Читать книгу Favourite Dog Stories: Shadow, Cool! and Born to Run - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 23

“The Whole Story, I Need the Whole Story.”

Grandpa

All this time, as Aman was telling his story, he had hardly looked up at me. It seemed to me that as he was telling it, he needed to relive his memories without any kind of distraction. He spoke so softly that he could almost have been talking to himself, his voice often barely a whisper. Sometimes I had to lean right forward to hear what he was saying. But throughout it all, his voice had been steady, until the very last bit, the moment he’d had to leave Shadow behind. I could hear then that he was fighting back the tears.

When he got up suddenly and rushed out of the visiting room, I was sure it must be because he did not want me to see him crying. I knew too that he might not come back, that he might be too proud to have to face me again after that. But I waited there anyway, because somehow I felt there was at least a chance he would come back. After all, he’d come back before, hadn’t he?

Sitting alone at the table I wished more than anything that Matt could be with me. Aman wouldn’t have run off like that if Matt had been there. They were friends, best friends. Matt would have been able to talk him round somehow.

It was then, with Aman’s story still fresh in my head, that I first began to consider seriously whether there really might be something that could be done to help Aman and his mother – besides just visiting them, I mean.

The longer I sat there, and thought about the poverty of their lives in Bamiyan, of the suffering the whole family had lived through, of their determination to get out of Afghanistan and come to England, the more I hated to think of them locked up like criminals in this place. There was a terrible injustice going on here. Aman’s story had awoken the journalist in me. I wanted to know more.

I wanted to know everything.

When Aman did come back a few minutes later, his mother was with him again. I hadn’t expected this at all. There was so much I still had to find out about. I’d been hoping that when he came back, he would be able just to pick up his story where he’d left off. But I knew Aman was much more shy and reserved with his mother around, so I wasn’t at all hopeful he would talk as easily or as freely as he had before. I could see his mother had been crying, and was still very overwrought. She was rocking back and forth, clutching a handkerchief in both hands.

His mother spoke up then, but only to Aman, and in her own language. When she had finished, he translated for her. “Mother says she had to come and tell you herself that we cannot go back to Afghanistan, that the police would torture her again. She says the Taliban are not defeated, they are everywhere, in the police, everywhere. They will kill her, just like they killed Father. She says we have been living in England for six years now. This is our home. She says our lawyer cannot help us any more, that the government won’t even let us appeal. She has prayed to God that you will be able to help us. Her dream tells her you will, but she has come to ask you herself, to beg you to make her dream come true.”

I didn’t know what to say, only that I had to say something, and something encouraging too, but without making promises I could not keep.

“Tell her I can do my best, and I will,” I told him. “But she must understand, and so must you, Aman, that I am not a lawyer. I’m not sure what I can do, what anyone can do. But I do know that for me to be able to do anything at all, I will need you to tell me your whole story, from the time you left Shadow behind, and got on the bus that day, until now, until today. I mean, how did you manage to get all the way to England? How have you been living, and what exactly happened when they brought you in here? The more I know, the better. I need to know everything.”

Aman talked to his mother for a few moments, to explain things. She was calmer now, more composed. Then he turned back to me, took a deep breath, and began again, reluctantly though, almost as if he did not want to remind himself at all of the rest of the story, as if he was dreading having to live through it again.