Unknown Sculptor 

Part Two

 

 

 

November 2018

You meet. You talk. Maybe he buys you a drink, a meal. Or takes you to the cinema. You eat popcorn. You laugh, tell each other old school memories. You might hug just a little too long at the end of it all. Normally certain rituals are performed before you sleep with someone. A chronology of events to confirm feelings. Courting.

But time apart equally builds suspense, as though your souls were together all along. And Ashraf’s return to the UK was enough to make me give in, surrender to what I knew would eventually destroy our friendship.

On the day Ashraf returned to the UK for the second time, I received a video call from him at 5am. I was still dreaming when I answered but quickly the cool air from the gap in my bedroom window awoke me.

“Hello”.

He didn’t speak. I rubbed my eyes. He then turned the camera around to show me where he was. White tarpaulin and car parts and a man crouched beside him, everything was shaking and there was the sound of metal clanking in the background. Ashraf turned the camera around again. I realised then that his eyes were wide and I had never seen his beard so long. He looked different, terrible actually, but as though he was about to explode with feeling.

An announcement in the background: “we are now arriving into Dover Ferry Port. Would all passengers please return to their vehicles”.

It was only then that I realised and leaped out of my bed dancing and screaming as though Curtis Mayfield was playing in the kitchen. My flatmate came out of her room in confusion.  

“He’s coming back! He’s really coming back!”.

As Ashraf had expected, after two weeks of seeing a lawyer, Germany rejected his case and, unless he paid money to appeal, he would be put on the next flight to Kuwait. Square one. Prison. He’d rather die.

So after three weeks of being in Germany he ran, jumped on a train heading to Paris and then travelled North. The lorry he broke into in Calais eventually pulled into a warehouse in Milton Keynes and once again, Ashraf sidestepped the security. And again, he ran. He ran to the next train station. London. Still without a country who accepted his name. Stateless. But none of that mattered when, after five long months, he turned up outside the door of my flat, with the children’s playground standing silently behind him. None of it mattered. The only reality was that he was standing there and we had missed each other and all of it had felt alienating and out of our control and neither of us had planned it. But it happened and to love was the only thing left…

“Do you want to sleep in my bed?”.

We finally hugged without anyone else watching.

 

 

 

September 2019

I visited Ashraf one Saturday in September. For seven months he had been living in Leicester waiting for his UK I.D to arrive in the post. His case was finally accepted. 5 years of British status. Total potluck.

His next plan was to move to Manchester, to live with his cousins who might have a job for him in a carwash place. That Saturday I wanted to say goodbye to him although I didn’t really think it would be the last time that we would see each other.

I arrived at Leicester station and as usual went into the toilets to prepare myself. Washed my hands, tied up my hair, and once the other women had left the bathroom, spoke to myself in the mirror.

“Do not kiss him Darcy. Do not kiss him”.

I had told Ashraf the month before that I was seeing someone new, but I never mentioned that we were as serious as we were. It had been three weeks since Jack and I became official, making him my first proper boyfriend since high school. I wanted to make it last.

Ashraf was waiting at the station, the same place as usual, listening to music on phone, wearing his new airpods. I noticed he had also brought a new jacket. He looked really well, as if his new asylum status had also polished his skin. We hugged strongly and longer than we used to. Both of our faces were beaming at each other, it was a silent gratitude for the strange circumstances that had once again united us. 

He went to hold my hand. I laughed and jokingly reminded him that I now had a boyfriend who was probably watching us from the rooftops. Of course, there was no one watching. Not anymore at least. Only the odd passer-by who would glance longer than normal at our seemingly awkward companionship and of course, my conscience.

Ashraf didn’t seem too disappointed at the news and instead continued talking about his plans for the future.

“Maybe one day Darcy I will start my own carwash business!”.

He seemed excited. He also told me he wanted to buy a new phone, live in a studio apartment, and one day fulfil his dream of travelling to Karbala.

“The job centre is helping me”. He said. “But I tell them I don’t want to work full time”. 

“Ashaf, most people work full time. Life in the UK is hard even for the people born here”.

It wasn’t the first time I had to remind him of this.

We sat in the park on the grass when a man who looked drunk stumbled over to us. He swore at us for being in the way of his path as though we were sitting in the middle of the pavement. Ashraf shook his head and tutted, just as he had that time when I suggested that Kuwait was a rich country. Ashraf never argues. Only tuts.

I told Ashraf again about my new lover. I wanted to remind him before we went back to his place, to make things clear, to stop the obvious from happening.

“I told Jack about you”.

But this time Ashraf was silent and smoked two cigarettes in a row. He then asked me why I didn’t tell him about Jack before but I couldn’t answer. I suppose I was too busy enjoying another person’s time. 

