Divinity Road (32 page)

I look at her, weigh up her words. Her eyes are beautiful, a greeny-grey, flecked with blue, like nothing I have seen before in Africa. I examine them carefully, think I read in them honesty and sympathy and compassion and sadness. But I still don’t know what to say, where to start.

Look, you can’t stay here. It’s, it’s...

Why not? I say, breaking my silence. I do not know why I say that, perhaps I am just playing for time.

Well, it’s... it’s... you... Nuala bursts out laughing. Christ almighty, where do I start? You’re not stupid, you must realise what you’re doing’s wrong. I say nothing. The point is, she continues, as much to herself as to me, that you wouldn’t be doing it unless you had to. She looks at me with those powerful, flinty eyes. Things are bad, eh?

I nod, I take a deep breath, and then I tell her everything. I tell her about the council housing lists, my problems with the meter, the Cowley landlord, Tom and Gloria. When I finish she purses her lips and gives a low whistle.

Jesus Christ, that’s some story, she says with a hollow laugh. She continues to stare at me and we remain like that, in silence, for a long minute. Finally she speaks.

Well, you can’t stay here. You can stay at my place for a few days. Just until you get yourself sorted. We can go round to your friends this afternoon to collect your stuff. I’ve got some paperwork to do but I should be free in an hour or so. I’ll meet you in the canteen.

I start to protest. I certainly appreciate the generosity behind Nuala’s offer, it feels in some ways like a miraculous answer to our prayers. But I hardly know this woman...

Look, Semira. I can see you’re hesitating, but let me put it this way. If you stay here and are caught, the college could prosecute you. You could be arrested and that might even mean a spell in custody. If you’re locked up, your kids would be taken into care. Come on, don’t be stubborn. You know it makes sense.

And of course, she is right. I hesitate for only a few more seconds, long enough to consider, then dismiss the idea that Nuala might be a crazed child killer, a dealer in human body parts. What is the worst that can happen? I think. If it turns out to be an awful mistake, we can always leave. And in the meantime, this buys us a bit more time.

So that is what I remember of our conversation, and that is how I come to be here in this spare bedroom, sitting at a small pine desk, finishing off this letter, dear Kassa. It is late, nearly two o’clock. Tom drove around with his van this evening to drop off our belongings. Yanit and Abebe are both on put-me-up beds in the basement, the house is silent, and I am dropping with fatigue.

All my love to you and Gadissa.

***

Dear Kassa I thought of you today with your love of stories, as I bought my copy of the local newspaper. Yanit has won a short story competition for schoolchildren and the prize is publication of the tale in the paper and a hundred pounds in book tokens. She is so proud of herself, as I am too. She told me nothing about it and submitted her entry secretly. It was not until they announced the winners that she allowed me to read it. It is about a young girl who is made homeless and breaks into her school classroom every night to sleep there. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I read it! I have cut out the story and enclose the clipping for you to read. I know you would be proud of her.

Our new home is large, a tall handsome terraced house half-way up Divinity Road. It is closer to the mosque and to the Asian shops that sell some of the herbs and spices I like to cook with. It is a little further from the children’s school, from the library and my classes, but the bus to Blackbird Leys passes the bottom of the road, and everything else is still within walking distance.

And what a handsome road it is, a thoroughfare whose life begins up at the top of a park, and which then meanders lazily down the hill bursting forth onto Cowley Road, from source to estuary a good quarter mile of tarmac.

In many ways the road is typical of this part of the world, residential urban comfort, a mixture of professionals and students. I could be in London or Bristol. There are the green dustbins, the blue recycling boxes full of empty beer tins and cardboard, the posters in the bay windows advertising school fetes or political meetings. At any one time three or four of the houses are being worked on, their front gardens filled with rubble or bags of cement. Cars are parked from top to bottom, enough space on the road for only a single vehicle to pass at one time, so manoeuvring up and down the hill demands patience and politeness – the English are good at that.

