Sunday

Each day of the winter holidays was cold and lifeless – Sunday proved no different. Yasmin Ali, a 13-year-old refugee, rose at seven to tend to the family vegetable garden. She grabbed her rubber boots, chalky with dried mud the previous weekend, from the family shoe cupboard. She swept her hijab over her hair, rough fingers catching on rougher material, and held it in place with a salvaged pin. She wore a two-year-old puffer coat from the local charity shop. It was black, timeless and like her mother had told her, kept her warm in the harsh Scottish wind. She cut a slim, shaky figure with a top-heavy look; it seemed impossible that her legs would hold all that weight.

Once she had her tools, she folded a burlap sack before the weeds that had grown between the frozen pond and the potatoes. She kneeled in the snow next to the frozen pond and began to pull the weeds from their roots. Her body knew the motions well and so the mangled plant matter grew beside her as her mind wandered. She worked steadily and remembered a time when she was milking a camel under a ripe fig tree, taking shelter from the sweltering African sun.

At nine, their council home came alive with the sounds of clunking pipes and hushed conversation. She stopped working and staggered to her feet, shivering. She stood for a while and walked towards the house but stopped before the kitchen door. She trudged back to the burlap sack, placed it in a new position and went on working. She worked steadily again and thought about her book waiting for her upstairs. The sweet voice of her ten-year-old sister, Aya, disturbed her silence.

“Yasmin.”

“Yasmin.”

“Sister!”

“What do you want?”

“Help me with my math homework. Ma said you would help me.”

She shoved a workbook under Yasmin’s nose. The words and numbers swam.

“I didn’t say I would help you. Tell Ma I’m working in the garden.”

She glared at weed in the garlic patch. It had fought for its life, strangled the garlic into submission and won the right to live. Aya cried out again from the kitchen door.

“Mum says you have to help me. You are older and she has to work.”

The weed and dead garlic plant finally came free. She placed it on the ground with the rest of the rubbish and thought she would have to check on the during the school week too. The weed hadn’t been there last Sunday.

“Yasmin.”

“What?”

She was still working and occasionally glaring at the empty hole where the garlic had once lived. “She says you have to help me or else.”

In slow motion, and a slight tremor in her hands, she put down her tools, jumped up from her cushion, and pointed to the where she was kneeling. “O.K.,” she said. “Let’s begin the lesson. Sit down. And do not touch my vegetables.”

She shook her hands and feet to get her blood to flow but her skin was ice and fire. Her sister knelt at her feet in her. She clasped her hands together tightly around her pen on her workbook, but she tilted her chin up to look Yasmin in the eyes. The dull sound of the front door sounded like a shot in the air between them. Yasmin saw the glint of pleasure drain away in her eyes.

“Look at the first question,” said Yasmin.

“Its math. I don’t understand it,” said Aya.

“Try to figure it out first.”

“But I can’t! And my knees hurt”

“Read it one-hundred times and try to figure it out first. Then you can ask me about the question.”

While she read the workbook, Aya flexed her toes and tried to sit so that every bump in the burlap didn’t grind into her knees.

“Get up,” said Yasmin.

Yasmin folded the burlap sack in half twice and put it back in the same spot.

“Sit, Aya.”

“Alright.” Aya sat and tried to smile.

“Have you figured out the question yet?”

“No.”

“Have you read it 100 times yet?”

“No.”

Aya continued to read the workbook and felt dread curl her stomach. Her breath was icy. Yasmin looked at the ugly garden; it was small, bare, and dormant. She looked back at Aya who braced herself and didn’t look up.

“One refusing a sibling's advice breaks his arm,” said Yasmin.

“What?”

“I said one refusing a sibling's advice breaks his arm. Ayeyo used to say that to Ma all the time. Before.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you, too?”

“Yes.”

“What else did she tell you?

“A just sentence cannot make happy both sides at once. And I remember she always used to say one cannot be cured of foolishness. Especially to Uncle Fozi.”

Yasmin began to smile but when she looked at Aya, she remembered, and she stopped. Without rancour, rather with a stinging gentleness, she said:

“Get up.”

Aya got up.

“64,” said Yasmin

“What?”

“64. It’s the answer to the question. Your homework.”

“Oh. But I thought we could ….”

“The answer is 64. You asked for help. There. I helped. Now, go inside. Its cold out here.”

“But I-”

“No buts! Just do as I tell you.”

“It’s just-”

“I’ll scream.”

Aya uncurled herself, patting snow away from her palms and her shoes. She didn’t look at Yasmin until she was through the kitchen door. But before she closed the door to the cold, she said:

“I’ll be back next Sunday. The garden needs more work.”