Saif shook his head, terrified suddenly that if he showed displeasure or anger she would somehow prevent him from reuniting with his boys. ‘I apologise.’
Neda nodded and went on. ‘They were living with a group of other children … effectively feral … Some deserting soldiers helped them with food, found them things to eat, but there wasn’t much.’
Saif shut his eyes.
‘Ash … Ash, we believe, broke his foot at some point and it wasn’t reset properly. We’ll be looking into doing the procedure here before you leave.’
Tears immediately sprang to Saif’s eyes at the idea of his baby hurt, limping, getting around on his wounded leg with no mum and no dad.
‘I realise this is upsetting,’ went on Neda. ‘And Ibrahim. We have reason to believe he spent a lot of time with the soldiers. There’s psychological help available – not as much as I’d like, I’m afraid. Austerity. But we will be here for you, as much as we can.’
Saif nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. He needed to have his arms around them immediately. ‘Can I … can I see them now, please?’ he asked as calmly as he could.
Neda and the doctor looked at one another. They passed over several pieces of paper, all of which he signed.
‘Follow me,’ said Neda.
The second room, down a long corridor, had windows in it, and, Saif noticed through the window in the door, toys of all kinds. His heart felt like it would stop. He wanted to go to the bathroom, was slightly afraid he was going to be sick. Kindly, the doctor put her hand on his arm.
‘It will be fine,’ she said softly. ‘It might take a while, but it will be all right.’
But Saif, blinded by the tears in his eyes, could hardly hear her as he blundered through the door, then stood there, trembling, blinking in the natural light, in the middle of the low-ceilinged room. Two thin boys, barely taller than the last time he had seen them nearly two years before, turned round, their huge eyes wide in pinched faces, both in terrible need of a haircut, and Ibrahim shouted loudly, and Ash whispered, tentatively and wonderingly …
‘Abba?’
Chapter Thirty
Saif held his breath. Ibrahim had, after the first time saying his father’s name, been silent. He had retreated to the corner table of toys, where he had been banging pegs into a wooden board with a toy hammer – a game far too tiny for a boy of ten, although he looked younger.
Ash, however, who was six now, wouldn’t let his father go. He had shrieked and raced towards him and clambered onto his lap and refused to budge. The last time Saif had seen him, he had been a round-faced babyish angel of a boy, only just four, still with the folds of the baby he had been on his knees and elbows.
Now he was so thin it was heartbreaking; his eyes were huge in his face, his cheekbones hollow and his legs and arms like sticks. When Saif picked him up, he weighed about as much as the well-fed Mure four-year-olds he treated in his surgery. He frowned and looked at Neda, who glanced at her notes.
‘They’re both on high-calorie meal drinks as well as food,’ she said. She read down further and smiled. ‘Apparently neither of them like them.’
Saif buried his head in Ash’s shoulder, so he couldn’t see him cry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered in English so Ash wouldn’t understand him. The child replied, ‘Abba’s back!’ in Arabic, as if he’d been away for a day.
Ibrahim’s head shot up at his father speaking this strange language, and his brow furrowed in a way that reminded Saif painfully of his mother. He indicated for him to come closer, and said, ‘Come here, my darling boy,’ in Arabic. But Ibrahim still regarded him warily.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Neda quietly. ‘This is all totally normal.’
‘Stop talking the way they talk,’ Ibrahim hissed quickly at Saif.
‘My darling,’ said Saif. He walked over and knelt down beside his boy. He put his arm around him. Ibrahim flinched at his touch, and he backed away.
‘That is how we are going to speak from now on. It is not so difficult. You’re very clever. You learned some already at school, remember?’
Ibrahim blinked. Of course, thought Saif. He hadn’t been in school for so long. He thought of the report again. Hiding out with resistance soldiers. What he had seen … He couldn’t bear it.
‘Have the people who speak English not been kind to you?’ he asked. Ibrahim shrugged.
‘They brought you home to me,’ said Saif.
‘This isn’t home.’
‘No,’ said Saif. ‘But you’ll like where we’re going.’
‘Going home to Mama,’ muttered Ash, his face still buried in his father’s neck, even though Saif’s beard tickled him. Saif closed his eyes.
‘I keep telling him,’ said Ibrahim, his face still cross. ‘Mama is gone. Everyone is gone. Everything is gone.’
He hit the block in the children’s game very hard with the hammer. Silence fell in the room.
Neda stepped forward. ‘There are new homes,’ she said. ‘You will have a new home now. Tell them what it’s like.’
‘Well,’ started Saif. ‘It is very windy. It’s fresh and blowy and sometimes you get blown right across the street.’
He could see Ash looking up at him, interested.
‘And it is very old, and there are lots of green hills and … boats … and sheep and … Oh, you will like it, I’m sure. Lots of dogs!’
Both the boys stiffened. Saif immediately realised what a mistake he’d made. They knew about the border crossings, when the soldiers would appear, their snarling beasts sniffing vans and lorries, looking for stowaways: looking for problems. He realised suddenly how much he’d changed and even relaxed. The island felt so safe, so much a haven for him, that dogs no longer scared him, and he couldn’t even remember how this had come about. He thought of Lorna’s daft dog, Milou, who rushed up to him every morning when they were on the shore at the same time. He had definitely helped. Then he remembered that Lorna wasn’t his friend any more and that God knew what was round the island by now. Then he thought, bitterly, none of this mattered. All that mattered now was in this room.
Mrs Cook peered in to where Lorna was, once again, working late.
‘Don’t stay too late!’ she said. Lorna looked up. She’d just received an official confirmation from the refugee resettlement council. It wasn’t a secret any more: the boys were on the school roll. She showed it without comment to Mrs Cook, who’d have Ibrahim in her class.
Sadie Cook read it slowly, then took off her glasses. ‘You knew about this?’
At least someone knew she could keep a secret, Lorna thought. She nodded.
‘Good God. I mean, this is going to be huge … Can they speak English?’
‘Those Galbraith children can’t speak English!’ pointed out Lorna.
‘Good God, yes,’ said Sadie. ‘They’d have to go some to be worse than that lot of ferals.’
‘Well,’ said Lorna. ‘Quite.’
Sadie looked at the paper. ‘And the mother?’
Lorna shook her head. ‘No news.’
‘Christ. It’s awful. Just awful.’ Even so, a slightly mischievous twitch played around her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness, that poor man isn’t going to know what hit him.’
Chapter Thirty-one
Over the next several days in Glasgow, there were numerous psychological evaluations, the beginnings of some English lessons and many, many forms to fill in and go over.
Neda was patient and useful throughout, and the doctor, whose name Saif never learned, was on hand to make sure the boys had their vaccinations and to build up red books for them – the British medical history they would need throughout their lives – as well as testing them for everything possible. They were malnourished, obviously: small for their size and underweight. They had internal parasites from eating God knows what, and lice, and Ash had his foot reset under a local anaesthetic. While he clung onto his father the entire time, he was so heartbreakingly quiet and brave Saif couldn’t bear to think of what else he’d had to endure.