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HOME AND AWAY

Jamal Mahjoub

The first thing that struck me about the kid was the stink. I felt my gorge rise and had
to fight the impulse to throw up. A putrid combination of rotten organic matter and
unwashed clothes, like he’d been sleeping in a waste container for weeks, which he
might well have been. It was all I could do to hold him at arm’s length. Fenton was
talking to the waiter in his broken Spanish. I was supposed to make sure the boy
didn’t get away. After a while, though, it began to get to me. It felt silly holding on to
him at all. Wrong. An abuse in some way. Here we were, three well fed, fully grown
men, using force to restrain a skinny kid who was twelve years old at most, not too
tall for his age, and clearly malnourished into the bargain. If he had been struggling
perhaps it might have been justified, but he was making no move to run for it. On the
contrary, all the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He just stood there with a
pathetic expression of resignation on his face, the kind you might expect to see on a
condemned man. I tried to imagine what lay in store for him; a juvenile detention
centre maybe, with deportation at the end of it. It didn’t sound like much, but then
again, he didn’t look like someone who’d had a great deal of luck in life.
Fenton and the waiter were still talking. I had the feeling Fenton’s Spanish
was really not much better than mine, though he always claimed to be fairly fluent.
The waiter didn’t care either way. He was a nasty piece of work. That much was clear
from the moment we sat down. Dressed in a white shirt, black tie and waistcoat, his
hair slicked back with some kind of oil, he approached our table with nonchalant
reluctance, taking our orders with disdain while staring off into the distance, watching
a girl cross the square, a pigeon circle the sky. Then he sloped off towards the interior
of the restaurant without a word. Fenton was oblivious.
‘What a great place,’ he grinned.
It’s what happens. A few years ago you could still describe the old part of this
city as charming. It was possible to wander for hours without haste. People still
treated you with respect. These days they have seen enough ugly tourists to make
them despise us collectively as a breed. The charm is waning. Now they are on you
like a flock of vultures; waiters waving menus in your face, confidence tricksters,
beggars kneeling like penitents on the pavements, bearded men touting cans of lager
at every corner. The innocence has gone. A stream of insistent buskers turned up at
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our table one after another, with all the spontaneity of a chain gang. Throwing circus
clubs in the air, strumming out of tune guitars, they gave a perfunctory performance
and then demanded your money. It was an extortion racket. If nothing was
forthcoming they were quick to curse you in one of a dozen languages.
By now I was supporting the kid more than restraining him. If I had let go of
his arm he would have collapsed to the ground in a heap. There wasn’t much more to
him than skin and bones. The right side of his face was swelling up from the hefty
slap he took when the waiter grabbed him. The rotten, miserable sight of him made
me feel ashamed. An hour or so ago I was still living under the spell of the projected
illusion that this city, like so many other places in the world, was a playground for
people like me. We flew in on jet planes and checked into comfortable hotels, we saw
the sights, ate in restaurants and bars. If nothing had happened, I would have walked
back to the hotel and fallen asleep thinking that all was well with the world. Instead,
here I was, allied with a waiter who had all the charm of a bulldog terrier, holding
onto a foul-smelling urchin waiting for the police to arrive. I’m not naive, there are
street kids all over the world and they can be ruthless. Some will cut your throat for a
handful of change. No, what sickened me was the crowing, the sense I got from both
Fenton and the waiter that we had done something fine and upstanding.
The waiter had a lean edge to him. With a caved in chest and dull rings around
narrow eyes, he was enjoying the moment. Lighting a cigarette, he blew smoke
everywhere as he fired questions at our trophy. The kid didn’t respond, but that only
spurred him on. From time to time he prodded him in the head for good measure,
clowning for his colleagues, the other waiters, who stood by with folded arms
watching the show. It was malicious and unnecessary.
I didn’t understand Fenton’s attitude. Smiling along with them as if trying to
convince the world how much he was at one with the pueblo. It was all part of his
man-of-the-world act and I was kicking myself for not having had the courage to tell
him what I thought of him earlier in the week. If I had done, I wouldn’t have been out
with him this evening. I couldn’t stand him. The swaggering arrogance of a man who
has all the answers, Fenton represented everything I hated about America, and yet I
was bound to him, needed him, courted his approval even.
