Anna is staring at the bedroom ceiling, trying to make out the pattern of electric stars the night light  is projecting.  She knows about stars and these are nothing like the stars she watched with her grandfather from their garden in Syria.  

There  she could spot the sharp white of the planet Venus on the horizon and the rusty red of the planet Mars.  She could name some of the constellations, her favourite being Orion’s Belt, so clear and full of stories.  She knew that stars all shift and dance through the sky as the world, her Syrian world, keeps turning.  Now at night in Cardiff, in this sixth floor flat, she can’t even find the stars.  They are hidden from her by murky clouds and sodium street lighting, as if they too have had to run for their lives.

 

The nightlight had once been someone else’s, like her bed and the clothes she wore today.  It’s an odd kind of borrowed life.   A week has now passed since she and her mother moved into the flat.  This too was once someone else’s, but now it's theirs.  It's not a boat or a camp or a hostel.  It’s not their real home in Syria, but it's theirs now and she is grateful.   It is safe and they can lock the door.

 

Words have cluttered and crashed in around her.  Somewhere between being hidden in the boot of a trafficker’s car and arrival at the refugee camp, Anna stopped speaking.  Now in Wales, she hears the words ‘leave to stay’ and sees the relief in her mother’s face.  She adds the words to the others unspoken, piled-up in her eight year old mind: asylum, refugee, them, camps, passports, boat people, agencies, sanctuary, illegal.  

 

Words have become dangerous, treacherous things to her.  There were the anxious troubled words exchanged quietly between her father and grandfather.  Then there were words used more urgently as her mother Salama used them, at first in whispers and then in sobs.  There were the crisp words on the radio and the closely attended words on newspapers and leaflets.  Then came the angry words between father Rashad and her brother, Kenan, followed by the heartbreak words of farewell.   Soon she experienced the urgent demanding words of strangers and the hard hearted edge words when men took things from them.  In Wales, she found kind words and cold formal words.  Sometimes there were no words, just hard looks.

 

Anna gives up on  the false stars and looks for Po.  Sometimes he is hiding under her bed.  Sometimes she has to just close her eyes and open them again to find him there beside her.    Nobody should underestimate the size of a polar bear.  With a body length of 2 metres, he occupies most of her little bedroom.  His coat is as white and shiny as her long hair is black and glossy.  She loves the softness of his brilliant fur and his velvety black eyes and furry eyebrows.   Together they have developed a language all of their own. One without words.

 

She is comforted by his presence and stretches out her hand to stroke his head.   It’s been a long day in this strange world.  Now she needs to change schools, from one she had only just joined to one nearer the flat.   Through all of this, Anna’s way of coping has been to have Po at her side.  Someone only she can see and talk with, who shelters her and comforts her.  He also makes her laugh, like when he walks alongside her, his huge feet padding out a slow rhythm as she tap-taps beside him. Then there’s the rhythmic roll of his bum as he strolls along that never fails to make her giggle.

 

He had arrived beside her when the overcrowded boat the traffickers had put them in hit turbulent weather.  The sea looked like it was going to gobble them up.  People were beginning to scream and she could hear voices in prayer.  Her grandfather was holding her hand, but she could tell he was scared too.  It was cold and dark.  The vicious waters spat, coiled and drenched them all.  Her grandfather at the beginning of the journey had read from the book her brother had given her about a polar bear and the night sky.  Later as the storm brewed he had tried to tell her stories, but she could no longer hear him through the crashing and the screaming. 

 

She closed her eyes, wishing she was at home, dry, warm and with her father’s arms enveloping her.  Then she felt it.  She was no longer sitting cold and wet on a bench in the boat.  She was cradled by a huge polar bear and was sitting deep in his fur.  He was holding her close to his belly, so his warmth spread into her.  In spite of everything she slept, only to be woken on a beach, the broken boat scrunched on the shore.  She was in her grandfather’s arms and her mother was telling her they were safe from the storm.  Over her grandfather’s shoulder,  she could see Po and knew he would not leave her.

 

This evening, she is  beginning to fall asleep, but not before she and Po have silently discussed ‘school’ and have  signalled  goodnight to each other in bonded and secret companionship.

© Gaynor Kavanagh