Ghostscape by Joe Layburn

Author:Joe Layburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907666131
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2008-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

I burst into tears. Great hot salty drops ran down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth. Why didn’t she just slap me round the face? That pain would have been much easier to bear.

“I can’t believe you said that,” I stammered finally. “My father loved me.”

“And because he loved you, he would have been destroyed by the way you shame him now.”

I thought of my father and remembered a man with the widest smile, the whitest teeth and the most sparkly, smiley brown eyes. I remembered when the life was extinguished from those eyes by a gunman with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head and a crescent-shaped scar down one cheek. My father was just another statistic in Somalia’s civil war. His death wasn’t written up in any newspaper or announced on television. But he had been my heart’s joy and when his life was snuffed out I felt my world would be grey forever.

“Your father wouldn’t recognize you,” she went on. “He would want you to be a good Somali girl.”

My legs had been feeling as if they might no longer hold my weight, but a jolt of anger went through me like electricity and though I still felt weak my mind was suddenly clear.

“And what is a good Somali girl exactly? Everything’s changed, Mum. We’re here now and everything is different. I refuse to be a victim any more. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that. This world is full of victims. I’m looking at one right now. My own mother, the victim. But I’m not going to be a victim. I won’t let you or anyone drag me down.”

It seemed that the emotion had drained her. She just slumped on the sofa: a small woman lying back against the cheap cushions. Part of me felt sorry for her but I wanted to hurt her too. And I knew how to do it. I tilted my head back and jutted out my jaw. “By the way, I’ve got a new friend and he happens to be a boy.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“He’s someone I feel very strongly about. A boy I feel very strongly about.”

OK, so Richard was a boy who had lived and probably died more than sixty years ago. I still couldn’t bring myself to admit that he was dead, but in any case I didn’t care about mere details right now. He was real enough to me.

“What sort of a boy?”

“He isn’t Somali if that’s what you mean.”

“I just meant…” Her words trailed off. She didn’t know what she meant. “…I just find this all so hard to take, Aisha.”

“Well get used to it because Richard is the most important thing in my life right now.”

I wasn’t prepared for the next bit. Instead of hitting me, my mum reached up and took me gently by the wrist.

“You don’t look well, Aisha. Sit down before you fall.”

Her tone had changed; her words were soothing. She pulled me towards her until we were sitting together on the sofa.

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