Forest Gate (4 page)

The boy who had been pushed approached me, bouncing as he stepped, his chest puffed out like a pigeon's. He was a sandy-coloured boy with bright eyes and a round face. He wore a T-shirt that said 'Dreams of fuckin' an R&B Bitch, Badboy Inc.' He looked at me like a lizard might look at a small, meaty rat. Once he was away from his friends all he said was 'Hi'. I hardly heard him and kept my eyes fixed on the weeds growing in the cracks in the pavement and did not open my mouth. I felt him looking at my tits slowly and exactingly. I looked up at him when I felt my nipples harden and his cheeks flushed. He walked away with his head bent so that I could see the raised bumps of his spine.

None of the boys were particularly handsome and all of them looked like they spent too much time in front of the mirror for my taste. They would never know – nobody would – but I would have fucked any one of that group that day if only one of them had said a kind word. I would have invited him home and given him sweet kisses on his mouth and let him touch my beautiful places and I would have given him what my husbands always took by force. I would have held him and told him how handsome he was and how strong and I would have made him feel golden sparks, if only for a little while.

I stared at the group. They reminded me of the teenage boys – a mixture of Islamist fighters and militiamen from the Hawiye clan – at home who, in protest over the presence of Ethiopian troops, blocked the roads with trees and threw stones and rocks at the armoured trucks. Ultimately, the boys offered no resistance. Mostly, they were like a great blot of incompleteness, shadows merging together to speak about dreams and girls in some poor attempt to supplement a meagre existence. As I passed I began to feel differently about the boys standing around. I began to think that maybe they huddled together to keep hold of their dreams. I thought of all the hidden emotions of boys. Maybe they were right to disengage from the world.

When I was at home I would visibly shake around men, any man who so much as looked at me. When I arrived in London I thought the world would change, that men would be different. I was wrong. I guess men are the same wherever you go, like mosquitoes always ready to suck blood from any available vein.

I
GUESS
I
SHOULD
say how Ashvin met James. They were in the same class, 4T, but they didn't even notice one another to begin with. Ashvin had started the term late on account of our visa restrictions. The teacher, Miss Raisa Bukolov from Gomel, decided to stand him in front of the class to give him a proper introduction, one of those ruinous decisions that teachers are remembered and hated for. With a flicker of amusement she mispronounced his name and sent him off to his seat. There was a pause as the boys in the class stopped talking among themselves. Their adolescent interest nudged, a rare and complete stillness took hold of class 4T. And then they started to laugh.

Ashvin lifted his chin, trying his best not to make a sound as he crossed the room to a seat at the back, in the darkness. He slumped into his chair, pulling at a thread on the frayed edge of one of the holes in his orange jumper, thinking about how popular he had been at home; how the teacher would always hand him the cutlass and ask him to lead the boys out to cut the thick grass that grew in front of the school where he used to play while he waited for our father to finish his lectures and collect him. Strange that, the way happiness only works in retrospect.

Class 4T was a different case altogether. They teased my brother relentlessly from then on. James, who was in class that day, heard the laughter but did not notice what had taken place, such was the distance between him and the rest of the boys.

At that time Ashvin owned one pair of trousers – it took a while for his size to come in at the shop that sold his school uniform. At home – I mean in Somalia where even those of us with private cars were poor – it wouldn't have mattered. In our village, girls sweated in the same frilly dresses for months at a time and boys were grateful for whatever they were handed down. But it was different here in London. For boys anyway.

I went to a sixth-form college. I was in all the top groups, even mathematics, which I found odd since I had never been considered anywhere near brilliant at home. I fitted right in with the popular girls because of my waist-length hair. The thought of me fitting in with all those eighteen-year-old Caribbean girls just because of the length of my hair makes me shudder, but at Ashvin's school, it seemed his clothes were the only thing about him considered of any importance. Initially, they teased him because he always wore the same orange jumper and baggy blue corduroys. When he started wearing his school uniform they jeered because the waist on his trousers was considered too tight. Then slowly they moved on from his trousers to his 'no name' trainers. Then they laughed at the way he walked, the way his voice differed from theirs. After weeks of almost constant teasing Ashvin despised them all.

In Somalia Ashvin loved to go to school, he really did. Forest Gate Community School for Boys changed all of that for good. He told me once that he spent hours locked in the toilets, stitching up holes in his trousers with green thread and trying to readjust his belt. He said the kids always laughed at him but only in packs. James thought they were afraid of Ashvin really. He told me there was something frightening about the flicker in my brother's narrow orange eyes.

The first time the two of them took any notice of each other was 18 March of this year as James walked home from school. How would they know where it would lead? James had felt guilty about doing nothing about the gang of boys – the 'Scare Dem Crew' – who that day teased Ashvin all the way to Hoe Street, near Walthamstow Central tube station. 'Paki liar, Paki liar.' Their taunts were uninspired.

