Nowhere Girl (7 page)

There was silence after Reza told his story. All four of them thinking of the life they were leaving, the unknown possibilities to come.

Though she was glad to be out of the truck, the water crossing was the part of the journey Amina most feared. She couldn’t swim, and they would be three hours crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, more if the weather was bad. She had heard whispers back in Tizi Ouzou, of other people who tried
harraga
and ended up lost in the waves. Samir had spoken of this too, he had said it was Allah’s punishment to them for leaving their homes. What would the punishment be, she wondered, when he found out that Omi had organised for his sister to leave? She shivered and Jodie put an arm around her shoulders.

“We ‘burn’ together,” Jodie said. “You know why they call it this, Amina? Is because if we see we are getting caught then we burn our papers. Is better that way.”

But Amina knew nothing of papers, and she had no way to start a fire.

“What would happen to us?” Amina asked.

“We would be locked up, in a prison they call an immigration centre,” Reza said. “And then they would decide what to do with us.”

“So they could let us stay?” Safiyya asked him, and Reza gave an encouraging nod.

“They would send us home, fool!” corrected Jodie. “Think about it, Safiyya. Why you think the good people of Europe would want your Muslim self in their country? Stealing they jobs. Your exotic-fruit sister stealing their men.”

Safiyya blushed bright pink and looked down, but Reza glared at Jodie. “I don’t want anyone else’s job, I only want to work to better myself. And Safiyya is a good girl, she will marry only when it is right.”

There was a silence. Amina thought of her own dream of learning things, of being free. If she stayed in Algeria her future would become part of a secret world, she would be married to a man of Samir’s choosing and there would be no escape.

Amina prayed, softly saying the words of the Qur’an, and finding comfort in them:
You alone we worship, You alone we ask for help
.

Just then they heard a sound, a put-putting noise that heralded the sight of a boat. It was much smaller than Amina had imagined, an open vessel with a small motor at the back. The man steering it was wearing a baseball hat and had a full black beard like her brother when she saw him last. She felt comfort that, baseball hat aside, he looked like the men back home, unlike Uncle Jak, whose beard was less full and who was much fatter too. Uncle Jak shook hands then kissed the man on each cheek. They spoke in Arabic, then rapid French, and yet made no move to go.

“What happens now?” asked Safiyya, this time directing her question not to her brother, but to Jodie.

“We have to wait until the coastguard is not watching,” answered Jodie.

“How you know all this?” Reza asked, still irritated.

“My brothers, they have all made this trip. Twice they came back but on the third time they did not return.”

“So which country are they in?”

“God’s country,” said Jodie. “Inshallah, they are safe now.”

Amina shivered, and found that she could not stop.

When the bearded man came close, Uncle Jak told them that they must call him Captain, and that he was an experienced seaman and they were lucky to have him guiding their ship. Captain looked to where Jodie and Amina were sitting holding their boxes. “You must only bring what you can carry, those boxes will weigh the ship down. Here…”

He pulled plastic bags from his pocket and gave them one each. Amina clutched at the box, thinking she could never part with it, but Jodie immediately began to empty hers, tipping her belongings into the dirty black bag. “Hurry, Amina,” urged Jodie. “They will not wait for us. Our families have already paid for us to burn, and the captain would think nothing of two less in his boat. A lighter vessel is quicker, and we should do as he says.”

Amina had already left her sister, her home. Omi. Now she left the box, in the protection of the rocky cave. She felt that with each part of this journey she was losing one more piece of her self.

The small boat rocked, banging against each wave as if looking for a fight, but every time the wave won, splashing over the side and adding to the puddle that was forming at the bottom of the boat. Reza held his sister’s head as she vomited over the side, her blonde hair darkened by sea and sick. The sight made Amina feel ill too, but Jodie told her to watch the horizon and to breathe only through her nose, which seemed to help for a little while. The captain did not flinch, he kept accelerating until the boat was more like an unbroken horse jumping fences.

