Forest Gate (15 page)

Before I knew it they rushed at each other, they pounded each other, dodging and ducking each other's heavy blows. Soon they were both on the ground, clinging to each other, then exchanging punches to the face, to the head and to the chest the whole time. They stopped for only an instant and then they smashed into each other again. I couldn't tell who was winning at first but then Nalma got on top. The gun fell from his waistband. That was when Ash started spitting razor blades. I had never seen shit like that before. Nalma staggered backwards as the first blade sliced near his eye. The second, third and fourth didn't miss. It was disgusting. Ash started shouting at me.

'Get the gun. Get the gun.'

I kicked it and it slid over to near Ash's thigh.

Ash picked up the gun as Nalma was bent over trying to support himself with the palms of his hands. Ash did this crazy wrestling move and tripped him over. There was this loud thud as Ashvin smashed the butt of Nalma's gun into his nose. 'How do you like it?' he said and he smashed it over and over again. It was terrifying. And then Ash laughed. It was a strange laugh, unfamiliar. We were inseparable; we sat next to each other in class – not talking much but always together. Outside school we talked about everything: what was on television, the state of the world. Sometimes we'd be together and we wouldn't feel the need to exchange words at all but I wouldn't be bored. Ashvin was always intense but in that moment I got really scared because I'd never heard him laugh like that before. Nalma collapsed to the ground and thrashed about. He stopped moving for a moment but I knew he was still OK at that point because he was breathing heavily and spitting out teeth and stuff. But then Ashvin turned him around, slammed a knee into his ribs and started tugging at his belt. Nalma was screaming, and his screams got louder when he saw the amount of blood there was on his hands. I couldn't understand why Ash was crying, but tears streamed down his face. I was behind them. I edged closer to be sure of what I was seeing. Ash pulled Nalma's jeans and underwear off and I thought Nalma was in for a whipping. He was trying frantically to work his body against Ashvin's grasp but a sudden blow made him lurch to the side and then his legs buckled. Then your brother dropped his own trousers as if he was going to piss but he spat on his hand and started to rub his dick. Ash grabbed Nalma's shoulder, pulled him up. Nalma tried to kick him but the rest of his body was limp. Ash grabbed his neck from behind with his left arm and smashed the point of his right elbow into Nalma's back. Then he crooked his own back and straightened his dick and then he squeezed it in, penetrating him.

'What are you doing?' I moved towards him. I was going to drag him away. But he didn't answer. Whatever it was I saw in Ash, Nalma sensed it too. He tilted his head slightly to look at me and I saw terror start in his eyes and then run across his face. He couldn't move because Ashvin held him firmly around his waist. Nalma, gritting his teeth and grimacing with pain, had no energy left, his mouth gaped in shock. For an instant he gathered strength from somewhere and shook Ash off but Ash smashed an elbow into the side of his face. Nalma was ready to drop, but he kept trying to spin round, to shoot his right hand up to reach Ashvin's forearm but Ash bent his other arm behind his back and held his neck down so he couldn't reach. Nalma's desperate screams echoed and then became muffled. His breathing laboured, the fight in him crawled away. Then he submitted. His head smashed into the ground and stayed there. I was glad when he turned his face away from me because I didn't want to see the cuts around his eyes. There was nothing I could do. I squinted down the street. Behind them in the distance shone the pulsing lights of Forest Gate. Panic spread through me. I was there but I also felt separated. I felt a sense of shame. It was all so animalistic and brutal. My blood was pounding and I was frightened and also sort of excited by my own fear or adrenaline or whatever.

Ashvin grabbed Nalma's hands and put them behind his back; he dragged his legs apart and pulled him up into a doggy position, still forcing him to look down. Ash spat in his palm again, somehow got himself erect and then, bending Nalma forward, he fucked him again, slowly inch by inch. His eyes were half closed. Nalma tried to move but Ash kept squeezing his neck and telling him to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. If Nalma tried to get up, Ashvin bent his knees by force. I'll never forget the way Ashvin looked when he penetrated Nalma, the way he started off moving his hips really slowly, unsteadily, but then he got really rough. With each thrust I heard a sickeningly dull thud and a smack as Ashvin's stomach connected with Nalma's buttocks. Both their angry cries split the night. Ashvin was crying and breathing hard at the same time. Blood trickled down the back of Nalma's legs. I looked up at the stars in the dead sky. They didn't twinkle. Nothing moved. The air was pungent with blood and faeces. My heart felt out of sync, beating in a way I had never felt it beat before. Ashvin had one hand on Nalma's hip, the other he used to press down on his neck. Nalma was yelping, clawing at the ground like a dog. Ashvin was ramming him, he tore him and scratched him and beat him until Nalma was totally limp. When he was done he whispered something into Nalma's ear. He didn't think I heard him but I did. I could see the moon between the trees and I just wanted to run, to get away. But I just sat there and I was ashamed because I was hard.

He said, 'Your countrymen gave me a gift and now it is my birthday and I give it to you.'

Nalma was alive when we left him but just after we reached the garages I thought I heard a gunshot; the roar of the traffic hid it so I couldn't be sure.

We didn't pull the trigger but it was our fault.

