The Immigrant

On a Sunday afternoon, when she wasn’t studying or working, Atidje liked to walk from her flat in Belgrave Road into the city centre and take a stroll around the Castle Gardens. She did it because it reminded her of why she had come to this country in the first place. The old black and white houses in Castle Yard, the ruined stone gateway, the cobbled streets and the beautiful flower displays in the gardens themselves reminded her of the England that she’d dreamt about, a genteel and polite country with long summer days immersed in history. It was a world away from the saris and samosas of Belgrave Road with its loud bhangra beats, multicoloured Sikh gurus and pick-pocketing Kosovans. In Castle Gardens she could sit on a bench and imagine that it was no park she was in, but the gardens of a stately home with afternoon tea on the lawn, just like Jane Austen and E. M. Forster described in their novels.

One afternoon in June though, she was approached by an English man with a ring through his eyebrow and a can of some drink called ‘White Lightning’ in his hand. He sat down on the bench next to her, smiled and then spoke to her in a slurred voice that was impossible to understand and the alcohol on his breath hit her like a cloud of noxious gas. She winced and he touched her backside with his hand. Immediately she stood up and began to run. He got up too and started to run after her, but he tripped on a loose slab, fell over and spilt the contents of his can. By the time he had staggered up again she was far enough away to be safe, but his demonic laughter still rang in her ears. In that moment she realised how stupid her daydreams had been: a true English lady like Lizzie Bennett or Emma Woodhouse would never dream of going to a public park alone! And so, she stopped going also, her happiness violated. It wasn’t the danger you understand; if the man had been Black or Pakistani then she might have gone back, but he was not. He was English and so the English themselves had soured her English idyll.

---

She closed her eyes and saw the village. She saw the roughly tarmacked road with the electric and telephone lines by the side. She saw the square brick houses and the ageing Ladas outside them. She saw the mosque with its peeling white paint and the wooded slopes of the Rodopi Mountains. She saw the graffiti on the walls and the peeling posters still up from the last election. She saw the coffee shop with its plastic picnic tables and pictures of chalga stars on the walls. She saw the schoolchildren, backpacks on, walking home from their lessons and she saw the mekhana with the old men sat outside drinking rakiya and Pirinsko. She saw rusty blue and white bus full of headscarf-clad and bag-laden mothers returning from the weekly market in Gotse Delchev. She saw the goats in the fields and the chickens running around in the yard behind her house. She saw her father chopping wood and her brother under their old Moskvich, trying to fix the broken transmission. She saw her mother cooking banitsa in the kitchen and her sister-in-law sewing clothes for her niece and nephew. She saw all of this when she closed her eyes.

She opened her eyes and saw the small, drab room in which she now existed, with its TV, single bed and calendar celebrating the Year of the Chicken given to her by her landlady who is from Hong Kong and runs the takeaway downstairs that causes the whole building to reek of boiled rice.

She closed her eyes again and began to cry.

---

Chris took the tiny round wafer and put it in his mouth. “Amen,” he said and then crossed himself. He walked slowly back to his seat, knelt down, closed his eyes and began to pray. “Lord, help me to do your work. I want to bring loving happiness, to help give someone a life as good as mine. You have blessed me in so many ways, now all that I need is a good woman to settle down with and bring happiness to. Please help me to help others Lord. Amen.”

As he spoke the organ began to play Ave Verum Corpus softly and a warm glow filled his heart. He looked up and saw the statue of Our lady of Fatima smiling at him and at that moment he realised that God had heard his request.

---

She put her book down and went over to the window. The same scene of tiled terraces and grey blocks of flats washed all over by droplets of drizzle that she saw everyday greeted her. She sighed. It was all a world away from the blue skies and snow-capped peaks that she could see from her bedroom window back home in Bulgaria.

Back home…

…home?

But where was her home these days?

The book had annoyed her and made her feel uneasy inside. It was a novel with a message, a message that we should follow our dreams and be ourselves. It involved a man who had followed other dreams and been true to money rather than his soul and who was unhappy because of it. But then, through the help of a mysterious stranger he had come to see the error of his ways, rediscovered himself and in doing so, gained happiness. The message was good and moral too no doubt, but it angered her, for she couldn’t apply it to her life anymore. She had followed her dreams, not been bowed by the pressures of family and convention and where it had all left her but looking out over a dreary Leicester skyscape that offered no hope for the future or consolation for the past.

