Mosi's War
Authors: Cathy MacPhail
For Hamza, with thanks
Contents
It was the moving beam of light that caught Patrick’s eye. He wouldn’t even have glanced out of the landing window if it hadn’t been for that sudden, darting flash of light. It wasn’t as if there was anything to see out there. A vista of high-rises blocked out anything resembling a view. But the sun came out of the clouds and caught something and for just a second sent a firefly of light dancing across the walls. He took a few steps towards the landing window and he saw it. A figure balancing on the roof of the opposite building. The mesh of steel to stop people from falling, from jumping, had been ripped open and there stood a man, a man who looked more like a puppet than a human being. A second, no, less than a second later the man began to tumble, arms wide, flailing wildly, as if he was trying to catch hold of something, trying to save himself.
Patrick stared. This couldn’t be real. It was some kind of joke. Patrick almost laughed as he watched the man falling. Sailing past balcony after balcony, going down floor by floor. Not making a sound.
The world was silent.
It seemed to him that the man was free-falling in slow motion. Patrick was mesmerised by the movement. He didn’t even realise he was holding his breath.
Any second and the figure would hit the ground.
Patrick knew he couldn’t watch that. He didn’t even want to think about it. He drew his eyes away and looked back to the roof. To look at anything other than the man hitting the ground. His legs began to buckle. He drew in a great gulp of air. And the world turned the volume up full blast. There were screams, yells, a car screeching to a halt. He only just stopped himself from screaming. But boys like Patrick didn’t scream. Instead, he stumbled back from the window. Stood trembling with his back pressed to the wall. The lift came then. Had it only been seconds since he had pressed the button for it? It seemed ages ago. The doors slid open. Waiting for him. He ignored them. The door to his own flat was on the latch, he always left it on the latch, always getting into trouble for that, from his mum, from his granny. If he went back into the flat, it would make him late for school, again, and then he’d get into more trouble, though he was usually late for school anyway. So why did he care, and why was he even thinking these things?
‘Mum . . . Mum . . .’ he began to shout as he ran down the hall. ‘There’s a man . . . he fell . . . he jumped . . . I saw it.’
His mother, sitting in the living room, still in her dressing gown, looked up from her magazine. ‘Are you no’ away to school yet?’
‘Mum, the man fell, I saw him.’
He grabbed her arm, pulled her from the seat.
‘What do you think you’re playing at, Patrick!’ She tried to shake herself free, but he dragged her down the hall, still babbling about what he had seen. Not making any sense. He knew he wasn’t making sense. He wanted her to see. He hauled her to the landing window. He dared to look below. Now it was alive with people, swarming like ants around the figure lying on the ground, surrounding him so he was almost blocked from view. In the distance they could already hear the siren of an ambulance, or maybe a police car.
It was as if his mother only just took in what he was saying. ‘You saw that man fall?’
He couldn’t talk to her. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He only nodded.
‘Oh, son . . .’ And for the first time in an age, his mother hugged him.
Mosi was on the way to school when he heard the commotion. He lived in the same block of flats as Patrick. Three floors below him. But they hardly saw each other except in class. Mosi had left early. He always did. So he had missed the drama that Patrick had witnessed. But bad news travels fast and as he walked he heard snatches of the whispered talk as he passed groups of people gathering on the estate.
‘Somebody’s fell.’
‘It was a man.’
‘I heard he jumped.’
‘Anybody know who it was?’
‘Only one of them asylum seekers.’
Mosi didn’t stop. Though he was angry inside. They spoke, some of them, as if the life of an asylum seeker meant nothing. As if asylum seekers didn’t feel as other people felt.
He was angry too, more angry, at the man who died. His death would bring the police, publicity, questions. Hadn’t he thought of the other asylum seekers who lived here on this estate? Didn’t he consider what his death, his suicide would mean to them? Selfish man. Selfish.
He stopped to watch some boys playing football. Kicking the ball from one to the other. He knew them. They were in his school, some of them in his class. One of the older boys turned to watch him. He smiled. Mosi tried to remember his name.
‘Hey, Mosi,’ the boy called out to him. Brian . . . that was his name. Always friendly. ‘Come on and have a game.’