It was an inglorious end to what had otherwise been a successful trip. These
weeks away from home were always tricky. You wound up drinking too heavily,
smiling too much and generally feeling out of sorts. I hadn’t been keen on coming in
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the first place, particularly when I knew I would be acompanying Fenton. We had
started out together, but his reputation had grown over the last couple of years. Bright
and aggressive, he had shot up the ladder. You always knew where you were with
Fenton, people said, though I had never found that. We had never had a problem,
though. Now that he was senior to me, however, things had changed. He had flown in
from the New York office - on business class, as he kept reminding me; ‘Not like the
old days stuck back in coach,’ he laughed. Another of his attempts to imply
complicity. Deep down I suspected that the reason he kept on that was to draw
attention to the fact that he had come so far, while I, having remained in London, had
progressed very little. The reasons for that stagnation I didn’t begin to expect him to
understand, so I didn’t even try to explain. Still, we managed to get through the week
without any serious mishaps or disagreements about anything. It just lay there,
whatever it was that didn’t match up, unspoken between us, ready to erupt at any
time. I think we both knew it and preferred it to stay down there for the time being.
We fell back on our assigned roles. I was the numbers guy. Fenton the salesman. I
don’t think either of us really understood how the business worked. We could talk
about it, but we didn’t actually grasp the mechanisms in play. Selling ideas, that’s
what we did. To get to where we wanted to go we would explain rises and falls in the
market, the impact of technological development. Contraction and expansion. The
language became and end in itself. We were both good at explaining things away. We
could identify weaknesses and strengths, where to cut, what sacrifices to make. We
worked well together, Fenton and I, and by the end of the week had managed to
secure terms that exceeded our best expectations.
So tonight had been kind of a celebration. The end of a good week and of a
partnership that neither of us, hand on heart, had really expected much of. Fenton had
been in exceptionally high spirits, insisting that he was going to treat me personally to
a great evening. In the hotel bar we drank caiprinhas before setting out, and on our
way to dinner we picked off a couple of cocktail bars that were in the guidebook.
Fenton insisted that he knew the city like the back of his hand, a cliché he repeated
endlessly, although I had clearly spent more time here than he. A fact that he was
happy to overlook. We talked about this and that, though nothing of any real
consequence. He recounted a few inside stories, scandals and the like, involving some
of the top people he claimed to know on first name terms – though as with everything
Fenton said this had to be taken with a good pinch of salt. As the evening wound on
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the conversation took on a sentimental tone, as we talked about wives and children,
painting a picture that would undoubtedly have struck our respective spouses as quite
unfamiliar. It served a purpose, filling a gap between two men who felt no emotional
bond and yet were bound together by duty; it added some colour to the barren
nowhereland separating us.
I suppose this only compounded my feelings of dishonesty. I didn’t like
Fenton yet couldn’t bring myself to say so. The longer I stood there listening to him
chatting away casually to the waiter, the more I felt it. Fenton brought out the worst in
me, and I knew why. I was afraid. For the first time in years I felt that my job was in
danger. Throughout the week we had skirted round the direct impact of the crisis we
were sent here to deal with, but we both knew that things were evolving outside our
control. All you could do was hang on and ride out the wave. But I knew that
Fenton’s seniority counted, and that once he was back in New York he could be a
useful ally. So I went a little further than I might ordinarily have. I laughed at his
long-winded and usually dull jokes. I listened patiently to his hopelessly ill-informed
dissections of Europe’s social and political problems. I commended his judgement
when it came to selecting wines, and turned a blind eye to his lewd remarks about
waitresses and women in general. By the end of the week I was his. He could have
strapped a collar round my neck and led me about, I wouldn’t have uttered so much as
a whimper in protest.
There was a kind of reckless air about that evening, as if, sensing we had come
to the end of our collaboration, we could afford to play it a little free and easy. We
were giddy, acting like we were still in our twenties. We certainly did a good job of
trying to drink one another under the table. In a stylish, wood-lined bar, Fenton
ordered a couple of daiquiri’s, which he insisted were invented by Hemingway, who
turned out to be one of his heroes. I never really thought of Fenton as the type to take
an interest in literature, but here he was lecturing me about the Spanish Civil War.
‘He was here of course,’ Fenton wagging his head as if he knew the man
personally; ‘America to the rescue, as usual.’ His voice rising as he turned into a loud
boor. The bartender glanced in our direction a couple of times. They had probably
seen their share of noisy, drunken Americans. An empty swathe had parted around us
as people moved away. ‘Along with some English guy...?’
‘Orwell?’ I suggested.
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‘That’s the feller.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘For Whom the Bells Toll,
now that’s a great novel. Read it?’
‘I always heard it was wildly inaccurate.’
