No Place for Nathan (6 page)

‘Do you think she’ll be like Phoebe was when she first came?’ my son Jamie called out from his bedroom.

I couldn’t help but smile at the hesitancy in his tone as I swept from room to room, checking there were fresh towels in the bathroom and grabbing a floral duvet set from the airing cupboard. Nine-year-old Phoebe had stayed with us for almost a year before moving on to a long-term carer. The friendly, kind and bubbly girl we said goodbye to was unrecognisable from the angry whirlwind we had first met. Our house seemed so much emptier without her presence and, despite her leaving months earlier and other children staying with us meanwhile, we still missed her. But the first few weeks of Phoebe’s stay had been challenging for all of us, especially so for Jamie.

From the moment she arrived Phoebe had fixated on him so that, whenever she was confused or upset, Jamie would be the one who got a wet finger shoved into his ear or a plate thrown at him. As she settled and learnt to trust us we witnessed some dramatic changes in her behaviour, so much so that our motivation to foster had grown even stronger, but the traumatic start had left Jamie chary of new arrivals.

‘No, I doubt it,’ I said, though my words sounded hollow. I actually had no idea what Zadie Hassan would be like. In a hurried telephone conversation with her social worker late that afternoon, I had been told that the 13-year-old was from a Muslim family who had never come to the attention of social services before, and so information was sketchy. Of Asian heritage, Zadie had been found by two patrolling police officers early that morning, sheltering in a shop doorway in a central northern shopping centre. Apparently she had pleaded with officers not to take her home, begging as if her life depended on it. She had seemed so genuinely terrified that the officers took her straight to the police station and alerted social services.

At 13, Zadie was outside of our approved age range, but she had spent most of the day waiting at the local authority offices, listening as social workers phoned agency after agency, trying to match her with Muslim foster carers. By the time the decision was reached to settle her with a white British family it was almost 5 p.m. and the poor girl was exhausted. Strictly speaking, our family was only approved to take children from 0 to 11, leaving a gap of at least two years between any child coming into our home and my own youngest, Jamie, who was just 13. But when an ideal match isn’t possible and a child urgently needs a warm bed to sleep in, social workers are usually prepared to bend the rules.

A gap of two years is recommended between looked-after and birth children so that the family dynamics are roughly unchanged. If disrupted, resentment against the foster child can build to a point where the placement breaks down. Some fostered children have been so badly abused in their own homes that they find it difficult to witness the positive environment when they arrive in a foster home and seek to sabotage the relationships between family members, so it’s important to maintain the original pecking order.

Preparing children for family life when they have had little experience of boundaries or parental discipline takes time and patience. Even getting them to sit at the table at meal times can seem like an insurmountable task, in the beginning. I wondered whether we would experience any behavioural issues with Zadie. If so, we would have to brace ourselves to get through the first few weeks while she adjusted to our house rules and boundaries.

I had cared for teenagers before and emerged unscathed so I wasn’t
too
worried about Zadie’s age. What concerned me more was her culture. Would she feel comfortable living with people who didn’t share her faith? I wondered. My own parents were Christian and, having grown up in a house where one adult was more devout than the other, I had witnessed first-hand the problems that differing religious views can cause. My father was so determined to prevent any of his children drifting away from the Church that he would only allow us to mix with families who shared his faith. Such a sheltered existence left me wary of outsiders when I was Zadie’s age. It took years for me to realise that people didn’t necessarily need to be religious to have a good heart. I wondered whether Zadie might feel as guarded as I had. If so, she might well feel awkward around us, frightened even.

Armed with clean linen and towels, I went through to make up Zadie’s bed. It was almost 6 p.m. but the bright, early May sunshine was still streaming through the window, giving the magnolia walls a cheery glow. I was pleased Zadie would have the room in our house that got the most sun during the day; she needed to recover from the nights spent sleeping outside.

I wondered whether there was anything about the place that Zadie’s parents might disapprove of, certain that they would have concerns about her staying in an environment so far removed from her own. The last thing I wanted was for Zadie to feel uncomfortable in what was to be her home.

My 16-year-old daughter Emily, still dressed in her school uniform, was already bustling around the room with accessories she thought Zadie might like. As if reading my thoughts, she plucked a book from the shelf beside the bed and handed it to me. It was a children’s illustrated Bible. ‘I don’t think she’ll be needing that, Mum,’ she said.

‘No, you’re right,’ I said, grimacing. ‘Help me scout around and see if there’s anything else we should move, would you, Ems?’

Emily nodded, kneeling in front of the bookshelf and running her index finger along the spines. ‘There’s a Muslim girl in my class, Mum. Aisha. She has, like, a special room to go and pray in. She’s never allowed to skip prayers
and
she sometimes has to miss lessons to do it. Muslims have to wash their feet and everything before they pray.’

‘And they’re not allowed to fart,’ Jamie piped up from his bedroom. ‘Or they have to start all over again.’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘He’s so gross, Mum.’

I could hear Jamie snickering to himself. Leaning out of the bedroom door, I called down the hall, ‘How did you discover that then, Jamie?’

‘Rohan told me. But I’m not sure if he was lying or not.’

Typical of my son to retain that particular nugget of information, I thought, although, to be fair, it was the sort of thing that captured the imagination of 13-year-old boys. There were actually quite a few Muslim pupils at Jamie’s school so he shouldn’t have been too ignorant about the faith. In fact, one of his friends from primary school had been Muslim. I remembered Jamie going to Tariq’s house for tea one day after school. He must have been about six or seven at the time and the little rascal had cleared his plate, yet at home he had been such a picky eater. When I asked Tariq’s mother how she managed such a feat she volunteered to show me how to cook chicken shorba with keema naans. I had taken her up on the offer, so at least I was confident about cooking a traditional meal for Zadie, although it was probably gross stereotyping to assume that she even liked spicy food.

