15. ESTELLA’ S ROOM It occurs to me now, writing all this out for you, Mister, that I almost certainly spent more time with these other women than I did my own mother. Hidden away under lock and key, she drifted further and further into the background. I’d hear my mother, sense her instead. I’d listen out for her feet on them boards, or the sound of her tossing about in bed.

  She lived in the only occupied room on the uppermost floor, separated from the rest of the house. That entire floor was strictly forbidden for me. And if I sneaked up two out of four flights, one of my other Mothers would haul me down by the ankles. Don’t you try it, you little mutt! You’ll never make it up all those stairs by yourself!

  My Mother Miriam would have me stand at the door of my mother’s room sometimes, while she tucked clean bedding into my mother’s mattress, and tenderly persuaded her to swallow her pills.

  I watched it all, lopsided and silent as I was, and stared into her odd, shrine-like little chamber. The room itself, Mister, looked so different to any other. There were hundreds of little portraits hung on the blue walls. Floor to ceiling, Mister, portraits of women in long dresses and shawls, mostly ink-like dark tones, a handful of them in faded colour. Each face seemed to look out in a different direction. The frames were lined with dust, as if they’d hung there for years, untouched. Nobody remembered who’d put them up there, or the little mirrors, nailed to the walls in their ornate gilt frames. And my mother – sitting in bed as I watched her, gazing at them frames, or from time to time sitting by the smeared glass window to watch the sky – seemed at home here, and perfectly calm. There’d always be a heap of black fabric beside her. And whenever she was alone, Mister, or thought she was alone, no matter what hour of the day or night, she’d be sitting there in that chair and begin sewing.

  I’d sneak up sometimes – in the evenings, this was, and then regular visits whenever my other Mothers were away – and if I was lucky I’d find her door left ajar, and I’d watch my mother Estella going at it with her needle.

  I’d see how the lines of her mouth quivered as she stitched, and realised how she talked to herself, or else quietly sang. She seemed so different when she was alone. I remember sitting there for hours just watching her. I wanted very much to go to her and ask her: What’s wrong? Why would she never speak to anybody? I wanted to ask her about them portraits on the walls. All them faces that were staring at her, and her own reflection staring back. I was desperate to mark some resemblance between my mother and me.

  Bolder still, I began inching further into the room until I could see over my mother’s face properly, and she, in turn, realised I was within touching distance of her.

  16. ESTELLA’ S SEAMS My mother didn’t really bat an eyelid when I came near. She only looked up to notice me there, before going back to her sewing, Mister. But it didn’t matter. All I wanted was to watch her. See them lines at her mouth begin to tighten. See them eyes dart about as if chasing a vision in the light. I watched long and hard to find a likeness. Her nose wasn’t as fleshy as mine. Hers was thin and narrow and chalk-white. My mother looked like one of them stitched figures in them old English tapestries, Mister. The ones in your village museums, pinned to stately parapets and church walls. Them courtly Roundhead women, I mean, with square hems and gloves at the waist standing alongside knights and kings and foreign princes.

  Obviously, I realised why my mother looked like that. I knew why both our cheeks showed red in the cold air while my other Mothers’ didn’t. Me and my mother shared a whiteness at birth. And I suppose we were haunted by the same things. My white gummy skin had always seemed to repulse my other Mothers. It was confusing to see Estella’s own whiteness shine so brightly in that dark little room. She looked beautiful. I began to compare her long braided hair with my own. I’d sidle close and smell her unwashed skin to see if I could recognise anything of my own odour on her. I’d search every inch of her face as she sat sewing, and from these little measurements – the curvature of her ears, slender hands fiddling away, them long porcelain feet – I found an intimacy with my mother despite the distraction in her eyes, and her refusal to let me touch her.

  Only later did she confide in me, Mister. And by this I mean she eventually did start talking to me – or, at least, sometimes, when I felt she acknowledged my presence in the room, she spoke as if she knew somebody was there listening.

  I drew even closer to make her out. It sounded as if she were offering stories into the air, little riddles, in weird metre. Strange, scattered speech. I could trace no meaning in it: Dear one…hear the one, the one about Tamerlane…gave his men robes. Nice and clean robes. Not cheap! Stitched gold threads and gemstones…Marwan, Marwan opened it and found a blanket…blanket for an ass…serves him right, the idiot, the fool…give him an inch…coat off his back…and then she’d shake a needle in the air before getting on with her sewing.

