Out of Heart Read online

  ‘Understanding is the heartwood of well-spoken words.’

  Buddha

  Farah sat on the bottom step and watched her brother. He stared back at her.

  ‘What?’

  Farah signed that he looked very serious.

  ‘A funeral is serious, Farah. There’ll be lots of serious stuff going on.’

  Why can’t I come? she signed.

  ‘No women allowed.’

  Why not?

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  I can be serious too. As long as I can bring my book. And my pen.

  ‘It’s not up to me, Farah. But I agree. You’re one of the most serious people I know.’

  I can wear black clothes too. Then everybody will definitely think I’m serious.

  ‘I don’t wear black so people think I’m seri— Look, you can’t come. Sorry. I’ll see you later,’ Adam finished, and walked out.

  Farah sat on her step and watched as the door slammed shut. Tucking in her legs, she placed the big book onto her knees, opened it and began to draw.

  Your heart is not red.

  Adam stood watching as the wooden coffin was lofted into the air and onto the arms of men. A queue began to form and the coffin was passed from hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder and slowly, steadily began to move forward.

  ‘Come on, get it onto your shoulder a couple of times before it gets to the grave,’ said Idris, moving past him towards the procession. He had lifted the coffin onto his shoulders and he beckoned to Adam, who moved in alongside and grabbed the handle. Hoisting it onto his shoulders, he felt the weight and almost stumbled, but pushed up and walked along. Throngs of men followed in the wake of the coffin. At fifteen, this was his first funeral. He was bearing his Dadda to the grave. Heartless.

  Heartless. Hurtless. Less hurt. Less heart.

  Adam suddenly realised that he hadn’t brought his notepad with him. So like a mantra he began to utter the words that had come to him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw some familiar faces. Standing apart from the procession were his mum and sister. Passing the coffin onto another man’s shoulder, he walked over to where they stood.

  Farah signed to him. You see, I can be serious too.

  Adam looked at her dressed all in black and smiled.

  Then, ‘Mum, you’re not supposed to be here,’ he whispered, looking behind him. Some of the men had noticed them and were pointing and signalling in their direction.

  ‘Never mind that.’ Yasmin bent down and grabbed a handful of dark brown earth. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Make sure you throw this into the grave.’

  Adam took the damp soil and bunched it in his fist.

  Hearing footsteps behind him, he saw Idris walking towards them.

  ‘Go on. I’ll see you at home,’ said Yasmin.

  Adam moved past Idris, holding the soil carefully in his hands.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ said Idris quietly.

  ‘I have every right to be here,’ replied Yasmin.

  ‘It’s not about right, it’s just not appropriate—’

  ‘What’s not appropriate about a daughter and granddaughter coming to see off their Dadda?’

  ‘Listen, daughter, you can mourn him just as well from home—’

  ‘How well did you know him, uncle?’

  ‘I knew him well enough. He was my cousin.’

  ‘I knew him. You understand. Like a daughter does. How well do any of these men know him. Knew him?’

  ‘You should go,’ insisted Idris.

  ‘No.’

  Men were turning to watch them as their voices carried over the graveyard. Idris’s shoulders dropped. He turned to look at the procession and walked back to join the throng. Adam watched him walk away from his mum and sister and breathed deeply, grateful that his uncle had backed off.

  The body, wrapped in a shroud of simple white cotton, was removed from the coffin and lowered carefully down into the grave. As Adam watched it disappear into the hole, he felt sick. He wanted to cry. He looked over to his mum. She wasn’t crying, but he hoped she would soon. She needed to cry, more than he did. The ball of mud in his hand was cold and wet. Earth created life, gave birth to flowers, fruits and food. He wanted to smear the mud across his Dadda’s chest. To spread it across his scar and seal it with the earth.

  The ‘lub-dub’ of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves of the heart opening and closing.

  Sorry to hear, sorry to hear, so many people so sorry. Adam walked through the neighbourhood and wished he could draw himself a black hole and be sucked into it. He wanted to scream at his Dadda for leaving them behind. As his father was not living with them it was his role now to look after the family, but it weighed on him heavily, making Adam drag his feet, his head fall.

  Adam walked to school slowly, taking his time, knowing he would probably be late. He also knew that he could say that his grandfather had died and so wouldn’t get into trouble. When he reached the canal path he stopped to admire the graffiti under each bridge, trying to spot new tags and interesting designs. He hadn’t decided on his own tag yet. He couldn’t decide on a word or symbol that defined him. He’d flick through his notepad but had come up with nothing. It had to define him. The bell went just as Adam arrived at school. He stopped at the gate and watched everybody rushing to registration. Leaning against a wall, Adam waited for the clamour to pass.

  ‘Are you OK?’ a voice asked.

  Adam looked up and saw Laila, a girl from his year, standing in front of him.

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  Laila stood close enough for Adam to see her light green eyes. Sometimes they were grey, but today they were green. Her hair was wild, as always, and her pale skin was touched with a little pink. She’d been running.

  ‘You’re going to be late. No use running, then being late,’ said Adam.

  She looked right at him with her green-grey eyes.