Ashraf offered me a cigarette. Like him, I took two. They were the same Russian brand that he started smoking when he first moved to Leicester. We both agreed that we liked them more than the expensive ones.

I tried to talk about other things, to lighten the mood, but conversation now only led to miserable topics, like how the banks refused him an account because he still didn’t have a permanent address and that his passport was due to arrive the week after his brother’s wedding in Sweden. As usual I wasn’t sure how to help apart from pointing out the brighter things.

“…but car washing will be fun!”.

Ashraf nodded his head half-heartedly and then looked over to the drunken man. He was now rolling around on the grass under the last light of the summer sun.

We brought lunch and then went back to his for tea. We looked through his pile of unwanted items which was mostly the junk left behind by the person who was living in his room before. Nail stickers, three paintings of English cottages, a red fabric belt, and an old rucksack.

“Why don’t you keep the rucksack, it could be useful?”.

“Not anymore”. He said. “I don’t need to climb into the back of lorries”.

I sat on the bed watching Ashraf stir several sugars into his tea. He liked his tea really sweet.  I thought about the first night we had spent together in Leicester. The walls of his room had seemed to have turned a deeper shade of yellow since then. Cigarette smoke I guessed. I watched the shadows of our former selves, rolling around on the patterned carpet pretending to sword fight, and then tightly squeezed together on his single bed, smoking and listening to Marley classics. That room had enclosed romantic memories.

“What about that? Will you take that?”.

I pointed to a large canvas print of Tower bridge. It had black glitter stuck onto the iron wires. It looked like something a teenage girl would buy from a home store.

“I got it free with the fridge. Take it if you like”.

I kindly refused telling him it was too big to carry. In truth I already had enough objects that remind me of him: a ring, boxershorts, three photos.

Ashraf finished making the tea and then sat next to be on his bed.

“I’ll miss this room”. I said.

We hugged. The weight of us on the single bed made our bodies slide closer to each other. I smiled. He hugged again, his arms smothering me and his heart beating faster. I coughed. I pretended. He touched my hand. I moved it away. He placed his hand on my thigh. I stood up.

“Sorry, I really can’t”. I picked up my tea.

“Really?”.

“Yeah I have a boyfriend now, I told you”.

“But don’t tell him”.

“That’s lying”.

“And what about me? Why did you lie to me?”.

“I didn’t lie to you”.

“You didn’t tell me the whole truth, that’s lying”.

I felt guilty. Guilty for standing in his room. Guilty for ever knowing him. Hatred for my insignificant life and how it was about to hurt a person who had already dealt with a lifetime of rejection.

“I’m sorry”.

“Darcy, I’m a man, not a Donkey, I feel things”.

He was right. He was a man and I was stupid to assume he wanted anything else but to touch my female body.

He was standing by the door. I asked him to move and made my way to the bathroom.

“Do not kiss him Darcy. Do not kiss him”.

That time I even pointed at my reflection. I stared at my finger tip then to my face. Whose was it? I was a stranger to myself. For that very moment, a distinct feeling, the same feeling I had riding a train in Poland, tears falling from my face. My face wasn’t mine and neither was the hand pointing. I felt like no-one, anyone, alone, my whole life haunted by the ghost of someone else.

I went back into Ashraf’s room and smoked another cigarette. I watched the walls turn a darker shade of yellow.

“When’s your train?”. He said. “When’s your train?”.

“Three hours. You remember that time when we sang karaoke?”.

I didn’t know what else to do apart from recall happier moments. 

He laughed briefly then asked me to join him again on the bed.

“Darcy why didn’t you tell me?”.

I told him everything again, that I didn’t know and that I was sorry.

“But why can’t we, just one more time?”.

“I can’t. I told you I can’t”.

“The last time, then nothing, I promise.”

He even offered me money but I didn’t care. I only cared about who would win, the ghost or the part of me which saw it.

Ashraf put his arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.

“Really, I can’t”.

But there she was.

The ghost of a young girl that was trying to please the world.

 

 

 

October 2019

Ashraf called me the day his older brother died. He was only 34 years old and Facebook told me that his body was going to be sent to Kuwait in a wooden box. I didn’t answer his call.

The week before I told Jack what had happened during the last time I met Ashraf and he told me to never speak to him again. Jack said that it wasn’t what real friends do, that it was disrespectful, not consented. 

It was a fair request I supposed although I couldn’t say that I didn’t miss Ashraf. Not the sex, just the company. And how we used to laugh at every small thing we both understood.

But one day we will meet again, go walking amongst the fields of our experiences and laugh from above at the beauty of it all, even the pain of miscommunication.