  Mister, it was as if the whole world hadn’t waited on her tongue.

  It might be hard for you to hear it, but this random speech of hers, and her voice – low, and hot, and thrown about – was at once troubling to me, and exciting.

  Who was she speaking about – her Marwan, Marwan – my father?

  Even now, I can’t be sure.

  At other times I can recall how she held one hand up at the light, flashing a quick smile at the window as if somebody had appeared and had caught her eye in the glass – No, I’m waiting, I’ll wait…she’d mutter, giving a little shake of her head and returning to her sewing.

  I’d try and get her to repeat what she said. I’d try whenever my Mother Miriam was there. I’d tug at her skirt and tap at her arms to get her to tell it. But she wouldn’t, Mister, not a word. My Mother Miriam, seeing all this, could only sigh and give a sympathetic look, ushering me away from my mother with a soft little tet-tet…

  My mother Estella saved them riddles for me. And it’s for this reason that I call my mother a liar. For as young as I was, Mister, I could see the dumb silence was a wilful ruse on my mother’s part. Some performance played out for reasons I couldn’t understand. I didn’t think bad about it then, and in fact I was grateful to have a secret to share with her.

  I spent all the time I could just watching and waiting for her to speak again. I was still small enough to crawl under her blankets. And whenever I’d find her asleep, I’d creep into a ball and tuck myself under her thighs. I lay hidden, Mister. Careful not to wake her. And I’d look over, studying her body for little marks. Like serrated lightning across her stomach. I’d follow them with my fingers, and I’d tell myself – here, this is where her skin snapped from mine, here, her hands like mine, nails like mine. Her skin seemed to shine even under covers. Even with her stubborn silences, I felt I could really see into my mother. I could touch her veins, almost. See the blood flow inside. I could press my ears against her, hear the beat of her heart, the heave of her breath. I felt I could even hear her thoughts. And there were parts of my mother, Mister, that bore a sink-water whiteness that tasted of tears to me, and just as bitter.

  17. SHELTER My mother Estella might as well have been mad. Might have been Scheherazade, for all I knew – the woman with no breath, having run away from her past. So far back, at least to before my father had left her. Nevertheless, she became like a shelter for me at that early age, against the crazy carousel of my other Mothers – them, with their endless rushing air, battles over hard soap and splashing water. My own mother never tried to coddle me, let alone wash me. Never tried to temper my tantrums. And whenever Sisi Gamal would find me there, and try to take me off her, I’d cling to my mother for all my worth Mister. She was the only thing I could bear to love at first.

  18. FIRST WORD Maybe I was after something more definite, I don’t know. If not a word, then a gesture. Something that said to me: Yahya, this is your mother, and she feels for you as you feel for her. But my mother lived beyond measurable things, Mister. And it was into her silence that I poured my own imagination.

  Beginning, of course, with my first word – which, as my Sisi Gamal revealed to me later, shaking his head in that ox-like slow bow – spoke of what I’d been grasping after, trying to tease back what I’d lost.

  My first word came in Arabic – ab meaning father.

  19. ABSENCES Father, imagine…The long-lost abba. My other Mothers were appalled at the utterance. They hadn’t spoken to me about Marwan, Mister, and were never aware of my secret visits. I realise now – and it’s obvious in hindsight – that they’d decided never to mention my father in the house. And this, despite the fact, Mister, that missing people, lost histories and past troubled lives were thick in the air at the time. This was a house cluttered with the past. Stretch out a leg, reach out a hand, and you were sure to find some bit of something left behind by an earlier occupant.

  By this I mean it was a hoarders’ house, Mister. The middle floors, where the rooms mostly stood vacant, were filled with piles of discarded junk. Not up there! came my uncle’s cry, there are nails in the wood, broken beams – ach! – things will fall on your head and end you!

  It was true, there was plenty to bang my head on or scratch my knee. There were clothes and umbrellas, worn-out old coats, stuff heaped into every corner. Entire rooms were left colonised by mountains of broken furniture, sofa cushions, collapsible chairs. There were black bin liners filled with moth-eaten rags, tinker toys with knobs and levers on. There were books and brassieres, Mister, and much besides, all left to rise like the sediment of the house’s history.

