No Safe Place (14 page)

The tea things were cleared away and the crumbs were swept up. Beth started to talk about hot baths for everyone and wonder where they all would sleep.

“Of course you're not going back to that cave. It's no problem to make room here.” She took Gemma to see about sheets and blankets while Cheslav and Rosalia finished off the dinner dishes.

Abdul put on his shoes and walked out of the house.

He went to the cliff above Gemma's cave. There was a rock there, a big boulder, and he climbed up on it and looked out at the sea.

The moon was out. The water sparkled.

He knew he wasn't the first person to sit on this rock and look out over the water. Women had watched the sea waiting for their sons and husbands to return. Farmers looked at the water and wished they could be sailors. Sailors looked at the sea and wished they could remain on land. Broken hearts and lonely souls, problems big and small. Whatever you were going through, the sea had seen it all before.

The rhythm of the waves was constant and comforting. Abdul wished he could just slip down into them, quiet and smooth, and let them gently lap over him forever.

It's too bad, he thought, that drowning was not a quiet way to die. He wouldn't magically float down to the sea and be welcomed into its darkness. First he'd have to leave the rock. Then he'd have to climb down the cliff — jumping from above could result in a broken back but nothing more. The sea would be cold and bitter, not soft and easy, and his body would struggle to stay alive even while his mind was willing something else.

He hadn't put much thought into that part of his plan. There had been too many other details to take care of first, just getting done what he needed to do to make the next step in the journey.

All he knew was that once he finished with Penny Lane, he would have run out of reasons to keep living.

The rock he was sitting on was the perfect size for two. He could imagine Kalil sitting there with him. The rock had a bit of a scoop in it, just below where Abdul was sitting, and Kalil would have fit there perfectly. Abdul would have put his arm around Kalil, and Kalil would have rested his head against Abdul's chest, and they would have watched the sea together before starting their new lives in a new land.

Abdul closed his eyes. He could almost feel his friend against him.

It was time for him to move on. Beth would make sure Jonah was all right. Cheslav and Rosalia were both tough. They would find their own way. No one needed him anymore.

So, he was free to leave. He had his medallion back. There was no need even to say goodbye. He would walk into the village, find a road going north and keep walking until he found the bus to Liverpool.

Abdul took one last look at the sea and stood up. He aimed himself in the direction of the village and started walking.

Abdul found the road going north and walked along it with his back to the sea. He walked through two villages until, when the sun started to come up, he came to the town with the National Express coach station. The ticket-seller didn't even look at him as he changed his pound notes into a bus ticket.

He had a two-hour wait. He bought food that he ate without tasting, kept his head down and took no notice of anyone or anything but the clock on the station wall. Then he got in line, eyes on his feet, and took a seat by himself, where he stared without seeing out the window.

He slept for a lot of the journey. People came and sat beside him for longer or shorter stretches, but no one spoke to him and he spoke to no one.

“Liverpool! Norton Street Station! Liverpool! All off at this station!”

A profound sadness sat heavy on Abdul's chest as he left the coach, stepping around the passengers gathering their bags and bundles. He bought a map of Liverpool from a station kiosk. From where he was, he could walk to Penny Lane.

He cried as he walked. He couldn't help it. These were the streets he should have walked with Kalil. This should have been the happiest walk of his life. Instead, it was the loneliest.

Abdul wiped his eyes and consulted his map. It was not far now.

And then, suddenly, he was there. A waist-high sign was bolted to the sidewalk.

Penny Lane.

He put his hand on the sign, oblivious to the passersby, and at that moment he knew he had somehow been expecting Kalil to be there waiting for him. It was as realistic a hope as expecting Lennon and McCartney to be waiting for him on the dock with a spare guitar and an empty chair.

Abdul took the chain with its Yellow Submarine medallion from around his neck. He knelt down by the street sign, brought the medallion to his lips and hung it around the signpost.

And then Abdul was engulfed by an emptiness so profound it robbed his limbs of the ability to support him. There was nowhere to go now. No reason to leave this patch of dirt and concrete. No reason for his heart to keep beating.

His knees came up to his chest and his arms curled around his legs. His back slumped against the sign. His head hung until his face was buried in his knees.

“Hello? Could you move over, please? We're trying to get a picture of the sign.”

“Excuse me — you at the sign. Could you move off to the side for us, please?”

“Go up to him, Stanley. Maybe he can't hear you.”

“You. I'm talking to you.” A hand shook Abdul's shoulder, tentatively at first, then with more force.

“What's this, then?”

“We can handle it. We just want a picture.”

“It's one of them bloody foreigners again. There's only one thing they understand.” A boot landed in Abdul's side.

“There's no need to…”

“The sign belongs to all of us, doesn't it? Who does he think he is?”

Abdul kept his head down while the debate raged above him. More blows would come soon. They'd get rougher and more painful and he would do nothing to stop them.

“Maybe we should fetch the police.”

“Don't need no police to handle this.” Another kick, followed by a shove that landed Abdul's face against the pavement.

Kick me in the head, he silently begged.

“All he had to do was move. Really, he didn't need to bring this on.”

A boot to his backside tried to shove Abdul along. Abdul could feel the gravel sting his face as it scraped his skin. Someone spat on him.

“Where do they keep coming from? Who keeps letting them into the country?”

Then he heard, “He's with us.”

He opened his eyes. Cheslav and Rosalia were there.

“More freaking foreigners,” the tough guy said, but he said it into the ground because Rosalia had laid him flat.

“Anyone else want to speak?” she asked, and the crowd of all sorts — hippies, thugs, middle-aged tourists with cameras and Beatles Forever buttons — took a giant step back.

Cheslav took one arm and Rosalia took the other. They raised Abdul to his feet and wiped the dust from his clothes.

“What are you doing here?” Abdul asked.

“You think you are the only one who likes the Beatles?” said Cheslav.

And Rosalia said, “You really are an idiot.”

She slipped her arm around his waist. Cheslav did the same, and the three of them, linked together, walked away from the crowd.

DEBORAH ELLIS
says her books reflect “the
heroism of people around the world who are struggling for decent lives, and how
they try to remain kind in spite of it.” Whether she is writing about families
living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, street children in Pakistan, the coca
protests in Bolivia, or the lives of military children, she is, as
Kirkus
attests, “an important voice of moral and
social conscience.”

A lifelong small-town Ontarian — born and raised in
Cochrane and Paris and now living in Simcoe — Deb has won the Governor General's
Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California's Middle East Book
Award, Sweden's Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and the
Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She recently received the Ontario
Library Association's President's Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has
also been named to the Order of Ontario.

She is best known for her Breadwinner Trilogy, set
in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a series that has been published in seventeen
countries, with more than one million dollars in royalties donated to Canadian
Women for Women in Afghanistan and Street Kids International. Her recent young
adult novel,
No Safe Place,
has so far received
starred reviews in
Quill & Quire
,
Kirkus
and
School Library
Journal
.

FICTION

Looking for X

The Breadwinner

Parvana's
Journey

Mud City

The Breadwinner Trilogy

A Company of
Fools

The Heaven Shop

I Am a Taxi

Sacred Leaf

Jackal in the Garden: An Encounter with Bihzad

Jakeman

Bifocal
(co-written with Eric Walters)

Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories

No Safe Place

True Blue

No Ordinary Day

NONFICTION

Three Wishes: Israeli and Palestinian Children Speak

Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk About AIDS

Off to War: Voices of
Soldiers' Children

Children of War: Voices of
Iraqi Refugees

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