How To Be a Boy (4 page)

Without breakin’ my gaze, I reach down for my violin. It is my friend, my companion.

He bring down his weapon, and I raise my musical instrument.

What we hear, as the blade scrunches into the body of my violin, is the sound clash we been seekin’, proper hard-core fusion poundin’ round the room. Pee Wee and I have an understanding. The sound is an old lady wailin’, as she is punched to the floor.

I raise my arm, pullin’ the violin high above my head, the blade stuck in its guts. Pee Wee roars, reachin’ up towards the handle of the knife, but fallin’ short. I lift my leg, put the sole of my boot against his chest and push. That bad boy crumple to the floor.

I turn to leave, hearin’ him, for the first time in my life, cryin’. Pee Wee sobbin’ like a child.

I leave him, and head straight for the police station.

Pee Wee and me won’t be rappin’ together in no slam next week. I’ll rap solo. And next time anyone disses me for playin’ my violin, I’ll face them down. From now on, I battle on my own.

DAYBREAK.
Awoken by the rooks. They have rooks in England too. But every time he hears them, he’s back there in Africa, and living an African war again.

Their grating caws shatter the dreaming silence, and the sky is barely reddened by a sun squeezing itself through the grey crack of dawn.

Awake now, he is immediately wide awake; his senses sharpened to pinpricks. The dangers of the night give way to those of the day. Night or day, there is always danger. There are always eyes watching; the eyes of night animals gleam through the remaining darkness, but even as they fade away, the day animals are as alert as he is. The fight for survival will go on today, as it did yesterday, and will tomorrow.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

The other boys are whispering out there in the bush. They gather themselves together, shivering with the night’s cold, but shivering too with the fear which hasn’t left them since they escaped. Escaped from where? Some from their captors, the rebel troops, some from their burning villages and massacred families. But each day is an escape from something: hunger, thirst, fatigue, wild animals, and the relentless heat of a blazing sun.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

No good lying around, sitting about, standing still. Keep moving; head for the border. There’s safety there; food, shelter, a plane out to a safe country. Which way? Go west. Note the position of the sun, head towards the point where it sets. Follow the track. Follow the leader – the tallest, oldest, bravest boy. Stay close. Don’t leave gaps. Carry the youngest if need be.

But the line is long, and more are gathering on the way; boys who creep out of the jungle, tattered and desperate, tag along at the end of the line, extending it further and further until it straggles. Good for the lions watching them; prowling, pacing, sizing them up as they march through the long sharp dry-as-bones grass. Narrowed eyes, taut bodies, contracted muscles – poised, targeted – release; a sudden blur of yellow fur and, almost soundlessly, a boy is snatched, then another, and another.

The panic, the terror, the grief; a friend, a cousin, a brother! Don’t stop; don’t look! It won’t do any good. Keep going. Running won’t help. They’ll take what they need and leave the rest of us alone.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

*  *  *

The patch of blue sky slammed into his eyes when he opened them, and for one exultant, exhilarating, heart-stopping moment, he thought he was home again in Africa. Home? How far back must he go to remember a place of safety that he could call home; where he slept without fear and woke to the sound of his mother cooking, his younger brothers quarrelling and his baby sister squealing?

“I’m off!” his uncle’s voice called indifferently.

His heart beat again.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
.

He was in England, and “Uncle” wasn’t really his uncle, just someone who’d picked him up on the way – not out of compassion, but because it was the only way to keep the authorities at bay for the moment.

The door slammed.

There was no one to urge him to get up, get ready for school, but he needed no urging. Within the locked gates and the high wire fencing, school was safer than outside. And he had friends. It was getting there and back that was dangerous.

Adan tipped himself out of his grubby sleeping bag on the floor and, still on his stomach, slithered away like a crocodile towards the bathroom; the water hole. If only he were the crocodile, drifting just below the surface, his great armour-plated body causing not even the faintest ripple to alert the innocent gazelle. But he knew, in truth, that he was the gazelle, the hunted; only able to survive by being quick-witted, fast, intuitive; by keeping upwind, invisible. Whatever African wilderness he had come from, the hard concrete jungle of the estate outside was just as dangerous. But he had a friend. Ti. He’d be waiting for him, kicking a ball on the grass in defiance of the peeling council notice saying
NO BALL GAMES
.