J
AMES STOPPED TALKING AND
sat there staring at the bedroom wall, rubbing his palms across his thighs. I walked over to the chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and pulled out a small tub of pills. I handed them to James.

'What are these?'

'They are antiretroviral drugs for HIV. I found them in Ash's room. He never told me. But I saw a letter from the hospital when an immigration officer at Heathrow Airport was interviewing us. My guardian had to show his supporting paperwork – bank statements, proof of address and confirmation letters from our schools – just before our new passports were stamped "Permission to enter".'

'What did the letter say?'

'Nothing much. It had his name on it and I saw "HIV-positive". Mr Bloom gave me a strange look at the time – he knew I saw – and when I glanced at Ash he froze and the flesh on his cheeks was trembling. I wanted to say something but I didn't. I was angry with Ash at first for not telling me and then I felt guilty.'

I stood behind James and placed both my hands on his shoulders. He turned and gently kissed the nape of my neck.

I touched his cheek and felt the pulse beneath his jaw.

'Why do you touch me like that?' he asked.

'Like what?'

'Like I'm a child.'

I removed my hands quickly. 'My guardian is coming here tomorrow. I'm going to let him know what happened with Nalma, he may be able to help.'

James frowned. 'Who is your guardian?'

'His name is Mr Bloom.'

'I don't think you should tell anyone.'

'Don't worry.' I sat down and crossed my legs. 'He'll be able to tell us what to do.'

'I mean, who is he to you? Ash never said anything about him.'

'He was a friend of my father's. You'll meet him tomorrow,' I said. 'You're worried about Whittaker. I can tell.'

'No. I don't care about him or about anything any more.'

The wind whispered against the window. Everything in the room felt sad. I thought of the time Ash and I spent with Mr Bloom. He lived in a vast condominium with a powerful electricity generator that was built to ensure the power supply never went out with the rest of Somalia. The building had twenty-four-hour armed security and was surrounded by Western-style shops. It was in the southern port town of Kismayo, a supposed safe zone. There were checkpoints everywhere and despite the service offered by the Special Protection Unit, aid workers, Unicef workers, journalists and NGOs were targeted indiscriminately in the area, kidnapped or shot. People lived in constant fear of ambush, car bombs and remote-control landmines. But it felt safe to Ash and me. That was the first time we lived with Mr Bloom. I stayed there happily for four months but Ashvin hardly ever came out of his room. I didn't know what was going on at the time. I was too busy reading Mr Bloom's books, eating cheeseburgers and strawberry jam and Chinese food to notice. I now know it was when Ash was first diagnosed with HIV. Since the death of our parents Ash had stopped saying what he was thinking, but Mr Bloom has told me since that Ashvin hated going to hospital. Once I asked him why he was so resentful towards Mr Bloom.

'Baba told me to be wary of white men. Bloom tries to be so nice. I'm confused,' he said. I think the real reason was because Bloom was the only person who knew he was infected. For me, things seemed fine until our aunt started showing up on Saturday evenings. I remember the first time it happened.

'They need a home where they truly belong, a traditional upbringing. I'm ready to play my part.' She spoke in a soft, caring voice and I believed her because I wanted to.

She had Mr Bloom wrapped all the way round her finger by then.

'Of course,' said Mr Bloom. He thought it was the right thing to do. 'But since I have already put in my application for permanent guardianship, I want to continue to provide financial support, to ensure the process will still go through, in case they check.'

My aunt adjusted her headdress and tried to appear calm but she didn't. I should have known then. I shiver when I think about how badly I misjudged her – I had no idea what she had planned. Ashvin never liked her. He watched her carefully whenever she was around. 'I don't trust that woman,' he said.

I was surprised when James kissed me. I had been married six times but before that night I had never had consensual sex. I had talked with other girls – my real friends in Somalia – about their fears of abduction, and nurses came to my school regularly for special 'stop the silence' classes and polio vaccinations. They would talk to teenage girls about the myth that sex with virgins was a cure for male HIV infection, preventing transmission of disease from mother to child, coercive sex; they warned us off seeking the attention of men, to have regular tests and they gave us proper sanitary pads. These classes were always about fear, so I wasn't at all prepared for the magic I felt when James's lips touched mine. I had no comprehension of the true power of a man – I ached for him. I felt I had waited all my life for his kiss. It was as though I was a weightless being carried along a river, and yet I was afraid. I gently touched the stitches on his lip with my finger.

'They'll dissolve soon. It's where I bit myself.'

I winced. His thick, woolly hair was softer than I had imagined.

'Sorry, TMI.'

'TMI?' I asked.

'Too much information.'

I smiled and he leaned in towards me, gently pushing his tongue between my lips. It was like opening my eyes and being able to see for the first time. I hoped I wouldn't wake up tomorrow and find it was all a dream. His breath was light, his lips like silk. I wasn't sure I was doing it right. I closed my eyes when I saw he had closed his and only opened them once, for a second, when our teeth clashed. I felt reassured when he ran his hand over my face with care, on my head, through my hair, down, down, until he gripped my lower back. I gasped when I touched his neck and for a moment I pulled away. My hand was wet.