  ‘I was running to catch up with you. I hope you feel less sad.’ She threw her rucksack over her shoulder as she turned and walked into the school.

  Adam watched her go and knew that he had said the wrong thing. However much he wanted to, he rarely said the right thing around her.

  Adam always sat at the back in class, closest to the window. He did his best to listen, but as his mum often said, Listening isn’t the same as hearing. She liked to pull that one out on him from time to time.

  Adam floated through the day. He sat in maths and saw fragments of formulas jumble before his eyes. He heard dates, times, places, events in history. He stood in science for reactions and results. And in English he read and wrote words, words, words. In art, he sat in front of a blank page and waited.

  Adam looked up at his art teacher, Mrs Matheson. In his mind he always thought of her as ‘Kindly’. It was in her eyes. Mrs Matheson watched Adam sitting staring at the blank page. He was usually distant, but today he was in another place entirely. She flicked through his portfolio and shook her head. Adam wasn’t the best sketcher in the class. Neither was his composition accurate or realistic or pretty to look at. He would probably scrape a pass in the exams. But his work was undefined. She had tried to tell him that he was able to capture something in each sketch instinctively. He had that rare ability to not filter what he was thinking and put it on the page. Not a single piece could be categorised. To be honest, his work confounded her. Made her think. Made her look again.

  ‘It’s OK, Adam, you don’t have to do anything today. You can just sit.’

  So Adam just sat. Art was his favourite subject, along with English. In either, he could draw and write and feel connected. He never felt more connected than when his pencil touched paper. Like a plug in a socket, he felt energy pulse up his arm and throughout his body. The art rooms had big windows. Usually light helped him think. Helped him concentrate. That’s why he liked the attic room at home. But today no amount of light could help. His thoughts were jagged.

  Mrs Matheson walked over and sat opposite him. She didn�
��t speak. He’d have hated it if she’d asked if he was OK – how was he feeling, how was it at home and all that crap. Instead she sat and drew. She covered the page in vortices. Little ones, big ones, overlapping one another until the page was covered in swirls. Then she used paint, black and red and yellow, delicately adding little strands to give more shape until each vortex was spinning with angry streaks of colour. When she’d finished, she stood up, looked at him and nodded. Adam looked down at his page and at the vortices and put the pencil down. His heart was surrounded by vortices. He understood something then and, picking up his pencil, he drew the shape of a heart. Across the heart, like a slash, he drew an alif. Mrs Matheson walked past and stopped to look over his shoulder. Smiling, she nodded as the bell called for the end of the day.

  The idea of the heart having two sides echoes the biblical image of the two tablets of the law, written in the heart.

  William Tide stood across the road from number thirty-four Marrow Street. He stared at the grimy yellow door and wondered what he was doing there. Before he knew it, his feet were carrying him across the road. He saw his hand bunch into a fist and rap on the door. He waited, half hoping it wouldn’t open. But the yellow door was pulled ajar and in front of him stood a little girl. Tipping her head to the side, she looked at him curiously.

  ‘Hello … I’m … You don’t know me … I just …’ William stopped. He didn’t know what to say, what he was doing here.

  Farah took a step forward right up to the threshold and stared right at him. She signed at William. He looked at her in confusion, not understanding, his need to bolt threatening to overwhelm him. He suddenly realised how he must look to her in his ill-fitting charity clothes – his too-small wax jacket, his too-short trousers and his too-pale face. She signed at him again.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Behind the girl, floating down, there was a voice.

  ‘Who is it, Farah?’

  ‘I should go,’ said William, poised to flee.

  Farah held out her hand in a gesture that made him pause. Behind her, a young woman emerged and came to stand behind Farah, her hand gathering the door ready to shut it in his face.

  ‘No, thank you, we don’t need anything,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t got anything to sell,’ said William.

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  Farah turned to her mum and signed again.

  Yasmin shook her head. ‘I doubt it very much, Farah.’

  William saw the exchange between mother and daughter and heard footsteps behind them. A boy, dressed all in black, stood watching, dark eyes sizing up William.

  ‘What did she sign?’ asked William.

  ‘She said she recognised you,’ replied Adam, surprised and curious. He looked at Farah and then at William, wrestling with something in his head. ‘No, that’s not right,’ continued Adam. ‘It’s difficult to explain, but she didn’t say that she recognised you as such, but something about you.’

  ‘Who are you? And what do you want?’ Yasmin asked in a firm voice, dark eyes flashing.

  William looked at all three faces, and then down at the three steps leading to their door.

  ‘I should go,’ he said, losing his nerve.

  ‘No, wait! Why did you come?’ asked the boy.

  ‘I … I’m not exactly sure … It’s hard to explain. My name’s William Tide. I have a heart in my chest that belongs to you. To your family. To Mr Abdul-Aziz Shah.’

  Turning, Farah signed to her mum and Adam. You two never listen to me. I told you I recognised him.

  The three members of the Shah family stood and stared at the man with their grandfather’s heart. Adam stepped past his mother and pulled the door open.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ he asked.

  William went up the three steps and over the threshold into the Shah family house.