The thing is, she had been away from Bulgaria for so long that although it was home, at the same time it wasn’t. She couldn’t imagine going back there now, but at the same time, the thought of staying in Britain was equally depressing. Britain had changed her, made her incompatible with the beautiful, innocent mountains of the Rodopi, but it still hadn’t changed her enough, not enough to belong. Like Ivelina – the other Bulgarian in Leicester – she was a lost soul, caught between two worlds. Like the goddess Janus of old whom she’d read about in the Classics that she so loved, she had two faces: one looking back over those pine-clad slopes, smelling the sweet odour of woodsmoke and the other looking forward, out onto Belgrave Road, breathing in the sickly odours of doner kebabs and chicken biriyanis.

She looked back at the book and then at the rain-sodden sky. “Allah,” she whispered, “please send a mysterious stranger to help me out.”

---

To tell the truth, Atidje did not much like Ivelina. In fact, to tell the absolute truth, she didn’t like her at all, and the feeling was mutual. That mutual dislike was based on a mutual lack of respect. Atidje did not respect how Ivelina had become so Anglicised, how she’d hidden every aspect of her Balkan roots from the clothes that she wore to the way that she introduced herself to everyone as ‘Evey’. She didn’t respect Ivelina’s marriage either, which Atidje considered to be as much a flimsy façade as every other aspect of English Evey. Ivelina had married Mark for the visa out of Bulgaria and she stayed with him because he left her alone to act as she pleased, because he paid for everything and because he suited her English image. For her part, Ivelina simply found Atidje dowdy, old fashioned, dull and above all, Muslim.

Like each other they may not have done but need each other they did. Ivelina, despite her great façade of Mark and all her girlfriends from work who loved to go clubbing and share a curry, was, like Atidje, lonely and desperate to talk to someone in her own language. She never admitted this of course, least of all to herself, but it was nonetheless a fact and so every other Saturday afternoon at three, when Mark was at the football match, Atidje went round to Ivelina’s semi-detached to drink coffee and engage in a nicety and falsity-ridden conversation.

This Saturday however, Atidje was shocked to find three other individuals sat in Ivelina’s English sitting room also drinking coffee and engaging in nicety and falsity-ridden conversation.

“Atidje darling, how are ya?” the English Evey asked in her new Saxon tongue.

“I’m fine,” she replied in an English laced with the consonants of the Balkans.

“Atidje, this is Nick and his sister Sally and his friend Chris.”

Nick. Atidje had heard all about him of course, the man who always came round when Mark was working shifts. His presence didn’t surprise her, but the addition of two others, one of which being his sister, now that was a shock. In her village if a girl was having an affair with a man, then his sister would certainly not agree with it, least of all sit down and drink coffee with the harlot. But there again, this was England, the country of “This is my partner, no darling, we’re not married” and “I lived with him for three years, but it didn’t work out”, a different morality entirely, and so perhaps it should not have been such a surprise after all?

She looked at Nick. He was passably handsome but did not look interesting to her. It would be impossible to ever find his soul under all those designer clothes. His sister looked to be produced in much the same mould, but the friend, who sat there looking most uncomfortable and out of things on English Evey’s English settee, (only six hundred quid from DFS darling, an absolute bargain), now he looked a little more interesting.

But what made him look more interesting? She studied him as he sat nervously glancing around Ivelina’s living room, as silent as she was whilst the others conversed. Perhaps it was because stripped as he was of fashion and falsity, she could see a light in his soul that was good, that was pure. He looked at her and she smiled. He smiled back and her heart missed a beat. Yes, there was a look of honesty in his eyes… and boredom. Like her, he was bored by all the prattle of celebrities and soap operas that Ivelina and the others were engrossed in. She looked at him again; he was staring at her! When he noticed her returning his gaze, he looked away guiltily, as if caught committing some heinous crime. Atidje recognised her own timidity in him, and it warmed her heart.

“You don’t seem to be interested in what was happening in the Coronation Street last week, Chris?” she announced.

English Evey looked at her in surprise: when in company, the mouse-like Atidje never spoke!

Chris looked round. “I’m sorry, but I don’t, err… watch it.”

“So, what do you watch then?”

Ivelina glanced at Sally with a look that said, ‘Now this I did not expect, there is gossip to be had here!’

“I watch very little TV actually, mostly films. I read a lot but I don’t watch TV.”

“I also,” said Atidje, “and maybe one time we can talk about the films and books that we are enjoying, but now I am sorry but I think we have interrupted the conversation of our friends. Please, I am sorry, Ivelina.”

