Gravel Heart(26)

When I got back from Camberwell, I told Auntie Asha that I would be leaving the next morning. My announcement probably sounded like insolence and discourtesy but it was meant as a small gesture of independence. My belongings still fitted comfortably into the cheap cardboard suitcase I had brought from home. I woke early, washed and dressed and waited on my bed for the house to wake up. I looked round the room I had lived in for two years and I shivered. It was a sunny Sunday morning and no one was in a hurry, because while I was upstairs pretending to pack last night, they had all stayed up late to watch the musical Aladdin, ignoring me and refusing to make a ceremony out of my disgraced departure. It suddenly seemed sad to be leaving in such a petulant silence. When I could hear that everyone was about, I went downstairs to say goodbye. I kissed Kady on both cheeks and waited while she kissed me back. I shook hands with Eddie, who was ten and did not take kindly to kisses any more. I thanked Auntie Asha and then kissed her hand. She slapped me playfully on the shoulder and said that she wasn’t a grandmother to have her hand kissed by a grown man. Then suddenly she reached out for me and held me for a moment. ‘Look after yourself and don’t lose touch,’ she whispered. I don’t know what that was about.

Uncle Amir was in his study and I had to go in there to say goodbye. When I made to speak, my uncle raised his hand to silence me. It was a haughty gesture, meant to stop me from wheedling for mercy. His face was grim but no longer had the power to menace and intimidate that it had while I lived with him. We shook hands, and then Uncle Amir transferred a roll of notes from his left hand to his right, which he extended towards me, the money lying in his palm for me to pick up. For a moment I was paralysed by the condescension, then I shook my head and uttered my thanks. ‘Take it, don’t be stupid,’ Uncle Amir said, and thrust the notes into my shirt pocket with his fingers.

As I walked along the pavement with my suitcase and back-pack, headed for the bus stop, I felt like a character at the end of a novel on his way to adventure and fulfilment. In real life, I was on my way to Guinea Lane, and more likely on the way to heartache and struggle, and as I thought this, I could not prevent my eyes from smarting with regret and self-pity that I should find myself alone where I was, and where I did not want to be.

*

Dear Mama,

Salamu na baada ya salamu. London streets are huge – not all of them but many. They couldn’t always have been like that. They must have had to knock down a lot of buildings to make the roads so wide. Whereas I think of our place as a town built piecemeal, one building at a time, and each house is kept standing by one ingenuity or another, because ruins are a kind of death.

I have disheartening news to give you. Forgive me. It has been a hard few months and I have made a mess. It is September again and I have now been here for two years. I think of September as a terrible month; it was when I first came here and became a vagrant, when I lost so much. At first I thought my real life would begin after I reached London, that I would do things differently from then on. I thought everything would change for me here in the land of luxury and freedom and opportunity, that nothing could possibly thwart me. I promised myself that. But it turned out to be untrue. It was a lie I was forcing on myself because I had no choice. It seemed I did not have the strength and hardness for it. I have now left Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha’s home. They have asked me to leave, which was also what I wished. I could not be as they wanted me to be. I could not bear them in the end, and they could not bear me. Uncle Amir expelled me with unnecessary hard-heartedness but it did not come as a complete surprise.

I abandoned that page and started a fresh one.

Dear Mama,

Salamu na baada ya salamu. I hope you are well and that Baba is well, and that you have news of him. It is September again, and I have now been here for two years. If we are lucky, September can be the most beautiful month of the year, with everything still green or just beginning to turn gold. The leaves change colour as the cold begins. I knew that from geography classes at school but I did not really understand what it meant before I saw it. You cannot imagine what the trees look like as they turn. The movement of the leaves is rhythmic and slow and it is like listening to music played over a period of days. I am struggling to explain. Then the strong winds come and whip all the leaves off in a few hours.

I am also writing to send you my new address. As you probably already know, I am no longer living with Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha. I moved to this address a few days ago. I am grateful that they have looked after me so far. I did not do well in my examinations and I have decided not to continue with Business Studies but to change to studying literature. That is what I wanted to do from the beginning but did not say so when I came here. I talked myself out of it because it seemed an indulgence. They provided an opportunity for me to study and I thought I should use it to learn something useful, which would earn me a lot of money. What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing anyway. I will try again, I don’t know if there is anything else I can say. I will find work and I will continue with my studies as best I can. I will try to write to you more frequently, I promise. Could you please reply to this when you have a moment, so that I know the letter reached you, and that you have this new address?

With my love,





Salim

When my mother replied several weeks later, she told me that Maalim Yahya had come back and taken my father away to Kuala Lumpur. As I read that, I saw again the man in the photograph the headmaster showed me all those years ago, and for the first time I thought of him as my grandfather. And I saw my Baba leaving when for so long he had refused to go.