We’re standing in the petrol station again, for the fourth night in a row after closing time, learning how to box from Mohammed. Shadi leans up against the shelf where the motor oil is kept, looking like he’s going to burst with all this concentration. Things are quiet. I fold my arms across my chest and watch the old cushion swaying backwards and forwards on its rope, spitting pieces of fluff from the places where it’s falling apart.
Mohammed says, ‘The way you hit can show what sort of person you are; it shows if you’re not sure enough about yourself, if you’ve got too much anger, if you’re the sort of person who gets knocked and never gets up again.’
He puts his gloves on and does another demonstration of how to hit, he throws himself into it, skin, muscles, breath, they all come out in one straight punch. The cushion swings and hits the ceiling. He catches it again on its way down.
Next, it is my turn. Mohammed takes off his gloves and hands them to me. They are heavy in my hands, like carrying someone’s head. On the inside they feel like you’re slipping your fists into an old pair of socks.
Mohammed stands behind me, pulls my shoulders back and says to relax my body, to stop tensing my muscles. ‘To box,’ he says, ‘you have to feel like you’re comfortable in your own skin.’
I let go, swinging my right arm and then my left into the cushion. I try lifting up my feet slightly, bouncing them on and off the ground until it makes me feel like I’m floating. I punch with my left arm and then with my right again. And I’m hitting it again and again and I get it, the way you can lose yourself, skin, muscles, breath. I let myself go.
When Mohammed grabs the cushion and makes it stop, I know I’ve been gone too long. He stands there, wrapping his arms around it, nodding his head up and down slightly. ‘Yeh,’ he says and nothing more about it but I know he thinks I’ve done alright. ‘Step back now and let Shadi have a turn. Take a breath, take a deep breath,’ he says and I realise how low and heavy I’m breathing in and out but it’s a different kind of heavy now, not as heavy as it’s been all year. The sound of me heaving in and out fills the storeroom.
Shadi hands me his drink bottle and I take a sip in between breaths. Mohammed leans over me and smiles ‘You can’t give all your energy away at once in the ring, you’ve got to hold back a little, so you’ve got a little bit of something in reserve,’ he says.