“It’s no problem, darling,” replied a startled English Evey.

---

Like all of England’s ancient cities, Leicester is a place not hampered by a shortage of public houses in which her drinkers may consume alcoholic beverages. For the discerning drinker however, that wide choice is alas reduced to a choice of but a handful of venues for the discerning drinker does not deign to look at the sports bars, wine bars and plastic chain pubs with their loud satellite TV and Burberry-clad patrons, let alone will he drink in them. One pub that he will drink in however, and indeed, delight in doing so, is the Black Horse on Braunstone Gate, and it is the lounge of that said establishment that we now find Chris Daly and his long-time friend and drinking partner, Craig Hibberts.

“She is nice, hot really, and clever too. I dunno but I think we might have a chance…?”

“What about Debbie?”

“What about her? That was three years ago, I’m over it now, I have to move on mate.”

“I agree with you there just so long as you’re sure. I mean, I just don’t want you getting hurt again. When that kinda thing happens it’s shit, I know. So anyway, tell me where you met?”

“At Evey’s house, you know, that Bulgarian girl that Nick is shagging. She’s some friend of hers, they’re both Bulgarian, although that seems to be about all they do have in common. Whereas she’s loud and forward and well, a bit of a slapper as we all know, Atidje is quiet and so far as I know – and this is going on what Evey says – would never sleep with anyone whether she liked them or not. She’s Muslim see and they don’t do the sexual freedom thing. Not that she’s particularly religious, but she’s just got standards, that’s all.”

“Good thing she isn’t religious, otherwise you’d be buggered, good Catholic boy that you are. To be honest, I don’t give you much chance though even if you do get round to asking her, after all, them Muslim girls won’t normally look at a white guy, their families would go nuts.”

“Oh no, it’s not like that with Atidje. That’s Pakistani girls and yes, whilst she’s Muslim, she’s not like Pakistani at all, not culturally. I mean, she doesn’t wear the headscarf and all that shit and have her brothers prowling around checking up that she’s behaving. Besides, her family aren’t here, they’re back in Bulgaria. No, if she didn’t tell you she was Muslim, you’d never guess, she’s just like any other East European and to be honest, I do think I’ve got a good chance with her. I sense that she’s lonely and she looks at me in a way that says that she likes me. Plus, we share loads of interests; it’s just getting the opportunity to ask her, that’s all. It’s a bit difficult sat in Evey’s living room with her and Nick gawping at you.”

“I can imagine, but if you think she’s the one then you’ve got to do it. If you don’t, she might pass you by and hook up with some Pakistani lad who can talk to her all about Ramadan.”

“I doubt it, I couldn’t see her being into that, but you’ve got a point, I’ve gotta do it. Next time I see her, then I’ll make me move.”

“Well, good luck mate, that’s all I can say…”

---

The rain drops that settled on the bus windows showed a million upside-down versions of the passing kebab and sari shops. Atidje leaned against the window by her seat and her breath caused a small patch of steam to cloud out some of the drops. She rubbed it away with her hand and gazed out, down Canon Street which stretched off to the east at right angles to Melton Road. Normally this view, with its run-down terraces and despondent Asians depressed her – a dreary street, packed with dreary cars, driven by dreary people in a dreary country – but today she found it inspirational. England seem a dreary place now, but is not anywhere when one is alone? Together though, with the man one loves, why, even Belgrave Road could seem like paradise. And that evening, she would not be alone!

After that first meeting at Ivelina’s she had seen Chris twice more sat on that most English of settees before they had bumped into each other by chance in the city centre one Thursday after she had finished studying. “Are you free now, Atidje?” he had asked.

Her heart had fluttered with the realisation that he’d remembered her name. “Yes, yes I am free for some minutes.”

“Well would you like to go for a coffee with me then?”

“Why, err… yes, yes I would. I would like that very much.”

And so they had gone to that chain shop where the coffee is expensive and not particularly nice and he had bought her an espresso and they had chatted about her studies, about Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens and about how designer clothes did not interest them. And then, after all that, she had plucked up all her courage and asked him if he would like to go for a meal.

And he had said ‘yes’!

She smiled at the prospect of what was to come; her first date in years! She was going for a meal in an expensive restaurant with a nice man and to mark the occasion she was now taking the bus into town and spending her hard-earned pounds and pence on a new outfit to wear.