  Farah was the first to turn and beckon him inside. He followed her into the living room.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Yasmin in a furious whisper to Adam.

  Adam closed the front door and walked past her into the kitchen. Yasmin followed him in and shut the door. Daddima, Adam’s grandmother, was busy chopping onions, preparing a meal.

  Pointing at the door, Yasmin shook her head.

  ‘You just let some random guy into our house. Because he said some nonsense about whatever.’

  ‘Why would it be nonsense? Did you see Farah? She sensed something about him.’

  ‘Even if it’s true, what are we supposed to do about it? With it? I mean, he’s not … I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t know either. It … just made sense.’

  ‘No. It makes no sense. None of this makes no sense. So Dadda dies. Doesn’t say a word to us about his heart-donation crap. Doesn’t tell us what he’s thinking, and now two weeks later we have a strange guy in our house. Is that how it’s supposed to be?’

  Silence. Nothing but the dull thud of the knife on the chopping board. The cacophony in Adam’s head was building. The knife, the clock ticking on the kitchen wall and, loudest of all, the steady drum of the heart in the other room.

  William stood in the front room. He could hear raised voices and knew they would be about him. He’d only thought about coming and knocking on the door. Beyond that, he hadn’t planned anything. He watched as the little girl moved towards the far end of the room and sat down at a small table. The light was best there. Opening her book, she began, in short sharp motions, to draw a shape. William sat down heavily in an old moss-green armchair. As he sat down, his legs gave way, like he’d been dropped into the sea with an anchor attached to his ankles. Leaning forward, he rocked back and forth slowly. Everything he now did was set to a rhythm. The rhythm of his heart. The beat of his heart. The lub-dub, his doctor called it. Lub-dub, lub-dub. Before his operation he’d never even thought about it, but now it was playing in his ears, like a song or a tune you just couldn’t shake out of your head. He could feel it pulsing in his ears, in his chest, in the veins of his neck and in the raised threads of his wrists … The arms of the chair were worn and pitted in places. William let his fingers trace the grooves of the coarse material. This was Abdul-Aziz Shah’s chair. Where he must have sat. The little girl looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. She waved. He waved back, but didn’t smile. She signed something. He shrugged and pointed to himself, shaking his head, and mouthed, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘She’s asking if you feel OK,’ said Adam quietly.

  William turned to look at the boy standing in the doorway. He was tall and skinny as a toothpick. His face was all angles and sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Eyes that were glowering at him.

  ‘I feel different to before – odd,’ replied William.

  Adam glanced over to Farah, who signed a flurry of signals and went back to her book.

  William looked at Adam puzzled.

  ‘She said to tell you not to worry about it – we’re all a bit odd in this family.’

  William glanced over to the little girl sitting in the light and back over to the boy standing in the shadows, fingers twitching and dark eyes seeing things he could not comprehend. Putting his hand over his heart instinctively, William looked up at the boy.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do. It’s his heart. I don’t know why he left it behind. I don’t know why I have it. I don’t know anything about him.’

  Adam looked down at the big man in front of him, folded into his Dadda’s armchair.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ he replied, and walked out of the room.

  ‘Surely there is in the body a small piece of flesh; if it is good, the whole body is good, and if it is corrupted, the whole body is corrupted, and that is surely the heart.’

  Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

  Adam sat at the kitchen table sipping a cool glass of milk. It had been the longest day he could remember, and still it wasn’t over. The doorbell rang. He expected it to be his mum coming home from the shops.

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nbsp; ‘Yo! Wa gwan?’ It was Cans, his best friend, music zinging from the headphones around his neck.

  ‘Nuttin much. What you saying?’

  ‘Nuttin. Thought I’d go old school and knock on your door stead of texin,’ replied Cans, smiling.

  And, just like that, Adam felt better. Cans bobbed to some beat in his head as he spoke. The huge headphones looked like two giant bear paws wrapped around him. The music was loud, the headphones trembling from the bass. Adam looked at his friend and grinned. Fresh trim, fresh trainers. Cans had a way of cutting through the sludge of the day with his vibesy energy.

  ‘Come in. Want some milk?’

  ‘Are you mad, fam? Man thinks I'm five years old or summat. I will have some of that strong-ass Indian tea you know. That’s a meal in a mug right there.’

  ‘Awright, awright, I’ll put some on. Come in then.’

  Cans threw down his rucksack and followed Adam inside. As he walked past the front room, he saw William sitting there and automatically held up his hand in greeting. William waved back. Sitting down at the small table in the kitchen, Cans thumbed over his shoulder.

  ‘Bruv, I don’t want to alarm you and that, but there’s some random dude sitting in your living room.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s William. He’s a new addition.’

  ‘Wha? Did you win him on eBay? Who the hell is he?’

  Adam sighed. As he watched the tea brew, he explained how William had come to be there.

  ‘That’s deep, man. I mean, that’s next level, voodoo heart transplantation, mind-bending deep. Deeeeeep. You get me?’

  ‘Man turns up at your door, what can you do? You can’t just turn him away – he’s got a piece of your grandfather in him. What you gotta do, bruv?’