Fenton straightened up. ‘What? You heard what?’
‘By all accounts Hemingway adjusted the facts to suit his purposes.’ I had
only a vague idea of what I was talking about, but I couldn’t help it. ‘He was one of
those champagne celebrity journalists who flew in for just long enough to take a look
and then get out as fast as possible. They were all at it. It was a status thing.’
‘Champagne celebrity?’ Fenton looked aghast, swaying back and forth on his
barstool. ‘I must have read it about five times or so. I adore that novel. Adore it.’
‘Maybe we should go and eat,’ I said, catching the eye of the bartender again.
Somehow we rolled out of there and wound up on the square where we
ordered the most expensive dishes on the menu and a good bottle of wine which soon
became two. Fenton was paying for the wine, he insisted. I didn’t care. Let him have
his moment. I guess we were making more noise than usual and perhaps that’s what
attracted the kid to us. It was as we were leaving that he brushed up against Fenton
who was still talking, outlining some brilliant strategy he had once put over on the
Swedes, or perhaps it was the Finns. He actually turned around to apologise, thinking
he had bumped into somebody when he saw the kid darting away. That was when he
felt for his wallet.
‘Son of a bitch!’
It would all have been over then, except for the narrow-eyed waiter. It was no
doubt a daily occurrence, a local sport. Some sap of a tourist gets rolled while
wending his unsteady way home. He was ahead of us all, even the kid. Stepping into
the boy’s path he grabbed his arm and backhanded him across the face. You could
hear his knuckles crunching into the boy’s cheek with a hard flat slap like a cord
whipping against a sack. The boy went straight down and Fenton’s wallet skidded
back almost to its owner’s feet.
So there we were, with me holding the kid’s skinny arm and trying not to puke
up all that seafood and wine, and Fenton playing out his fantasy at being Hemingway.
From the smell of him the kid had been sleeping rough for weeks. I had read in the
paper that they stowed away underneath the big trucks driving up from North Africa.
They lodged themselves in under the chassis and held on for dear life. Some got
caught, but that was a minor hazard. The real danger was dropping off. If you fell
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asleep and slipped off your perch you would be crushed under the wheels, or hit by
the next vehicle. You ended up a bloody smear on some dark, godforsaken stretch of
empty road. It happened all the time. You had to be pretty desperate to try something
like that. I thought about my own son, who was around the same age, and expected to
be driven everywhere, to football practice or a friend’s house two streets away.
Fenton winked at me. ‘Hang in there,’ he said, enjoying that sense of being in
charge of the situation; ‘The guy says they often carry knives. You could lose a
kidney, or worse. So keep a tight grip on him.’
It was the waiter’s idea that we hold the boy and call the police, but they were
taking their time. I couldn’t see the point of it myself. We had the wallet. Let the kid
go. No harm done. Fenton took the waiter’s side, of course; ‘You can’t allow yourself
to be complacent on this one. These kids run wild. Even the law can do nothing to
stop them. The waiter says they have to let them go after a couple of weeks anyway.
Can’t charge them if they are underage.’
‘If the law can’t stop them why are we waiting for the police?’
Fenton looked aghast; ‘Do you have no sense of civic duty?’ I was letting the
side down. It was something he stressed all the time. I had heard it twice a day this
whole week. In times of crisis the companies that pull through are the ones that
manage to instill a sense of commitment in their employees. ‘Loyalty has no price,’ as
he liked to put it.
‘It’s a matter of principle. You want to go back to the hotel, that’s your call.
Me, I’m staying until this gets done.’
I couldn’t really walk away from that, so I gamely held on to the kid’s arm.
‘Ask him why the police are taking so long.’
He rolled his eyes, but relayed the message and the waiter went back inside to
call a second time. ‘That’s why they still worship Franco in these parts,’ Fenton shook
his head. ‘He was the only one who could get anything done around here.’
‘It feels like he might have a fever,’ I said. The kid’s arm was burning up.
‘For Christ’s sakes don’t get too close, they carry all kinds of diseases.’
The boy really did look weak. His face was covered in sweat. When he
gestured at the kerb as if he wanted to sit down, I nodded okay. I’m not sure how it
happened exactly, but his weight shifted as he made to squat down and I was caught
off balance. It all happened so slowly I didn’t realise until it was too late. His bare
arm slithered through my hand. As I tried to get a better grip he twisted lithely. I
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stumbled and I threw out a hand, grabbing wildly but managing only to hook his shirt.
