Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner Page A

process of discovery, a new library, new shops to explore, new bus routes to negotiate to take me to my English classes. A new college also, as the old site was too far from here, perched as we are on the southern edge of the city, so I have transferred to the Bedminster campus, one bus ride away. Sad to say goodbye to my old friends, my thoughtful teacher, but if Yanit and Abebe can put up with this constant chopping and changing, then so can I.
    I do feel for them, the guilt has never been stronger. Blossoming at school, neighbourhood friendships, the beginnings of a social life. Then these fragile roots torn out, another upheaval, more dislocation.
    It is bad enough for them as it is, what with having to cope with so many bewildering puzzles in their lives. Confusion upon confusion! The challenge of language here, for example. Consider their linguistic history. Think about what they have had to cope with: born into a Tigrinya-speaking environment but with Amharic spoken at home and Arabic in the mosque and Qur’anic classes. Then thrown into an English-speaking world, though with most of their neighbours in Easton speaking Urdu or Bengali or Punjabi. It is more Babel than Bristol, but they cope, automatically fit their language to the context, and seem to thrive in all of them, as if somehow each one complements and supports the others. You would be amazed to see Yanit’s nose buried in a thick English novel, to hear Abebe chattering away to his friends using the latest slang. Oh silly me, I am starting to cry! What an old fool I’m becoming...
    But that inner-city chapter has now ended and I am not too confident that this next one will be as much to their liking.
    Gone are the playmates, the mixed school, the halal butcher, the mosque, the Asian shops and Muslim centre a stone’s throw away. This is a different kettle of fish, black faces most definitely in the minority, a tough, white, working-class world.
    But we beggars cannot be choosers, as I tried to explain to tearful Yanit when it came to breaking the news to her. The lease came to an end, the landlord wanted to sell the property, and after three months of increasingly frantic house-hunting, I had found nothing we could afford with my housing benefits.
    As a result, made homeless, we found ourselves placed by the council in emergency accommodation, in this drab but clean house in Hartcliffe. It is the most space we have had, not only the usual two bedrooms, but a proper lounge, a full-sized kitchen and our own piece of garden behind. The downside of this new location is the road we are situated on, a cul-de-sac next to a field. Even an outsider like myself can see it is a problem site. Neighbours’ gardens are filled with discarded fridges, sofas, bags of rubbish. The field is the nightly meeting place for drug dealers, joy riders, gangs of intimidating youths.
    As always, we batten down the hatches after dark, find escape in our homework, our books.
    We continue to maintain some of our old ties. We still make the trek to St Mark’s Road for the children’s Qur’anic classes. Once a fortnight I take Yanit up to visit Fatima, taking the opportunity to stock up on meat and vegetables and spices in the Stapleton Road stores. But in truth, the page has turned, a new chapter has begun. It is up to us to make the most of it.
    My solicitor phoned on Tuesday to tell me we have a date for my case on the first of the month. We can only pray.
    No news from the Red Cross.
    To you and Gadissa as always we send our purest love. There is never a day, an hour, a minute when we do not miss you. When I say you are always in my thoughts I do not only mean that I think about you a lot, that there is a frequency to the number of times I recall, reminisce, reconstruct, speculate. No, what I mean is that whatever I do, the filling of a kettle, the visit to the baker’s, the queuing for the bus, the brushing of my hair, every activity is flavoured by your absence, spiced by my