But what should she choose? Although her eyes looked out onto the passing semis and streetlamps, in her head she only saw herself, decked out in the most elegant of outfits. The silver party dress or the navy-blue gown? The lady in red or perhaps virginial white? Or what about a classic little black number? Her heart raced with the choice, with the realisation that for the first time since she had come to this land, she was actually enjoying herself.

And as the bus stopped at the traffic lights by the Burleys Flyover, she was lost in her daydream, swept around a magnificent ballroom by the handsome Prince Charming Chris, both of her glass slippers firmly on her feet despite the fact that midnight had passed hours ago.

---

Soon after her arrival in Leicester, Atidje had attended an ESOL class at the local college. It was free because the government wanted all immigrants to be able to speak the language to ‘aid integration into their workplaces and broader communities.’ Atidje doubted that anyone with such dusky skin and an exotic name could ever integrate into any broader community so white and coldly Saxon as Britain – after all, her people were not even fully integrated in their own country – but she went along as she wanted to lose her accent and meet some new people. A year later she left with her accent still intact and no new friends out of the classroom. It is true that she could perhaps have made some – Nada, an Iraqi girl who had fled the war there was really nice and she’d always shared coffee with her during the breaks – but she’d never had the courage to actually ask if she fancied meeting up outside of college and once the class had finished, they lost touch.

That day they’d been discussing marriage. The teacher, a young girl named Vicky who’d lived in Thailand for a year, had been asking about weddings and marriage customs in the various countries that the class members came from. Vicky herself was not married; she was English and so she lived with a man whom she called her ‘partner’, but the rest of the class were not English and so lived quite different lives. Aziza from Somalia had been married at fifteen whilst Malika from Pakistan had never even seen her husband before they wed. “In my country a girl must be a virgin when she marry and the father and the mother are choose the husband,” she announced. Nikoleta from Romania then told everyone that it was quite different where she came from. “We wait until we are about twenty-five or twenty-eight before we are marry and then we are choosing ourself of course,” she said. Vicky then turned to Atidje . “Is Bulgaria like Romania then?” she asked. “It’s next-door, isn’t it?”

Atidje felt all the faces turn to her, like she was some contestant on the TV show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ that she sometimes watched in the evenings. She stared at the map of the world on the far wall with arrows on it showing where everyone in the class came from and began to speak:

“Yes, it is true that Romania is next to Bulgaria and also it is true that for the Bulgarians it is the same like the Romanians. But my people – the Pomaks – it is different for them. The girls of the Pomak people, they are marry maybe fifteen or sixteen and only if the parents are agree. The husband must be a Muslim, another Pomak maybe or a Turk. Many girls do not study in the university even when they have good grades because they must looking after the husband and the children.”

There, that was it! The spotlight could leave her now!

“It is the same like Pakistan!” declared Malika. “But please, if you do not mind, I have one question: Atidje, you are not married, yes, but you are beautiful girl, yes? Why is you not marry?”

Atidje did mind but what could she do?! Malika loved the attention and at that moment Atidje hated Malika. However, the spotlight was back on her and it was as if the blond-haired man was asking the £50,000 question and the option to phone a friend had gone. She focused her gaze firmly on Algeria and the arrow pointing to Hussein’s picture and said, “It is true that I have had many offers of the marriage; I was said to be pretty at school, but I did not want to only be looking after the husband and the children all of my life. I wanted to study in the university and so I did not marry. My father was not happy but in the end, he was accepting this.”

‘Not happy’ was more than an understatement! He had been furious when she had expressed unwillingness to marry Fikret Myuktar but how could she have yoked herself to such a nice – but dull and small-minded – man for life? Thankfully her aunt and uncle had intervened and offered to put her up in Plovdiv. Disaster averted, but that was almost fifteen years ago, and she was still unmarried and sometimes she wished…

“Do you want to get married one day?”

It was Malika putting her back in the spotlight, the eyes of a dozen nationalities turned towards her. She stared at Brazil and the photograph of Edguardo and replied, “Yes, maybe one day but I am busy with the work now and…”

And what? She had wanted to say, “and I am too old and ugly now, and I am in a foreign land where no one loves me or understands me, and I am on the scrapheap, and I will never marry because nobody could want me now.” That is what she wanted to say but somehow the words wouldn’t come out.

“Do not worry Atidje, darling,” said Malika. “Insha’allah you will find the good man and have many children soon.”

The class murmured in agreement.

“It is ‘a’ good man,” corrected Vicky.

