Out of Heart Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Out of Heart

  Irfan Master

  Copyright

  For MK,

  who mended my wings.

  The Little Boy Lost

  Father, father, where are you going?

  O do not walk so fast!

  Speak, father, speak to your little boy,

  Or else I shall be lost.

  The night was dark, no father was there,

  The child was wet with dew;

  The mire was deep & the child did weep,

  And away the vapour flew.

  William Blake

  Your heart is the size of your clenched fist.

  Thin slivers of light plunged through the square attic windows on Marrow Street. The small room in the Shah family house was a real suntrap and Adam would come here to think and draw, and to leave the shadows of the day behind. He lay down, staring up through the grimy glass at the blue rectangle of sky, and pulled out his battered, smudged notepad and a well-chewed pencil.

  Suntrap. Sun trapped. Trapped son.

  Adam started sketching, trying to capture the sunlight in his drawing, but soon threw his pencil down in frustration. Then an image unfolded in his brain, a painting his art teacher, Mrs Matheson, had shown him. It was of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun, and showed him lying on the rocks, the ground beneath strewn with feathers. He’d soared high, letting the winds carry him, to show his father he wasn’t scared. To show he could go higher. To show that he loved him. Adam understood then how you drew the sun – by showing broken wings on the rocks below. But Adam was more interested in Icarus before the fall. He seized his pencil and started drawing furiously. He drew Icarus, standing on the edge of the cliff looking down, wings unfurled, about to jump. Then he sketched the blurry shape of Icarus’s father, Daedalus. As he traced Icarus’s wings with his index finger, Adam imagined Daedalus saying, Don’t fly too close to the sun or you’ll perish. Promise me you won’t fly too close to the sun? In his mind’s eye, he saw Icarus turning to say, We have nothing to fear from the sun, Father. The sun gives us life. Adam saw Icarus spread his wings and smile, and, with a last look at his father, jump.

  East London. Now.

  Adam watched as the needle-thin second hand continued its sweep around the clock face. As he listened to the voice speaking on the end of the telephone, he wondered why time hadn’t stopped.

  Sorry, the surgeon said. Loss, he said. Difficult time, he said. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. The right sort of voice for the wrong kind of news, Adam thought. Switching the phone to his right hand, he picked up the pencil and started sketching on the notepad next to the phone.

  ‘What was the exact time of death?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You always note the time of death, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s … It’s not a question we usually get asked.’

  ‘But can you tell me?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ Adam lied. Fifteen, eighteen, what difference did it make? Now that his grandfather, his Dadda, was dead.

  ‘I can find out for you.’

  ‘OK.’

  Adam heard the phone being set down and the shuffling of papers. He began to add numbers to the hearts he had sketched, making them into clocks. Six hearts joined together to form one big heart.

  The voice came back on the line.

  ‘Time of death was 7.12 p.m.’

  Adam drew the time onto one of the heart/clocks.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Please can you ask your mum to call us on this number as soon as she gets home.’

  Adam jotted the number down, and continued giving shape to the hearts. He looked up at the clock. 8.04 p.m. He sketched that onto another heart/clock.

  Adam stared at the second hand still sweeping around the clock face and then down at the phone still in his hand. Time hadn’t stopped, and all he was left with was a dead tone.

  A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.

  Adam stood in the doorway watching his mum. When he had told her the news, she had stood still, clenched her fists and nodded, and gone back to what she was doing. He had hoped she would look up at him, come over and hug him, hold his hand, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t done that in a long time.

  ‘What you up to, Mum?’

  She had her back to him and was bent over an ironing board. Next to her, piled high, was a laundry basket of crumpled clothes, waiting to be ironed. In the next room he could hear his grandmother. She was whispering to herself. A mantra. A prayer. For comfort. That was the proper response to bad news. Prayer. Words. Some tears. Right? Adam leaned against the door frame. His mum unfolded one of his shirts and laid it on the ironing board. She pressed down hard, smoothing out any creases. The board creaked. She looked up.

