No Ballet Shoes In Syria by Catherine Bruton

Author:Catherine Bruton [Catherine Bruton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781788005852
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Aya felt a surge of panic. The studio was a small room with only the skylight for a window. Suddenly it seemed stiflingly close.

She grabbed the door and rattled it, terror rising.

“Don’t stress. I’ll call Miss Sylvie – oh!” Dotty lifted her hands in dismay. “My phone is in my ballet bag – outside!”

Aya could feel terror beating in her chest. Her lungs felt tight, her head pounding, memories pouring in, clouding her. She slammed her hands against the door.

“Aya, are you OK?”

Dotty had grabbed her by the shoulder. But Aya couldn’t focus on her face. Couldn’t breathe. Her eyes tore around the room desperately. She could see her own reflection on every side. But memories were pushing in on her, making it hard to breathe.

“I don’t like – I don’t like … closed spaces,” she said.

“Sit down,” Dotty was saying, taking her by the shoulder. “Miss Helena will realise soon enough. We’ll be out in no time.”

But the panic felt like drowning as Dotty led her to the corner, sat her down with her back to the mirror, wrapping a concerned arm round her.

“If nobody comes in ten minutes then we’ll smash the glass in, I promise!” She said it jokingly but Aya was shivering now. She felt sick and dizzy.

“You want to tell me about it?” said Dotty.

Aya shook her head.

“I can tell you what I’m most afraid of, if you like,” said Dotty. Her arm was round Aya and her voice was gentle. “Mostly I’m scared of letting my mum down. I guess that’s what my dance is about, really.”

In her head, far away as if at a great distance, Aya could recall Dotty dancing, her arms reaching out to someone – her mum?

“Probably a silly thing to be afraid of, but I just know how much she wants me to be a ballerina – to follow in her footsteps … only sometimes the idea of spending seven years at ballet school makes me feel like I can’t breathe.”

There was a quietness in Dotty’s voice that lay still in the air between them. Aya closed her eyes and tried to breathe in and out, tried to focus on the glugging sound of water in the pipes, the humming of electric lights. After what felt like forever, she started to speak.

“On the journey here,” she heard herself saying, her own words sounding distant. “We are smuggling … in a container.”

“Like – on the back of a lorry?”

Aya nodded. “There were many, many of us in there. More than thirty. It was the only way to get out of Syria. Because of the fighting – and the border guards…”

“How long?” asked Dotty. Aya could see the two of them reflected in the mirror opposite. Dotty’s arm round her, holding her tight. Both faces pale as ghosts in the gloaming, like the faces of the other people in the container.

“Three days, I think.”

Aya remembered the dark inside the metal prison. No food, no water, barely enough air to breathe.

“What about… I mean, what if you needed the toilet?”

Aya’s eyes were still tightly closed.

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