---

She ran up the stairs and unlocked her door. She slammed it behind her and threw herself on the bed. She could not believe it! She could not believe that she had done it! She replayed the scene over and over again in her mind except in the replays she was a casual observer and the Atidje who had said those words was somebody else entirely, somebody more beautiful, somebody more confident.

“Chris, you said before that you do not have a girlfriend?” the out-going, desirable Atidje had asked.

“No, not for two years now.”

“Well then, I want to ask, can I be your girlfriend?” the sexy, self-assured Pomak girl in the blue jeans and white top had said.

Chris, unprepared for such a forward, modern woman, paused for a moment, but the new Atidje never doubted or swerved from her aim. She smiled at him and that did it. “Yes, yes of course, I would be very happy to be with you, if only you can accept a boring old guy like me…?”

“Chris, you are not boring and not old also,” the go-ahead Atidje had said, eager to share her inner confidence around.

---

Chris lay on his bed and stared at the white ceiling. That quiet Bulgarian girl, Evey’s mate, had asked him out and he’d accepted. He’d prayed for a girlfriend, for the opportunity to be able to make someone else happy, and had not those prayers been answered? It was three years since Debbie, that split that had hurt so much, and he’d ached inside, been painfully lonely, struggled to trust again, but now the Lord had noticed his plight and sent someone to him! And she seemed such a nice girl too! Her conversation was intelligent and interesting; she liked to talk about literature and films, not soap operas and celebrities, and he was fascinated by her tales of the little village that she came from. Evey never talked about Bulgaria, it was as if she was ashamed of her homeland, but Atidje went into raptures about the food, the mountains and the quaint old customs. Of course, the fact that she was of a different faith was not ideal, but her conversation had revealed her to be a Muslim in name only and he was sure that if they got serious, then in time she would turn to Christ – after all, was it not Him who had brought them together and so doubtless He had a strategy mapped out? And as for the no sex thing, well, he respected that actually and besides, he was far from sure that he was ready for sex again, not after how Debbie had betrayed him… Not that he didn’t desire Atidje of course; despite the fact that, like him, she was past her thirtieth birthday, she still had a fine figure, and her face was pretty. No, it was all good, all very good and Chris felt on top of the world.

She sat down in front of the mirror and looked at herself. Was she still beautiful? Yes! Yes she was! The good-looking girl from the Hristo Botev High School was still there. More mature and somewhat weathered it is true, but nonetheless, still there. She smoothed the black material against her skin. She’d long been ashamed of her figure, her wide hips a million miles away from the pencil-thin models in the magazines, but Evey had said that men actually prefer the curvaceous woman these days and when she’d asked Chris which celebrity, he liked the most he’d replied ‘Shakira’, that Colombian singer with the famously wide hips.

She cast her mind back to the evening. The meal had been lovely, and it was so nice, after so many years, to have an excuse to get dressed up again. She recalled the excitement in her heart that she’d felt taking the bus into the centre, browsing the High Street shops and picking out the little black number that she was now wearing. For the first time since she’d come to Britain, she was someone special. She was no longer a student, or an employee, or an immigrant, or even an expert or renowned authority on. For the first time in years, she was a woman.

---

It costs a pound for five tracks on the jukebox in the Black Horse but for Craig it was worth it. The selection was good, and something was desperately needed to break Chris’ silence. After putting on the tracks and buying two pints of Pedigree he made his way back over to the table. “I take it that it didn’t go too well then?” he asked.

“She was devastated,” Chris replied. “I felt like a right bastard.”

“I can imagine.”

Chris didn’t seem to have heard him. The music, as Craig had hoped, had burst his dam of silence and now, as Bob Geldof informed them that he didn’t like Mondays, the whole story came flooding out.