For me, though, the road is unique. It is our temporary safe haven from life’s storms, so I have studied it at some length. In my mind, I divide the road into three parts. The first stretches from the top to the first bend, where the road veers to the right. On this section, as you head down the hill, your eyes travel above the houses and you can see a rising area of greenery in the distance, a mile or two away perhaps. Then, if you raise your eyes, you see beyond the first ridge a proper hill, far out in the country, a patchwork of fields and woods, and you understand that Oxford is a small urban island in a rural ocean.

When you reach that first bend, you are into the hundred-and-twenties where we live. From here you are too low to see the country landscape beyond the buildings. Instead, rising above the houses, the view is dominated by the curved roof of the mosque, matt or gleaming depending on the time of day, the lighting and weather, and the minaret, tall and stately. It is a beautiful sight, the first thing I look for when I leave the house, a warming, welcome presence and yet exotic, too, in its setting.

The bend is short, from the one-twenties to the nineties, and then you are in the home stretch, the road sweeps down the final section to the insurance firm and manicure bar facing you on the main road at the bottom.

And what of our sanctuary itself? It is a four bedroom house with a large basement converted into some kind of art studio. Nuala has the master bedroom and both of her children, Sammy and Bethany, have their own rooms. I am in the fourth bedroom, with Yanit and Abebe on camp beds sharing the basement.

At first I protest and offer to share my bedroom with the children, but Nuala insists that the studio is temporarily not in use, and both Yanit and Abebe plead to be allowed to stay there. The piles of canvases, tubes of paints, jars of brushes, the haphazard stains and smears on every surface, all make it seem like some exciting playroom. Together with Nuala, we hoover the room, tidy up the worst of the mess, scrub and dust so that it can serve as a place to sleep.

Settling in has not been straightforward. At first everything is awkward. Sammy, aged nine, and Bethany, eleven, seem like sweet, funny children. They are obviously confused by our arrival, but they are polite and helpful as they go about showing Yanit and Abebe around the house. They explain how to use their playstation, which cupboard holds the biscuit tin, what password you must use to log onto the computer.

I hate those first weeks. Perhaps I have just grown unaccustomed to sharing a life with anyone. All those uncomfortable episodes: opening the toilet door before realising that someone is already inside. Having to ask a hundred times a day where such-and-such lives, how to switch it on, why it will not work. Always wanting to help, to put on the laundry, do the dishes, cook the meal, but worried that you are being too pushy.

But gradually things have got better. Nuala has a knack for putting people at ease – I have seen it often enough with new students in the classroom – and little by little we work out a routine that seems to satisfy us both.

First of all she announces that henceforth she will be buying her meat halal from a Cowley Road butcher. She likes to do the weekday cooking – great saucepans of beef stew, chicken curry, tomato and red pepper sauce, which she throws together with rice or pasta or mashed potatoes. I help out with the peeling and dicing. For my taste it is wholesome but one-dimensional and rather bland. Still, it is food her children are used to, and Yanit and Abebe, sick of takeaway chips, approve heartily.

At weekends, we feed the children on pizza and I make them mountains of falafel, which everybody seems to love. Then, once the little ones are fed, I cook my own dishes, lamb and lentil wat, kitfo and tibs and gored gored. I introduce Nuala to berbere and niter kibbeh. The familiar cooking smells draw Yanit and Abebe away from the television and computer, bring them into the kitchen for a second sitting. And then Sammy and Bethany appear, anxious not to miss out, and even they will sniff the plates, break off a hunk of injera and dip it into one of the stews.

My studies are going very well. Nuala says I have a gift for languages. She says it is almost miraculous how quickly I pick things up. I don’t know about that, but it is pleasing to be moved up classes regularly, to see my hard work reflected in certificates and qualifications. I am now in the top English language class, a pre-access course called Pathways for Adult Learners. Every week I inch closer to my goal.