'James, you're bleeding. Did I hurt you?'

'It keeps doing that. Sorry,' he said.

'I'm sorry.'

I kissed him. Then I felt him touching my lower back under my shirt where my skin was hot and damp.

I wanted to stop him. I must have tensed my body.

'Meina, are you OK?'

I was confused. He wasn't meant to sound so warm. I was trembling. It was like electricity was passing through me. I looked at the window. It was a bright night but I couldn't see the moon. I thought I should stop. But I needed to prove something to myself.

'Do you want to?' I asked.

He opened his eyes.

'What's wrong?' I thought perhaps I had embarrassed him.

'Do
you
want to?'

I moved his hand from my back and placed it on the front of my panties, letting him feel my heat. I felt him trembling as he fumbled with the elastic on the inside of my left thigh. I was wet. I opened my eyes to see him looking at my face.

'Meina, is it OK?' he said.

'Yes.'

He widened my legs.

'God,' I said when I felt his finger inside me. I had no idea I could be happily led to the undignified places he took me. He opened me up and together we made love.

When I fell asleep James made his way to the other bedroom in the dark. I woke again at one o'clock and found it difficult to go back to sleep. I wrapped the blanket around the bottom of my feet. I wondered if he lay awake like me, listening for sounds all around in the dark, groping for a reason to get up.

T
HAT NIGHT WAS FILLED
with vivid memories of my father. I always had an image of him conducting his interviews in an expensive room in a huge white castle. I went with him once to a place called the Alibi in Baidoa. He made me wait opposite the entrance but I went and peeked inside through a crack in the wooden door at the back. The front door faced the corner of the main street, across from a deli and discount store in a part of town that was then unfamiliar to me. Both sides of the Alibi building had signs bearing the bar's name in peeling yellow paint accompanied by a faded blue elephant logo with the shape of the African continent in bold. The building's three storeys looked noticeably worn, with chipped blue-and-green paint and barred or boarded-up windows. The chalkboard outside touted the air conditioning but there was no mention of the bare, peeling mud-coloured walls, layers of grime everywhere or the bar stools that were held together by duct tape.

The Alibi was about 250 kilometres from the war zone in Mogadishu. I had heard my father and some of his teacher friends say it was the only decent secret bar left in Baidoa. Ashvin asked him about it once and my father said it was where big business was done. There were no paved roads or street names and the rains had created ravines with crumbly sides; the entire area was virtually impassable. The first time my father met him, Mr Bloom's driver got stuck in the sandy chasms.

In the centre of the main room stood two dilapidated picnic tables; they used two wooden stands for a bar. With the exception of the counters and the picnic tables the room was bare. A wet sludgy substance covered the floor, a mixture of beer and dirt and who knows what else.

There were broken beer bottles on the floor too and empty plastic cups swelled in the corners and around the tables. My father said the beer was like battery acid but the Alibi served this special hot-buttered rum that tasted like heaven. It was made by mixing butter, rum and goat's milk, whipped in-house with four different spices and brown sugar, stirred forty or fifty times and taste-tested by the regulars. Many of the regulars were drunk and danced on the tables. In another front room, local guys lined up at the bar to holler over the soccer game on a small, mounted black-and-white TV, while others cheered on the often highly competitive pool games. A harshly lit, graffiti-marred back room provided extra seating and a Top Forty reggae list played loudly on a strange home-made jukebox.

It was the most unlikely friendship. Mr Bloom represented everything my father despised about Westerners in Africa. My father, well, he was black. Mr Bloom had not had a black male friend before. He had worked with many, even chased a football around the park with a couple. But friendship? Never.

My father was a handsome man who commanded the respect of the beautiful. He blushed easily and although he laughed without exception at all of Mr Bloom's jokes he was very intelligent. After eight years abroad he had returned to Somalia in 1974. He was only twenty-five years old and eager to begin building a professional life, to play a part in developing a modern Somalia. My father never lost his ambition. He worked closely with the Somali experts in Scandinavia (where he met Mashood, my mother) and for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During his four years in the UK he worked at the Department of Economics and International Development at the University of Bath before he returned to Somalia where he built his reputation at the University of Mogadishu. What Mr Bloom liked most about my father was his candour, the way he never tried to impress. He didn't pretend he was anything other than what he was and that, according to Bloom, made the relationship honest.

Their friendship was cemented the night they finally got round to doing the interview in my father's study at the back of our house. Mr Bloom loved being in our home. It was clean, with haphazard shelving and furniture covered in sailcloth. It was decorated with ceramic bowls and locally sculptured vessels. There were cushioned nooks for reading, decorative bundles, and twigs and sticks and odd baskets filled with bits of cut firewood. Our house was always brimming with people with familial or professional bonds: poets, writers, academics and children running around and shooting marbles on the veranda. My father's friends, who drank seriously despite the alcohol ban, seemed to enjoy Mr Bloom's presence. Soon he was at our house more than his own.

Our house looked across a river that was still and blue. But there was always fighting in the area. People kept light to a minimum out of fear of the roaming militia; ash from the fighting covered the streets and many buildings, but from inside our home, the war seemed like flashes of distant lightning.