This Is Where I Am (29 page)

In front of me, I see an old man stooped over. He is sheltering by a tree, curled in on himself, and is puffing, puffing as if it’s his dying breath. I deviate from the path, go over.

‘Are you all right? Can I help?’

He jerks, then straightens.

‘I’ve nae mair fags.’

There is dank fear in his expression and I see that he is trying to light a cigarette. I cup my hands either side of his. ‘Try now.’ He hesitates, scared, I think, to be vulnerable, to lower his head in my presence. It is a thin, spindly snap of a neck that he has; his jaw is weak and grizzled. But the desire for his cigarette is stronger than his fear of me, or maybe, up close, I am not so bad, but anyway, he puffs and I cup and he puffs and I cup, and suddenly we have ignition!

‘Cheers, son.’ His eyes flicker briefly as he inhales, then, quick with the need to be always on guard, he opens them wide. Checks left and right and touches his cap before he shuffles off. As he passes beneath the trees and into the sunlight, his posture alters. There is a dignity to his walk, how his shoulders are braced to face the world. His gait reminds me of Geordie, who reminded me of my grandfather.

For a moment, I Iean my spine against the tree. Watch the shadow of the leaves dance patterns on the earth. Then I push myself off and continue on my way. I am begun again as a fish seller, but I hope this won’t be the end. As you drop stones, you can also find them. It’s how you cross rivers, standing on one, then the next, testing the weight, feeling the breadth and tilt with your feet. It may take time to get your balance before you can safely move to the next, but then you do. You must.

The trees on either side of me become lampposts. I am out of the park, and nearing the supermarket where I am to be inducted. My supermarket! This job is a mark of another human’s faith in me. It is a fine country, this, it is generous and sound in principle, if not always in the practice. At first, when I said about my new job, the lady in Housing told me my housing benefit would stop, that I should not take the job. I said the supermarket people told me I would keep my benefits because this is a scheme for those who have nothing. They have made the hours, the pay, the training such that it should not affect what little income you have. The lady sniffed and shook her head. Then she also
thought
– although it was not her place – that my Jobseekers Allowance would definitely be stopped if I were to go to college in September. So I should not go.

‘You seem annoyed that I want to escape,’ I said and she called her supervisor, said I was ‘giving her cheek’.

I turn the corner – and there it is. My supermarket! Many windows, a black and yellow frontage, a long sloping roof and a little turret built to look like the kind of clock-towers you see on old halls and churches. But it’s the vibrant black and yellow that dominates. It is modern and traditional and I love it! I love this generous, unpredictable, light and dark and beautiful city. My shoes make a lovely clipping sound as I walk past the cars scattered in the car park. Maybe one day I will drive and have a car and drive in here like Richard and be their Regional Manager but I am going to be a teacher but I could be anything now! I suck another breath of bright morning air, swilling it to every pocket of my lungs. The door is cool and clean on my palm, I push it inwards, show my badge to the uniformed man as he says
we arny open yet. Oh. Right. Away you go through to the back
.

Is the back at the top? I assume it is, make my way to the rear of the store. On every side of me: shining towers of food. Huge rows of bottles, tins, whole pyramids of eggs. Refrigerators that are longer than a truck, full of different types of milk. I see goats’ milk –
they have goats’ milk in Scotland!
– and resolve to buy some and am pulled on by the smell of fresh bread and my excitement, past the floury piles of rolls, past the buzzing cabinets of – I pause –
dips and hummus?
– until I reach a wide door masked with plastic sheeting. It is positioned between a counter heaped with fish and sea-smells and another of garnet-bright meat. As I hesitate, because to go inside will mean going behind the actual counters, a florid man appears in the gap. Red hair, red face, red arms visible beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his overall – which is white with pale-red staining. He nods at me.

‘All right, pal? You the new start?’

‘Yes. I am Abdi Hassan.’ I extend my right hand towards his. Each time I do this is fraught – once a man refused to shake it because
Nae offence, pal, but yous wipe your erses with your hands, don’t you?
This man wipes his hands first, before he clasps mine.