I felt something rip and then he was gone, springing away down an alleyway to
disappear into the shadows.
‘Oh, well done!’ shouted Fenton, who turned to walk in a circle muttering
fuck fuck fuck. A set of flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the cops and the
whole thing turned into a long, wearisome waste of time. I stayed out of it. Fenton and
the waiter were talking nineteen to the dozen. There was a crowd of onlookers
gawking at us as the cops, a man and a woman, filled out the forms with all the
enthusiasm of office functionaries whose lives were spent in pointless, time-wasting
routines. I noticed a small square of white card lodged at the foot of one of the big
square pillars. Leaning down, I picked it up.
Flipping it over in my hand I held the card up to the light. The moving
shadows shaped themselves into an image of a young woman holding a baby. She was
herself not much more than a child, standing in the open yard of a house. Who was
she? The picture must have fallen out of the boy’s shirt as he made his getaway. His
mother perhaps? The photograph was badly creased as if it had been folded and
tucked away countless times. I wondered if the baby was the kid himself. I looked at
the woman in the picture and tried to imagine what had happened to her, where she
was now, if she knew what had become of her son?
‘Is there anything you want to add?’ Fenton called over. I shook my head,
quietly tucking the picture away in my jacket.
Fenton and I parted company outside the hotel.
‘I’m not tired,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll walk around for a bit.’
‘Whatever,’ waved Fenton. ‘I’m going right to bed. I’m beat.’ On the short
walk back he had uttered hardly a word. Now he was avoiding eye contact, his gaze
bouncing from pavement to doorway to street again without finding me once. He was
clearly still annoyed at me for letting the kid go; ‘We need to talk in the morning,’ he
said in parting. ‘There’s something I have to go over with you.’
It didn’t matter to me that the kid managed to get away, but I realised it was
somehow important to Fenton. And that was what this partnership thing was all about,
wasn’t it, respecting one another’s priorities? I was convinced that Fenton no longer
trusted me. On the way back to the hotel he seemed to hint that I had let go of the kid
on purpose. Why he thought this, I couldn’t say, and he did not elaborate further, but
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fell into a sullen silence. It was as if what happened was confirmation of something he
had suspected all along.
I couldn’t see the point of getting upset. It was over. He had his wallet back,
and in all likelihood the cops would never find the kid. Even if they did they had
nothing to charge him with. I would apologise to Fenton tomorrow morning at
breakfast and we would make a few jokes about it and the incident would be
forgotten. It would join his long list of anecdotes to recount in the future. Things that
happened to me abroad. He would be telling the story in cocktail bars and sales
conferences for years to come.
I wandered along, happy to be alone, feeling a need to open up my lungs and
clear out my head. I expected the town to be closing down at that hour, but it was still
early by local standards. I passed several places that were full of life and paused
outside an old fashioned bar with painted tiles on the wall. On impulse, I pushed my
way inside, suddenly feeling the urge to lose myself among ordinary people who had
nothing to do with Fenton and all the rest of it.
It was noisy and packed. The reason for the commotion was a football match.
All attention was focussed on a screen placed high on the opposite wall. Every single
move of the ball was like a twist in a complex drama, drawing gasps and sighs. The
room was thick with smoke and clamour as they tried to cheer their team on.
Listening to the comments around me, I sensed that my understanding of the language
was improving, perhaps it was a matter of confidence, having witnessed how Fenton
could get away with so little. The match was heating up and everyone was getting
very excited. It was the national team playing against an unidentified African country.
Spain was losing.
As I eased myself onto a stool by the bar the middle-aged couple sitting next
to me quietly rearranged themselves. The man tapped his wife discreetly on the
shoulder. She glanced round and then shifted her handbag to the other shoulder, away
from me. I pretended not to notice. It may have meant nothing, but I was instantly
aware of the fact that I was the only person in the bar who wasn’t white.
Most of the people I know and work with like to think of themselves as being
above race. We use our relative wealth and power to steer a course through life as
sophisticated citizens of the world. We travel widely and freely, order confidently in
fine restaurants, can tell the difference between one wine and another. But away from
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the boardrooms and fancy restaurants, the hotel lobbies and tour guides, you become
nothing more or less than the colour of your skin.
As the world becomes porous, as frontiers dissolve and borders come down,
we find ourselves brought face to face with our collective humanity. And every once
in a while – in a brief glance, a passing remark - we glimpse the abyss that lies
beneath. I was suddenly aware of the people around me in that bar, feeling every
glance in my direction, every whisper, as if the hairs on my skin had grown sensitive
to the slightest change in the atmosphere. It was just a football match, but it seemed to
run like a hot knife along a nerve that lay raw and exposed in the world.
