This Is Where I Am (12 page)

My daughter is watching. Her brown eyes study me in the little mirror that sits above the windscreen.

‘Hello, baby. Did you have good sleep?’

‘Huh! Ask your daddy if
he
had a good sleep, Rebecca. I don’t know, all this lovely scenery and there’s you two, snoring away.’ Debs widens her nostrils, snorts like a pig. Is she insulting us? Rebecca has a fit of giggles, Debs joins in. No. I think she’s laughing with us.

‘Anyway, Hassan family. You’ll be glad to know – that’s us here. Forty minutes door to door. Not bad, eh? Having this on your doorstep?’

Surprised, I refocus on the world outside. The real one. Grey-pink sky, gentle green fields and hills on my left side, a flash of liquid through dense thickets on the right. Debs slows, turns the wheel so we swing sharply there, to the right. The car crunches over grainy stones. Dark trees curl their bare knuckles at us, part their arms to show us . . .

This.

I’m too inarticulate, but I think Deborah senses that, because all the tension of the journey falls away. The brittle air between us dissipates and we smile. She stops the engine.

‘OK, gang. Wee walk first, I think, then lunch, yes?’

We get out. A searing, healthy cold rinses out my lungs, and I tuck my daughter’s scarf tighter in her coat. My red bag swings forward as I bend to her; I’ve hung it loosely from one shoulder. Not secure at all. I am growing casual – and that means careless. I slip my other arm through the flapping strap. Look and look and look again. We are the only car parked here. It is as quiet as desert sands. Rebecca beams at me. Tugs my hand in her urgency to get to the water’s edge.

In my life, I do not think I’ve seen anything so beautiful. Quiet water lapping land, the beach a steady slew of wide flat pebbles. So many rich greys, blues and greens, and sparkling red-brown-pink. They are all the colours of the earth, and the silky water licks them and makes them shine. The sun is low in the sky – I can see it though I cannot feel it. But it is the power of this brown and amber and pale green water that makes this whole place luminous – not the sun. Ha. Today, you know what it means to be weak. You are insipid, you futile mass of dying fire. Today, overpowered by Loch Lomond, the sun is liquid pale. It is curds, the top of a bowl of milk. Strange birds keen above the water.
Skraw, skraw
in lonely, wheeling dips. Beyond the loch, the mountain rises in bands of green and blue. Shadows roll across its face. It smiles. It is a low, comfortable hill, not the fierce dry mountains of my home. I sense the essence of it, humming. It lends all the colours of the earth so that they saturate this beach, that water, this sky.

The mountains in Somalia bleed life from the land, not into it. I know; I have lived by the Karkars as a child. We are, we were, a nomadic people, moving with the rains. Rain means grass, grass means grazing, grazing means food and trade. When the rains begin, for two, maybe three months, the desert becomes a garden. Flowers, tall grass and water are abundant, almost too lush. It hurts your eyes to see it so full and rich and temporary. Our people come to life as well. When we have only drought, we dry up inside. Our lips parch and our blood slows, thin and thirsty as it is. But something happens also to our hearts, I think. When it is
gu
and the rains come, we unfurl our faces and dance in the rain. We meet, make poetry, make friends, make love. Our ages are calculated by how many
gu
we have lived through. By the lour of the Karkars, it is never temperate, always harsh. In December it freezes, in July in bakes. When the rains come, the mountains suck them dry, greedy for moisture. My mother told me and my sister:
Look up. Look up at Mother Rain. She will fill the earth with good things
. But, after the initial deluge, when you think you will drink your fill, you still see bare, steaming earth. It breaks in parched clods as you pick your way over dry beds of streams, while up on the mountain will be a twist of stunted green, or the tantalising drip of faraway rivulets through fissures of stone. Eventually, as Mother Rain keeps battering down her bounties, the mountain is sated and we’re allowed our share of rain.

Rebecca hops. Stands on my toes. In the distance, a small craft shrieks like an angry spirit over the smoothness of the water, and Rebecca cuddles into me. The speed of the boat is amazing, but your nets would snarl instantly – I can’t see how you would fish from it. So narrow too – room only for one man to perch. Idly, I pat my baby’s head. ‘Ssh, mucky pup. Is just a boat.’

