Short Fiction

Unexpected Angel

Farah Ghuznavi

She barrelled her way through the crowd that had wrapped itself tightly around my shrinking figure, a miniature dynamo of flying blond curls and righteous indignation. “Leave her alone! What are you staring at?!” she barked, her sense of authority belied by her diminutive stature.

The other children withered before the onslaught of that fierce blue gaze, melting away with mysterious rapidity. The two of us were left facing each other in the sudden silence.

I struggled to comprehend my unexpected salvation, as two dimples flashed endearingly to life on Belinda's smiling face.

The ominous metallic thunderclouds overhead mirrored the unenthusiastic welcome I had received at my new school. Refugees from the genocide taking place in East Pakistan in mid-1971; my mother, my brother and I moved to London for safety while my father remained trapped at home by the weight of responsibilities he was too conscientious to shrug off.

I was deeply unsettled by our sudden departure. And the tensions of a newly-fragmented family life had left me disoriented, ill-prepared to navigate an unfamiliar school environment. That too, armed with only a handful of odd words and phrases to make up my splintered English vocabulary. "Hedgehog" wasn't a word likely to be of much use, even if it did describe my prickly sense of vulnerability quite well at the time.

I buckled under the weight of the curious stares from my classmates, and my prayers for rain during our mid-morning break went unanswered. Much too soon, it was time to go out and play. But with whom, I wondered, as my panicked breathing tattooed an unsteady rhythm inside my chest.

A sympathetic look accompanied the pressure of the teacher's palm against my rigid back, but she made it clear I could not linger indoors during playtime. And within a few minutes of my eviction from classroom to playground, I was surrounded by children whose badgering questions I could neither understand nor answer.

Until Belinda appeared, I'd been drowning, sinking bit by painful bit.

Now, she put out her small hand, taking mine in her confident grasp. The concept of rejection never crossed her five-year-old mind. I looked down at those pale fingers contrasting so boldly against my own coffee-shaded skin; and for the first time in forever, I felt safe.

And that was exactly how she kept me for the next nine months, before it was time to return to the new nation that was emerging from the bloodbath.

We were inseparable at school, everyone saw it. And if they didn't understand what had drawn the supremely confident English girl to the shy soon-to-be Bangladeshi, it didn't matter. That's just how it was.

Kindergartners are pack animals; wolves, when they smell blood. Luckily for me, everyone liked Belinda. So by extension, they tolerated me.

Periodically the teachers would separate us in the interests of "class discipline”. Every now and then another girl made an abortive bid for the position of Belinda's best friend. And inevitably, we occasionally had a falling-out of our own.

But when things got complicated, Belinda and I had a well-tested formula to extricate ourselves from the situation. One of us would look at the other and say “What were we fighting about again? I can't remember…”

It provided an invaluable face-saving option for two little girls who both had more than their fair share of pride.

And it worked every time.

Farah Ghuznavi's writings have been published in anthologies at home and abroad. She is currently editing an anthology of new writings from Bangladesh for the Indian publisher Zubaan.