Chapter 15: Left Foot, Right Foot - My Name Is Samim

Back home, Miss Brown greets me with a smile. “Here’s our chess master!”

Ayan walks over, too, but Rita doesn’t. She’s still not talking to me.

“How you played chess?” Ayan asks, hands in his pockets, nudging his chin up at me.

“Good.” I take my shoes off and hang my jacket in the cupboard.

Zayn throws his arms up in annoyance. “‘Good’? That’s it? Just ‘good’? He beat the teacher himself! How about that?”

I smile. Zayn loves nothing more than a good boast.

“Well,” Miss Brown says, “Mr Adams called and asked for my permission to let you compete at the qualifying event for the London Junior Championship. You must have really impressed him.”

I beam, staring at my feet, uncomfortable with all the attention but proud of defeating Mr Adams.

“Would you like to take part in the competition?” Miss Brown asks.

I shrug, unsure.

“Don’t you shrug! Don’t you dare to shrug!” Zayn growls at me. “You better do that competition or I’ll jump inside your body, wear you like a sock puppet and drag you there myself!”

I lean away from Zayn, my eyebrows arched. He really wants me to do this!

“Don’t you get it? You must do this competition for all of us – for me and every other child who never made it to this happy part. And you’re going to win it for us, too,” Zayn says, pointing his finger in my face.

“No pressure then,” I mutter.

“Wrong!” Zayn shouts, throwing his arms in the air. “A lot of pressure! Huge amount of pressure! Unless you want to be haunted by hundreds of angry child ghosts, you’d better win it, Samim! Because trust me, not all those ghosts are as charming as I am!”

“Charming?!” I chuckle.

“Excuse me?” Miss Brown asks, her forehead creased in concern.

“Sorry.” I shake my head, trying to concentrate on Miss Brown instead of Zayn.

“So, what do you say? Will you compete?”

I look at Zayn. He gestures a sock puppet to me with his hand, then raises his arms and wobbles them about, mimicking a ghost with his eyes crossed.

I take a deep breath and nod.

“Well, that’s settled then.” Miss Brown gives me a thumbs up. “I can’t wait to hang your future victory certificate on the wall!”

So that’s what the documents framed on the staircase wall are. They are Miss Brown’s foster children’s achievements. Knowing she wants to show off my victory, too, makes my chest swell with pride, and now I want to win the contest even more.

“Mr Higgins and Miss Nadia are already here,” Miss Brown says, and my smile evaporates.

She notices and pats my back.

As Zayn and I walk into the study, I whisper, “What kind of melon-head ever told you you’re charming?”

Zayn shoots me a warning glare and imitates a sock puppet again.

In the study, Miss Nadia and I chat about school while Mr Higgins leafs through his notes.

“Hello again, Samim,” he says at last. “Let’s pick up where we left off. What happened after you and Zayn separated from your uncle?”

My chest tightens as my mind takes me back to the day we parted with my uncle.

Iran, spring 2021

Uncle Roshan kept our money in plastic bags inside his shoes. He took some out for himself, and Zayn and I split the rest. He also gave us his mobile phone and told us to message Uncle Jalal and tell him what had happened as soon as we got a signal.

Before we left the old woman’s house, we washed ourselves over a basin and changed into clean clothes. She handed us a plastic bag full of food at the door.

“It’s just some bread, boiled eggs and apples,” she said, “to hush your bellies.”

We’d been starving for days, yet somehow didn’t feel excited about the food at the time. But we said, “Thank you, Auntie,” and bowed to her.

In the end, I never said goodbye to my uncle. I couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, I stood at the door for a while, watching him lie on the bed with his eyes shut. I didn’t remember my mother’s eyes any longer. I didn’t remember my sister’s voice or my father’s smile. I didn’t want to forget Uncle Roshan, too. But then he twisted his face in sudden pain, and I looked away. I wanted to remember him, but not like that.

“He will get better,” Zayn said, patting my back, and I nodded, though I didn’t believe it.