  ‘Lots to be done for tomorrow,’ she said.

  Noticing her eyes on him, Adam looked down at his black T-shirt, black trousers and black trainers. His uniform. All black. She didn’t like that and neither did his dad. They both hated that Adam wore black every day.

  ‘Black again. Don’t you have any other clothes? It’s depressing.’

  ‘I don’t know why it annoys you so much. I like it, Mum.’

  But his mum didn’t reply. She had turned away, moving quickly, efficiently, through the laundry.

  Adam knew his wearing black annoyed his mum, but at least it made her look at him. Adam sighed and took out his notepad.

  Daddadead. Dad dead. Dead is dead.

  Around the words he drew the shape of an ironing board and sketched an iron about to press down on the words. He looked up to see his mum standing there with her arms folded across her chest. Whereas Adam was tall, she was short, her long rust-brown skirt making her look shorter. A cream roll-neck sweater left only her face exposed. An oval face with dark eyes. Black.

  ‘You gonna stand there scribbling or help me clean up this mess?’

  Grabbing a bed-sheet, she threw one end to him. Adam found the edges and held them up. She moved forward, pinched the edges from him and squared off the sheet. Once. Twice. Perfect square. Adam knew she didn’t need his help to do this, but he stood there in the hope she might say something, anything, about his Dadda. Adam had had a whole speech worked out in his bedroom, but standing here, divided by a white sheet, he couldn’t find the words. She grabbed another sheet and they did the same, neither saying anything. Until all the sheets were folded, squared off and ready to be put away.

  She searched for something else to iron. To fold. To put away.

  ‘There’s nothing else, Mum.’

  Suddenly folding in on herself, she slumped down on the edge of the bed. Adam showed the sketch of the iron and the words he had scribbled down. She took the notepad and stared at the page. She smoothed down the curled-up edges and placed the notepad on her lap. She didn’t cry. Adam wanted her to. He needed her to cry. He wanted to throw the sheets on the floor, unmake the bed, create a mess. If she didn’t cry, then how could she move on, do what you need to do next? Adam sat down heavily beside her. He desperately wanted to draw the confusion that was in his head. He knew whatever he drew would be all scribbles-streaks-slashes. He knew it wouldn’t make sense, but sketching it out would help him to make sense of the world around him. He just needed to draw.

  He could hear the faint whisper of the prayer from his Daddima in the next room. One word over and over. God. Like the ticking of a clock.

  Adam’s little sister, Farah, was sitting with her book in the living room. A small, heart-shaped face with a fringe and a little ponytail. And her big book. Always her big book of dot-to-dots. She signed abruptly and left the room.


  ‘What’d she say?’ asked Adam’s mum.

  ‘Not sure. It was too fast. I don’t think it meant anything. It was more frustration, I think.’

  ‘She knows Dadda’s gone? Did you tell her?’

  ‘No! Mum – I thought you had.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to … But I don’t know what to say. She’s eight, she doesn’t understand …’

  Adam looked at his mum’s furrowed brow. He couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled.

  ‘I’m fifteen, Mum. I don’t know how to explain stuff to an eight-year-old girl.’

  She looked right at him then. Sat up in her chair.

  ‘Adam, I want you to do something. It might be hard. Will be hard.’

  Adam didn’t ask what it was. It was coming whether he liked it or not. He waited. ‘I want you to be there when they wash and dress the body. I don’t want it to be your dad, or for the funeral. I want you to be there. To represent us.’

  Adam’s mind spun. He wanted to grab his pencil, his lifeline, and write. To draw. To hear that scrape of pencil on paper. He drew a mental image of a square, a window, a horizon, a ship, birds. He always did this to calm down. But this time the image blurred.

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘OK, I’ll go. Represent us,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. Good.’ Adam’s mum sighed. ‘Adam … There’s something else.’

