Far From My Father’s House. Jill McGivering

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СКАЧАТЬ shrieking and tickling each other. A toddler sat beside them in the dust. He had the severed arm of a doll in his hand and was sucking on its plastic fingers. His nostrils were black with a moustache of flies.

      Her colleague all those years ago had been wrong. She still cared. She would force London to pay attention to what was happening here. That was her job. Frank was feeding them and giving them clean water. The least she could do was write about them. But to make an impact, she needed stronger material.

      Her clothes were sticking to her back, her arms, her neck and the cut above her eye was throbbing. She lifted the bottle of water to her lips and drank, then stood, thinking, and inhaled the faint smell of plastic. Two young boys careered onto the path from between the tents. They skidded to a sudden halt when they saw her. Their clothes were filthy, mouths and noses encrusted with dirt. They turned, their eyes following her uncertainly as she walked on, looking for Ali.

      The further she moved from the entrance gates, the poorer the shelters became. The off-white canvas soon ran out and was replaced by makeshift structures made from salvage and imagination. Faded grain sacks, torn open, were tied with twine round knobbly sticks. Torn sheets of plastic sweated in the heat. Pieces of brown cardboard, which had clearly once been aid boxes, had been bent round to form screens from the sun.

      Smoke was rising. She walked towards it. Three women were crouched together on their haunches outside a shelter. A grandmother and two daughters-in-law perhaps. They’d built a small fire inside a triangle of mud bricks. One of the daughters was poking it with a stick. A battered metal kettle was perched on top and a row of tin cups stood by, waiting. The grandmother had a fan, stiffly plaited straw nailed to a rounded stick. She was fanning herself energetically to keep off clouds of flies.

      The young woman who was tending the fire lowered her head and blew on it, scattering sparks. There was a sickly stench. Ellen looked round. The women were just by a row of latrines. The toilets were simple wood frames, raised a foot or so off the ground on bricks and nailed round with hessian for privacy. It was clear where the women had found bricks for their fire.

      The grandmother saw Ellen and lifted a hand to greet her. She said something in Pashto and laughed and three isolated, stained teeth showed in her mouth. Ellen put her hand on her heart: Salaam Alaikum.

      The old lady patted the ground beside her. A daughter shuffled along to make a place. When Ellen sat down, the grandmother fanned her with such enthusiasm that droplets of sweat flew off her arm, speckling Ellen’s shoulders and neck.

      The kettle rocked as it boiled. The daughter wrapped the end of her chador round her hand and poured out sugary milky tea. Ellen took the plum from her bag and broke it into pieces, coating her fingers in juice. The flesh was mushy and heady with sweetness and they sucked on it noisily, smiling round at each other. When she lifted her fingers to her nose, the rich smell of the plum juice blocked out everything else.

      She was sitting there amongst the women, drinking tea, when Ali found her. He walked right past at first, then did a double take and stopped dead. He looked so shocked at the sight of her, tucked in with the village women, that she had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. It was pointless, she could tell at once, to ask him to join them and translate. From now on, she would have to fend for herself.

      Later, she started back through the camp on her own. The aid trucks were just coming into view when she heard a noise, a stifled cry, off to one side between the rows of tents. She turned to look. A thin figure. A man. Leaning against a wooden strut down the back of a shelter. He was bowed as if in pain. His shoulders were trembling, his face low and hidden in his hands.

      She stepped off the main path and approached him cautiously.

      ‘Ab caisse hai?’ How are you?

      He stiffened but didn’t reply. He was wearing a salwar kameez which might once have been cream but was now streaked grey with dirt. A round tribal hat was tipped forwards on his head.

      She tried again, a little louder: ‘Ab tik hai?’ Are you OK?

      He raised his head. His face was long and thin and lined with anxiety. His pointed beard was almost entirely white. Thin wire spectacles sat on the bridge of a pinched nose. They were lopsided, their spindly arms hooked around his ears. His myopic eyes, light in colour, were watery and anguished.

      She stepped closer. ‘Do you speak English?’

      He squirmed, embarrassed, and turned away.

      She groped for the right words: ‘Ab English bol suk—’

      He turned back to her and interrupted, with a hint of defiance: ‘I know English.’

      Her eyes fell to his hands which were sticking out from the sleeves of his shabby kameez. They were raw with burns. The flesh was bloated and blistered, scored through with pink creases. ‘You need a doctor.’ She pointed to them. ‘Let me have a look.’

      ‘You are doctor?’ He looked at her with suspicion.

      ‘I’m a journalist. My name is Ellen. I can take you to a doctor.’

      He shook his head and sighed. He held up his damaged hands and considered them with sad detachment, as if they belonged to another man.

      ‘Madam,’ he said at last, ‘this is not important.’ He lifted off his spectacles with slow, clumsy fingers and wiped his wet eyes on his sleeve.

      When he’d replaced his spectacles, he turned his shoulder and she sensed that he was about to walk away. She moved closer at once. He mustn’t. This was the first refugee she’d found who had some English. There couldn’t be many here. She spoke in a rush, trying to use her questions to pin him in place.

      ‘Tell me. Please. Have you just arrived? Where did you come from? What happened to you?’

      He drew himself to his full height. ‘I am schoolteacher. My name is Ibrahim. I hail from the mountains. From Mutaire.’

      ‘Ibrahim.’ She bowed her head to show respect. His pale eyes seemed utterly exhausted. In a camp bursting with large families, he seemed, like her, to be all alone. She reached out and handed him her bottle of water. He drank it, shyly at first, then urgently. There was a narrow strip of shade running along the edge of the shelters. She sat down in it, practically at his feet, and raised her face to him. ‘If you talk to me,’ she said, ‘maybe I can help.’

      A shift in the light made her look past him. A young man had stopped on the path and was watching them both. He was a broad-shouldered teenager with a downy beard. She expected him to move on when she stared pointedly back. He didn’t. He stood his ground. She pulled her headscarf forwards to conceal her hair and forehead. When she looked again, he had disappeared.

      Ibrahim had decided to trust her. He lowered himself and sat a small distance away. He crossed his legs under his long kameez and stared at the mud.

      ‘So Ibrahim-ji,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

      When his words finally started to flow, they came out in a torrent, only just intelligible. ‘My family. My daughters. My old daughter, she cannot walk. How can they come down from the mountain? But so much fighting is there. That’s what they say. The army. The Taliban also.’

      He put his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. Ellen leant forwards. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘Ibrahim. Let me help you.’

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