Wa-hush, Wa-hush, Wa-hush.
He could see Rafi walking quickly up the cliff path.
He ran after him but nobody noticed because they were all helping Milly.
The cliff path was slippery and he was worried about so many things. He was worried about Miss Price being cross with him for running away and not telling her first. She’d never been cross before but she’d never shouted before either. Maybe she wouldn’t even know, because everyone else in his class was with Mrs Cardswell, their form teacher, and she probably thought he was with Mrs Cardswell too. And he was worried about Milly, but then he remembered that Lucas always has an inhaler in his coat pocket, and one in his trousers pocket too, because his mother says she’s a worrywart, so Lucas would give Milly his inhaler. Mostly he was worried about catching up with Rafi, because he was going as fast as he could, faster than he’d ever run before, but Rafi was running too, and getting smaller and smaller. He shouted at him but the wind just stole his words away before they got to Rafi.
He got a stitch in his side and it was hard to run in the life jacket, because he couldn’t move his arms very well. The snow was blowing against his face, the cold was biting his cheeks and the trees by the path were all twisted and bent over because the wind had hit them so much.
He got to the gate and had to climb it because it was locked. It was covered in snow and ice and his feet kept slipping and his life jacket made him clumsy and his stitch really hurt. From the gate, he saw a light on inside Junior School and he thought that Rafi might be inside.
He ran towards Junior School across the slippery car park, past all the teachers’ cars which had snow over them and looked like snow cars. Through his classroom window he could see Rafi! He knew Basi would be frightened of the sea so he’d waited for him!
He ran towards Rafi but when he got closer to the window he saw the man inside was much taller than Rafi. The man’s back was towards him, so he couldn’t see his face. He had a big gun and belts of bullets and at any second he might turn round and see Basi looking at him through the window. He imagined Rafi saying to him, Duck down and keep still, Basi, still as a statue, then find somewhere to hide.
He ducked down and tried to take off his yellow life jacket, because it was too easy to spot, but he couldn’t undo it in woolly gloves, so he took his gloves off and they fell on the snow. Then he managed to take off his life jacket.
He heard a sound like a stone being thrown on to an icy puddle, lots of stones, and glass breaking, but he kept still as a statue till his knees hurt from crouching, and when he stood up a little bit he couldn’t see the man inside any more.
The window was smashed and the scarecrows they’d made were all shot with pieces of window sticking into them. Lucas’s mum had given Basi some of Lucas’s old clothes for his scarecrow because he didn’t have his own old clothes. There were bullet holes in his scarecrow, through his clothes and through his face, so he didn’t have a face any more.
He ran away as fast as he could, slipping on the ice in the car park, hiding behind the snow cars. He saw the boatshed and the door was open a little and he ran inside.
Remembering the man has made him frightened all over again; he pushes his face into the crook of his elbow, burrowing into his anorak, like he can hide from the man and not hear the breaking glass any more.
Think of a kind face, that’s what Rafi tells him to do when he’s really frightened. All on his own, he thinks of two! The Soup Sisters in the Dunkirk camp. One had crinkles round her eyes when she smiled, so her whole face was a smile, and her sister had a thin, stern face but when she smiled at him it was like her face was a lamp switching on. The Soup Sisters mean he’s not going to be sick any more.
When they were in the camp they thought about Mr Marr’s kind face, but Mr Marr’s face doesn’t work now because they see him for real every day and Rafi says you have to use your memory and imagination, like opening a storybook in your mind, the best unexpected bits, and going there for a little while.
He remembers there’s a rowing boat at the back of the shed – he’ll hide inside it so that if the man gets in he won’t see him. He turns on his phone so he can see his way.
He has a missed call and a message from Rafi!
I love u
He only has 4% charge left. Rafi calls it ‘juice’ and says you mustn’t run out of juice, but Rafi doesn’t have animals inside his phone. Basi’s the only person in junior school who’s allowed a phone at school and Mr Lorrimer doesn’t like it, but Mr Marr says Basi can always talk to Rafi if he wants to.
Even with the light from his phone, he’s still bumping into things, but he gets to the rowing boat, with its smooth curvy sides, and he clambers in.
He reads Rafi’s text again then turns off his phone. It’s even darker further from the door inside a boat.
He mustn’t turn it on again and phone Rafi back, mustn’t do that. Because the man with the gun might be outside and shoot him.
He’s got to keep on being brave like a Barbary lion and a Bengal tiger and Sir Lancelot and the Gruffalo mouse and Odysseus. And then Rafi had said, ‘Brave as Basi Bukhari.’ And he’s trying really hard but he doesn’t know how much longer he can be brave.
* * *
In the woods, the path has almost disappeared under the snow when Rafi sees the theatre and the fire-exit door at the back. He’s stopped checking behind him because there was never anybody after him; nobody shot at the wall above his head or broke a non-existent twig; his damaged mind just imagined it all and his phantom pursuer belongs back in the past with Assad’s men and Daesh and the gangs in the camp.
He wonders where his friends have got to. Whenever they rehearse Macbeth he hears his father’s voice again because, for Baba, Syria was a suffering country under a hand accursed, that sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds; Bashar al-Assad, Russian bombers and every single person in Daesh was a devil damned in evils. And when they made plans to leave, Baba had said that they had no choice, because their country was no longer their mother but their grave. But then Baba and Karam were murdered – each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face – but Baba wasn’t there to say that any more and there was only enough money left for him and Basi to escape.
Baba had liked other playwrights, especially Saadallah Wannous, but Shakespeare was his go-to guy for quotes.
He should have said Birnam Wood to Hannah, when they were talking about trees. Why didn’t he say that? The coolest woods in literature and stage are the trees marching to Dunsinane Hill and defeating Macbeth; not real trees, of course, or Ents, but soldiers using trees to camouflage themselves. But even so, the trees march. He loves that. Maybe that’s why Baba loved the play so much, for its ending. They are using trees from these woods in their production. Daphne has a whole load backstage.
His mobile vibrates with Basi’s rhythm – rat-a-TAT-tat, rat-a-TAT-tat – a rhythm they’d set up in the camp; a secret code between them.
He answers the phone, having to shout above the noise of the wind.
‘Little Monkey, are you okay?’
‘I’m almost out of juice.’
Basi breaks down sobbing, as if he can’t get enough air to breathe.
‘What’s wrong?’