Kiss the Dust Read online

  But at last, hours later, they were walking down the corridor and out into London itself. The last thing Tara heard as the door of the detention centre swung shut behind them was a frantic row breaking out between two men who both desperately wanted to use the telephone, and the last thing she saw was the face of a little girl, from Vietnam Baba had said, who was standing at the window sadly watching them go.

  Tara never forgot that first drive from Harmondsworth to Latif’s flat on the other side of London. For one thing, she couldn’t believe how big London was. It went on and on for ever, mile after mile of little houses, with their funny patches of front garden and their rows of chimney-pots. She couldn’t imagine how people could ever find their way in such a maze of streets, when one looked so like another.

  Everything she saw was different from what she’d been used to. Everything was a shock. The shops had different kinds of window displays. The house fronts looked more kind of open. You could actually look right into some people’s rooms through the uncurtained windows.

  There weren’t many smart, modern buildings like in Baghdad. Most were rather old and shabby, and some had advertisements on them, huge pictures of cars, or wine bottles, or just lines of writing, or foreign beaches. Lots of them had pictures of women in revealing clothes that were really indecent.

  Strangest of all were the people. It was quite cold of course, so nearly everyone was muffled up in thick coats and jackets, but try as she might Tara could see hardly anyone who looked like the sort of English person she’d imagined. Most people looked dowdy, and a lot of them looked quite poor. None of the women were wearing smart coats and hats like the royal family, and a lot of people didn’t even look English. In some streets almost everyone was either black or Indian. She couldn’t understand it at all.

  Latif’s flat, when they finally got to it, was the biggest shock. He seemed very pleased with it. He said it was almost impossible to find a place as nice as this in London for the rent he could afford to pay, and he showed them round the small sitting room and two tiny bedrooms with pride.

  Tara could hardly hide her disappointment. She’d expected an English flat to be really splendid, much better than Uncle Daban’s in Teheran. She had known it would be smaller than the house at home of course, but she’d thought it would still be big enough to sleep them all comfortably and have a nice room to sit and relax in as well.

  She looked round disbelievingly at the stained carpet and scarred wooden chairs while Latif talked cheerfully about how he could sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, and the girls could have one bedroom and Teriska Khan and Kak Soran the other. Kak Soran said how much they appreciated it and how kind Latif was, and Teriska Khan butted in to say how she was going to cook him a proper Kurdish dinner just like his own mother would have done.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said looking worried. ‘We’d better go out and do a bit of shopping if we want to eat this evening.’

  There was an embarrassed silence. Tara saw Kak Soran frowning at his wife, and they both looked away from Latif. He seemed puzzled for a moment, then he laughed.

  ‘You’ll need some English money,’ he said. ‘Have you . . .’ he paused delicately.

  ‘I’ve got no money with me at all,’ said Kak Soran bluntly, spreading out his hands. ‘I had to spend every penny getting our papers and buying our plane tickets. We’ve got a lot of stuff still tied up in Sulaimaniya, the house, several bank accounts and so on, but until I can get my hands on that . . .’

  ‘We’ve got my jewellery,’ said Teriska Khan firmly, ‘and I intend to sell it.’

  She fished down inside her collar and pulled out her necklace.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘Solid gold.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Latif cheerfully. ‘Give it to me. I know a friendly jeweller near here. He’ll price it for you. And in the meantime –’ he pulled out a wad of notes – ‘I went to the bank this morning. I thought you’d need a bit of ready cash. No, don’t worry. You can pay me any time. Ready? Let’s go.’

  Tara stepped out into an English street for the first time in her life with her heart in her mouth. She was quite scared. It was like being in a jungle full of wild animals. You didn’t know which way they’d jump.