‘Maloney. Kevin Maloney. Pleased to meet you. I’ll be your supervisor when you’re in the store.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Come away through, Abdi. Come and meet the boys.’ He pushes the plastic strips back and we go in. ‘Have you been at the college yet, did they gie you an overall?’

‘Eh . . . no. I go to college on the Wednesday. This Wednesday it starts.’

The room we enter is broad and echoing. It contains silver metal tables and silver metal shelves. Silver metal doors with vast spear-shaped handles line two of the walls; every wall is tiled in white, is shining, scrubbed and dazzling in piercing artificial light. Other lights – round blue lights – hum, spaced at regular intervals near to the ceiling. There are people in white coats and hats working quietly at one table, precise movements of weighing and wrapping, while a younger man sweeps left and right, left and right methodically across the floor. It is cleaner than any hospital, but with the same faint smell of blood.

‘Nae worries,’ says Mr Maloney. ‘We’ll get you kitted out here then. A white coat’s a white coat however you get it, eh? Only don’t say that to a doctor!’ He butts me with his elbow. ‘Aye. We had one of your lot last month.’

‘My lot?’

Yes, I do mean my voice to be that way. Clipped, but not yet discourteous. I aim for a tone of censure, the way I would warn Rebecca that this is her last chance before Aabo gets cross. I am only following orders – good ones, I think, if this is really to be my rebirth. As Mrs Coutts was foisting my piece on me, she suddenly frowned. Pinched my cheek with her finger and thumb.
Now, don’t you take nae snash the day, son. You hear? A bit of banter’s fine, but don’t let them talk down to you, right? You’re a fine handsome lad, and you probably know mair about all the fish in the sea than they do
.

‘Aye,’ continues Mr Maloney. ‘Another boy on the apprentice scheme. Didny stick it, but I’m sure he left his overalls and his knives, so you’re welcome to them. I doubt the college charges you much, but if you can get them here for free, so much the better, eh?’

‘Thank you, Mr Maloney.’

This good man takes my jacket, gives me a locker and a white coat, then escorts me round the room. Each stop along the way is punctuated with names and introductions. There are six, maybe seven men and a couple of women, but only two others who seem to be working with fish. I am shown where they – we – prep, where they store, where they receive, where they create.

‘Aye, I encourage the lads to experiment a bit. You canny sell the fish right if you don’t know what to do with it, know? And the boss loves it if we do something a wee bit different from the other stores.’ Mr Maloney raises his voice. ‘Local, distinctive and –’ pausing, lifting his arms to conduct the response which is shouted from all quarters:

‘
Quality guaranteed!
’

The boy with the brush gets carried away, flings his white hat in the air along with his shouted refrain.

‘Right, you, pick that up. Oh, and you’ll need a bunnet an all, Abdi.’

He is giving me a small cake? I search my brain for where I’ve heard this word before, see the boy scoop up his hat and remember the man with the magazines and those boys and the chasing. It is a hat, of course it is.

‘So, if you’ve any ideas for marinades and that – gies a shout, aye? Wee Cammie there came up with a stoater, didn’t you, pal?’

Is a stoater like a bloater? I have been swotting up on my fish.

‘Aye. Salmon steak with ginger, lime and chilli.’

‘Magic, so it was. Anyway, Abdi, that’s for later. The now we’ll be concentrating on the basics – your hygiene, your safety, your customer service, the produce we sell, how we prepare it. I mean, you’ll no actually be on the shop floor for a while yet.’

‘I understand.’

Mr Maloney speaks more quietly, so it is just him and I in the conversation again. ‘Aye, I’m sorry about that. We have to go through all the hoops: it’s company policy, particularly with this new scheme. I think they’re shiteing themselves that some homeless laddie’ll cut off his fingers cause he didny get the “knives are sharp” input. Mind, I’m expecting great things from you. I hear you’re a fisherman.’

‘I was, yes.’

I am surprised he knows this. And pleased.

‘Kind of fish you deal in?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What sort of fish did you catch?’

