Thicker Than Bone

4th July 2009

4th July 2009

Yazid wished this was as complicated as his life ever got: bus timetables and working out how to look smart without dressing up posh.

“Yaz,” Ali said as the bus turned off the main road and started burrowing into the sprawling residential estate in which Ali’s mother apparently lived. “You look fine, stop twitching.”

“Can’t,” Yazid mumbled, brushing off the knees of his jeans for the fiftieth time. They were brand new and jet black, but he kept seeing imaginary fluff and loose threads. He felt a bit sick, to be honest.

“You’ll be fine,” Ali insisted.

Yazid had to disagree. He’d never done this before. He’d grown up mostly in care, and it had taught him one very important lesson: white mothers didn’t want their offspring bringing home stray Asians. He knew it was a bit daft, but…you didn’t get passed over every time a couple came in wanting to adopt without it leaving an impression, you know?

And from what he’d heard of Violet…this wasn’t going to go well.

“Come on,” Ali said, having to pull on Yazid’s hand to get him to move.

The bus slowed and stopped on a residential street that could have been any other—lined with trees rustling in the summer breeze, and a hundred small, semi-detached houses set back from the road. They had identically mown lawns, identically washed cars on identically paved driveways, and the nearest nod to any individuality was the odd fat gnome squatting in the bushes.

“Your mum lives here?”

“Yep,” Ali said, and squeezed both of Yazid’s hands. It had been a bright summer, and there was a tiny crop of faint freckles breaking out on Ali’s face. “Listen. I just want to introduce you, so she can see I’m serious about someone and she’ll have to get used to it, and then that’s it. Okay? There’s no…big test or anything. I mean, you know, don’t kick her cat or something, but…”

Yazid managed to crack a smile. “Okay,” he said. “I’m just crap with parents.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ali said, kissing his cheek. “Just be yourself, and don’t worry. This is about me getting her to stop nagging me about dying alone with a million cats, not about whether you measure up.”

Yazid pushed away the nausea, and offered a bad joke. “Can we get a million cats anyway?”

“Maybe one cat,” Ali compromised, before towing Yazid by the hand towards one of the identical houses—marked out only by a bundle of yellow rose bushes under the front window—and ringing the bell.

Yazid eyed the lawn sceptically. Someone, he decided, had taken straighteners to every blade of grass. No plant stood up that straight on its own.

Then the door opened and Yazid forgot all about the lawn.

Violet Archer was tall for a woman, a backbone straight as the grass and slate-grey hair that looked regal rather than old. Her face was thin and lined, but not quite wrinkled yet, and the hands clasped in front of her were bearing the very first marks of liver spots, but still looked young and agile. She dressed…sensibly, Yazid supposed, in a deep purple cardigan and a dowdy skirt and blouse fit for church.

“Alasdair, darling, you’re early.”

Her voice was soft and cultured—Harrogate rather than Leeds—but despite her words, it wasn’t enthusiastic, merely factual. She looked a little like her son, Yazid thought, with the same sharp blue eyes and slight build. She looked more solemn, a little less lively, but…pleasant.

She looked pleasant. Ish.

“Hi, Mum,” Ali said, hugging her briefly and almost stiffly before stepping back and sliding his fingers around Yazid’s elbow. “Mum, this is Yazid.”

Her eyes slid to Yazid, and her face—froze.

“Mrs Archer,” Yazid managed, trying not to let his hackles rise at that wide-eyed look, and held out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She hesitated before shaking his hand. Their skin barely touched, her grip feather-light. She shook it exactly once before letting go, dropping it like a dead sparrow.

Ali’s fingers clenched in Yazid’s sleeve, but Yazid very resolutely did not look at him.

He could feel his heart beating in his throat.

“Yazeed,” she echoed.

Yazid carefully made sure his face didn’t react to the drawled vowel. She almost made three syllables of his name.

“Lovely…lovely to meet you, dear.”

Yazid summoned an awkward smile. For a half-beat, a silence rolled in before Ali cleared his throat and his mother jumped.

“Yes,” she said, as if answering a question. “Come in, both of you. Tea?”

“Thanks, Mum,” Ali said. “Milk and two sugars for Yaz, he’s got a sweet tooth.”

Mrs Archer said nothing to that, disappearing like a ghost. Yazid exhaled shakily as Ali shut the front door. The hall was thickly-carpeted and homely, pictures on the wall of a pretty blonde woman’s wedding, and Mrs Archer with a giggling toddler in some anonymous photography studio.

But it felt cold to Yazid.

“Hey,” Ali murmured, and kissed Yazid’s cheek. “Stop looking so scared, you’re making me nervous.”

“Can’t help it,” Yazid muttered, sticking his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders. He felt like he was eight years old again, seeing the hesitant looks on prospective foster carers’ faces, and hearing the whispers from the social worker’s office again. The excuses as to why they didn’t want him or Khalid. “I’m sure they’re lovely boys, it’s just…well. We don’t know the first thing about that…culture.”