James stood and watched as the bullies began throwing things: stones and bottles lying around at first but then fists and kicks started to fly. When I asked James about it he said he could tell Ashvin was furious about the bullies' taunts but on the outside he remained strangely calm.

'I'm not a Paki. I'm not lying. I
was
born in Africa,' said Ashvin. Then he swung a fist and landed a decent punch that changed everything. It made James think differently about Ashvin, made him think he was brave. It made him want to be his friend. He watched one boy, thick and tall, who was caught on the nose by Ashvin's wild punch, pull a gun, a Baikal, and put it to my brother's head.

'Hit me? I'll kill you,' said the boy through clenched teeth.

'Shoot me. Go on, do it,' Ashvin said and then he laughed.

He had seen war. It was the reason we were here.

The boy cocked the gun but he did not shoot. He froze for a long moment as though waiting for the voice of God and then in the prickly silence he smashed the butt of the gun across the bridge of Ashvin's nose. Ashvin hit the ground, curled into a ball and soaked up more hammer-blows. But he was still laughing. My brother could be very stubborn.

James remained hidden until the beating stopped and then he watched the boys run towards the tube station shouting obscenities as they fled. When Ashvin was sure he was alone he made a solemn effort to prop himself against a wall, taking slow breaths in the rain. His eyes gleamed as he wiped himself down.

From his hiding place behind dustbins, James watched Ashvin as the rain abated, feeling pity and something else that he couldn't quite describe until much later.

As time slowed the only sound came from gentle rainwater filling street drains. James watched Ashvin until the street lights awakened and the brightening moon cast a hideous glow over the East End. He said he felt ashamed. When I pushed for more detail, James said he would have cried but he remembered staring directly into Ashvin's eyes looking for tears, and they only glistened in triumph.

Ashvin made for a lonely sight. Blood seeped from the split on the bridge of his nose and yet he sat very still, staring at a pigeon. Every now and then he would shiver because of a sudden icy breeze. It was like watching a scene from a poem. 'I will never forget the look on Ashvin's face,' he said, 'the way he hunched his trembling shoulders and glared across at the traffic, the tower blocks, the run-down council houses and the unkempt front gardens.'

I loved my brother dearly. Thinking about him now invites only pain. He had a brilliant mind and I imagine what kind of life he could have had, the wife he would have chosen, about his kids. Ashvin was slightly built and had a serene face, smooth cheeks with cinnamon skin. I clearly remember the day those boys put a gun to his head – the thoughtful look on his face when he returned home. His orange jumper was covered in dirt and his curly black hair full of dust and dried blood.

'Where have you been?' I asked him.

'I made a friend,' was all he said. And he smiled.

When James came out from hiding, Ashvin had walked briskly in his direction, shadow-boxing while holding his belt and mumbling in his raspy voice.

'
Suffer, poor Negro, the whip whistles, whistles in sweat and blood
.' He often recited random lines of poetry, my brother. His delivery was serious and natural. He wasn't showing off, just practising, he would always say. At school in Somalia we learned to recite poetry and Langston Hughes was one of my brother's favourites.

'What?' James asked him when he emerged from behind the hedge. 'What did you just say?'

'
Suffer, poor Negro, the whip whistles, whistles in sweat and blood
,' said Ashvin.

The only poet James knew by heart was Lil' Kim.

'Suffer, poor Negro? Who's that?' asked James.

'That's Langston Hughes,' said Ashvin.

'Langston who? Old or new school?'

Ashvin smiled as he squinted his eyes at James incredulously and pulled his lips in a grimace. His teeth were stained red; he had a gash above his right eye and the split on his nose widened. He looked up at the brownish sky.

'It's started again. It's not going to stop,' he said.

James turned his face upward and flinched as he was pelted with cold rain.

Ashvin continued shadow-boxing on his way. '
Suffer, poor Negro
.'

Intrigued, James followed.

James knew Ashvin lived on the Lumumba estate that was just behind his. They took the long way, past Stratford cinema. There was a long queue and people, adults, saw Ashvin's blood and beat-up face but no one met his eyes. Stratford Picturehouse was showing
The Queen
. Ashvin held up two of his fingers and spat blood loudly when he looked up at the poster of Helen Mirren as Her Majesty. James, smiling, spat too.

They did not speak much to begin with. They walked steadily, coming to terms with each other's presence.

'Why didn't you run home?' James asked.

'What? So they can know where I live?' Ashvin said.

'Look,' said James thoughtfully, 'I've watched you in class and wondered why you don't just change your trousers, get some new shoes?'

'I have got new trousers. My sponsor bought me expensive jeans, same as everybody wears, with the red sign on the back pocket. He bought me trainers too, Air Force 1s,' said Ashvin.

'Good for you. So why not wear them?'

'Why should I?' asked Ashvin as he spat a fresh glob of blood. 'I don't want to be friends with you people.'

'You people? Don't lump me in with everybody else. I hate it when people do that. I'm different.'