  Latif and Kak Soran led the way, and the others followed. Latif was really confident. He seemed to think it was quite normal that the traffic was going the wrong way, driving on the left instead of on the right. He didn’t look twice at the woman who was standing outside a shop shouting at her small child in a loud voice, not caring if anyone was looking or not. He didn’t even notice the couple at the bus stop who were gazing at each other in a very frank way and actually holding hands. The girl was wearing a skirt right up above her knees and her hair was brushed up in a kind of spiky fuzz. The boy looked very young, not old enough to be married or anything.

  This must be a really bad area, where that kind of woman gets men, thought Tara, trying not to look. But then in front of her she heard Latif say, ‘This isn’t a bad part of London to live in. Prices are quite reasonable and it’s fairly quiet and residential. Plenty of schools for the girls. It’s not rough like some places. You could do worse than look for a place of your own round here.’

  They were almost at the shops now. Tara was relieved. She’d felt uncomfortable in the street. The thick jacket and skirt she’d bought in Teheran didn’t look any different from what other people were wearing but she still felt horribly conspicuous as if she was half naked, or luminous or something.

  ‘It feels funny not wearing a chador,’ she whispered to Teriska Khan.

  Teriska Khan squeezed her arm.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I feel strange too.’

  ‘I suppose you get used to it,’ said Tara doubtfully. After all, she’d hated wearing a chador at first. It was only gradually that she’d come to appreciate the feeling it gave you of being safe and private. In Iran everyone respected a woman in a chador. You could go where you liked quite safely. No one would even seem to see you. It was like being invisible. You’d never get cheeky looks or rude comments. But here it was the other way round. No one took any notice of those two girls who were chasing each other down the street, shouting, or at that poor old woman who was mumbling to herself and looking in a litter bin, but she felt sure they’d look at a woman in a veil.

  The food shop Latif took them to was a little supermarket. You had to choose things yourself off the shelves and put them in a basket, then pay on the way out. Tara was relieved. They’d never have been able to explain what they wanted to a shopkeeper.

  ‘We’ll come back and meet you here,’ Latif said casually. ‘I’ll take Soran on to see the jeweller. It’s only a bit further on from here.’

  ‘I want to go with Baba,’ said Hero, dropping Teriska Khan’s hand and catching hold of Kak Soran’s. She was the only one, thought Tara enviously, who didn’t seem at all surprised by England. Her fever seemed to have miraculously disappeared as soon as they’d left that awful prison place. She skipped off happily with the men, singing a little song to herself.

  There were five or six people in the shop. None of them seemed to know each other and they were all in a tremendous hurry, filling their wire baskets and standing impatiently in a line to pay. No one stopped to chat with the shopkeeper as they would have done at home. No one talked at all, in fact.

  Teriska Khan stood helplessly in front of a shelf full of tins and packets.

  ‘I don’t know what all this stuff is,’ she said. ‘Which is tea and where’s the sugar? I can’t read the writing and the pictures are so peculiar. Why do all these tins have dogs and cats on them? And how do I know if anything’s got pork in it?’

  Tara stared at the bright rows of tins and packets. The words in bold Roman letters seemed to stare back at her.

  Winnalot, Whiskas, Pedigree Chum, they said. Go on, make sense of that.

  She passed on to an array of bottles. Some were familiar. You couldn’t mistake the Pepsi Cola or
the Seven-up. But what about that pale stuff labelled ‘Lemon Barley Water’, and the bottles next to it which read ‘Orange Squash’? Perhaps they had alcohol in them.

  Tara began to feel a bit desperate. It was like being in a maze when you didn’t know the way out. She looked along a row of packets. They had pictures of strange desserts on them in brilliant pinks and greens and oranges, and there were closely printed instructions on the back.

  Then all of a sudden, Tara felt angry. She moved round the stand to where Teriska Khan was helplessly examining a packet of what might have been sugar, or flour. Tara took it out of her hands, ran her finger down the paper seam and licked it.

  ‘Flour,’ she said, and put it in Teriska Khan’s basket. Then with a new determination she started going systematically along each shelf. She wasn’t going to let this place beat her. She was going to learn English, to find her way about, be in control, hold her own. She’d start by getting this shopping sorted out if it killed her.