“It’s already better than when Jo brought David home,” Ali promised, sliding his fingers through Yazid’s again. “Come on, come and sit down.”

The living room was just as quiet and tidy as the hall—plump, squashy furniture in warm colours, but not a sign of life, from the switched-off TV to the magazine-free coffee table. There was a photograph of Ali himself, looking shockingly young, with the blonde bride from the hall.

“Your sister?” Yazid asked, pointing at it as Ali pushed him to sit down.

“Yeah. Jo,” Ali said. “I was twenty, she was twenty-one.”

“She got married at twenty-one?”

Ali shrugged. “Yep. Gunning for the kids and a white picket fence now.”

Yazid took a deep breath and Ali’s hand in the same motion. He could hear the clink of spoons and the low grumble of a kettle in the kitchen. “Are we staying for lunch?”

“Not the colour you’re going,” Ali murmured. “If you feel that bad, we can go.”

Yazid shook his head. “I’m being stupid,” he said, and shut up when he heard the shuffle of feet in the hall.

Mrs Archer materialized with a tray, three identical white mugs lined up with military precision.

“Alasdair,” she said as she put the tray down on the coffee table, “you should have warned me, I made a quiche.”

“So?” Ali asked blankly.

Mrs Archer made a flustered noise. “Well,” she said, and then lowered her voice as though Yazid were deaf, “he can’t have quiche, can he?”

“Why not?” Ali asked, looking bemused.

Yazid bit back the urge to snort.

“Yes, he can,” he said pointedly. “I’ve not been a Muslim in a very long time, Mrs Archer. I don’t follow halal. Bacon’s fine.”

Ali pulled a face and picked up his mug. “Thanks for the tea, Mum,” he said deliberately quickly. “Yazid’s training to be a chef anyway, he does all sorts of food. He’s like a dustbin, he’ll eat anything.”

“Not anything,” Yazid said. He didn’t like quiche, for one, but he wasn’t going to mention it. He’d choke the stuff down if she made him. It was awkward enough already. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs Archer.”

“Violet,” she said as she sank into an armchair, but the invitation didn’t sound genuine. “So,” she continued, a little more cheer injected into her tone, “where are you from, Yazeed? Alasdair’s not told us anything about you.”

Yazid winced, and gave Ali the evil eye. He’d told Ali to tell her—nice, middle-class mums who tried to raise nice, middle-class sons did not, in Yazid’s experience, expect their middle-class sons to bring home…well, men like Yazid—and this was going from awkward to painful really, really fast.

“Bradford,” he said eventually. “I only moved to Leeds last year.”

“Originally, though, dear.”

“Mosul,” he said slowly. “In Iraq,” he added when she simply blinked, and then—there it was. The flicker downwards at the corner of her mouth; the line creasing between her eyebrows before it smoothed and the plastic little smile was painted back in place.

Iraq. The land of sand and failed wars, the land of the Muslims and the Islamic State, the land of burkhas and men called Mohammed. That was all anyone thought of when he said Iraq. A bloody war, a bad alliance with a joke of a president and a hated prime minister, and an enemy nation. Iraqis were the enemy, even after the war was over, even above terror groups from other places. Sometimes, Yazid bitterly thought they always would be. He came from the terrorist state.

A state he couldn’t even remember. A state he’d only seen through Skype and postcards from his mother’s family every Eid. A state he knew no more about than the people who hated him for having been born there. That, Yazid thought sometimes, was the worst part—he was the foreigner who couldn’t even remember the enemy.

“My parents came to Britain when I was two,” he continued. “I grew up in Bradford. My younger brother was born there.” He didn’t mention the accident or the children’s home. One thing at a time.

“It must be difficult,” she said. “Being…you know.” She lowered her voice. “Gay.”

“Well, the mechanics are a little different, but…”

“Yaz!” Ali exclaimed, elbowing him in the side. Mrs Archer simply blinked. “Mum, he’s not Muslim. He doesn’t go to mosque or anything.”

“But if you’re from Iraq, dear…”

Yazid sighed heavily. Okay. Maybe they would go there. “My parents died when I was a kid. I haven’t been to mosque since. I’m not a Muslim anymore. I don’t believe and I don’t practice. So it’s not really any harder for me than it is for Ali.” Except, maybe, for this bit, where everyone else expected it to be.

“I see,” Mrs Archer said slowly. “So. Bradford. What brought you to Leeds?”

The conversation was beyond awkward, Ali more-or-less having to talk for Yazid. He sipped his tea, interjected now and then as little as possible without being rude, and waited in vain for her pinched, plastic expression to fade away and show him something real. He felt tired all of a sudden, tired at having to explain himself again and again in a way Mrs Archer—or Ali, for that matter—would never have to.

Tired of being seen as something other than just Yazid.

But when Mrs Archer got up to check on her oven, and Ali leaned over to kiss Yazid’s cheek and murmur some reassurance, Yazid squeezed his hand and relaxed for a tiny moment in the gentle acceptance of Ali’s smile and the unwavering grip of those cool fingers around his palm.

An hour of excruciating conversation was worth it—for him.