Read Online This Is Where I Am by Karen Campbell - Free Book Online

will telephone the child-doctor for me. It is like stones being taken from my chest. I have heard the expression ‘breathe easier’ before – Mrs Girdwood said it after church, when we were sipping tea and she was talking to another lady about a robber who pretended to be from the council, and was tricking his way into people’s homes. The lady had told Mrs Girdwood the police had a description, and Mrs Girdwood had said: ‘Well, we’ll all breathe easier when he’s caught.’ Often, I don’t ask them to explain phrases. It interrupts the conversation, and singles me out. Plus, I like the challenge: me and my thoughts, wrestling with all the possible connotations as I unpick words like knots in my net. ‘Easier’ was ‘more simple’, so it was ‘simple breathing’, which implied to me breathing that had been difficult before. But I’d never thought of it as an obstruction. I had decided it was to do with holding the air inside your lungs, because you are terrified to breathe out. Like when you shake behind the thick trunk of tree, in whose branches you are perched, your face crushed tight against its bark and your head squashed low, immobile and you feel your head melt and the pressure is of underwater with the force of not-breathing in case the soldiers down below pause in their gutting of your friends – and look up to find you.
    When they go, you can ‘breathe easier’. That to me was the definition. But when Deborah read my letter and said she would help, I felt a lightness in my lungs. I hadn’t known they were . . . congested? Being crushed? It was a strange, free feeling when she offered to help. Like a crouching jinn had been removed from me. I kiss my munching girl on her forehead, steal a bite of fish. It tastes, and smells, of paste.
    Deborah and I were both ‘easier’ after that. I know I’d embarrassed her, when that guard shouted at us, but it did not diminish my pleasure for the Kelvingrove. The museum wasn’t boastful. It made me feel small as well as full. No coins were exchanged for entry, no bribe was passed to leave. It simply stood there with its doors unlocked and its visitors passing through. Like a temple in which Glasgow kept her history. She chose what of creation to display to the world. In Somalia, people always praise the new. The higher and shinier a building in Mogadishu, the greater it is revered. You can cram more people inside, you can shake your fist at the unblinking sky and say: ‘We are nearly there, beside you. Ha!’ I noticed, though, that Deborah only delighted in the objects that were made, not the ones that were taken. Several times she had apologised, alerting me to signs and explanations. I just wanted to look at the art.
    ‘You understand?’ she had persisted. ‘A lot of this stuff is stolen. You know? During wars maybe? Or when Britain was “pretending” to help countries.’
    I think I annoyed her. ‘If it was war, then much of this “stuff” would have been destroyed. At least it is here.’
    ‘But that’s not the point, Abdi,’ she began. Then, immediately, she stopped. Rubbed her nose. I noticed she’d painted some of that pigment on her face, very faint, but you could see it gathering in powdery flakes where the bulge of her nostril was. I think we were both thinking the same thought. You are going to lecture me on war?
    Even knowing so much of Kelvingrove was filled with plunder, I loved it. Glasgow is both barren and rich, it is poor and it is bold. In Somalia, one wealthy warlord would live here and he would put up gates and guns. Next time, I will bring Rebecca. Tell her we are having a feast. She’s finished her peas and fish, has her hand outstretched for the doofer.
    ‘You want cartoons?’ I ask. She nods. I press the red button and the house is filled with noise. I go to the fridge to get some milk, pass the shelf above the fireplace. My mother would have . . . I grope for the phrase I heard Mrs Coutts use. What was it again? It