I reel off the most common: tuna, sardine, swordfish, marlin, mackerel, lobster. I have prepared for this: looked at pictures on Mr Google, learned the English names, and no, I did not catch all these fish as a matter of course. Indeed, I’ve never fished for lobster, but occasionally they curled inside our nets. Outwith the coastal areas, few Somalis eat fish, far less spiny great crustaceans. These things go for export, and we were subsistence fishermen. What we didn’t eat, we’d sell, so we fished for what would sell quickest. My friends deemed me arbiter of this. Coming from a nomadic tribe, to my mother’s coastal homeland, I’ll admit I was disgusted at first. To eat fish is to show that you are not a good herdsman, yet here was my
hooyo
’s family gorging themselves on everything slimy and rank. I soon learned. Firm flesh, good colour, no smell. That’s what sells best.

‘So, you’ll have filleted plenty?’ Mr Maloney asks.

‘Of course.’

He gestures to the pale-grey fish that lies on the marble slab beside us. It looks like mackerel with its mottled belly. ‘Show me.’

I stare at the fish and its extinguished eyes.
Come on, Abdi. Do your worst. I will feel nothing anyway
.

My fingers contract. They are cold, cold, cold. I flex and I swallow. Today is an
induction
. This action I have done a hundred thousand times becomes a clumsy horror. What if I forget; fail this simple test? My job, my stability, my stature as a newly working man is predicated on my memory of tiny bones. The fish pouts its disdain. It is obvious: neither it nor Mr Maloney think I am capable of the job. Often, on the beach, we would use the razor-edge of a seashell, or a thin sharp piece of rock. The knife which rests beside my little dead friend is silver as the fish. It is slim and light, with a fine sleek blade to it. I think it could do the task itself.

First, I wash my hands. I suspect this part is also my induction: do I think like them? Am I clean? The two other men have ceased chopping. Watching me, quite openly. A trace of fishscale smears the bigger one’s chin. I dig my nails into the fish’s tail, lift it to eye-level and slit the belly with the little knife. Hook my finger inside, a gentle tugging twist and there – the skeleton laid bare. I present it to Mr Maloney.

‘Aye, very good. Probably better if you keep the produce on the board, though. Health and Safety, know?’

I do not, but I will go on to hear much about Health and Safety from Mr Maloney.

‘What about salmon? You can do the pin bones and that?’

‘I do not know a pin bone.’ There’s no point in lying; the next test may be to point one out. Debs has given me much advice, but the most useful – seeing as she knows very little about fish – was when she told me: if I don’t know, I should ask.
Ask once, Abdi, that’s fine. Everyone’s got to learn. But when someone’s shown you or told you – make sure you don’t have to ask again
.

‘Here, watch Sam. Man’s a master with the beast.’

‘Aye, shame he’s shite wi the burds, though!’ calls Cammie.

‘Your wife wisny complaining last night.’

‘Piss off.’

Mr Maloney taps a knife on the counter. ‘Right, lads, that’s enough.’

‘Aye, that’s what your wife said and all, once me and ma mate had ridden her raw.’

‘Sam, I said that’s enough.’

‘You huvny got any mates, so I know you’re lying,’ says Cammie, returning to his mullet. At least, I think that’s what it is. I can’t expect them to teach me all the names, I must pick it up as quick as blinking.

The big man – Sam – hefts a whole salmon from the fridge. I hear his knuckles crack as he prepares himself, massaging the meaty length of his hands. Hundreds of tiny brown marks on the back of them.
Freckles
. I like how that rhymes with speckles. Mrs Coutts says they are a Scottish affliction. The freckles are speckled between gingery tufts of hair. Very clean hands, clean, clipped nails, but there is something grubby about the spattered brown.

First, the knife goes in the back of the neck, a deft twist and the head goes, then Sam slices wide, halving the fish. Another flash and we have fillets.

‘OK, so you lay it skinside, you take your tweezers –’ he takes a metal pincer from a hanging rack. ‘Grab here – see how they run along the length of the fillet.’