I say to Miss B. ‘I think it was a great thing, what you did in the IU. One of the best things I’ve ever seen.’
‘Yes,’ says Miss B. ‘But I still wish I’d written it down. At the time. Got a record of it – a flipping MA or something. Something to show.’
But she was too busy with the actual good she was doing, so I have written this down instead.
About Nations, Papers, and Where We Belong
Shakila, Aadil, and Me
Lucky, this point in time and space
Is chosen as my working-place
W. H. AUDEN
My multicultural school – the one I teach in, the one my children go to – is the opposite of exclusive. Our town, like many in the south-east of England, has had huge influxes of migrants in the last twenty years – from the British Commonwealth, from the EU, and, most recently, from the crisis across the Middle East – and now our school includes, it seems, the whole world: students from Nepal and Brazil, Somalia and Lithuania, Portugal and the Philippines, Afghanistan and Australia, and everywhere in between. Pakistani and white British students make up substantial minorities, but there is no majority group.
This makes for innumerable cross-race friendships and for a particularly respectful atmosphere, a careful, decorous gentleness that comes
from no one knowing quite what’s what, from everyone being dependent on the kindness of strangers. It makes for beautiful scenes: a row of girls under the willow tree, their skin colours varying from black Somali to white Polish with every shade of brown in between, laughing and gossiping together; a boy called Mohammed from Syria throwing the basketball to a boy from Brazil and shouting his name – ‘Jesus, Jesus! Catch!’; our motley choir, representing all the nations of the globe, singing ‘All You Need Is Love’; Jonathon, six foot five inches tall with a slow, resonant African accent, concluding the vote of thanks at a speaking competition with the words, ‘And I wish to thank too this school for making me welcome and giving me shelter. Truly, you are kind in this country. Hand on heart’ – and his hand was on his heart – ‘I am thankful for this school in this country.’
Hand on heart, I am thankful too. But a school full of migrants, refugees, and difference also throws up questions about nations and belonging, and these are some of them.
Shakila’s Head
It’s Sports Day, and Shakila slips from the shade behind the library, blinking in the sun. ‘Miss!’
I wonder again what Shakila does to her hijab, and why it seems to sit fuller and higher than the other girls’ – a Mother Superior hijab, or one from a Vermeer. It can’t be starched. Maybe it’s draped over twisted horns of hair, like Carrie Fisher’s in Star Wars. That would go with her furry eyebrows, her slanting, sparking black eyes, her general, Mongolian ferocity.
‘Miss!’ cries Shakila. ‘I won the 400 metres!’
‘You did? Isn’t it Ramadan? Aren’t you fasting?’
Shakila nods. ‘I still won. And Miss! I’m coming to Poetry Group. After the hurdles. Here. Poem.’
She hands me a sheet of A4, and dashes back onto the playing field. It is twenty-eight degrees and getting hotter. Under her rugby shirt and long trousers, Shakila grows thin.
The poem, though, is very fine: a variation on a theme I gave the group last week, contrasting the morning adhan from the mosque in her native Afghanistan with the morning alarm of her new life in England. I’m more interested, though, in the writing on the other side of the sheet, which she has crossed out with a single line so the whole text is still visible and begging to be read. It’s about a man sweating, and a scarf and a backpack and suspicious minds – so when, because of Sports Day, just Lily, Priya, and Shakila turn up to Poetry Group, I ask her about it.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I was trying to write, you know, about terrorists.’
‘What about terrorists?’
‘But I couldn’t make it work. Miss! It was too hard.’
‘Terrorists here? In this country?’
I’m assuming the poem is a protest against suspicion of Muslims in Britain. I’m aware there is a group of Afghans in the neighbourhood now. The local cafe has a new name and a map of Afghanistan on the wall, and an invitation to order a whole sheep, twenty-four hours in advance. I got into a discussion with the cook about the poet Rumi. He looked just like Shakila, come to think of it, so maybe—
‘No, Miss,’ says Shakila, eyes snapping, ivory fingers blossoming in scorn. ‘In England? There are no terrorists in England.’
‘She’s from Afghanistan,’ says Lily, ‘she means the Taliban.’
Lily is an alternative type, a Goth with heavy eyeliner who always knocks about with the black girls; nevertheless, I assume this is a white stereotype, and I am about to correct her when Shakila nods, more vehement than ever.
‘Miss! I am Hazara people.’
‘Like The Kite Runner,’ says Lily, glancing at me smugly.
‘I don’t know,’ says Shakila.
‘It’s a book,’ I say, ‘about Afghanistan. It’s on the A Level, isn’t it, Lily?’
‘The Taliban,’ says Shakila, ‘hate us. When my mum went to get our visa, Miss, the bus was bombed – not her bus, but the one in front. Miss! I thought she would never come home.’
‘But,’ says Lily, ‘I thought you was Muslim?’ She offers me a Monster Munch. Usually, at Poetry Group, Shakila brings us cherries and strawberries, shining like the roses in her cheeks. She and Priya are pale today.
‘I am Muslim,’ says Shakila, ‘I am Shia.’
‘What’s that?’ asks Lily. I raise an eyebrow. Clearly, this wasn’t in The Kite Runner.
‘A different kind of Muslim,’ I supply. ‘Like Protestant and Catholic.’