  Adam heard serious in her voice. His mum was looking down at her skirt, smoothing out the pleats.

  ‘He did something. Dadda did something without telling us. Before he died. You’ll see when you go to wash the body …’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘What he did to himself. What he gave away.’

  ‘What? What did he give away?’

  ‘His heart, Adam. Dadda gave away his heart.’

  It was still early when Adam woke. He closed his eyes again, but knew that sleep had fled. He picked up his notepad from under his pillow and made a list:

  Adam Shah’s to do list:

  1. Wash Dadda’s body (Represent Us)

  2. Attend Dadda’s funeral

  3. Go to school and pretend to listen

  4. Discuss death, hearts etc. with Farah

  5. Try to cry

  6. Make Mum cry (or try to)

  Adam pulled the covers over his head, closed his eyes and began to draw shapes onto the dark canvas of his mind.

  Early Egyptians believed that the heart and other major organs had a will of their own and would move around inside the body.

  The day was dripping with sunlight. Feeling the warmth on his face and arms, Adam wished it was grimy-grey-bleak. Being asked to go and wash your grandfather’s dead body was one thing, but being asked to do it when the sun was shining and everyone else was smiling and sitting in their gardens was wrong. Taking out his notepad, he scribbled.

  Wrong sun. Wrong son. Wrong ’un

  When his uncle arrived, Adam was looking up at the sky, his shock of roughly chopped black hair falling back from his face.

  ‘What you looking at up there, son? He’ll be up there, you know, in heaven. Watching over you,’ said Idris, his voice firm. ‘You can be sure of that.’

  Adam wasn’t sure of anything. He had never thought of his Dadda as someone who would watch over anybody. He had always been there, but never fully present, choosing silence instead of telling them what was in his head. Now that he was gone, Adam had so many questions and no way of getting answers.

  ‘Well, get in the car then, and let’s get going, eh.’

  It was slow driving. Adam looked out at the terraced houses packed tightly together shoulder to shoulder, each the same as the next, car out front, three steps, window downstairs, two windows up. Door. He scribbled on his notepad.

  Adam’s uncle glanced at him in the mirror and shook his head at the fact that Adam had chosen to sit in the back and not said a word. Instead the boy had pulled out his notepad and begun to draw.

  They arrived at the hospital and parked up. Adam looked down at the maze he’d drawn, made up of square blocks. He’d lost track somewhere in the middle and now wondered if he’d left a way out. He’d give the drawing to Farah later and see if she could find a way. She was good at mazes.

  He’d been visiting the hospital for the past month. Visiting his grandfather in the ‘death ward’ or the ‘organ-failing ward’. Or the ‘waiting-for-bits ward’. He’d come up with quite a few names for the place. He hated it there. Mum had always told him hate is too strong a word and that you shouldn’t hate anything. Adam agreed. It was a strong word. That’s why he used it. He hated it there. Hated the hospital smell. Hated the groans of suffering. Hated the waft from bland-looking food that followed him down the corridor. But most of all Adam hated the fact that there was no colour there. The hospital was colourless, as if someone had rubbed out all the colour between the lines of the walls-floors-ceilings. It was filled with nothing.

  They waited in the hospital reception for two of Adam’s cousins. They were running late. It’s hard to get time off work, Idris explained. That’s why they’re doing this in their lunch break. They arrived in their work clothes. One was a butcher and the other an accountant. Adam privately called them Blood and Money.

  ‘How are you, son?’ asked Blood.

  ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

  ‘Don’t you worry too much about anything in there. It’s good that you’re here. Representing. You understand. Sign of a man,’ said Money.

  Adam wondered what sort of a sign. A scared-looking boy dressed in black with a well-thumbed notepad didn’t seem like a sign of anything.

  The nurse came and led them to the room. A colourless room bathed in light. In the middle was a bench on which his Dadda lay. In state, Adam thought they called it.