Ashvin lowered his eyes to James's feet, threw a hateful gaze at his footwear.

'What?' asked James. 'I like Air Force 1s. It don't make me the same as everyone else. Seems to me you want to fight with everyone.'

'Beats following the crowd,' said Ashvin.

'Trying to be different is like vanity, no?' asked James.

'Makes me feel free.'

They were both quiet for a while as James watched Ashvin walking clumsily, wincing now and again as he struggled not to put weight on his left leg. James put his arm around Ashvin's shoulder to support him across Leytonstone High Road.

'What's your star sign?' Ashvin asked, catching his breath.

'Gemini.'

'My mum's a Gemini.'

They talked all the way to the corner of York Road where they had to split up to get home. But they didn't part. They stood and carried on talking. Ashvin had an air of authority that appealed to James. They talked about unsettling things, of war and of charcoal and diamonds. Ashvin spoke of artists whose music our father knew by heart. Nina Simone and Fela Kuti. Ash said their music 'set him free'. He told James about writers he loved, Zora Neale Hurston and Aimé Césaire. Mostly, James listened, absorbing new things with unusual intensity.

They had eight pounds cash between them and at about nine o'clock they decided against going home, preferring to share a meal. It was beautiful and fatal – their immediate friendship was innocent, but they were tormented boys with troubled hearts. They shouldn't have been brought together. Not then.

Together they were emboldened by thoughts they discovered they held in common. I have often wondered how different things could have been if they had been two teenage black girls blessed with peace and the hope of most women. Perhaps two girls would have accepted who they were instead of complaining about life and the things they couldn't change. Instead, like two old philosophers, Ashvin and James spoke of the ruin of their lives, their unfulfilled needs, their unanswered prayers and ultimately – over pizza topped with black olives, green peppers and sweetcorn – they were seduced by the phantom call to death by suicide: its science, its poetry, its violence, its art.

Forest Gate Pizza Hut had recently been made over. It smelled pleasantly of baking dough and was full of bright colours and angles like a snakes and ladders board. The restaurant was very busy for 9.15 on a week night. A tattooed waitress with hair plastered to her forehead made a 'you're so lame' face when James used his Sean Connery voice and asked for his usual table. But the two boys bent over with laughter. They followed her to a middle booth between a Polish couple looking ill at ease and an elderly black man wearing a London Underground uniform who looked as though he had been born with a frown, and sat reading a tabloid while he ate.

Directly opposite Ashvin and James were another two booths. A teenage couple huddled together in one. The boy wore a cool pair of sneakers with three fluorescent stripes. While his girlfriend ate garlic bread and cheese noisily, he masturbated his laces. Two women in their mid-forties with thick braids and thicker Bajan voices sat in the other booth. Every now and then someone would shuffle past the boys' table, different people, wearing a loud scent or using a mobile phone. At one point during their dinner, their waitress, a delicate Eritrean girl who James had been eyeing, interrupted to hand them both crayons. That had them both in stitches.

They spoke intimately that night. I don't know all the exact details but I can just imagine how the conversation went:

'Do you think it can get better?'

'Not for the likes of me and you.'

'What about religion? Do you have any faith in God?'

My brother would have laughed. 'The night they killed my parents,' he would have said, 'while I hid under the stairs, I called to Allah and then to Muhammad and then to the God of Abraham, to Jesus Christ. I asked them to save my mother. She was old school. She'd been religious her whole life, fasting and praying, genuinely devout. She never put a foot wrong. But while she suffered, God and all His prophets remained silent.'

'What is all the fighting about in your country?' asked James.

'I asked my dad about this once. He said it began with the collapse of the Ottomans, the last Islamic empire. The Europeans met in Berlin in the 1800s and carved Somalia into slices like pizza. Some slices went to Italy, others to Britain and France. Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, was also a Christian, and he begged his fellow Christians, saying that his country was a Christian island in an Islamic ocean. And so Ethiopia was also given a slice of Somali pizza – Ogaden. This territory has remained the cause of much of our fight with Ethiopia.'

'I didn't understand a word of that,' said James and Ashvin would have almost spat out his pizza when he laughed.

'My father sold drugs. He used them too,' James told him. 'In the end he was shot by men he thought were his friends. Two years ago my eldest brother returned from prison with years of his memory erased.' James held his head in his hands and his voice became tense. 'I saw my dad in hospital the night he got shot. He said he was going to be all right. He promised. I was only young. You might think he was bad because he sold drugs but he wasn't. He tried to go straight. The night before my dad died my brother made me kneel down while he prayed. I'd never prayed before, not really. I always felt stupid talking to myself in the dark but not that night. My brother said some words that I thought would make everything all right. Of course, it didn't. My father died. God didn't even answer my one simple prayer. I never pray, not now. I don't ask for anything: happiness, beauty, love, power, order, money, all the world's possibilities aren't worth the sorrow and suffering it seems you have to give in return. Things keep getting worse.'