9
I AM SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL, WHAT seem to be coats, and there are shoes on the floor and a vacuum cleaner squashed up in the corner. It is warm in here and there is a boiler above me. To my left, at the end of the corridor, the Moroccan man is standing, staring at me. He walks towards me and silently offers me his hand. He doesn’t say anything, but there is a sombre look on his face, and he leads me into my bedroom. Afra is not there, the bed has been made and her abaya is not on the hanger. But on the cabinet, on my side of the bed, there is a beautiful sketch of the apiaries – the field stretching far and wide, the beehives dotted around, the sun rising. She has even drawn in the kitchen and the tent where we would all sit to have lunch. The colours are wrong, the lines rough and broken, but the picture moves. It breathes: I can almost hear the buzzing of the bees. There are black roses in the field beyond, their colour leaking into the sky.
The Moroccan man sits me down on the bed, unties my laces, takes off my shoes, and lifts up my legs. I hold the picture to my chest.
‘Where is Afra?’ I say.
‘Don’t worry, she’s OK, she’s downstairs. Farida is keeping her company.’
‘Who is Farida?’ I say.
‘The woman from Afghanistan.’
He is gone for a while, and he returns with a glass of water. He holds it to my mouth and I drink it all. Then he adjusts the pillows behind my head, closes the curtains and tells me to get some rest. He shuts the door and leaves me here in the dark.
I remember the alleyways and the sound of running and Mohammed’s red T-shirt, but my body is heavy, my legs and arms like rocks, and I feel burning in my eyes and I close them.
It’s even darker when I wake up. I can hear the sound of laughter – it spreads out across the darkness like the ringing of bells. I head downstairs to the living room, where some of the residents are playing dominoes. Afra is among them and she is leaning over the dining table, there are six dominoes balanced in front of her in a row, and with steady fingers and a look of pure concentration she is trying to place the seventh one next to them. Everyone around the table is holding their breath and watching. She stops and shakes her hands and laughs again. ‘OK, I do it! I do it! You see!’
It is the first time I’ve heard her speak to anyone in weeks, the first time there has been light and laughter in her voice for months.
The Moroccan man spots me standing in the doorway.
‘Geezer!’ he says in English, his eyes alight. ‘Come sit, play. I make you tea.’ He pulls up a chair for me and leads me to it with his hand on my shoulder, and then he goes off into the kitchen.
The other residents glance up at me for a second and nod or say hello, but their attention is back on Afra and the domino. She is sitting up straighter, her hands shaking a little bit now, and I see that she has turned her head slightly towards me. She places the domino too close to the previous one and they all tumble down.
Everyone laughs and cheers and groans and the Afghan woman collects the dominoes and pulls them towards her. She is good at this game. By the time the Moroccan man comes back with the tea she already has fifteen tiles in a row, she is numbering for Afra, who is sitting right beside her.
I drink my tea, which is too sweet, and then I call the GP surgery to inform them that I have the correct information now and want to make an appointment for Afra about her vision.
When night comes I make sure to go to bed with Afra. I follow her up the stairs, trying not to look at the door at the end of the corridor. Diomande’s bedroom door is open again and he is standing with his back to us, looking out of his window, the shape of the wings visible through his T-shirt. As if he can tell that I am looking, he turns to face me.
‘Goodnight,’ he says, and smiles, and I see that he is holding a photograph in his hands. He brings it over to show me. ‘This my mum, these my sisters.’ They are all smiling women with big teeth.
In the bedroom I help Afra to get undressed and I lie down beside her.
‘Did you have a nice day?’ I say.
‘It would have been nicer with you.’
‘I know.’
I can hear a boy’s voice calling something in Arabic. It seems to be coming from one of the other bedrooms, but I know there are no children here, unless new people arrived today. But the voice seems to be coming from the garden below.
‘What are you doing?’ Afra says. I am standing by the window now, looking down into the dark courtyard.
‘Did you not hear that?’ I say.
‘It’s just the TV,’ she says, ‘downstairs. Someone is watching TV.’