Friday afternoon – a refugee camp north of Athens
Cal
Sweat trickles down my spine. Even through my sunglasses, the light bouncing off the sea of white canvas tents blinds me. I’ve been here and done this so many times before, but nothing has prepared me for seeing such a tented city again.
I have to shade my eyes. Dust rises and swirls around my feet as we walk towards the school in the camp. We pause at ‘reception’ – a gazebo with an old table – and the aid worker who’s showed me into the camp stops to speak into her phone. She brought me here after I’d met Esme’s family and I’m still reeling from that, from their generosity and welcome to me, from the way they haven’t judged me, from their kindness.
Beyond the gazebo, through the open flap, I catch a glimpse of the inside of the tent. It looks like a school and sounds like a school. There are paintings and charts on the walls, the backs of heads, a teacher crouched down on the floor, talking to a group of kids. The children are painting, dipping brushes in and out of jars clouded with pigment. Some are hunched over their paintings, tongues out in concentration. Others are making broad brush strokes on the paper, laughing and chatting.
It’s a school, just a different kind of school, one with canvas walls and plastic patio tables for desks and students who never wanted or planned to be here.
The young woman clicks off her mobile. ‘The kids have art therapy once a week,’ she says. ‘It’s one way of helping them to release the stress and trauma but you must know about that from your work.’ She pauses. ‘Would you like to join the class now?’
‘Can I?’
She smiles briefly. ‘Of course. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.’ Barely older than Demi, she sounds weary and looks even wearier, but by the time we walk into the classroom, she has a broad smile on her face. The kids turn round and some grin at us; others go immediately back to their art. One head, a little girl’s, is intent on her painting, carefully adding some fine detail. She doesn’t see me but I know her.
I stop. My throat dries. My heart seems to seize up. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more fear in my life: more terror of the unknown. Every instinct tells me to run away and I don’t know why I should be afraid of this young girl – or perhaps I do know.
It’s too late. The teacher has spotted us and walks over. She puts her hand on Esme’s shoulder.
‘Esme. There’s someone here that you might know. It’s Cal.’
Esme puts down her brush and somehow I make my leaden feet move towards the desk. It’s her. Light brown, almost blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark brown eyes and a pink sweatshirt with a picture of a bear on it.
‘You remember Cal?’ the teacher says.
Esme nods, slowly, up and down.
‘Hello, Esme,’ I say.
She looks at me without any malice, any shock: just as if we had gone back eighteen months to the day before I lost her and her mother. As if nothing had ever happened.
‘Hello, Cal,’ she says in English.
The teacher smiles. ‘Esme’s been painting. She’s worked very hard on her picture today, haven’t you?’ She asks the question in English and in Arabic.
I look at the three figures on the paper. A girl, a woman and a man, hand in hand, with broken buildings all around and the sun shining in the sky.
‘Who is it?’ My voice cracks with the heat and the dust.
‘You. You and me and mummy.’
‘Your painting has really come on. I love the detail in the dresses and I can almost feel the heat of the sun,’ her teacher says. ‘Can’t you, Cal?’
I can’t speak. My throat is numb, my chest feels as if it’s cracking open. I shouldn’t have come in here, in front of the children. I should have waited, been better prepared, even though I’ve been waiting too long already. And no matter how hard I try, how much I swore to myself that I would not do this, I can’t stop the tears running down my cheeks like a river, falling into the dust.
The teacher stands silently by my side, the kids grow quiet and a small warm hand slips into mine. ‘Why are you crying?’ Esme asks me in Arabic and then again in English. ‘Don’t cry. Not any more. You found me.’