He was working in the kitchen at the Welcome Center when he saw his mother staring at a man who was lining up for food. She had an expression on her face that he’d never seen before. She couldn’t take her eyes off the man, and her eyes were filled with fear. A second later, she fainted. If it hadn’t been for Chef Sami catching her, she would have hit her head.
In the chaos that followed, the man melted away into the crowded dining room, but Abdi had seen him, noticed the scar on his upper lip. Maryam told everybody that she just felt unwell, but Abdi knew that wasn’t true. He tried to find the man and ask him what he said or did to Maryam to frighten her, because Abdi was sure there must have been something, and he would defend his mother to the end.
A friend gave him and Maryam a lift home shortly afterward and Maryam made him swear he wouldn’t mention to Sofia that she fainted. Sofia had important schoolwork to concentrate on, and Maryam didn’t want her to worry.
“You promise to tell Dad, though,” he said. “Or I will.”
It was very late that same night that Abdi was woken. At first he thought it was the sound of his father creeping in from a night shift, but then he heard sounds that chilled him. His mother was crying out, almost screaming. She was in terrible distress. He got out of bed, ready to rush to her. As he was about to open his bedroom door, he heard Nur’s voice.
“Maryam, Maryam.” The voice was lilting, calm, hushed, bringing her back from a terrible place. Abdi was transfixed.
What he overheard next told him that Maryam had that evening found herself face-to-face with a man who had raped her in the months before their family left Hartisheik Camp.
What followed felt strangely logical and fated, because Abdi has always felt as if his parents treated him differently from Sofia.
It was the way they always seemed so afraid if he strayed even a tiny bit from the path of being the perfect son. They didn’t put that pressure on Sofia, not to the same extent. And unlike some other families they know, they don’t have lower expectations of Sofia because she’s a girl.
If Sofia messed up, they encouraged her to try again, to get past her mistake. If Abdi messed up, they seemed fearful, and now he understands why. It was because they didn’t know who he would grow up to be.
Abdi didn’t dare talk to his parents about what he overheard, but he thought a lot about the man with the scar on his lip, and how he was the child of a rapist.
He might have found the right time and the courage to talk to his parents or Sofia about this if it hadn’t been for Ed Sadler’s exhibition opening.
Abdi knew immediately that he was looking at the same man when he saw the photograph. More evidence stacked up when Ed Sadler told him about the man’s violent reputation. When he researched the football match the men in the photograph were watching, he discovered it took place nine months before his birthday. That’s when he understood that the man with the cleft palate and the hard eyes was almost certainly his father. It explained so much.
Now Abdi Mahad intends to confront this man, because he knows where he is.
How exactly he’s going to confront him, he isn’t sure. One minute he wants to kill him for what he did to Maryam. The next minute he wants to say, “I am your son,” to see how the man will react. Then again, he thinks, perhaps I’ll just take a look at him and then disappear, because if this man is half of me, I want to see with my own eyes what I might become.
He’s desperately afraid for Noah, too. Abdi knew the fall into the canal was bad. He stood helplessly by as Noah fell, and then he froze, because he couldn’t swim. He’d assumed that Noah was getting better in the hospital, though, so to see the photograph of him in the newspaper was shocking.
He’d like to find out how Noah is, but he can’t think of a way. He knows he won’t be able to sneak into the hospital without being noticed. He should have sent him a Facebook message, he thinks, but it’s too late now. His Wi-Fi time is up.
Abdi gets up and leaves the café. With his hoodie up and his head down, he heads into a Subway. He has only twenty pounds left and nowhere to stay, so he knows he should probably spend his money more wisely, but his growing body is craving food.
He eats the sandwich on the street, walking. He knows he mustn’t stay still too long because somebody might spot him. To avoid being seen, he ducks into the side streets as soon as he’s able to.
It takes him fifteen minutes to walk to the place where he’s been sleeping.
In the cover of a large shrub, its evergreen leaves shiny and thick, he’s made a sort of nest. He chose that place because it looks out on the row of terraced cottages that Ed Sadler told him about.
“Really crazy coincidence,” Ed Sadler said in his study on the night of the exhibition, after Abdi stopped recording. “I swear I saw that man with the harelip the other day when I went with a mate to the climbing center in St. Werburgh’s. I could have sworn it was him. Looks good now, his face all fixed up, teeth all in place—on the NHS, no doubt—but it made me do a double take because of course I’d just been selecting photographs for the show, so his face was fresh in my mind. He was just coming out of one of the cottages opposite. He had the scar on his upper lip.”
Abdi knew the place. He’d once been on a school trip to the converted church with the climbing wall inside it. He remembered the row of houses opposite it, and remembered that at one end of them there was a dark tunnel where the railway passed overhead, and beside it was a steeply sloped park area he might be able to hide in.
He’s observed lots of people on the street: climbers arriving at the center, and drinkers coming and going from a pub on the street. As he passes it now, he can’t help feeling a tug of desire for the warmth and camaraderie he sees through the windows. He keeps his head down as he passes a group of youths. They don’t give him a second glance, though.
Last night he found a blanket left out on a dumpster and brought it to his den. He’s pleased to find it still there when he gets back. In the middle of the bush he’s snapped some twigs and small branches off to make a space he can just sit in. He crawls in and curls up with the blanket around him. He wishes he’d thought to bring a bottle of water with him. He knows he should keep an eye on the houses, but it’s dark and he’s bone weary, so he shuts his eyes.
He wakes suddenly out of a deep sleep some time later, sensing danger, though he’s unsure why. Even the sound of his own breathing alarms him before he realizes what it is and calms himself. The smell of earth is strong, and he understands as he dares to move for the first time that it’s rain that has woken him. It’s trickling down through the leaves of the shrub in small cascades that are wetting him and his blanket. He’s shaking from the cold.