When we left, the sky was the colour of a bruised peach: yellow and pink swirled together. Brown dirt under our feet turned red with the sunrise.

It hadn’t been long since we had left the stone-cutting factory, but it seemed like a galaxy away. And although life at the factory hadn’t been easy, it suddenly felt like a good life. We’d had Uncle Roshan and Uncle Karim with us, food, some safety and a warm place to sleep.

We wandered silently until we saw six men from the truck huddled outside an abandoned shepherd’s hut. They were leaning on the walls, their dark heads drooped. The men told us that the handler had called and another truck would come for us later that night. Zayn and I slumped with relief beside them and messaged Uncle Jalal about what had happened. He told us he believed in us and that Uncle Roshan, his brother, was a fighter and would never give up. We reread that message dozens of times, and each time, it felt like pulling a splinter out of a finger.

Exhausted, we slept through most of the day.

A few hours past midnight, a truck parked on the other side of the road. We watched it with bated breath, like it was a gazelle we were afraid to spook. The driver flashed the lights three times – a signal for us. We bolted to the truck, scrambling into the trailer. The engine rumbled and we zoomed down the road. We huddled together, our eyes wide, staring at the melon-like moon. Each second I was getting further and further away from Uncle Roshan, but it was a comfort to know that if we both looked up, we saw the same moon.

“Why does the world have to be like this?” I whispered, the truck bouncing beneath me. “Why do kids have to suffer because grown-ups can’t get along?”

“I know,” Zayn growled. “Adults act like they’re so smart, but look at the world they built! Two orphans sneaking away like rats just to survive. And they preach about school making us wiser? Maths and grammar don’t stop these men from starting wars. Maybe they should teach kindness in schools, teach people how to live together and get along instead of tearing each other apart.”

Zayn had a point.

A few hours later, our truck stopped at a mountain village near the Turkish border. As soon as we jumped out of the trailer an icy wind slapped our faces, and we rushed to put our warm clothes on. Thick snow blanketed everything around us, sparkling under the first rays of morning light. It was as if we had travelled back in time to winter.

Another group of men, women and kids was already there, jumping from foot to foot to stay warm. The driver barked orders for us to stick together and walk through the mountains to the other side. A bus to Turkey, which was the next stop on our journey, would be waiting for us there. People exchanged panicked glances, but in the end we all had to swallow our fears like bitter-tasting medicine and start walking.

We plodded down paths and climbed hills that no one usually sets foot on in winter. But we had no choice: we had to cross the border unnoticed. Those who have no choice walk a different path from everyone else.

The icy wind gnawed at our skin, and soon we all had burning-red faces and hands.

A young mother with a baby in her arms and two children by her sides fell behind everyone else. Her kids were sobbing and pulling her wet skirt, their hands blue from the cold, faces red and snotty. Zayn took a pair of woollen socks from his backpack and pulled them over the kids’ tiny hands. He gave them a boiled egg each, and they shoved them into their mouths so quickly they almost choked.

“Easy there! I know you’re hungry, but you need to chew!” Zayn grabbed their hands and helped them through the snow. “Come on, now. Keep walking! Left foot, right foot, left foot and… Curses, I forgot again!”

“Right foot!” the kids yelled, wiping their sniffly noses.

“Ah, of course!” Zayn slapped his forehead. “This cold is turning my brains into icicles!”

The kids giggled, shaking their heads at him.

“Left foot, right foot. We’re almost there now! We will soon get to that nice warm bus, and there will be treats for us, too. You just need to keep going.”

The kids listened to Zayn, and their little bodies kept fighting through the slush.

It took us two days to climb up the mountain and one day to climb down, and all that time cold burned our skin like a thousand paper cuts. We spent nights huddled by a fire in a cave, our numb hands and frozen feet prickling back to life against the flames. The kids clustered around Zayn, their faces tilted upwards like sunflowers, waiting for his next joke. He never disappointed, and though his jokes were meant for them, they brought smiles to weary adults, too.

When we finally reached the other side, the bus was already there. And even though it was another rusty, sorry-looking thing, to us it was the best bus in the whole world.