“What I don’t get is that she was so surprised by it all. I mean, we only went out four times and each one was hell, with us bickering at the end over stupid things, yet according to her, those were the best nights of her life. She pleaded with me, pleaded Craig, to give us another chance, yet I had to say ‘no’ of course, ’cos well, you know, you can change some things, but you can’t change the fact that you are ridiculously insular and sensitive. For years all she’s done is study, work and sit in that bed-sit and it’s turned her into some sort of… oh, I don’t know and I don’t want to slag her off as she is a nice girl really, but the thing is mate, she’s petrified of the outside world, petrified I say and before I know it, if we’d stayed together, she’d have made me like her. You think I’m exaggerating I know, but I tell you mate, I am not! She told me off for crossing the road on a red man when there wasn’t even a car in sight and she refused to enter the Castle Gardens because once, years ago, some drunk had tried to feel her arse there. I mean, ok, so that’s not nice and will upset you, but get over it! But the thing is, it was an excuse really and the fact was that she didn’t want to do anything – clubbing, pub, even the cinema; despite that she likes watching films. ‘Let’s just go home instead,’ she said, back to the bed-sit that time forgot, unbelievably depressing just to sit there and stare at the wallpaper whilst she boiled the kettle. I ask you Craig, is that a life?! No, it could never have worked mate, never ’cos we were incompatible and that was that, simple as, but even so, problem was, she was a nice girl, really nice and sweet. If she’d been a complete bitch then fair do, you split up and that’s that, but she wasn’t, and instead she had a heart of gold and was trusting and innocent and not bad-looking too and the only fault with her was – and I don’t wish to be harsh here – but she was as dull as ditchwater, and so that was it. But she needed a boyfriend, ‘cos she was lonely, I could see that, but I was not the guy Craig, I was not the guy and that pisses me off ’cos I wanted to be, I mean I was a bloke who needed a girl and she was a girl who needed a man, and so why, instead of it all being happily ever fucking after, why did I have to break the heart of a nice, good girl and thus become as big a shit as Debbie was to me?!”

“Don’t worry mate, these things happen I s’pose, like with Kate and me. Look, I’ll get you another pint in, try and forget about her, it’s hard I know, but try to.”

“I’m gonna shoot, ooh, shoot, the whole day down,” added Bob Geldof.

---

Two people stared back at her. One, a young man with black hair and the other a girl, the same age, pretty as she had once been, arm around the man, smiling at her from afar.

She turned over the photo and read:

Aunt Atidje ,

This is me and my boyfriend Hakan at the school prom. He is a great guy and what’s more, dad and mum like him. Hope you are well, miss you as always,

Your niece,

Alara

Atidje sighed and stood up. She went over to the wardrobe and took out her black dress. Then she brought it over to the table, folded it carefully, placed it in a carrier bag and then wrapped the carrier bag in brown paper which she then addressed to her niece in the faraway Rodopi. Then, before fastening the package, she took out a piece of paper and wrote on it:

My darling Alara,

I am happy to learn that you are well, and your new boyfriend looks very handsome indeed. Enclosed with this note is a dress for you to wear when you go out with him. I hope it will bring you much happiness.

Love

Aunt Atidje

Then with a sigh, she slipped the letter into the parcel and taped the whole package up carefully.

---

The bricks of St. Patrick’s stand dark and forbidding against the black Leicestershire sky. Inside it is silent – Mass is not until an hour hence – and the pews are deserted.

Well, almost deserted.

On one pew, to the left near the back, sits a man, his head in his hands, muttering incessantly. Fr. Flannery has been watching him from the confession box for some twenty minutes now and not once has he either moved or ceased in his supplications. Curious – and concerned – the priest gets up and moves nearer. He knows the man, Christopher Daly, a regular attendee at St. Patrick’s, a good and devout Catholic. As he comes closer the Daly’s words can be made out: “God, why me? Why her? I trusted you and you let me down. I only wanted to help, just wanted to help someone and I prayed to you, and you answered that prayer, you sent her. She needed someone and I needed to help someone. But it was all a cruel joke! Why God? Why do that across me – and across her? Why did you do that? Of all the girls in the world, why her? She was nice, she was good, but she was not the one for me! We were not matched; we couldn’t cope together! Why did you do that to her, her who needed someone so much? And to me too! Why did you not send someone whom I could help rather than the one whom I could not? Oh Lord, oh Atidje! Why her? Why me? Why? Why? Why?”

Fr. Flannery put his hand on Chris’ shoulder and said gently, “Would it help to talk about it?”

Chris Daly’s head nodded.

“Tell me what the matter is then?”

“I fear that I’ve lost my faith in God.”

---

Atidje gazes out at the rain-sodden sky and sighs. She’s seen it all before, but she wishes that she will never see it again. Her wishes however, do not come true. She is no princess in a fairy-tale or heroine from a novel. No, she is only an immigrant, sad, alien and ageing. And she has no one to blame but herself. Wearily she picks up a pen and begins to write on the pristine sheet of paper before her.

‘Father,

I am sorry for my mistakes in the past and the times that I disobeyed you…’

As she writes, silence fills the bed-sit.

Copyright © 2007, Matthew E. Pointon

Written October, 2007, Smallthorne, U.K.