A Thousand Cuts

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It will all be forgotten. Won’t it? No one will remember. No one really cares. Even now, it is in the newspapers, but people buy the newspapers why? For the same reason they watch movies or read a novel. To be entertained. It is entertainment. They read the stories and they gasp and they tut – tut tut tut – but nothing is real to them. Not really real. They look at the pictures, the pictures of him, and they shudder and they say, just look at his eyes, you can tell, can’t you, it is all in the eyes. And they will tut again and turn the page and move on to a story about fox-hunting or tax increases or a celebrity taking drugs. But if it were really real to them, they would not be entertained. If they cared, they would not turn the page. They could not. If what was in the newspapers seemed real, they would not buy the newspapers at all. They would lie awake at night, like I do. They would weep, like I do. They would despair, like I do. They would despair.

Even you. Why are you here? You do not care. Maybe you think you care but you do not. You are here because it is your job. Would you be here if it were not your job? And the questions you ask. Why do you ask them? How will what I tell you change things? It will not. Felix is dead. Felix was murdered. My son is gone and soon I will be the only person in the world who still remembers that he lived at all. He died in vain, Inspector. That is the phrase, is it not? He died in vain and that is the hardest thing of all for me to accept.

Do you know what Felix survived? You do not. I do not blame you for not knowing because how could you know? Even Felix did not know. He was not yet a baby and already he was as close to death as I am to you, here, now, in this room. Children that would have become his friends were dying. His relatives were dying: his aunt, my sister; his uncle, my brother; his grandmother and grandfather. His father, who did not even know he was a father, was dying. They died for no reason, just like Felix. They died because someone told them, believe in this God, He will save you. But it was the wrong God. Someone else, someone who had a gun and who had friends who had guns, decided it was the wrong God. And the real God, they said, was angry. The real God was vengeful. The real God, it turned out, was a devil.

But Felix survived. I survived, which means Felix survived. We came to England. We came to London. The Greatest City in the World. In London, they told us, only the old die. Only the sick die and usually not even then. Nobody dies for no reason. Nobody dies for a God that does not exist. There are no guns, they said. Not even the police have guns. To die from being shot, in London. Ha! Not unless a bullet finds its way over from Africa. So we felt safe. We thought we were being saved. We thought coming to England would save us.

He wanted to be a waiter. In a restaurant. That was his ambition. I laughed when he told me and he asked me why did I laugh? I stopped laughing. I said, Felix, you will be a waiter. You will be a waiter if that is what you choose to be. You could be a doctor too, you should consider becoming a doctor, but if you decide to become a waiter I will love you just the same. He told me he would think about it. He said, waiters get tips, Mother. Doctors do not get tips, do they? I had to agree with him. I had to say, no, Felix, they do not. He said, yesterday I was watching at the window and I saw a man in a restaurant give a waitress paper money. He folded it and he put it in her pocket, just here, in the pocket on her shirt. So on the whole I think I would rather be a waiter. But I will think about it. If you want me to think about it, I will. That is what he said.

He worked hard. He tried to work hard but his imagination interfered. He would dream. He would listen to a teacher and not know later at which point he had stopped listening. He would stare at the page of a book and come to a word and that word would carry him off, to somewhere other than the end of the sentence. He told me this. His teachers got angry with him and then they got angry at me so I spoke to Felix and that is what he told me. He said, Mother, what can I do? I want to learn. I know it is important that I learn. But I have so much thinking to do. I try to hold it off but sometimes I cannot stop it. It swallows me up, like it is thirsty and I am a glass of water. What can I do?

I could not get angry with him. How could I have got angry with him? I think, Inspector, that he would not have been a waiter. He would not have been a doctor either. He would have written stories or sung songs or painted pictures. He would have made something beautiful. He was beautiful already and everything he did was beautiful but others would have seen it just like I did. They would have seen it too.

Because they did not see it. Before he died, they did not see it. Felix was not popular. Partly it was because he dreamt so, I think, but mainly it was because he came from Africa. He was British, English, a Londoner, but he came from Africa. So the teachers complained about his attitude and the children, the other children, they complained about the colour of his skin. Even black children, Inspector. Especially black children. They said Felix was too black. They called him Africa as though the word itself were an insult. They beat him sometimes. They beat him and laughed and said, if it hurts so much then why don’t you ever bruise, why do we never see a bruise?

This was in school, out of school, before school, after school. Felix would shrug. He would say to me, do not worry, Mother. Do not cry. It was my fault, it must have been my fault. Do not cry. And I would wish then that his father were alive and that he were here and that he were with us. Because that is what a father is for, do you not think? To protect his family. I tried but I failed and I failed and I failed. I would walk with him, to school, from school, but then we would both end up running. I would talk with parents and Felix would watch his mother get shouted at, spat on, laughed at and he would learn exactly the things I did not want him to learn, about what people thought of us, what they thought of where we had come from, what they thought we were worth. I would talk to the school and the people I spoke to, the teachers, the headmaster, they would nod and look concerned and tell me that boys brawl, Mrs Abe, it is the way of things in this country. This country. Like it was their country and not my country, not my son’s country. The way of things. Like the way of things was fixed and decided and unchangeable. I have heard such words before, Inspector. Where I come from, such words are like medicine, they make it easier to cope with the pain. But not here. Not in the Greatest City in the World.

So I expect nothing. I have learnt to expect nothing. You seem nice. You look kind. But you know, I think, how this will end. It has ended already. Not for me, for me it will never end, but for everyone else it was over as soon as it began. Felix lived and now he is dead and already the world is forgetting his name. Tell me: will you remember his name? In a year. In a month. In a week. Will you remember his name?