Amina wanted to kneel, to face Mecca and pray, but there was no way of knowing which way was east and the floor of the boat was now sloshing with water. As the journey progressed the twins weren’t faring too well, before long both brother and sister had been sick so many times that now all they did was retch, dry-stomached, a sound that was thankfully drowned out by the waves. Because Reza was now unable to help his sister, Amina held Safiyya’s hand, stroked her bony back. It was what Omi would do when Pizzie or Amina were unwell, she knew that comfort was a free thing to give. As the pink sun rose, the siblings were exhausted but at least no longer sick. Reza was hunched like a dog, barely able to lift his head, while Safiyya let Amina cradle her. They were still tightly huddled when the boat finally hit Spanish sand.

They had survived the terrible journey. Amina felt herself close to tears until she remembered she was not a child any more, and that she must act in a proper way, as Omi would will it.

After the boat they travelled in a grain truck, and all four were too exhausted to worry that they must sit on a floor crawling with beetles. The twins had been so ill that they fell asleep as soon as the truck began to move. Amina too was soon dreaming, rocked to sleep by the truck’s movement down pock-marked roads. Hours passed, with no food or water.

She dreamt she was back at home, in the village, and Omi was combing her long black hair with oil so that it gleamed, hair as slick as a bird’s wing. And then she became a bird, huge and black, her wings open and she took to the sky. She was free.

The truck comes to an abrupt halt and she wakes to discover that freedom was only a fantasy. Here is reality, a truck full of stowaways, the stench of their sweat and recent sickness, their fear, is stifling.

When the door opens Uncle is there, and a familiar face is good to see, so good that Amina finds she is smiling.

Jodie has regained her composure. Though she’s pale, she manages to encourage Amina, “Keep grinning, Tina. That’s my trick too.” Then Jodie says to Uncle, “So, this our new home, Uncle Jak? What language they speak here, then?”

Uncle stands aside as the group find their legs, Reza helps Safiyya climb down from the truck, to the grassy ground. Amina wants to kneel and kiss the ground, thank Allah for her safe arrival, but no-one else is doing this so she doesn’t.

When she stumbled, Uncle touches Jodie’s waist to help her from the truck. “Only one language you’ll need here,” he tells her with a wink. “We are in Luxembourg now.”

Amina doesn’t know what language he means, but she knows she doesn’t want to learn it. She wants to learn other things. She wants this to be the start of good things.

Around her is green, though a different type from her home. And muddy, which is the same. The building, though, is tall and concrete. It is not pretty, not like European homes in her imagination, but there is a white van parked outside the house and there is a swimming pool painted on the side, just like Jodie spoke about.

The back door opens and a woman stands there, well-fed and wearing a colourful apron over black clothing. She is also smiling, and half-hidden behind her back is a boy, younger than Pizzie, but still Amina’s heart softens to see him. She can only see one cheek, one eye, and a mop of dark hair, but she has the impression of a smile across his almost hidden face.

“Say
Salam alaikum
to your new auntie,” Uncle Jak tells them, and they all lower their heads in respect.

“
Salam
, Auntie,” they say, as they enter the house that smells of spices, turmeric and cayenne pepper. Amina takes this as a good sign. The boy watches them carefully, his face still half-hidden by the fabric of Auntie’s flowery apron, but as she turns back toward the stove the boy’s whole face is revealed. One eye is dark brown and seems to be smiling. The other is completely covered by a white bandage, sealed at all four edges with white tape.

“
Salam alaikum
,” whispers Amina. “Hello, little one.” Hoping that the boy understands. He lifts a hand to wave, but his hand is skinny and the wave is a limp-wristed attempt. Though he is smiling, Amina senses that he is unwell. He moves back, as if wanting once again to hide his bandaged eye from view.

Auntie becomes irritated with his clinging, trying to ready the meal, and she pulls her apron free. “Are you hungry, Fahran? We’ll eat soon, but you could go and wait in your room. Go and play.”

Amina can see he is reluctant to leave, with the excitement of new guests, but there is much pushing and commotion as Uncle brings in only two bags, Jodie’s and Amina’s.

“What about Safiyya and Reza?” Jodie says suspiciously, and Amina is glad to hear her ask the question she herself was wondering. “We only have one spare room,” snaps Auntie, over her shoulder. “Just space for two of you. The boy will work with my cousin in Germany. The girl will be more useful in Belgium.”