  In state. In a state. Inner state.

  His fingers were itching to scribble these words down, but his uncles looked grim so he forced himself to leave his notepad in his back pocket. The previous evening, Adam had googled ‘wash body death funeral’ and had received thousands of hits about ancient rituals from around the world. No matter what religion you belonged to or what you believed, there was always some kind of ritual. Some kind of death preparation. However you went about it, in order to meet God, you had to be prepared.

  His cousins stepped up to the bench. Adam made to follow but his legs wouldn’t obey. He was in a room with a dead body. His Dadda lay there under the sheet. Adam realised he was beside himself with terror. He bunched his jaw, his breathing ragged. Blood and Money set about the room with purpose, but Idris saw Adam frozen to the grey floor and came over.

  ‘It’s OK, son. Breathe. Otherwise you’re going to pop like a balloon. Breathe, son.’

  Adam looked at his uncle and let out a long gasp of air and set his shoulders.

  Taking a step towards the body, Adam watched as Blood and Money washed their hands and put on rubber gloves. Pulling out a shower head, they tested it in a sink and turned to Idris, who had also put gloves on. Adam was shocked. The ancient pictures and instructions he had seen on the internet had been about bathing and cleansing using a clay pot and an earthenware jug. Items made from mud and heat and water. He had not expected rubber gloves and a shower head. It was too modern – too stainless steel-efficient-scientific. Too cold. He wanted to yank the sheet aside and give his Dadda a hug. To clutch at his index finger like he used to when he was tiny and learning to walk. To hear his Dadda wake early in the morning and plod slowly down the creaky stairs. The room was completely silent, but Adam could hear a rushing wind inside his head. Closing his eyes, he imagined it to be a typhoon. A swirl of air so powerful it would lift you off your feet.

  ‘Adam, open your eyes. You must see,’ said Idris in a reverent tone. They had uncovered Dadda’s face and were ready to begin. The shock of seeing his Dadda lying there unnerved Adam. His Dadda’s eyes were open. Adam grabbed hold of the bench and felt a chill as the metal sent a stabbing coldness up his arm. He started to tremble. Why were his ey
es open?

  Idris turned to Adam. ‘You’re a man now, so be a man. There’s nothing to be scared of here. We must prepare him so he can go to God. You see his eyes are open. This is how it always is. He is watching to see who has come to send him on his way.’

  Using the spray from the shower head, Idris began to wash the body, which was still mostly covered. Money stood back and uttered prayers in a quiet voice, while Blood gently turned the body so that Idris could wash parts of it. Adam watched him and realised why he was there. Blood was a butcher. He worked with dead meat every day.

  Idris turned to Adam and nodded. ‘Go and fill that jug over by the sink. Bring it to me,’ he asked.

  Returning, Adam made to hand Idris the jug.

  ‘No, this is for you to do. Tip the water where I tell you.’

  Following his instructions, his hand trembling, Adam tipped the jug and watched the water sluice over his Dadda’s nut-brown skin. Blood moved across the body and pulled the sheet down to reveal Dadda’s chest. Everybody froze. The tip of the scar reached down from the top of his breastbone and, like a slash, ended where the stomach began. It was pink, raised and angry-looking. It hadn’t healed. Would never heal. Adam couldn’t stop himself – he took out his notepad and drew the shape of the scar. His uncle and cousins turned to him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Blood.

  ‘The scar. Can you see? It’s in the shape of an alif. The Arabic letter A. Do you see? Like A for Adam. He’s given away his heart, but he’ll be OK because the alif is where his heart used to be. For protection.’ Drawing the symbol underneath, Adam scribbled a few words.

  Alif. Alife. Alive. A Life

  Blood tutted and covered the body once more. Idris looked strangely at Adam and continued with the ritual. Adam took a step back and stared into the bright light until his eyes hurt and began to stream with tears. But no matter where he looked, he knew his Dadda was looking only at him.