Two of the other boys stepped forward. ‘Do you know the man who topped himself?’ one of them shouted.
Mosi didn’t answer him. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to think of the man who had jumped.
‘Did you know him, Mosi?’ This time it was Brian who asked.
Again he didn’t answer.
Brian called out again. ‘Come on, have a kick about before you go to school. It’ll be a laugh.’
Another boy pulled him back. ‘Leave him be, Brian. That wee Mosi’s a weirdo.’
Brian gave him a final wave, then he turned back to his friends. Mosi continued to walk on. What the boy had said hadn’t hurt him. Nothing could hurt him now. Anyway, he wasn’t a weirdo.
He was something much worse.
Patrick began to think it was almost worth seeing a man fall to his death to get the morning off school. That, and being the centre of attention. Well, actually, the dead man was the centre of attention, but Patrick was running a close second. Patrick’s mother had dragged him downstairs to the crowd who had all gathered there. She had a habit of dragging him places.
‘My boy saw it happen!’ she called out dramatically as they emerged from their block. She hauled him into the middle of the crowd. There was a cover over the dead man now. Patrick was glad of that. He tried not to think of what was lying underneath. ‘My Patrick saw everything!’ she shouted out to anyone who would listen. Everyone did. They all turned. ‘Didn’t you, Patrick?’ She shook him and he nodded. Couldn’t stop his head from nodding. He felt like one of those dogs you see in the back of cars. His mother went on. ‘He saw it all from up there.’ She pointed a scarlet-nailed finger at a window somewhere high in the tower block. ‘He was waiting for the lift. He was going to school.’
A big policeman pushed his way through the crowd. Patrick recognised him, and swallowed. This community cop knew Patrick well. ‘Ah, Patrick Cleary, you again,’ he said.
Patrick was still nodding.
‘And you saw this?’ He expected the policeman not to believe him, to dismiss him as a liar. Patrick had a reputation for telling stories. But the policeman did a surprising thing. ‘Aye,’ he went on. ‘I can see you saw it. You’re as white as a sheet, son.’
‘Oh, he’s always that colour,’ his mother said. ‘But even his freckles are white this morning.’
The policeman led Patrick gently to a graffiti-covered bench. Patrick was responsible for most of the graffiti there. Pretty good stuff too, he thought. And he thought again, why am I thinking these things, noticing these thing? But why, at a time like this, am I thinking about graffiti?
‘Sit down, Patrick.’ The policeman turned to his mother. ‘I think your boy could do with a glass of water.’
His mother immediately delegated that task to a woman behind her. ‘Could you get my boy a glass of water.’ Then she turned to the policeman again. ‘He’s been in shock since he saw it. Do you think he might need counselling?’ Patrick could almost see the wheels of his mother’s brain turning.
The policeman ignored her again. He sat down beside Patrick. ‘Now, tell me everything you saw.’
He thought he wouldn’t find his voice, but he opened his mouth and the words came out, tumbled out, faster and faster, everything he’d seen. It took him longer to say what happened than it took for that man to hit the ground. And Patrick lived those seconds again, seconds that seemed to stretch to an age.
He was interviewed for the television too. The van drew up even before the emergency services had arrived. A reporter pushed his way through, shoving what looked like a hairy lollipop into his face and asking him to describe what he’d seen.
Out it all came again. ‘Something made me look over at the other flat, and I saw him.’
‘Did he look as if he meant to jump?’
And Patrick saw those terrible moments played out in his mind again.
‘Yeah, yeah, he jumped . . . but I think he changed his mind. He jumped, and then, he seemed to panic.’ He was breathing hard, on the verge of panic himself, feeling what that man must have felt as he fell. ‘I think he changed his mind . . .’ he said again.
The policeman had heard enough. He covered the reporter’s microphone with his big hand, and held the television crew back. Even told his mother to get out of the way. ‘This is too much for a young boy. Get him back home, make him a strong cup of tea. He’ll need to give a proper statement later, but I’ll make sure he’s not bothered till then.’
His mother wasn’t too happy about that. She was quite enjoying the ‘being bothered’ bit. But she took him up to the flat anyway, telling anyone who would listen. ‘I would love to stay down here, but . . . you know me, I always put my boy first.’