“You know what I mean.”
We’d just started going to philosophy club, so Abdi was obsessed with dissecting the meaning behind everything we said, looking behind words and phrases, asking questions all the time. I thought it was a bit pretentious at the time, but since The Talk with Dr. Sasha, it’s probably fair to say I’ve been a bit like that myself.
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 4: Be normal (or as normal as possible).
Dad’s private view at the gallery was a chance for us to be the family we might have been without my illness.
My mum looked beautiful. She got her hair and her nails done, wore a new dress, and stood tall. Dad took a family selfie and installed it as the wallpaper on his phone.
“A very proud night,” he said when he showed it to us. It made me very glad I hadn’t let them cancel the party when we got the news.
Mum drove us to the gallery, which was in Stokes Croft. Usually she puts the central locking on if we pull up at a red light in that neighborhood, because she says it can be “edgy.” It’s a description that makes Dad laugh. She was iffy about the location when Dad first told her about it, but he said, “It’s a satellite space for the Arnolfini Gallery; it’s very prestigious. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to show anywhere else except London.”
Abdi was already there when we arrived, standing at the door waiting for us.
“You look really nice,” I said.
“My mum got me a new shirt,” he said. It was dark blue and a little bit shiny.
I put my arm around him when we walked in, even though it was a bit difficult because he’s grown so much taller than me lately. I didn’t care, though, because I wanted everybody to see that he was my best friend.
Just inside the gallery a small notice was displayed on a board:
WARNING: This exhibition contains images from war and disaster zones.
Some visitors may find it distressing.
Mum had wobbled about Abdi and me coming for that reason, but Dad saved the day.
“The boys are fifteen,” he said to her. “They have to grow up sometime.”
Too right.
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 5: Watch an 18 certificate film. (Dad says me and him are going to watch Alien together, even if Mum has a hissy fit. He says it’s incredible.)
The gallery was packed with people, so much so that it was hard for us to see the photographs properly, but people were talking about them.
“Jaw-dropping . . . beautiful . . . The focus falls away at just the right point . . . He really does have an extraordinary eye.”
Me and Abdi had the job of helping to pass food around. Dad promised us a “very decent” hourly wage in return.
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 6: Have a job (yes, a few hours of paid employment counts).
We carried big silver platters around the room as it filled up even more, and offered the guests a choice of posh bits of food. Lots of people told me I’d grown (I hadn’t much lately) and that I looked well (I really didn’t—go figure), but it was very nice all the same. Me and Abdi made a good team.
After a while, the room got so crowded that we had to abandon our platters, and somebody opened the door to let some cold air in.
Dad got on a chair and made a speech, and I liked it when we saluted each other at the end.
At about nine o’clock people began to leave and Mum and Dad stood at the door, saying goodbye, kissing everybody and shaking hands. Me and Abdi stood with them.
“Shall we go?” Mum said when the last people had left. She yawned. “Your dad’s going to get a beer with some friends.”
Outside on the pavement three of Dad’s friends were standing in a huddle, two of them smoking, and all of them laughing loudly.
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” Dad said.
“It’s fine.” I hugged him super tightly, making sure to hold on for a long time, and I said, “I’m so proud of you, Dad.”
“Thanks, mate,” he said. We held the hug for ages.
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 7: Make sure people know how important they are to you.
We waved Dad off and I said to Mum, “Can we just look at the photographs before we go? Really quickly?” It was the first chance I’d had to see them properly, now that the gallery was empty.
“It’s very late.”
“Please?”
“Five minutes. They’re waiting to close up.” Well, she wasn’t really going to argue with me, was she?
Abdi and I took a look around. The gallery was a neat rectangular space with photographs covering the walls. Some of them had been blown up very large, but others were smaller and hung in groups. All the photographs were good. Some of them were very shocking. I wanted to make sure I looked at each and every one of them.
The photographs were from different areas of the world, and by far the biggest was a section with the heading HORN OF AFRICA. The first photograph in that section was of a baby crouched naked in the road outside a destroyed house. She had sand on her face and eyelids. In another, a very old woman was propped against a tree, leaning her head back against the trunk. Her eyes were open. She was alive, but probably not for long. A long trail of families walked past her, all of them loaded with possessions. It made me shudder, the sight of her waiting for death.
Another picture was a close-up of a mother and her baby. The baby’s belly was swollen huge. The mother looked straight into the camera, over the baby’s head. Both their eyes were dull and yellowy. It was the loneliest picture I’ve ever seen.
The other photographs were just as shocking.
There was a man lying in the middle of the street, dead and covered in blood. A boy with a gun in his hand was picking through the man’s pockets.
There was a body hanging from a post, head slumped to one side, hands and feet limp. Behind it was a mural on the side of a shop showing cigarettes and sodas and toothpaste and other things for sale.
The worst was a photograph of somebody’s feet beaten to a pulp, with a fly resting on one of the toes. It was a horrible, sick-making picture, but the lighting in it was strangely beautiful. I could see my dad’s skill.
Others weren’t so bad. I liked one that was a panorama showing domed tents in a desert, hundreds or thousands of them. Behind them, above a ridge, a sandstorm was rising, and in the front of the picture, bits of plastic rubbish caught on a thorny bush were being blown horizontal by the wind.