Alvard is plumping the cushions on the sofa—they look slept on—and Sofia takes the opportunity to flip open the folder. Inside there’s an official report titled “Living Conditions in Hartisheik Camp.” There’s also the stub of an airline ticket to Addis Ababa and some other documents, among them a hand-drawn map on lined A4 paper that’s dog-eared and creased where it’s previously been folded to pocket-size.
With one finger, Sofia eases the map out of the folder so she can see it in its entirety. It shows a bird’s-eye view of the refugee camp where her family lived before they made the journey to England. Whoever drew it has worked quickly, sketchily, but has labeled each area. She runs her finger over the map, tracing along the main thoroughfares. Her memory of the camp isn’t perfect because she was a little girl when she was there, but she recalls the hospital, the UNHCR buildings where food and water were distributed, the market, the cemetery, and the area her family lived in.
It’s all there, and more. It’s very detailed. Sofia’s so absorbed that she jumps when Alvard appears beside her and says, “Mr. Sadler goes to some difficult places. He does difficult work.”
“Yes,” Sofia says. She can’t tear her eyes away. She was born in this place. She reacts physically. Her nostrils curl as she remembers the smell of it. She pictures the vast sky and her skin prickles as she feels the heat of the sun and the lash of the relentless wind that blew across the desert and shredded the tarpaulin that covered their shelter, day after day.
She already knew from Abdi that Ed Sadler had spent time at this camp, but didn’t pay much attention to the information, because why would she? There was no nostalgic conversation to be had about what her family experienced there. Rather, Sofia would have felt a sense of shame having that conversation with Ed. She’d put the link out of her mind and kept it there, even when her parents were agonizing over whether to let Abdi attend the opening of Ed Sadler’s exhibition.
Actually seeing the evidence of Ed Sadler’s visit there, however long ago it was, is different, though. It makes this link between their families feel much more real, and for the first time, she shares her parents’ deep unease about it.
She tears herself away, not wanting Alvard to think that she’s lingering too long and snooping where she shouldn’t be.
Downstairs, Alvard says goodbye affectionately, squeezing Sofia’s hand between her own. “I am praying for both boys,” she says.
As Sofia walks away from the house she adjusts her hijab so that it shrouds her face more than usual, partly because it’s got very cold, but partly because she doesn’t want anybody to see her looking upset. She regrets it a few minutes later when she gets on the bus and a woman tuts at her, shifting in her seat to put distance between them.
Sofia wants to tut back at the cross the woman is wearing around her neck, just to make a point, but she doesn’t. She knows that’s not how it works, and she’s not that kind of person. Instead, she sits very still in her seat, Abdi’s bag at her feet, and feels both afraid and angry. Next time the bus stops, she moves to a seat at the back.
When I was in primary school I had a friend called Matthew. He came to visit me in hospital very soon after my diagnosis. I was in the main area of the ward where there were three other beds in the same bay as mine.
“It’s a bit like camping, isn’t it?” Mum said when we unpacked our things into the small cabinet beside the bed. The doctor said we were going to be in for at least four days. The plan was to have an operation to put my central line in and do some more tests so they could choose the right medicines for me. It was my first operation and my first time staying in the hospital.
On the bed opposite was a bigger girl sitting up in bed with pink headphones over her ears, watching a film on a portable DVD player. Her arms were toothpick-thin and she had a tube going up her nose. Her mum sat on a chair beside her. She had a book open on her lap, but her eyes were shut.
On the bed beside me was a boy a bit younger than me with a bald head, looking at a Pokémon sticker book. He was on his own. He got out of bed and stared at me. “My dad’s getting a motorbike,” he said. He had a massive scar that went all the way over the top of his head, and one of his eyelids was droopy.
“That’s nice,” Mum said.
“I’m five,” he said.
When the nurse came, she put him back under the covers and turned on the TV at the end of a plastic arm that swung out over his bed. It was showing a very loud cartoon.
“If you stay in bed until the end of the program,” the nurse told him as she closed the curtain around him, “I’ll tell Mummy how good you were when she comes.”
I unpacked and checked everything out and felt excited about my friend Matthew coming to see me. I wanted to show him the controller that made my bed tilt and fold.
Matthew came to visit me two days later. His mum brought me a present. By then, I was sore from the operation to put my central line in, and it hurt to move much, but I showed Matthew the see-through dressing on my chest that covered up the place where the line came out of me, and I showed him the little fabric bag the nurses gave me to wear around my neck for storing the ends of the line in. The bag had smiley dog faces on it and a blue ribbon. The nurse told me nice ladies made them especially for the children. When Mum saw what I was doing, she said, “Noah! Don’t! Put it away!”
“It’s okay,” Matthew’s mum said. “It looks very good, Noah. You’ve been very brave. Don’t you think so, Matthew?”
Matthew stared at it and sucked his finger. I pulled down my top.
We put on the TV while the mums got tea, but we couldn’t find anything we wanted to watch. Mum wouldn’t let us play with the bed controller after Matthew tested it out and all my things fell off the end.
It was very cramped around my bed for us all, so we went to the playroom that was on the ward. I told Matthew a dog came to visit us in the playroom the day before. It was a special dog that visits people when they’re sick. I stroked it, and when I said, “Sit,” it sat down, but it wouldn’t roll over when I asked it to. It just licked my hand. I told Matthew about how I was going to get a dog but after I got my diagnosis we had to tell the breeder that we couldn’t have the puppy. Mum promised we would get a dog as soon as I got better. (That never happened, hence this: Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 3: Borrow a dog).
The boy from the bed next door to me came to the playroom with a hospital play specialist when me and Matthew were there. They started to build a train set together. He had lines drawn in black pen on his bald head.
“Radiotherapy, I think,” my mum muttered to Matthew’s mum.
Matthew stared again. His hand crept into his mum’s hand, and he sat down beside her and didn’t want to play.
After they went home I said to Mum, “I don’t want my friends to come anymore.”