It speeded him up. He dashed his face with water, dragged on jeans and T-shirt, grabbed six slices of bread from the kitchen and let himself out.

Two dangerous areas to get through: the alleyways running between the buildings which emerged onto the green, but before that, the stairwells, alcoves and doorways, lurking with darkness, hiding the bully, the gang member, the thief, the predator. But the open ground was dangerous too. Eyes would be watching from the upper walkways. A boy alone was a target.

Quick! Get down the alley, fast as you can across the quadrangle, through the next alley and out onto the front. Ti was always there, waiting for him. Be there, be there, he prayed. He had noticed a quick movement above him. He knew he’d been spotted.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
.

Ti was there. Big, broad Ti – fattened from a diet of kebabs, hummus and pitta bread – who, though only thirteen, could pass for a man. Next to him, Adan looked like a thin black shadow of a stick insect, yet with the energy of a projectile, as if he could be shot from a bow. And like an arrow, Adan flew out of the alleyway and across the green, intercepting the ball which Ti had aimed at him.

Whoever had been pursuing him stopped and didn’t show himself, and Adan jogged with relief alongside his friend. If the lions were watching, they didn’t pounce. Not today.

In the African bush, his friend had been Yusuf. Both of them had been captured by rebels; taught how to kill, to carry knives and guns; to forget they were sons and grandsons, cousins and brothers, friends and neighbours; to become mere slaves of the commander, obedient to him, to his whims, to his decisions – you live, you kill, you die – at the click of his fingers. Boy was taught to kill boy. Boy was taught to kill man. Boy was taught to kill whoever he was ordered to kill – even his own sister, mother or father. As bad as animals? No. Animals have dignity. Adan no longer felt a living creature. He had almost become a brainless, unfeeling tool to be used in any way the commander desired.

They would die sooner or later – Adan knew that. Yusuf knew that. Even to be caught talking in private could be a death sentence. But they exchanged looks; frowns and glances, the raised eyebrow and curled lip – all became a language they understood. Both burned with a desire to escape. In the massacre of the next village, they had caught each other’s eye, and exchanged the message: “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Shielded briefly by the confusion of smoke and flames, they fled into the bush. They ran until their feet were shredded and their lungs bursting; urging each other on and on to get as much distance as they could between them and the rebels. Finally, they fell to the ground panting, weeping, exhausted; but free – for the moment. It was days later when, on the point of starvation, they came across the marching boys.

“Where you going?”

“To the border.”

“Can we come?”

“If you can keep up.”

There was no real leader except the tallest boy, who led the way. They foraged for food and shared it, sitting in silence; as if language were too painful and would release the floodgates of distress each was carrying inside his heart.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
.

And so they went; marching towards the border, day by day; keeping up.

England. He had met Ti in an arcade. When Ti mentioned school, Adan said, “I’d like to go.”

“You must be mad,” Ti shrugged.

“I’ve never been to school. I want to know what it’s like.”

Ti told him of a boy who played truant all the time. “Why not pass yourself off as him?” he said. No one would know. Kids came and went almost too quickly for any teacher to get to know them properly, and he told Adan to answer to his name at registration. So he did, and suddenly, he realized he had just walked into something his father had always dreamed of for him: an education. “With an education, you could have a future and escape all this,” he had muttered between a hacking cough and bouts of fever. But the rebels had killed him as he tried to stop them abducting his son.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

Adan shouldn’t have been in the country, let alone in school. But he was such a skinny smudge of a kid, he could walk alongside anyone and not be noticed, and so he had slipped onto trucks and boats and mingled with the big guys and got himself into England. One of the big guys was “Uncle”. “Stick with me, kid,” he’d said. It suited Uncle to have a child in tow. It got him through the system, though Uncle was always on edge: dreading the knock on the door, or the stop-and-search. But he knew people, and by sticking with him, Adan at least got a bed for the night and an endless supply of sliced bread.

