15

Nadima’s Home

‘We live here, in England,’ he said clearly, pointing at Britain on the screen. ‘Where … did … you … live?’ he asked slowly, and he nudged the computer nearer to her. We all looked at Nadima expectantly. I was pretty sure she’d understood. She stared at the map, blinked a couple of times and swallowed hard.

It suddenly hit me that maybe she didn’t want to tell us. But then she pointed to the map and said, ‘Syria.’

Syria.

It was like someone had chucked a bucket of cold water over everyone. I’ve never known it so quiet round the kitchen table in our house. You could have heard a pin drop.

‘Syria?’ repeated Mum, trying to sound all light-hearted and interested, rather than shocked.

But Nadima’s face had gone all tight and she seemed close to tears.

I’d seen the pictures from Syria on the news. Well, we all have, haven’t we? The smashed-up buildings and all those injured and dead people. Even little kids. It looked terrible. It was terrible. But up until that point I don’t think I’d properly understood that it was happening to real people. But it was. Real people like Nadima.

I didn’t know what to say. None of us did. Then Mum said gently to Nadima, ‘It looks bad over there.’

Nadima looked down at her plate.

Mum waited to see if Nadima was going to say anything. But she just sat there with her eyes lowered.

‘Well, we’re glad you’re here. Safe,’ said Mum, breaking the horribly uncomfortable silence. And then she added, ‘Perhaps you girls would like to eat in Jaz’s room,’ and she put some pizza slices on a plate and handed it to me.

I took Nadima’s hand and gently pulled her up from the table.

‘Drinks!’ said Mum, holding out our glasses. Nadima took them, gave Mum a polite nod and followed me upstairs.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked, shutting my door.

Nadima didn’t answer. So I didn’t press her.

We sat on the floor, with our backs against my bed, and ate our pizza.

After a while I said, ‘Was it very bad, back home? In Syria.’

She nodded.

‘What was it like?’

She shrugged and shook her head.

I think she understood. But she didn’t want to talk about it.

So we didn’t say anything for a while. But it wasn’t an awkward silence. We just sat together, munching our pizza and swigging our Cokes. I started wondering about how Nadima and her family had actually got here, all the way from Syria. The news was full of pictures of refugees on boats or hiding in lorries, or walking for days on end.

So after a while I said, ‘How did you get here? To England?’ I wasn’t being nosy. At least I don’t think I was.

But she shook her head again.

So I left it.

Maybe the journey had been so bad she didn’t want to think about it, I thought. And then a really horrible idea struck me. What if something terrible had happened? I looked across at her. She seemed OK, just calmly eating her pizza, but I had absolutely no idea what she was thinking about, did I?