Divinity Road (31 page)

To the fight.

And

Fight and slay

The Pagans wherever ye find them

The red walls have gone, but the room is still haemorrhaging.

***

Another step closer.

Homemade DVDs have been left in my room, a pile on top of my television, looped images of torture and carnage. Women, children, helpless civilians brutalised by invaders in uniform, the bloody aftermath of aerial bombardment. The Arabic subtitles detail each location, each context – Chechnya, Kashmir, Al Fallujah, Helmand, Ramallah, Mogadishu – but the pain and loss is identical.

Another DVD consists of a compilation of martyrdom speech videos. Their messages, too, are unvarying, the same validation I have always had from Kalil, violence justified by divine instruction.

***

I still dream about the accident, about the boy. I still dream about you, the children, our old life.

The past is the motherland from which you can never escape.

***

Kalil comes to me again. He has brought my latest repeat prescription, but before he hands it over, he looks at me quizzically.

Well, brother? It is time to decide. What is it to be? The Garden or the Fire?

And this time he waits for an answer.

***

Without my noticing, winter has made way for spring.

The endgame commences. An unannounced dawn rise, a few clothes thrown into a holdall, a bus into town, then a coach to Gatwick. Kalil shows me my new passport, takes me to the check-in desk, leads me through immigration and security.

Ours is a direct flight to Cape Town. Kalil has given me extra tablets and I am already dozing in the departure lounge. The journey passes in a foggy haze.

***

I am writing this from my bed. Kalil tells me we are in a house in Chatsworth, a township suburb of Durban.

We move from place to place every few days. He has hired a car, and we drive across the country following an itinerary that only he understands. I sit beside him, his passenger, as he points out landmarks, exclaims at the outside world. I nod but I have no idea where I am.

Today I read with a stab of recognition the Surah
Al A’la
in which hell is depicted as a place in which you neither die nor live.

When I was in Britain, I memorised a verse from the Bible:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

I try to make sense of the words, to identify a course of action that will stop the fear, end the torment. I do not know what to do. It is no longer in my hands.

The only love I feel is for you, but is it enough?

I am so sorry, my flower. Forgive me.

Dear Kassa

The last few weeks have been difficult, with neither the time nor opportunity to write to you. Now, however, we seem to be enjoying a temporary respite from the threat of homelessness, so let me update you on this latest episode in our topsy-turvy lives.

I should start from where I left off and explain the nature of my plan. Since my class switch from Union Street, I have become familiar with the campus layout at Blackbird Leys, and in particular the comfortable English department staffroom. The campus itself is divided up into several large buildings – one for the construction department, another for motor mechanics, others for carpentry, for the canteen, for the reception and library.

The English language department, housed in a separate two-storey building, is based at the back of the college campus. The staffroom is on the ground floor. My form teacher, a woman named Nuala, has on several occasions sent me there to collect dictionaries or the class register, or make extra photocopies of class worksheets, and in so doing has revealed to me the door code for the security lock. The first time I go there, I note how warm the room is, take in the soft, electric blue carpet, the WC with toilet and basin, the tiny kitchen area with sink, mini fridge and microwave. I think already then the seeds have been sewn in my mind, if only as a vague and fanciful ‘what if?’

This idea is further crystallised one lunchtime some weeks before my crisis as I am standing beside Nuala’s desk. I am waiting for her to return from the photocopier where she has been making a copy of some homework I missed the previous week.

Two workmen in overalls are rolling up wheels of cable and folding up their stepladders. As they return their screwdrivers to their toolboxes and replace some ceiling tiles, they explain to one of the other teachers that they have just been told to stop the job they are doing – a much needed rewiring of the old burglar alarm system – and get straight up to the main city centre campus, where a serious fault with the system has been reported. Security there is considered a priority, so they will be postponing this job until it is completed. That could take up to six weeks, and in the meantime they have already stripped out some of the essential wiring, so the alarm system in the English language building will be out of order.

There are jokes about tipping off someone to break in and steal the staffroom paper clips, some moaning about how the city centre campus is always prioritised over the Blackbird Leys one. From me, though, there are no complaints or laughter, just a vital nugget of information to store away.

And it all comes together on that first Monday.

Checked out of the bed-and-breakfast, the children dropped off at school, arriving at college with no guarantee of where we will be sleeping that night, I am galvanised into action.

I take the bus into college and make my way through the campus to the English department building. As I pass through the main doors, I notice that they too have a security lock, though it is now on the latch. Have they been programmed with the same code as the staffroom door? I flick off the catch, punch in the numbers and pull back the lever. It clicks open smoothly. So far, so good.

On the way out, I take stock of the college grounds. I examine them the way a burglar surveys a likely target. I know that in the evening the security guards will lock the two sets of college gates, front and rear. I have noticed that the fencing close to the back gates is poorly maintained. At one point it serves as a border between the college grounds and a concrete playground, an area used by the apprentice plumbers for impromptu lunchtime football matches. There are a series of holes in the fence there made by these footballers to retrieve poorly placed shots that sail over into the college grounds.

Class finishes at one. I buy a cup of tea in the college canteen and sit amongst the rowdy apprentices with their fry-ups and pie-and-chips, and sketch out a plan of action.