‘Bloody jetskis,’ sniffs Debs. ‘That’s why I brought you in March. Come summer, the place is teeming with them.’

Jet
ski. I know jet plane, so that makes sense. Ski? It echoes the cries of these drifting birds, and the shape is thin-necked, so maybe . . . but there are so many other sights for me to focus on, I let the question whip past quick as the boat. These strange trees, for instance. Some of them have no leaves, while others are full and strident, like spiky bushes grown too high. We have frankincense trees. They are the scent and shade of my childhood. You can eat the roots, inhale the resins, rub bark on sore skin or chew leaves to ease your pain. It is a haunting smell; spicy-rich. This faint sharp tang I’m breathing now, that reminds me of being older. Not the scent of trees at all. I taste in great long pangs. The smell of bright and moving water – whether it’s fresh like this loch, or salted sea – fills my mouth. It slides over me, in me, setting tiny sparks alight. The top of my cheeks are tight, my nose aches, tingling with the liquid underneath. When my father died and we moved to the coast to live with my grandfather, it was humid. The rains were milder, the sea was full, and fish lived in the sea for ever. Silently, I thank Debs for bringing us here. When I turn from the water, she’s watching. Nervous, I think. Her shoulders are drawn. ‘You like it?’

‘Oh yes.’ I stroke the little hand that rests in mine. Our palms pat thickly; we’re both wearing gloves. ‘Don’t we, Rebecca?’

My daughter nods, first at me, then, more shyly, at our companion. I can feel the press of her little body huddled in my legs. The jetski has frightened her.

‘Wait, wait. There’s more!’

Debs skips as she says this – I know she’s a middle-aged woman, but she does, in fact, skip – over to the back of her car, pulls on the silver handle. The back of the car swings up like a lid, and she leans inside.

‘Take that, will you?’ Emerging, she hands me an orange plastic box with a thick white lid. Embedded in the lid is a handle, which I raise so I can hold it with one hand and reclaim Rebecca with the other. The space is so vast out here; I worry it will make her more afraid. Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll lose her in it. But the box is heavier than I realise. I almost drop it.

‘Whoops! Tell your daddy to be careful, Rebecca. That’s our lunch in there.’

Debs wrinkles her nose at me. I think she is a far more expressive woman than she realises. ‘I know. A coolbox, in this weather. Daft, isn’t it? But we . . . Callum and me, we always used to bring this on picnics.’ She leans further inside the car, resumes her task.

‘Can I help you, Debs?’

‘No, nope. We’re fine.’ She tugs at something long and thin, pulling and pulling on its whip-length until she sets it free.

‘Woo-hoo!’ She is a warrior, brandishing her assegai.

I smile, politely. Why is she excited by this? She unfastens the black casing, revealing a wooden stick, which she presents to me. I lay the orange box on the earth, carefully unwrap my other hand from Rebecca’s grasp, so I’m free to receive this stick.

‘Thank you. What is it?’

‘It’s a fishing rod!’

I roll the stick in my cupped palm, testing its weight. Light and loose. It trembles. A wisp of transparent twine glimmers and waves, glimmers and waves.

‘I thought we could do some fishing,’ says Debs. ‘If you like.’

‘I’ve never used fishing . . . rod?
A
fishing rod.’

‘Oh.’ She claps her hands in front of her. ‘Oh, of course. Hey, well, neither have I. It was my husband’s. Far as I know, you just flick it back and wheech it forwards.’

‘Wheech?’

Rebecca has let go of my hand, is fingering the rod.

‘Tcha-tcha.
No
. This is not yours.’

‘It’s fine, there’s no hooks on it. I thought you’d know how . . . och, look, never mind. I’ll stick it back in the boot for now.’ Debs holds out her hand to Rebecca. ‘Ok, missus. How about that walk?’

As we walk, I tell Debs about the letters. The first was months ago, from the Housing people. Since I had been granted leave to stay in Scotland, I could not stay in my house. Does that make sense? I would have to leave my flat because it was for asylum seekers, not refugees. In my sad hierarchy, I was no longer at the bottom. I did what the letter said: made a homelessness request to the council, and started applying to local housing associations for help with a new home. Or I could also buy my own house, the letter said, if I had the financial resources. Hmm. I wonder how many of my fellow refugees tick that box first?