  At first, when my Mothers caught me sifting through this trash, they’d have to trudge upstairs to fetch me. They gave up, soon enough. I discovered too many hidey-holes, Mister, and became too good at covering my tracks. Fine go then – go! they’d shout back up, you go and stay – pfft! – and roll in your mess all the day, you goat-boy!

  My favourite thing to do, once I was old enough to climb, was to tumble into these heaps of trash head over heels. Mostly there were women’s clothes up there. I got a lot of joy out of them dresses, sequinned costumes and boxes of cheap jewellery. I found ruby-red brooches and chain bracelets. I liked to put on these silky things and watch the cheap gems gleam in the dusty light. I’d wrap my arms around discarded kameez, make puppets out of long socks and black fabric. I’d make masks out of wicker baskets, Mister, build forts out of wooden chests, and climb great ziggurats of suitcases and jump and I’d soar. I’d spend long afternoons like this, Mister, climbing over mounds of wire cable, and then, whenever I heard a scurrying under clothes, I’d follow the sound of chasing rats under floorboards.

  The days felt very big to me. In my memories they feel limitless. Sometimes I’d sit for hours, crossed leg-over-leg, under a pile of mattresses, Mister, or inside some bunker I’d fashioned out of old chests and broken drawers. I imagined my escape into that darkness. Getting lost someplace where my Mothers or Sisi Gamal would never find me. And I’ve often wondered, Mister, why such leftover wares made me so happy. Stuff was worthless after all. Any real value had disappeared, along with the lives of the women who’d left it all behind – but then again, maybe that was it, Mister – maybe their absences left me all the space in the world to roam and to play.

  So, there I was – a child whose beginnings were mysterious enough, whose reflections were never clear – making hidey-holes among other people’s cast-offs: clothes, ruby necklaces, leather belts. I imagined myself into their shoes, affording myself new names, new voices, play-acted the parts of them women on the walls. I was the possessor of everything left unclaimed. And I believe, also, that these flights of imagination first kindled a sense of poetry in me. I’d everything any young poet would need – my boredom, my imagination – and these absences surrounding me, Mister, which felt like a gift.

  20. BRIGHT-WIDE You can read from my recollections that I spent a lot of time indoors. Until the age of five or six, the world outside – the big bright-wide, as I thought of it – was at once forbidden and frightening. Whenever my Mothers threatened to take me out to the mosque say, or the Cash & Carry, or the park to expend some energy, I’d kick and snap and bite back at their wrists. The world beyond the house seemed a place people only went to quietly suffer and disappear into, Mister. And as a child, I wanted nothing to do with any of it.

  My other Mothers plodded into the outside world every day. Cleaners or cooks, mostly. They took buses into the far ends for pay. It was left to my Mother Sadaf to mind me. And even she’d spend most of her time in the allotments outside, returning in sweat and mud and her same earthy stink. My Sisi Gamal, meanwhile, had a habit of disappearing every morning. He never told anyone where he was going. I remember seeing him hauling out a wheelbarrow often, heading out there with his books. Gamal has gone to sing into bad weather…was all my Mother Miriam would tell me. The old man returned in the evenings, head lowered, dog-tired. And my Mothers too, collapsed over the sofa, in similar states, Mister, somehow lesser in body, as if they’d left parts of themselves behind.

  Who would blame me for drawing my own conclusions – and then drawing closed the curtains in every room? I tucked them in at the bottom too, Mister, insisting that daylight only threatened. I preferred the darkness inside the house. And my Mother Sadaf cussed me out for it. She’d stomp after me, dashing from one room to the next. Get out, you little mutt, leave these curtains – boh! – I will give you big beating…I ignored her threats, Mister. I’d watched my uncle spend an entire afternoon nailing little prayer plates to the walls. By the end of that summer, he’d fixed an al-fatiha above every door except for the ones that led outside. I considered the matter sensibly, and presumed that any door fixed without a prayer was a threshold I was never going to cross.