‘The Taliban hate the Shia,’ says Shakila flatly. ‘They kill us, all the time.’
Priya leans across the table. Her hijab is soft, striped, and biblical like in a nativity play, her teeth in braces, her face, as so often, full of delicate feeling. She is from Bangladesh, originally: a Sunni.
‘Miss!’ she says, but she is talking to Shakila. ‘When I found out about that, when I learned that there are other kinds of Muslim, I didn’t believe it. I said to my teacher in the mosque, this is not true, how can this be?’
‘There is only one Koran,’ says Shakila. ‘There is only one Allah.’
Priya says: ‘Miss! Don’t laugh. When I was a little girl I thought the television was true. I mean, the black and white. I thought the past was black and white, Miss, I thought England was black and white. When I found out about Shia and Sunni, it was like that for me – I mean, when I found I was wrong.’
‘You should write that down,’ says Lily, ‘this is Poetry Group. How old was you when you came here, Priya?’
‘Six.’
‘Me, I was fourteen,’ says Shakila.
‘Sunni, Shia, there is no difference really,’ says Priya. ‘Just – some prayers. Wait – do you whip yourselves?’
‘No!’ snorts Shakila. ‘I mean, not really. It is a – thingy. A symbol.’ She leans her hijab to Priya’s hijab, puts her hands across the table. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘in my country, they caught this terrorist, this bomber, they put him on television, he said he was doing it for the Taliban, but he didn’t know anything, he did not know –’ and she breaks into Arabic, sharp and triumphant – ‘As-salamu alaikum.’
‘Wa alaikumus-salam wa rahmatullah,’ chimes in Priya, and both girls bow their heads.
‘What’s that?’ asks Lily, and Shakila gazes at her.
‘A salutation,’ she says, ‘a Muslim says it to a Muslim. Everyone knows that.’
‘Except the Taliban fighter didn’t know it,’ I say. ‘Or not with a gun to his head.’
‘But,’ says Lily, ‘this bloke, the Taliban bloke on the telly, was he the same as in this poem?’
‘No,’ says Shakila, ‘this was another one.’
Priya raises her head. ‘How can a Muslim hate another Muslim? Miss! It is terrible, Miss.’
‘A real terrorist?’ says Lily. ‘In your poem? Like, you met him?’
‘Yes!’ says Shakila. ‘I saw him on the street – in the market – and I had this feeling, he is wrong. He is sweating, he wears all these clothes . . .’
‘What clothes?’
‘Like, you know, jacket, big thingy. Scarf, big trousers. It is hot, it is summer – I had a feeling, run away, run away from this guy. I catch my friend’s hand. We run.’
‘Yes,’ says Lily, ‘but was he real? A real terrorist?’
‘Yes,’ says Shakila, ‘real. I ran, I screamed, I ran, everyone ran. There was an explosion. I was hiding, behind a thingy. Wall. He was in a bomb. He exploded. You heard it. Boom.’
And then the bell rings for a long time, and we flinch from its noise.
Priya says, ‘You need a frame. For your poem. Miss. Give her a frame.’
A frame. They have learned my mantra. A frame, I say every week. Try this poem-shape, this form, this bit of rhetoric, this frame. Never: tell me about . . . Certainly not: unload your trauma. And still, they tell me these terrible things.
‘Yes,’ says Shakila, ‘a frame. How shall I say it, Miss?’
I haven’t the slightest idea. Shakila folds her hands on her bag, waits.
‘That,’ says Lily, ‘was a really good disc
ussion. I reckon we should have filmed it. Like for RE? I have to go.’
And she goes. So does Priya, leaving me to search my mind for the right frame for a poem about recognizing a terrorist in the market place and then running away.
Shakila says, ‘Miss! You know, bombs. Miss, the worst thing is, they cut you. They cut off bits of you, Miss, like your feet, your leg! And when the bomb goes off, Miss, those . . . thingies?’
‘Body parts?’ I suggest, automatically.
‘Yes!’ Shakila’s eyes brighten as they do when she sights a really fine piece of vocabulary. ‘Body parts. Body parts, they land in the town around.’
‘Did that happen in that bomb?’ I ask. ‘The bomb in your poem. Did you see that?’
‘Miss,’ she says, ‘there was a head. A whole head.’
‘His head?’ I ask. ‘The terrorist’s?’
‘Just,’ she says, ‘you know, a head.’
‘Right,’ I say. I look at the sunlight coming in the slats of the blinds and I suggest that the interrogative mood might be good for poems like this, and short lines probably, and regular stanzas. A ballad, perhaps, or a set of instructions. How to recognize a terrorist. Shakila says she will send me the poem, by email.
And she leaves. I sit and stare, listen to the roar of the children finding their classrooms, the silence as the doors close and the register is taken. This is an orderly school, I remind myself. A just one. A safe one. As Lily said, it is beautiful to see Shakila and Priya extend hands across the table. More people should know.
Then I think I will go to the staffroom and find someone to tell. There will be someone there, someone to listen and to counter with some equally horrifying tale, and we will rehearse all the interventions available, all the help school extends, which is good help, the best available anywhere, the best anyone can do. We will remind each other this is why we work here, why our school does so well. Our multicultural intake, our refugee pupils, so motivated, so very often brilliant, so, in the modern parlance, vibrant.