“You can’t separate us!” Reza places a hand firmly around his sister’s shoulder. She looks close to tears, but her brother is angry. “We won’t go to different countries!”

Uncle sighs. He considers the boy closely.

“The Belgian border is just fifteen minutes away, and Germany isn’t much farther. You wouldn’t be so far apart. You need to work, Reza. The work is building a café at a swimming pool in Germany.”

“But we stay together,” insisted Reza, and Amina wished that she too had a brother who would fight for her in this way.

“Impossible!” says Uncle. “I cannot have a boy in a nail salon in Bastogne! This is Europe now. With motorways and fast cars so you can forget your village idea of what is a long way to travel. We are in the heart of Europe, everything is possible.”

Auntie intervenes, she can see that the boy will not be persuaded. “Jak, let them stay together. He can work, and she can be helpful in other ways around the swimming pool. When they are settled, then is the time for the girl to move to Bastogne. But not now.”

Reza’s face relaxes, just slightly. Safiyya has her head on his shoulder, her eyes are closed, but tears run down her pale cheeks.

“Okay,” says Uncle, grudgingly. “You will both go to Germany. For now.”

Auntie reaches for Safiyya and lifts her head. “Do not cry, girl. You are now in Europe and like Uncle says, everything is possible.”

Safiyya manages a small smile and Uncle leads the twins out, back to the van.

Auntie is turned towards Fahran now and her face shows all her love, also her hope that what she has just said is true, that everything will be possible for the boy with the bad eye.

She won’t be sick again. And she won’t cry.

Ellie took the bottle of bleach, the heaviest thing she could find, and held it like the P.E. teacher said to throw a javelin, hurling it straight at the window. The bang was loud, ricocheting around the caravan, and that spurred her on. Again and again she picked up the bleach bottle and threw it with all her might but the window didn’t break. Her arms ached, her breath caught, and she felt anxiety threatening to overtake her, but she pushed it down and ran at the door, the weight of her seventeen years bashing against it. She began to yell with each push, and to shout again and again, hysteria taking hold now. “Help, help, help.”

She returned to the tiny window, banging her palms and screaming in frustration that there was no opening. She pulled the mattress from the bed, threw it, slammed the empty bottle of water at the door, then the bleach again. She did everything she could to attract attention, to break free.

And then, just when she was giving up hope, the caravan door opened.

Meanwhile, Bridget stands at the window, staring out onto the street. Waiting. Her eyes, unblinking and wide with exhaustion, scanning the empty road, her ears straining for a van or car, but finds nothing. Her thoughts are running, fast, faster, until she cannot contain them. She sees then that her hands are shaking.
I have to do something with my hands
, she thinks. Remembers how the doctors would give the patients paper and pencils, and ask them to draw. It seemed so simple, so pathetic, but to Bridget’s surprise, it worked. A drawing, a story. Solace for the boy who had lost his mother to AIDS, whose sister was raped because she was a virgin. An old woman, mad with grief, and seven children to care for. A piece of paper, that was all she had been able to offer them. It had helped.

She remembered there was a notepad in the coffee table drawer, last used at Christmas to keep Scrabble scores, and she found it, still with the biro slid into the spiral binding. Bridget put the pen in her shaking hand, telling it to move, because she didn’t want to go mad. This was how she started:
I could go mad, Ellie, with this grief
. But then she strikes through this line. It was not good enough. If she was going to write to Ellie she was not going to be self-absorbed, every word must count.

Dear Ellie
, she begins again. Then:
Oh, my girl, I would give so much to be able to talk to you, to say these words rather than write them. But Ellie, would you listen? Can you hear me now, thinking these thoughts for you?

Bridget paused. The pen hovered above the paper.

There are things about me you should know
. And then the words flowed, because this was what Bridget really wanted to say to her daughter, all these months of conflict, but had been unable to. These were the things she most wanted to say:

I know how you see me. And you’re right, I am tense, I do worry. I shout and swear too. I want you to forgive me, but I think that will only happen if you understand
.