“Who is this?”
“Mr. Sadler? It’s Sofia Mahad. I’m so sorry, we were just wondering how Noah is doing, but I shouldn’t have called.”
“Sofia.” It sounds like a sigh. “Fi’s not up to talking. We had a very tricky moment with Noah, but he’s stable again. They’ve put him in an induced coma because he banged his head when he was in the water. That’s all I can tell you.”
Sofia, feeling out of her depth by about twenty thousand leagues, can only think of very formal words to say: “Please know that we are thinking of him and praying for him and for your family.”
“Thank you,” and then, just as she thinks she’s going to get away, he asks, “How’s Abdi?”
Silent, she thinks, but apparently physically fine. It feels wrong to say that when Noah’s situation sounds so desperate.
“He’s very traumatized. He’s home, but he’s in shock. He’s sleeping.”
“We were wondering . . . did Abdi say what happened? The police told us that he wouldn’t talk to them.”
Sofia wonders if she’s imagining the slightly accusatory tone in his voice. She’s uncertain enough that she replies very carefully.
“It’s because of the shock. He can’t talk right now, but he will when he wakes up, I’m sure.”
There’s a silence on the line that feels a fraction too long to Sofia, but she second-guesses herself as soon as she has that thought, and tells herself it’s her own paranoia.
Just three nights ago Abdi struck a strong-man pose in front of the TV.
“Black and Muslim,” he said, flexing his muscles, moving this way and that to show them off, laughing at himself as he did. He was modeling a new T-shirt.
Sofia laughed, because Abdi was good at making fun of himself, but the smile died on her lips quickly, because references to her family’s race, creed, or religion give oxygen to a fear that burns in her day in, day out. She can’t ever shrug off the idea that any one of those labels is a reason for some people in Britain to hate her, and she finds that very painful to live with.
On the phone, Ed Sadler’s talking again, “Do you have any idea why the boys were down by Feeder Canal? We can’t understand it.”
“No. We don’t know.”
“We just can’t think why they would go there. To a scrapyard, apparently?”
“We don’t know either.”
“Do you think they were heading to your home? Or somewhere in your neighborhood?”
Sofia considers this, but Feeder Road isn’t on any route she’d take from Clifton to Easton, though she’s aware that her sense of direction isn’t great.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t think so. We thought they would be with you all night. Abdi was looking forward to it.”
She regrets those words as soon as she’s said them, in case they sound accusatory, but Ed Sadler’s distracted.
“I’m sorry, Sofia, I have to go. The doctor’s here.”
The line goes dead before she’s able to say goodbye.
When she turns around her parents’ faces are so eager for the news to be good that she downplays Noah’s condition.
“He’s stable” is all she says.
“Was it Fiona Sadler?” Unable to communicate effectively with Fiona herself, Maryam has always been very curious about this woman.
“No, it was Ed.”
Nur stands up. The tension’s so great he can’t sit still. He says a silent prayer for Noah, for both boys. It takes him a second to hear that Sofia’s asking him a question.
“Where’s Feeder Canal, exactly?”
“Behind Temple Meads station.”
Nur carries the city in his head like a map seen from a bird’s-eye point of view. He can visualize the rail lines snaking away from the train station, from where they eventually reach out into the rest of the country. A short distance away from those serpentine tracks he knows there’s a dead-straight road running alongside a dead-straight stretch of water: Feeder Road and Feeder Canal.
Nur is a voracious reader and a self-taught student of everything, so he knows that the canal is part of the grand Victorian engineering project that made Bristol’s floating harbor and swelled its trading coffers. He knows everything about the colorful mercantile history of his adopted city, and on the whole he admires it, in spite of the deeply shameful parts of it.
Nur admires it because he believes in possibility, and in hard work’s paying off. He believes that there’s good to be found in people, and in life. He believes in hope. It’s what gives him the strength to get up each day. It’s what got him and his family here, all the way from Somalia.
“They asked me if we knew why the boys were there.”
“Abdi will tell us when he wakes up,” Maryam says.
The dishcloth she’s holding is twisted tightly between her hands.
Next time I wake up, I remember that I’m in intensive care, but I don’t know how much time has passed. To be more accurate, I know I’m physically present in the intensive care unit, but I feel as if I’m floating on water somewhere with a big empty sky above me. It’s only the sound of my parents’ voices that anchors me now and then. Mostly I spend my time drifting, experiencing my past and my present all at once.
I met Abdi on my first day at secondary school. I was nearly twelve.
I looked like a thin, ratty kind of creature that day. My hair had fallen out unevenly during treatment and begun to grow back in unevenly afterward, so my scalp resembled a badly shorn sheep with some fuzzy bits in places and some weird comb-over wisps, all a lifeless shade of pale brown, and not enhanced by the ghostly pallor of my complexion and my red-rimmed eyes. You don’t take a lot of selfies when you’re in treatment.
Before I went to my classroom I had to sit in a meeting with the headmistress, the special education needs coordinator from the school, my specialist learning mentor from the hospital, Molly, and my mum, and they went through my care plan, which was designed to help me back into mainstream education. It was the world’s most boring document.
I shut my eyes while they over-discussed every point and subpoint. When Mum noticed I had zoned out, I said I was conserving energy so I could get through the rest of my day. It was sort of true. I felt like I would get chronically fatigued if I heard the word special one more time.
“Don’t feel self-conscious,” Molly said to me when we eventually stood in the corridor outside my new classroom. She was always very earnest, and more often than not, she had biscuit crumbs stuck between her bottom teeth. “Just be yourself.”
I was a bit worried, but I wasn’t going to tell her that, because I was determined that I would make friends and have a good time at Medes College. I felt like people would be nice to me there. It was my dad’s old school. Our family knew at least two of the governors. After my last relapse, one of them sent me a framed photograph of the Bristol City football team. It was signed by all the players. I made some good money for that on eBay.