Another letter came.
Yes, we find that you are homeless
. Why, thank you. I was given temporary permission to remain in my flat, while another home was sought. I met with a nice lady who said, ‘What are you looking for?’ I said, ‘A house with a garden would be lovely,’ and she said, ‘You won’t get one of those.’ I said, ‘A small flat with a garden’; she said, ‘Oh, I doubt you’ll get one of those.’ I said, ‘Anything please, but can it be near my church and my daughter’s school?’ (At that point, I still thought Rebecca might go to school.) She said, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

She told me I did not have to accept the first place that they offered. Added darkly
but always seek advice before you refuse
. I was given extra leaflets and a computer address. More phone numbers, another department of this council or that charity or . . . I’m never clear who all of these people are, but to ask would suggest it matters. All that matters is a nice lady will help us find a house. Except the nice lady is no longer there. She does not answer her phone; when I ask on the other telephone number, they say she is ill. When I ask about my house, they say she is dealing with it. That I must use her telephone number, not theirs.

My sore head mocks me, I hear my voice whiny like a child’s. We are sitting on large boulders by the side of the loch. Warm now, with all that walking and a fine tired sense of achievement. A good ache in my legs. The
pic-nic
is still in the orange box inside the car. Rebecca has the fishing pole, which she refused to relinquish, and has been parading like a mighty staff for all of our walk. My love for Loch Lomond has intensified with each new vista.
Here
. If I could, I would live here. Build a shelter from some of the leafless trees, learn to use this pole and fish.

‘The new letter,’ I bring it out to show Debs. ‘It says my application has not been processed and I will need to start again. But I
did
meet with that lady, and she said I would be on a list . . . No! Rebecca, no!’ My daughter sulks at me, withdraws her hand. She has been pushing the pole into the water, stirring up silt.

‘Well, that’s just nonsense.’ Debs takes it, reads. ‘Sounds as if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your woman. She’s probably disappeared off on the sick and no one’s been picking up her workload. But that’s not your fault, Abdi – you shouldn’t be penalised.’

‘No.’

‘It’s just not on.’ She’s scowling at me. ‘I mean, I had a lady last week, at the Refugee Council. Exact same thing – everyone dyking it, and she’s back to square one.’

A
dyke
is one of those layered walls, built with stones like the ones littering this shore, but they are not square and I don’t know what she means is on them. As my mind catches her next words, I let these words slide. Their sense is indignation, and purpose and a plan, so that is all good, I hope. I stretch down, take a handful of the flat stones from the beach. Outside the water, their colours are chalky.
Just push me over this wall, Debs
. Please. I cannot tell the height and breadth of it any more; it seems to move and shift, as though the bricks are made of living, netted fish. I
want
to be independent. To sort these things myself. I want to build my home, not beg for it. A roof and roots and work. I have not been allowed to work for so long.

Deb’s speech is becoming compressed. Spiky. ‘Honestly, folk have no idea. It’s like a bloody labyrinth and you’re left to . . . Look. Why don’t we ask for a meeting, eh? I’ll come with you, kick up a stink. Or I could speak to your councillor. You know about them? They have surgeries, and –’ She stops, her frown increases. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry? Rebecca – no!’ Rebecca has slipped from the boulder, is inching towards the creeping fingers of the loch with her rod outstretched. It is twice the length that she is. ‘You will have no
pic-nic
! Debs, why are you sorry?’

She has gone into herself, face pale like the sun. ‘I don’t mean to interfere.’

‘But I asked you . . .’

‘Yeah, I know. But you asked me –’ she looks at Rebecca, whose tongue is stuck firmly out as she inspects a cleft in the rock, ‘you asked me to help with Rebecca, and then you just went . . . cold. So, you know. Maybe it’s me. My fault, I mean, if I come on too strong . . .’ Her voice goes very quiet. ‘You’ve got to realise, for years it was just me, my husband and his illness. I had to fight for everything, and then . . . it was just me. You get tired. You close off, you know?’