By three thirty I am back at school to pick up the children. We walk around to the library, look at the books and toy with the computers until it closes at five thirty. We stroll up to the Cowley shopping centre, buy chips at the takeaway and sit on a bench to eat. It is as much to kill time as to satisfy our appetites. The children are unsettled and demand to know what is happening. I tell them to be patient.

Now it is back to Blackbird Leys, only this time we walk so as to waste more time. There is a sick feeling in my stomach – too much to go wrong. It is half past seven, eight by the time we get to the front entrance, and I note that the gates are padlocked.

Ahead I can see the main building with the reception and, next to it, the cramped control room used by the on-duty security guard, little more than a cupboard equipped with desk, chair and the CCTV screens. The whole area is dark. I breathe a sigh of relief. I had presumed – prayed – that the college would not have night security but here was the confirmation.

We walk around to the rear entrance and skirt across the concrete playground. I find a big enough hole in the fencing. The children are confused but not afraid. I make light of our illegal entry, turning it into an adventure. Once inside the college grounds we head straight for the English building.

I am aware of the CCTV cameras but figure no one will re-run the film unless there is a reported incident.

My memorised security codes get us through the main doors and into the staffroom. Inside I take out my holdall. I have brought books for the children, some fruit, teabags and sugar, a torch and two blankets. The heating has gone off but there is still the residual warmth from the day. It is our first night as squatters.

The following morning I get the children up. I make tea in the kitchen area and we eat a little fruit. I am restless, unsure what time the security guards go on duty, when the cleaners will arrive. This is information that I need, so after hiding my bag on the top shelf of a store cupboard, we make our escape through the damaged fencing. I take the children across the road to the row of shops, wait until the bakery opens and buy them warm rolls for breakfast. While we wait, we take our seats on the bench facing the main gates of the campus.

The security officer arrives at seven o’clock, the cleaners soon after. The first teacher arrives at eight. Ninety minutes later I have dropped the children at school and am back for my first class. We have a routine. We have a new home.

And so it continues. I return to Tom’s house every couple of days, to fetch clean clothes and dump the dirty laundry. I still don’t tell him what has happened. I have fabricated some friends with whom we are now staying, friends who do not have space to store our things. His wife, Gloria, is sympathetic. She insists they will keep my goods for as long as I want. I have also sworn Yanit and Abebe to secrecy. I promise them we will soon find better accommodation.

The following weeks feel hazardous and disorientating, a crazy mixture of the normal and the bizarre. There are moments, lost in some classroom writing exercise or picking up the children from school, when I forget that I sleep between a photocopier and a filing cabinet, that I wash in a kitchen sink, dry myself with a towel that stays hidden between archived student records.

The routine does not change. After classes, I kill the afternoon in the college library completing homework tasks or scouring the internet for properties to let while all around the boisterous plumbing apprentices and pimply motor vehicle trainees sit at their computer terminals and banter over music videos and gaming websites. Then it is the school pick-up, the local library where I supervise any homework jobs, the takeaway for tea, and finally the long haul to Blackbird Leys.

Anxious not to arouse suspicion, I draw the staffroom blinds and we lie on the floor and read by torchlight. I keep a supply of blankets in the first aid cupboard, and have divided up our other belongings and have them secreted around the building.

At the end of the second week I have to take a trip to the launderette. I realise Tom and Gloria must find it strange that we cannot even store our clothes at our present accommodation, but they say nothing. And me, I keep up the cheerful façade.

Still, by the beginning of the fourth week, the strain is beginning to show. My routine visits to the letting agencies are fruitless, I check my bidding rank for council properties and find I am still up there in the fifties. Worse, though, I have not informed the council about my ‘change of address’, I am sure that quite apart from my squatting, I am breaking any number of other housing and benefit regulations. It is too much to deal with, a mountain on my feeble shoulders, so I mentally shelve my responsibilities and bury myself in the present.

Of course I know it cannot last, am only unclear how long I can get away with it, how it will end. All I know is that I have no options.

And the end comes sooner than expected. The day after checking my bidding rank, a Tuesday, it is one o’clock and I am about to leave my classroom when Nuala calls me back, says she would like to have a word with me. I am used to these private chats. Sometimes they are to discuss progress or set learning goals, sometimes they are to deal with some other aspect of college administration, to enrol for an exam or update records. Occasionally they are just an opportunity for her to offer help with any personal issues.

We sit opposite each other in an interview room. Nuala gets straight to the point. I am re-constructing from memory, but the conversation that follows goes something like this:

So tell me, Semira. How long have you been sleeping in the staffroom? I am dumbfounded. My first instinct is to bluff. I gulp, search for the right words, the right expression to convey my outrage. Nuala just smiles at me.

It’s OK. I know it’s true. Don’t try to deny it. You can trust me.

I hesitate. Nuala is a good teacher, kind and patient, and her lessons are interesting and funny and useful. She is caring and considerate, but I have never got beyond our ‘professional’ relationship.

Let me explain, before you say anything, she says. I left my debit card in my desk drawer on Friday, and I only realised it after I got home that evening. I needed it the next day, so I came back here at half eight hoping that someone on security might let me in. The whole campus was locked up but I came round the back and found the hole in the fencing. I guess that’s how you get in. She pauses, but does not wait for a response. I was just about to come in when I saw flickering lights through one of the windows. The blinds hadn’t been closed properly and I could see in. I saw you there, you and your children. You were reading together with torches. I didn’t want to disturb you. I thought I’d frighten you, so I just turned back.