At that moment a cry of despair sounded. On screen a group of players
where jumping up and down and hugging themselves. Some were in the corner
wiggling their hips suggestively. The Spanish players looked dejected.
‘Ah,’ said the old man disgustedly. ‘Look at those fools. We pay them
millions and they can’t even score a goal. All those moros get paid is a couple of
chickens and they can still beat the shit out of us.’
Many now turned their backs on the screen in disgust and began ordering
more drinks to drown their sorrows. All over the world people dreamed of coming to
Europe, where the footballers were pampered and paid vast sums of money. But the
pitch was a universal leveller where everyone was equal and anything could happen.
That was what made it interesting.
The match ended in defeat for the Spanish team. I finished my drink and
started back. I was almost at the hotel when the first blow struck me on the shoulder,
propelling me forwards. Someone hooked my foot at the same time, causing me to go
down on one knee. The old flagstones were heady with the smell of rain and piss.
They were on top of me like a heap of wet sand. I struggled, but there were four or
five of them. They were fast, too. Deft fingers quickly located my wallet and removed
it. I pushed back as I heard small feet scampering away. Only one remained. I could
feel his hands patting the sides of my jacket, going through methodically. I realised
instinctively what he was looking for just as his hand finally found the photograph. I
felt the pocket give as it was torn frantically away in quick, spasmodic jerks. A sound
like the world coming apart. Then the knee in my back was lifted and I rolled to the
ground. As I tried to get up, I glimpsed the shadow of the boy thrown high across the
medieval walls, between the old stone blocks, scarred and chipped by centuries of
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conflict and strife. A spirit running soft-footed into the dark folds of night. I felt a
strange thrill, and silently wished him good luck.
I missed Fenton at breakfast the next morning. In the taxi on the way to the
airport he explained that the company would not be renewing my contract;
‘I’ve been trying to think of an easy way to break this to you, but the long and
the short of it is that there isn’t one.’
‘I don’t understand, all week you’ve said what a great team we make.’
‘I admit it,’ Fenton stared out at the passing buildings. ‘I had high hopes for
you. Truly. The fact of the matter is that in lean times we have to cut close to the
bone. We can’t afford to keep anyone at this level who is not a hundred percent on
board. In a way,’ he surmised; ‘You are the victim of your own success.’
We were parked at a set of traffic lights. Bright sunlight glanced rainbow
colours off the spectacular arched roof high above us on the other side of the street. I
knew the building, had heard how it was meant to represent Saint George’s legendary
fight with the dragon. The carved windows were eyes and bones of wrought iron. I
had seen it before, but had never really understood. Now I saw how the green tiles,
swimming with turquoise and magenta, did indeed shine like the scaley skin of some
ancient, long forgotten beast. Then the lights changed and we moved on.
END

Questions while you read:

1. What does the title suggest? Why this title?

2. Where and when does the story happen? Which other places are mentioned?
From a post/colonial point of view, what do these three places denote?
3. How is the narrator described? Fenton? The little boy? The waiter?
4. Why are Fenton and the narrator in the city and what is their relationship like?
5. How does power intervene in the story? What worlds are confronted in the
story? (p. 6)
6. Once he’s holding the kid, what is the narrator´s feeling? (p. 6)
7. What does the photograph show and imply? (p.7)
8. What happens in the bar (p. 8)? What are the people doing there? What do we
learn about the protagonist there? To what extent is this information relevant
for the story’s development?
9. “Most of the people…” (pp. 8-9) After reading this paragraph, what would
you argue the story is about, mainly?
10. Next paragraph: “As the world becomes porous…” (p. 9) In what way is the
football match representative of what is going on in the world?
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11. What comments are heard in the bar? How do these contrast –or connect- with
the situation the protagonist is going through?
12. Who attacks him? What are they looking for? What are his feelings?
13. Why is the company not renewing his contract?
14. What does the final reference to St. George and the Dragon suggest?

Discuss the following quotes:

1. “The innocence has gone” (1)

2. “We fell back on our assigned roles” (3).
3. “Fenton insisted that he knew the city like the back of his hand.” (3)
4. “America to the rescue, as usual.” (4)
5. “champagne celebrity journalists” (5)
6. “The boy really did look weak” (7)
7. “You are the victim of your own success” (10)
8. “Then the lights changed and we moved on” (10)