you doing there, geezer?’ The Moroccan man looks down at me, a broad smile on his face. He speaks in Arabic. ‘Did you sleep here in the garden, geezer?’ He holds out his hand to me, unreasonably strong for such an old man and stable on his feet as he pulls me up.
‘Giza?’ I say, half dazed.
‘Geeeeezer,’ he says, and chuckles. ‘The man in the shop says geeeeezer. It means old man.’
I follow him inside, into the warmth. He tells me that Afra has been looking for me. ‘She’s been crying,’ he says, which I find hard to believe, and when I see her in the kitchen she is already dressed and is sitting stiff at the table just as she was when Lucy Fisher was here. It doesn’t seem to me like she’s been crying, and I haven’t seen or heard her cry since Aleppo. She is holding Mohammed’s marble, twirling it around in her fingers. I’ve tried to take it from her before but she won’t let it go.
‘So you can dress yourself then?’ I say. But I immediately regret these words when I see her face drop.
‘Where did you go?’ she says. ‘I was up most of the night and I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I fell asleep downstairs.’
‘Hazim told me you were sleeping in the garden!’
My body stiffens.
‘He is kind,’ she says. ‘He said he would find you and he told me not to worry.’
I decide to go for a walk. It’s my first time outside. This whole place is strange, the shops standing shabby and proud – Go Go Pizza, Chilli Tuk-Tuk, Polskie Smaki, Pavel India, Moshimo. At the end of the road there is a convenience store where someone is playing Arabic music very loudly. I make my way down to the sea. There is no sand on this beach, only pebbles and shingle, but along the promenade by the seafront there is a huge sandpit for children to play in. A boy in red shorts is making a sandcastle. It’s not hot, but they think it is, so his mother has put him in shorts, and this boy is scooping up sand and placing it carefully into a blue bucket, until it is full. He evens it out with precision, using the handle of his spade.
Kids are running around with ice cream and lollies the size of their heads. The sandcastle boy has made a whole city – he’s used bits of plastic, bottle tops, sweet wrappers, to add colour to his buildings. He’s made a flag out of a lost sock and a candyfloss stick. He crowns the castle in the middle with a teacup.
The boy gets up and stands back to admire his creation. It’s impressive, he’s even used the teacup to make houses to surround the castle, and a water bottle looks like a glass skyscraper. He must sense I am staring because he turns and glances at me, for a moment pausing and holding my gaze. He has that innocent, preoccupied look, like the children before the war. For a moment I think he is going to say something to me, but a girl calls him to come and play. She entices him with a ball. He hesitates, taking one last glance at his marvellous creation, looking at me one more time, before he sprints off, abandoning it.
I sit for a while on the promenade by the sandpit and watch the sun move across the sky. In the afternoon the place is quieter, clouds have gathered, the children have gone. I take the asylum documentation out of my backpack.
To stay in the UK as a refugee you must be unable to live safely in any part of your own country because you fear persecution there.
The sky cracks and there’s a flash of lightning. Thick raindrops fall onto the piece of paper in my hand.
UK.
Any part.
Persecution.
It rains harder. I put the documents into my backpack and start up the hill towards the B&B.
Afra is sitting by the double doors in the living room; there are a few other residents milling around and the TV is on full blast. The Moroccan man raises his eyebrows. ‘How’re you doin’, geezer?’ He says the whole sentence in English now, his dark eyes sparkling.
‘Not too bad, geezer,’ I say, and force a smile. This satisfies him. He laughs with his chest and slaps his hand on his knee. I sit at the desk again and stare at my reflection in the computer screen. I