He and Ti reached the school. They plunged into the river of children pouring through the gates. Adan had become more confident now, and wasn’t bothered when Ti was swept away from him. They would find each other again at break. He had no trouble seeing his bullish head with its close-cropped hair, his huge shoulders and powerful arms. No one touched Ti in anger.

It was on the nineteenth day of walking, walking, walking that Yusuf had suddenly flopped by the side of the track, sinking into the yellow brittle grass. Adan stopped, as the others trudged on past them. “Keep going, keep going!”

“Yusuf! Hey man! What’s the matter?” Adan knelt by his friend. “We’ve gotta keep going, man!” Everyone knew that to fall out of the line was death.

Yusuf had looked up at him with eyes as dead as dried up wells. “Can’t.”

The line of boys continued plodding past. Hardly anyone had the energy to even glance at them; there was just a murmuring, as of bees: “Keep going, keep going.”

“Need … to … catch … my … breath,” muttered Yusuf, with barely enough breath to say it.

“I’ll wait with you, then,” said Adan. “I’m not leaving you.”

As they sat there in the thicket, it seemed to Adan that their bodies were already breaking down and becoming part of the dry earth, the dry bushes, the dry grass; that with their dust-engrained skins and their torn, dust-stained shirts they were already dust to dust.

Gaps appeared in the line as the last of the boys – the stragglers, the weakest – stumbled past, trying to keep up. When at last no more passed by, Adan urged Yusuf again:
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Yusuf said nothing. And when Adan looked again into those open dried wells of his eyes, there was no life.

He didn’t catch them up till the next day. At first he had lost the will to live, and just sat, through the night, silently rocking next to his friend. He no longer cared whether the lions got him, or just starvation. But when the sun came up the next morning, and the sky darkened with vultures, he got to his feet with dread, and ran.

*  *  *

Adan had enjoyed the day at school. No one had any expectation of him. He couldn’t read or write and had been put into the special needs unit. Just as the desire to survive had made him get up and go after Yusuf died, now the desire to learn made him listen, copy, try – all the time hearing his father’s voice in his head:
“With an education, you could have a future.”
He wanted a future. He wanted to stop running and hiding; he never again wanted to be a victim – either of brute force or brutish ignorance. He wanted to be his own man.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
.

He hoped that Ti would be dawdling back towards the estate, giving him a chance to catch up. He grabbed his old sports bag containing the homework he would try and do with Ti’s help. He usually caught him up at the roundabout, waiting for the lights to change. But when he reached the crossing, there was no sign of him. He felt a pang of nervousness. He would have to cross the estate alone.

Have a strategy; that’s what he’d learned. Run; get across the green, through the alleyways, across another open space. Head for the stairway; race up three flights. Get to the flat. Thrust the key in the lock, get in, slam the door.

He entered the alleyway; fingered the key in his pocket, positioned it in his hand. It might have to be a weapon. He emerged into the sunlight; paused.

Then Adan saw him kicking a ball up against a wall in the quadrangle. Ti had come to find him after all.

Adan’s head swivelled as if he were back in the bush; all senses fine-tuned. He caught the blur of yellow on an upper walkway; the lions were prowling. He saw a glint of metal. Had the guns and knives of the rebels followed him here? Eyes were watching. When lions go for the big prey, like a young elephant, they work together in packs. Ti was big. So they came for him from everywhere.

Adan yelled out, “Ti!” Then they were on him. Adan sprinted forward like a cheetah and hurled himself across their backs as they lunged forward. For a moment it was as if he was swimming – all limbs thrashing against the weapons in their hands.

A police siren sent them scattering. Voices bellowed,
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Adan and Ti lay on the grass side by side, panting; alive. Boots raced past them, up the three flights of stairs. A hammering on a door. “Open up! Police!” They heard the door smashed in.