Matt
None of it would have happened if it hadn't been for Grandma's tree. And that's a fact. Ever since Grandma die - that was about three years ago now - Grandpa had always come to spend the summer holidays at home with us up in Manchester. But this summer he said he couldn't come, because he was worried about Grandma's tree.
We'd all planted that tree together, the whole family, in his garden in Cambridge. A cherry tree it was, because Grandma especially loved the white blossoms in the spring. Each of us had passed round the jug and poured a little water on it, to give it a good start.
"It's one of the family now," Grandpa had said, "and thats how i'm going to look after it always, like family."
That was why, a few weeks ago, when mum rang up and asked him is he was coming to stay this summer, he said he couldn't because of the drought. There has been no rain for a month, and he was worried about Grandma's tree would die. He couldn't let that happen. He had to stay home, he said, to water the tree. Mum did her best to persuade him. "Someone eles could do that, surely," she told him. It was no good. Then she let me have a try, to seeif i could do any better.
That was when Grandpa said, "I can't come to you, Matt, but you could come to me. Bring your Monopoly. Bring your bike. What about it?"
So thats how I found myself on my first night at Grandpa's house, sitting out in the garden with him beside Grandma's tree, and looking up at the stars. We'd watered the tree, had supper, fed Dog, who was sitting at my feet, which I always love.
Dog is Grandpa's little brown and white spaniel, with a permanently panting tongue. He dribbles alot, but he's lovely. It was me that named him Dog, apparently, because when I was very little, Grandpa and Grandma had a cat called Mog. The story goes that I chose the name because I liked the sound of Dog and Mog together. So he never got a propper name. Poor Dog.
Anyway, Grandpa and me, we'd had our first game of Monopoly, which I'd won, and we'd talked and talked. But now, for a while, we were silent together, simply stargazing.
Grandpa started to hum, then to sing. "When the stars begin to fall... Cant remember the rest," he said. "It's from a song Grandma used to love. I know she's up there, Matt, right now, looking down on us. On nights like these the stars seem so close you could almost reach out and touch them."
I could hear the tears in his voice. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing for a while. Then I remembered something. It was almost like an echo in my mind.
"Aman said to me once," I told him, "about the stars being so close, I mean. We were on a school trip down on a farm in Devon, and we snick out at night-time, just the two of us, went out for a midnight walk, and there were all these stars uo there, zillions of them. We lay down in a field and just watched them. We say Orion, the Plough, and the Milky Way that goes on for ever. He said he had never felt so free as he did at that moment. He told me then, that when he was little, when he fifrst came to live in Manchester, he didn't think we had stars in England at all. And it's true, Grandpa, you cant see them nearly so well at home in Manchester - on account of the street lights, I suppose. Back in Afghanistan they filled the whole sky, he said, and they felt so close, like a ceiling painted with stars."
"Who's Aman?" Grandpa asked me. I'd told him once before about Aman - he'd even het him once or twice - but he was inclined to forget these days.
"You know, Grandpa, my best friend," I said. "We're both fourteen. We were even born on the same day, April 22nd, me in Manchester, him in Afghanistane. But they're sending him back, back to Agghanistan. He's been to the house when you were there, I know he has."
"I remember him now," he said. "Short fellow, big smile. What do you mean, sending him back? Who is?"
So I told him again - I was sure I'd told him it all before - about Aman had come into the country as an asylum seeker six years before, andhow he couldn't speak a word of English when he first camae to school.
"He learned really fast too, Grandpa," I said. "Aman and me, were always in the same class in junior school and now at Belmont Academy. And your right, Grandpa, he is small. But he can run like the wind, and he plays football like a wizard. He never talkes much about Afghanistan, always said it was another life, a life he didn't want to remember. So I don't ask. But when Grandma died I found Aman was the only one I could talk to. Maybe because I knew he was the only one who would understand."
"Good to have a friend like that," said Grandpa.
"Anyway," I went on, "he's been in this prison place, him and his mum, for over three weeks now. I was there when they came and took him away, like he was a criminal or something. They're keeping them locked up in there until they send them back to Afghanistan. We've written letters from the school, to the Prime Minister,to the Queen, to all kinds of different people, asking them to let Aman stay. They don't ever write back. And I've written to Aman too, lots of times. He wrote back only once, juat after he got there, saying the worst things about being locked up in this prison place is that he can't go out at night and look at the stars."
"Prison place, what d'you mean, prison place?" Grandpa asked.
"Yarl's - something or other," I said, trying to picture the address I'd written to. "Yarl's Wood, that's it."
"That's near here, I know it is. Not far anyway," said Grandpa. "Maybe you could visit him."
"Its no good. They dont let kids in," I said. "We asked. Mum rang up, and they said it wasn't aloud. I was too young. And anyway, I don't even know if he's still in there. \like I said, he hasn't written back for a while now."
Grandpa and I didn't talk for some time. We were just stargazing again, and that was when I first had the idea. Sometimes I think that's where the must have come from. The stars.