Money is difficult. At first I have nothing. My housing benefit is going straight to my ex-landlord, I guess, and I still cannot face the council with my tale of foolish misfortune. I want to contribute to household expenses but am unable.

I try to explain this to Nuala and she waves away my embarrassment. Still, she tells me I need to sort out the bureaucracy for the council if I want to avoid losing my housing ranking for the second time. She helps me make an appointment with a housing officer and accompanies me to the meeting. We have already agreed to turn her landlady status into something more formal so that I will remain on housing benefits and can keep my place on the housing list. We fill in the paperwork to transfer my benefits payment to her. It is a huge relief to have all that sorted out, and I feel better handing over some rent. There is still some awkwardness. I keep telling her all this is only temporary, that we will be out of her hair soon. She tells me we can stay as long as we like, but I cannot help feeling a little uneasy.

Nuala’s two children are interesting characters. When they are tired or frustrated, they squabble and fight constantly, are insolent towards their mother and lose all sense of boundaries. In other words, they show that lack of respect that we find so scandalous when we observe family relationships here. At these times I look over at my own children observing the scene with shock and awe, and I think, Now don’t you get any ideas...

Most of the time, though, Nuala’s children are bright and funny and thoughtful. Bethany is a year younger than Yanit but similar in many ways, a book-lover, a sketcher, a scribbler of poems, an actress. She has introduced Yanit to a computer game that involves designing and building your own virtual home and lifestyle and they spend hours choosing colour schemes and furnishings. Sammy is nine, the same age as Abebe. His passion is Lego and his bedroom is little more than an on-going construction site. His interest has brushed off on Abebe, a good thing since it keeps him off the computer.

Despite their occasional tantrums, the ‘paddies’ as Nuala calls them, there is something admirable about these children. It is difficult to explain, Kassa, but as I watch them, I begin to understand that the freedom they enjoy, the lack of boundaries and respect, is both a curse and a blessing.

Of course it is shocking to see children abuse each other and show so little respect for authority. But as I watch them pushing those boundaries, flourishing in the freedom they have to experiment, to learn from their mistakes, I see that there is a healthy side to this way of bringing up children, that it makes these young ones strong-willed independent-minded and creative, and this must be a good thing too.

In the meantime, though, there are times when Nuala’s children are playing up, where I have to fight the urge to deliver a few choice slaps...

On the kitchen wall, there is a framed collage of photos of family and friends. It is easy to identify the children’s father, a gentle-looking man with a long face and thin, mousy hair, greying at the temples. He appears in many of the pictures and I study his features for glimpses of his children – the shape of Sammy’s mouth, the humour in Bethany’s eyes. I scrutinise his profile, occasionally reflective, caught off guard, but usually smiling, pulling a silly face, playing up to the camera. I wonder where he is, what his story is, but of course I do not ask Nuala.

And I am not the only one who is curious about the lives of others. Nuala digs around for my past, not in a bad way, not aggressively, just a gentle but dogged grilling for information. Since my arrival here, I have opened up to no-one about my history, save for the minimal account necessary to persuade the Red Cross officer to commit himself to my cause.

It is not only that I still feel a danger, the long claws of the Asmara family. Much more than that it is an act of self-preservation – I need to survive here, to flourish even, if only for the sake of Yanit and Abebe. To do that I have to be focused, to deal ruthlessly with my memories. To open the lid, to allow my past out, would be to risk the mental equilibrium that I currently maintain. My history buried, I remain strong. My family, my friends, my lost life in Africa, you are all needles in my heart, Kassa, but I cannot afford to give you my attention, must work to push you out to the edge. That is how I survive. That is how it must be.

But Nuala is persistent, and from time to time I feel strong enough to open the door a crack. Yesterday she asks me about my family. I have rarely spoken to anyone about the early years of my life, not even to you and Gadissa, but on this occasion I find some relief in revealing my past. Here is the conversation as I remember it. You may find it illuminating.