Three Hours(13)
Before the starting gun, there would be a little alert. Perhaps the teenage couple would see, perhaps not. Didn’t matter. It was just a warning, a tap at the door; a joke.
*
A class of seven-year-olds, coats buttoned and zipped up against the freezing weather, raced through the woods, some breaking into a skip, jostling and laughing, with Camille Giraud, their sixty-year-old teacher, leading the charge along the path. She’d been ferrying them in a school minibus from Junior School to the art block in New School, the distance judged too far for little legs, when she’d asked them if they’d like to make clay acorns and now the minibus was parked at the side of the drive and the same legs that were too little to walk far were running and skipping, because clay was magic and part of the enchantment was the pottery room in the middle of the woods.
One of the skipping girls said she was frightened of the pottery room because it was like a witch’s house! And then a boy grabbed hold of the story, embellished it, and the kiln was the witch’s oven! Roasting children inside to eat! And they were all enjoying the quiver of fear because Camille was with them and it was just the pottery room and a kiln which had baked their clay-coil snails; fun to be a little afraid. And then it started snowing, a few flakes but enough to banish the witch and her oven, the children screeching the word ‘SNOW!!’ as though it was a visiting deity.
Camille had an odd sensation, a chill that wasn’t the snow; a feeling of being watched. Perhaps Lily, who’d been fearful of the witch’s house, had felt something too, which had prompted the image; something not quite right in the woods. But Camille knew her artistic nature could make her overly sensitive, so she ignored the sensation and listened instead to the children planning a snowball fight, a snowman and an optimistic igloo for break time.
*
Rafi Bukhari’s hand was holding on to Hannah’s as they ran through the woods, helping her to run faster and because he loved touching her; her beautiful red hair and pale skin and her kindness; Angels are bright still. His best friend, Benny, would say, Wow, man, you’re so fucking deep, and he’d say back, Hey, bro’, you’re so fucking shallow.
The rhythm of his feet hitting the path as he ran, then Hannah’s a moment later, thudding out an iambic pentameter; his friends would say, You really are fucking weird, bro’, and they’d be right but Hannah was equally weird and they were united in their shared weirdness, a normality of two.
His mum and dad were fluent in English but never used words like fucking, bro’, chrissake, hench, peng, wanker; they’d be shocked, but his older brother, Karam, would have learnt it all immediately.
His thoughts were full of Hannah and the luxury of worrying about being late for your school dress rehearsal. He’d brought his dad’s copy of Macbeth from Syria but had never seen it performed. And now he had a part! He wished he could tell his dad. He heard Hannah wheezing and pulled her to a stop. A white snowflake landed on a fiery gold strand of her hair and for a moment he saw the beauty of it.
‘Have to go,’ he said, then he turned from her and ran towards Junior School, because his younger brother was terrified of snow – not stopping for even a moment to explain to Hannah, and later he’d wonder if it was because he thought she understood or because responsibility for his brother trumped everything and this was a kind of selfishness and smallness in him because he wasn’t able to incorporate Hannah too.
‘Snow is a PTSD trigger for Basi,’ Dr Reynolds had said, but for him and Basi trigger meant a gun, a real trigger on a real gun; men holding guns, their dogs barking and snarling; just the word trigger making memories jump alive again. So he and Basi had their own word – hole. Because the present was the floor you trod on, all fine and oblivious, and then – BAM! a hole – and you fell down into the past.
He saw the tarmac drive which wound through the woods ending in Junior School, but the path would be quicker.
He jogged, not slowly but not flat out; Basi had become quicker to recover in the last few months and he felt guilty for wondering how long he’d need to spend with Basi, if he’d still make it back in time for his cue.
The percussive roar of an explosion, ripping the air around him, cutting inside his memory as if it was flesh and could bleed, and he was falling into the past.
His dad was running, carrying toddler Basi in his arms, his mum and older brother ahead of him, yelling at him to run faster but he couldn’t hear them, just saw their mouths, because the sound waves had torn his eardrums. He fell as another building was hit.
He was under the rubble, calling for Baba and Mama, but his mouth was dried with dust and he couldn’t make any sound. It was four hours until he was pulled out by his parents, his right leg broken, but lucky; Baba’s hands bloody from digging for him, two of Mama’s fingers broken by her search through the rubble.
He was struggling to breathe under the rubble but at the same time he was pressed against an English oak tree, its trunk soft with moss. He thought of the face of a stranger who’d been kind because that’s how he could clamber back to the present. Today it was the judge, his beard flecked with salt, talking to him all through the first night on the boat, and Rafi came fully back to the English woods with snow falling.
He walked towards the flames being extinguished by the snow, charcoal smoke smudging the sky; then the wind blew the smoke into his face, stinging his eyes, smarting at the back of his throat. Pulling his hoody over his mouth and nose, he went closer. A twisted, blackened piece of metal, the size of a lunch box. A small bomb, nothing like the ones in Aleppo, but a bomb. The tree close to it had pieces of shrapnel sticking into its trunk. The lower branches were charred and, as he watched, fragments of blackened bark fell with the snow to the ground. He couldn’t see anyone else in the woods.