But this lot had looked bored and none of the faculty had even turned up. The applause was tepid, just a few desultory questions. For the first time in a long while, he had felt the cloak of inferiority wrap itself around him. Once attached, it was hard to shake off. When the board had finally convened to interview him he could tell that they were just going through the motions, and when the professor had started texting during one of Sam’s answers, he had stopped mid-sentence, picked up his bag and walked out. On the bus to the station, still fuming, it had occurred to him that now he knew what it felt like, the incoherent rage some of the thugs he’d studied talked about.
The former church hall stank like the refugee camp they had stayed in when they’d first arrived in England, of sweat, boiled veg and unflushed toilets. Inside was a sea of camp beds, mostly mothers with small children. He approached a huddle of women in scarves, in the midst of which, holding forth, in a tacky fake-fur coat and ankle boots, was his mother.
‘Hello, Mum.’
They stopped talking and gazed up at him. He smiled back. He knew what they were thinking. Here comes Sammy the doctorate. Too bad his mother couldn’t share in the admiration.
‘Ah, good,’ she said, as if he had just come back from the shops.
Eighteen years ago, just a few months after they had settled in Doncaster, his father had stepped out for a pint of milk and never come back. Recently Sam had done some digging and found out that he had gone back to Bosnia and started another family.
She got up, took his hands and kissed him purposefully on both cheeks. He noticed that, despite the privations of the last few days, her makeup was still being liberally applied. Wherever she was, she always had a mirror.
‘So wonderful of you to spare the time to come all this way.’
He looked at the crowd. Not exactly starved of attention. Was this new-found appreciation of him mainly for their benefit? ‘So, what happened?’
She smacked her forehead as if dispatching a mosquito. ‘Ugh! They came down the street, smashing everything. Oh, it was terrible, terrible! Jimmy’s away so I was all on my own.’
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘Oh, no. I’d put the shutters down. But they stood there and banged and banged. And the dreadful things they shouted. It was just like Bosnia.’
‘Well, I don’t think there’ve been any massacres.’ It was an ill-chosen remark but he couldn’t help himself. She was adept at exaggeration.
‘After they’d gone the police came, asking if I was okay. I told them how traumatized I was alone so they said I’d better come here. Can you take me to the airport?’
Fuck — had she gone senile?
‘You don’t want to go home?’
‘No, silly boy! Jimmy’s booked me a flight to Málaga tomorrow. He says we should stay there where it’s safe.’
‘In Spain?’
She shrugged, as if it was what any sensible person would do. ‘He has a sea-view flat.’
‘Oh, fine, then.’
He could feel the familiar simmering irritation. She had dragged him back from Oxford to book her a minicab.
Suddenly her face crumpled.
‘What is it, Mum?’
She turned her eyes up to him, wide, full of love and longing. ‘It’s Karza.’
‘Right.’ His heart sank.
‘They still don’t know where he is. Jimmy’s been onto the Foreigners’ Office again—’
‘Foreign Office, Mum.’
‘Yes, that’s right, and they wash their hands of him.’
She didn’t need to say any more. A year ago, his brother and two of his equally useless and misguided mates had boarded a flight to Istanbul, made their way to the border, crossed over to Syria and enlisted with the rebels. Knowing Karza, Sam expected he’d be back in three weeks. But after a month they’d got a photo of him holding an AK47, a pair of bandoliers crossed over his shoulders. And for the first time in as long as Sam could remember, Karza was grinning. He had found his calling.
‘Have you asked Bala?’
She threw up her hands and clasped her forehead. He had heard that Bala, one of Karza’s fellow fuckwits, had come back four months earlier with a serious leg wound. ‘He stays in his room twenty-four out of seven. Says nothing to his mama, not even please and thank you for his foods. So I go there myself. I ask, I beg, “Where is Karza?” He tells me to — I can’t say the dreadful words. Sammy, please, can’t you do something?’ His mother tilted her head to one side and looked him up and down, as if his drenched linen suit was a uniform that conferred on him some official status.
‘Now you are a doctorate, can’t you at least do that one thing?’
From as early as he could remember he and his brother had gone separate ways. While Karza had stuck resolutely with the other Muslim kids, Sam had made a point of courting English friends, copying their habits and manners, like a method actor studying for a role he intended to play for the rest of his life. He had adored Britain from the moment they arrived. He couldn’t believe his luck to have been exiled from what he saw as a backward place, a cauldron of prejudice and religious dogma. He loved school, and his teachers loved him: he gobbled up knowledge as if it was ice cream. He had had no time for Karza and his friends, who seemed bent on denying themselves any hope of advancement.
And yet their mother doted on his brother.
‘Mum, he’ll be lucky if he’s allowed back without a struggle. He can’t expect to go off to Syria and just come home when he’s had enough.’
‘But he has passport. He’s British citizen.’
Before he could reply, she shut her eyes and shook her head as she always did when she wanted to warn him that she would be deaf to whatever he said. Then, just as he was cursing himself for having made the journey, she reached up to him. He sighed, lowered himself into her embrace and just for a moment let himself go — felt the soft warmth that he had so loved as a boy.
‘Mamina’s baby,’ she whispered. ‘I am so proud of you.’
He knew this was a lie. Why do you do this with criminals? Where is the job? she had blurted out once when he showed her a conference programme that featured his name. He still looked forward to when he could tell her he was officially a lecturer, though that goal seemed to have receded beyond his reach — again. Bursaries and fellowships were way beyond her understanding, yet all the time his brother had been at home on his arse in front of Medal of Honour, it was ‘poor Karza’.
She waved at the group of friends who had respectfully withdrawn so they could have this moment together. ‘They all saw you on the television.’
They, not you, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. He smiled and took the compliment anyway. He couldn’t help it: he had always been a sucker for her praise — however guarded. A part of him that he didn’t want to own up to was aware that it was almost worth coming all the way up here for.
But he knew the moment would be short-lived.
‘Since Karza left, you don’t know how hard it’s been.’
He loosened the embrace and stepped back. ‘Well, you’ve got Jimmy now.’
He had noticed her charming their Cypriot landlord even before his father had left, praising him for letting them live in the cramped, badly ventilated flat above his shop. Such a kind man, so good to my boys. It was true: Jimmy gave them Cokes from his fridge, change for the slot machine and free kebabs. Then she had appeared in new earrings, shoes, a winter coat. He soon realized what she was doing to secure these favours, as he turned up the TV to drown the squeals and gasps that floated up from Jimmy’s room behind the shop when she was ‘helping downstairs’.