  Teriska Khan had moved over to a stand of vegetables. She was fingering the potatoes and waiting for the shopkeeper to come and serve her. A woman brushed past impatiently. She pulled a polythene bag off a roll and started filling it with oranges. Then she put it in her basket, got another bag and started on the apples. Tara watched her.

  ‘Look, Daya,’ she said. ‘You have to do it yourself,’ and she tore off a polythene bag and began to look over the onions.

  The basket was soon quite full.

  ‘We’d better go and get him to weigh it,’ said Tara, leading the way to the checkout. Teriska Khan put it down on the counter and they both saw the shop keeper for the first time. He was quite dark skinned, like an Indian or a Pakistani.

  Without thinking, Teriska Khan spoke in Arabic, like she always did to her usual shopkeeper at home.

  ‘How much is all this then?’ she said.

  ‘Wait,’ said the man. ‘First I add it up.’

  Teriska Khan and Tara looked at each other in amazement. He spoke Arabic too!

  ‘Where do you come from?’ asked Teriska Khan eagerly. The man smiled.

  ‘Slowly, please,’ he said. Obviously his Arabic wasn’t very good.

  ‘What country do you come from?’ said Teriska Khan.

  ‘Pakistan,’ said the man. ‘I speak a little Arabic only.’

  ‘You’re a Muslim?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Teriska Khan breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘Now I can do my shopping. The vegetables are no problem, we’ve got those. But we need tea, coffee, sugar, spices, milk, butter – all kinds of things. And then there’s meat and oil. How do we know if they’re OK for Muslims or not?’

  By the time Kak Soran and Latif came back, Teriska Khan had two large plastic carrier bags bulging with food.

  ‘I’m going to do the first decent bit of cooking I’ve been able to do since we left Kurdistan,’ she said. She looked so determined and defiant that right there, outside the shop on the pavement, they all burst out laughing.

  It was as if the sun had come out, thought Tara. She looked round, feeling a bit embarrassed. They were making such a noise that surely people would be looking at them. But none of the passers-by seemed to mind, or even notice.

  People are so free here, thought Tara. They haven’t got any respect for anything or anyone. They can do anything they feel like. It was an odd feeling, sort of attractive and exciting in one way, but frightening in another, as if things might suddenly get out of control.

  ‘Tara,’ said Teriska Khan, breaking in on her thoughts as they started walking back. ‘You’ll have to help me when we get back to the flat. I wouldn’t dream of saying a word to Latif, but we’ll have to give the kitchen a thorough clean before we start cooking. It’s just as well we’re here. He needs a family to look after him, poor boy.’

  26

  Autumn, 1985

  It was quiet in the school office. The secretary had welcomed Tara and Teriska Khan with an abstract smile.

  ‘Your mother doesn’t need to wait,’ she said. ‘Tell her she can go home now.’

  Three months of intensive English at the language school had done its work. Tara understood most things now. She turned to her mother.

  ‘She says you’d better go, Daya.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Teriska Khan looked round the office. The big timetable pinned to the wall, the well-tended pot plants, the electric clock ticking quietly over the door and the efficient clack of the secretary’s typewriter gave a reassuring impression of order. She picked up her handbag and started towards the door.

  ‘You know where the bus stop is, don’t you, Daya?’ said Tara anxiously. ‘It’s only three stops. Don’t get off at the wrong place.’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ said Teriska Khan, trying to sound dignified. ‘And don’t you get lost coming home.’

  They smiled at each other uncertainly.

  When the door had shut behind her, Tara sat down to wait.

  ‘I’ll send someone across to take you to your class,’ the Deputy Head had said when she’d looked out Tara’s file and checked on all her details.