  That’s not to say I wasn’t curious. And in fact, I scoured the entire house for a proper vantage. I used a kitchen stool and set it on the counter. I could sit and look out from safety. I could see the allotments. I watched my Mother Sadaf shambling about with her basket and shears. It was here that I realised what a proper bounty grew outside. My Mother Sadaf would have her neck bent in a full hedge of parsley, Mister, and thyme, and great big rows of green peas and self-sown poppies. There were mint plants and fennel. Wallflowers mauled over by slugs. And masses of ivy, spread over an entire outer wall, Mister, as if holding the house upright.

  My Mother Sadaf very much prided herself on that allotment, Mister, which she’d been nourishing for decades by then. Most of what we ate was grown there. She even tried planting a salt bush, and a ghaf tree once. Even bedded a date plant, though she blamed its fibrous roots for wilting everything else around it. Even now, there was a patch at the back of the grove where nothing else grew.

  – God perish this child if he does not bring his head out the window…

  My Mother Fareeda sat with a white shawl covering her feet. She turned her gaze from me over my other Mothers, Mister, standing around the muddy allotment. My Mother Aneesa, sat squat on the hardened concrete, looked up and stifled a laugh and spat.

  My other Mothers, Shahnaz and Sofiyya, were heard playing their radio out the second-floor window.

  – Miriam! Miriam! came my Mother Shahnaz’s quick voice. Bring the boy out with some milk and some bread. He will come surely if there is food!

  – And Sadaf! Sadaf! called my Mother Sofiyya, shrill over the music. Have you checked the boy’s teeth? You go! Go and check the boy’s teeth in his mouth, the little scammer he is, you will surely match the bites in your weeds with the ones on my wrists, the bitey bugger!

  My Mother Miriam appeared then, rubbing the blotchy window I’d been staring out of with her sleeve.

  – Why don’t you come out? she whispered softly. Get some air…

  It was summer, Mister. Everything was in bloom in the yard and the cluttered kitchen had started to reek of rotten veg and stale bread. I banged against the glass with my fist, crying defiantly No! No! No! before barricading myself into the hole under the sink.

  I could hear my Mother Aneesa’s laughter. I could hear my Mother Fareeda whistle and mutter. And later, Mister, when we were all together at the kitchen counter, passing each other bowls and dipping ladles for soup, it was my refusal to step outside that they blamed for my developing limp.

  – Ach! – there is no limp on the boy, went my Sisi Gamal as soon as the problem was pointed out, with a jutting of my Mother Sadaf’s chin, at the table.

  – Are you blind, Gamal? spat my Mother Sadaf. Look how he goes crooked!

  – We think the boy may be bow-legged, said my Mother Fareeda wide-eyed at me.

  – He is not lame! Not bow-legged! went my Sisi Gamal angrily, throwing a hand.

  – He is walking to one side, pointed out my Mother Sofiyya.

  – To the left side, added my Mother Shahnaz.

  – Yes to the left, like the ground on this side is heavier.

  They all put their bowls down to look over. I was standing with my fingers in the door jamb rubbing at the sides. My Mother Miriam then stepped forward and called me closer. When I approached she turned me around and peered at my knees. Gave a little twist at the hip, which felt tight to me, and sore when she twisted the wrong way.

  The others crowded in.

  – See the one leg – pfft! – it is bowed, sputtered my Mother Aneesa agreeing. He swings like this – ha-ha! – like a rubber band, he swings. Like a – ha! – like a little goat…

  My Mother Miriam whispered for me to walk in a circle so they could get a proper look. I made one round in the room. They all watched, Mister. And there was an exchange of looks. In the end, even my Sisi Gamal had to admit it. I was walking in a kind of violent, jerking shuffle, which made them all recoil and mutter darkly.

  – Ach! went my Sisi Gamal once I stopped. So what if he walks this way? Let other boys walk in straight lines! This boy will walk in circles!

  They all turned away, pulling faces, but went on filling their bowls. Despite their looks, Mister, I was determined never to set foot in the open. All this time, I’d been watching them. Seen them rush out into it, only to come back all sullen and dull in the eyes. Even my burly Mother Sadaf, Mister, who worked the yard so busily, clipping branches, spreading black soil under an ancient rake. The way she groused and complained at the earth gave me the morbid impression that I might sink into it, that someday the ground itself might swallow me whole.

 

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