Emily broke my chain of thought, handing me another pile of books – the Harry Potter series. ‘Goodness, all of these have to go as well?’

‘Honestly, Mum. Muslims are
so
strict. There’s no way Zadie would be allowed to read these. Aisha is the only one in our class who hasn’t seen the films. I feel really sorry for her.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said, my mind racing again. Emily had sparked a memory of myself as a child, coming home from school in an excited state and telling my parents about our assembly that morning. It had been close to the end of term and teachers had arranged for a magician to come into our school to perform a show for the children. My father was furious and complained to the school; to him, magic meant sorcery – a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. He feared that through magic there was a risk of me being seduced by the occult. After that, whenever a story or topic involving magic came up, my teacher would ask me to leave the room. I think my classmates felt sorry for me at the time. I bit my lip. ‘Strict isn’t necessarily bad, Ems,’ I said, bending to rest the heavy pile of books on the carpet in the hall. ‘Look at your grandfather and how devout he is, but we weren’t unhappy growing up.’ I fanned my fingers and swept my hands through the air in front of me. ‘And see how I’ve turned out?’

Emily curled her upper lip. ‘Exactly. See what I mean?’

I gave her a mock stern look.

She grinned. ‘I’m just
so
glad we’re not that religious, Mum. It’d be awful.’

‘I think you’re generalising, Em. Faith can be a positive thing. And Muslims are no different to anyone else. All religions have their extremists but on the whole people just want get on with their lives and do the best they can, don’t they?’

She looked doubtful. ‘I don’t see how anyone can be happy with all those rules. I bet that’s why Zadie ran away. Her parents were wa-a-ay too strict.’

‘We don’t know that at all,’ I said, shaking the pillows and moving the duvet so I could get on with making up the bed. ‘We hardly know anything about them.’ But what Emily had said really got me thinking. So many questions ran through my mind. Had Zadie rebelled against her faith, or would she still need a special area for prayers? And what about visiting the mosque? I wondered as I manoeuvred the pillows into freshly washed cases. If Zadie wanted to worship in a particular way, then, as a foster carer, I had to honour her beliefs and provide her with whatever she needed to maintain her faith.

Still, whatever hurdles we had to get over, a feeling of excitement ran through me. It wasn’t unusual for me to feel apprehensive before meeting a new, temporary member of the family. If I was to take the best care I could of Zadie then there was certainly a lot I had to learn. I got the sense that this placement would open my eyes to a way of life very different to my own but I was looking forward to the challenge. I resolved to do a bit of research on Google if I had time before Zadie arrived. But preparing the room had to be a priority.

Both Emily and I loved the build-up of getting everything ready, and making the child’s own special place look welcoming was a practical way of doing something positive for them before they’d even arrived. Usually I would make an effort to find out what interested the child, tailoring the room so that it was unique to them, although often that wasn’t possible.

Several years earlier I had been expecting a boy of 10 who was coming into care as an emergency. During the initial phone call with his social worker, she had mentioned that Chester had a passion for motorbikes. With an hour to spare before he arrived I dashed to the shops and bought some models to put on the shelf in his room. When I took him up to show him where he’d be sleeping he got emotional, burying his face in his sleeve. I assumed he was upset because he was missing home so I left him upstairs to have a few words with his social worker. When she came down she told me that Chester was overcome at the sight of the motorbikes. He told me later, ‘It was the nicest thing anyone ever done for me, Rosie.’

I think Chester was moved more by the fact that I had taken the time to think about what might be important to him rather than the items themselves. It really is amazing how something so seemingly insignificant can mean so much to someone when they come from a place where kind gestures are in short supply. Since then I’ve always tried to bear Chester’s reaction in mind.

When the room was ready I went downstairs and logged on to the computer to see what I could find out about Islam. My mind strayed to a hot day months earlier when I went to watch one of Jamie’s cricket matches. I remembered being surprised to see that some of the school’s star cricketers were watching the match from the sidelines. One of the parents told me that some of the boys weren’t allowed to join in as it was Ramadan and they couldn’t drink anything, not even water. Even medicine wasn’t permitted. Before that day I had assumed that fasting during the month of Ramadan meant not eating solid food. I never imagined that fluids were to be avoided as well. To be honest, I didn’t even know when Ramadan would next fall, although I knew it migrated throughout the seasons; something to do with the Islamic calendar.

Wikipedia offered the most condensed information so I printed the pages and took them to the living room to read. Emily was already on the sofa. ‘I wonder if Zadie will have her face covered, Mum.’

‘Yes, I was thinking the same. What does Aisha wear to school?’

‘One of those headscarves, but it has to be in school colours.’

From what I had just read, it seemed that Muslims placed great store in the concept of ‘haya’ – dressing decently and wearing nothing that accentuates the body shape. I couldn’t help but wonder what Muslims must think of some of the local girls tumbling out of nightclubs at the end of a Saturday-night session. I supposed Emily might have been right about Zadie rebelling against her own culture. It was possible she would turn up dressed in T-shirt and jeans. What seemed almost certain was that she would only eat halal meat, but I knew that was easy enough to get hold of these days; I had seen a whole section in our local supermarket. The rest would depend, I guessed, on just how strict the family were. I scanned my eyes over the print-out, my stomach rolling with anticipation.

‘A car’s just pulled up outside, Mum,’ Jamie shouted as he hurtled down the stairs.

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