  The clock ticked steadily on. The office was pleasantly light and airy. Tara allowed herself to relax a bit. She hadn’t slept a wink all night. She’d had terrible dreams of stern teachers demanding crossly why she couldn’t understand, why her English was so full of mistakes, why she seemed to have forgotten all the maths and science she’d ever been taught. It seemed a lifetime ago since she’d sat in a classroom, listening to a teacher, copying from a blackboard. She was sure she’d never be able to understand a thing anyone said to her, or read a word in an English textbook, or write a single sentence without making hundreds of mistakes.

  But now she was actually here her confidence was returning. She’d always been near the top of the class at home. Given time and a lot of hard work she’d do the same again, even if it killed her.

  The minute hand on the clock clicked on to the hour and at once a deafening bell shrilled out. The secretary looked up and smiled.

  ‘Awful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You get used to it after a while. It doesn’t bother me any more.’

  Tara could hardly hear what she was saying. As soon as the bell had stopped ringing, a door somewhere near by had crashed open. Now, outside in the corridor, there was a noise of shouting and trampling feet. It sounded as if a riot had broken out.

  Tara looked nervously towards the secretary. Rowdy behaviour would have been instantly and severely punished in any school at home. Surely something awful was about to happen? But the secretary wasn’t taking any notice. She was unconcernedly rifling through a heap of papers on her desk.

  The door to the office burst open. A young teacher came in. He was dressed in a tracksuit and carried a football under his arm. He took no notice of Tara but perched on the secretary’s desk and began laughing and chatting with her.

  He had left the door open, and Tara was able to see down the long length of the corridor. The confidence that had been slowly creeping back ebbed right away. She couldn’t believe her eyes. This didn’t look like a school. It looked like a – like a – she couldn’t say what. She had nothing to compare it with. She’d never been in such a place before.

  The school children were dawdling from one class to the next. A knot of big girls were laughing noisily and pushing at each other. They didn’t look like schoolgirls at all. Most wore something vaguely recognisable as the school uniform of navy skirts and white tops, but one or two were in completely different clothes and even those wearing uniform had such a variety of brightly coloured bags and odd jackets slung over their shoulders that they could have been wearing anything. Behind them came a couple of wrestling boys, one with his head pinned under the other’s arm. A teacher, coming from the other direction, was being hailed by half a dozen loud voices.

  ‘Miss! Where’s the rehearsal today?’

  ‘Miss, I can’t come. I’ve got the dentist.
’

  ‘I gave my book to Simon to give you, Miss. Did he?’

  Tara wanted to turn tail and run, back to Daya, back to the tiny new house she had to learn to call home, anywhere in fact as long as it was away from here. She’d never felt so alone in her life.

  The corridor was beginning to empty when at last a girl came into the office. She had sandy hair and her friendly face was freckled. She was a couple of inches shorter than Tara.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you the new girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tara shyly.

  ‘I’m Vicky,’ the girl said, smiling. ‘Miss Hammond said to bring you straight over to the Science Block. You’re going to be in our class. I hope you’ve got your running shoes. It’s miles and miles to the chemistry lab.’

  Tara looked doubtfully at her feet. She didn’t quite understand. Vicky was half way out of the office already. Tara followed her.

  ‘Your name’s Tara, isn’t it?’ said Vicky.

  Tara nodded.

  Vicky gave up asking questions. She started walking a bit faster. Tara hurried to keep up with her. If she lost sight of Vicky her one lifeline in this terrifying place would go.

  ‘Hey! Vicky!’

  Vicky turned round. Another girl was running to catch up with them.

  ‘Hi, Sarah.’

  The other girl looked curiously at Tara.

  ‘This is Tara,’ said Vicky. ‘She’s the new girl. From the Middle East.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Sarah brightly. ‘There’s another Arab girl in 9L.’

  Tara cleared her throat again.

  ‘I’m not . . .’ she began.

  They both turned towards her expectantly.

  ‘I’m not Arab. I’m a Kurd,’ said Tara.

  ‘You what?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Kurdish,’ said Tara desperately.

  ‘Oh.’

  Sarah and Vicky exchanged puzzled looks.