aBigForehead

I left work just after 5. I had an appointment with a pamperer.  I booked a pedicure and a facial last week on a day when I thought the sleeplessness would drive me to ogre-like behaviour.  What either would do to cure the mood or the insomnia I didn't know but it mattered not. I deserved it.

Later, after nearly two hours of being cleansed, washed, massaged and filed I was out on the streets again. I erm and err over which route to take home and in the end laziness decides to go the way which involves the least walking. I read a book and now and then look up to see where we are arriving. At one such stop, a group enter and I notice a tall striking Albino girl stepping into the train.  While my eyes take in the vision that she is, dressed in a shalwar khameez, hair wrapped backward in a black hijab, stark against her skin, another vision steps into view behind her. A copy it seemed of the first girl.  One follows the other into the carriage. Then there follows a boy, also Albino, cap over his head accompanied by a couple of small children and last but not least a mother figure, also an Albino. I probably watch them longer than I normally watch people.

My mind races. Was it hereditary? I couldn't remember what I knew of Albinos but it can't have been much as my brain returns nothing useful. They release something into the carriage for some of the passengers start to shift in their seats  and I wonder what it must be like for the family.

The children talk and I hear Urdu intermingled with the English. The boy, tall, robust, silver-haired comes my way and the little girl follows him. The train is stationary now, in the middle of nowhere as they often like to do, stop, take a leak, something, I don't know what, leaving you wondering for the longest while and then a driver's voice apologising for the delay, we will be on our way shortly, seconds before moving again. What's the point I always wonder, why say we'll move and move momentarily.

The little girl gets on the tips of her toes and reaches for the train door at one endof the carriage that leads to the other carriage- if you make it to the other carriage. A warning of possible death looms high above her on the door. Na, na, na no, I say, it's not safe.  She abandons it, shoulders slumped down.

London Underground ought to pay me for all the work I'm doing for their passengers.

Suddenly the boys says, excuse me have we reached Euston yet?

I stop reading. Euston? We've gone past Euston. The girl next to me says, go back.

The boy leaps up and I hear him say, Dad we've passed Euston. The family rustles into action, they stand up and get ready to leave the train as we pull into a station. Dad, I then notice, is also an Albino.

I blink. I imagine a village in Pakistan 17 years ago, the two village Albinos married to one another.

Maybe the woman wasn't the mother but the sister of the father.

I shake the confusion out of my head, how interesting.

The girl next to me says Crazy people.

I wonder why she thinks that and want to ask- how her thinking was so far from mine and we had witnessed the same thing- but think leave it, London Undergroung safety scout, referree and shrink?

When I get off the train, I wait for a bus. Two drunk Polish men sit at the bus stop. I look away quickly before one collapses and I have to administer CPR. On the bus I happily settly down with my book, relaxed. A couple of stops later as the bus is about to move away, I hear shouting and see through the window a man running to stop the bus, shouting loudly and waving. The driver stops and the man jumps, and I mean jumps on the bus with a drama befitting a moon landing and says something very loudly to the driver.

Oh no, I think, please not a weirdo on the bus sitch.

The man turns away from the driver and starts to strut down the bus aisle. I see the face. Somali.

Oh no, I think, not a Somali weirdo on the bus sitch.

The man talks loudly as he walks but I don't understand him. The accent is Somali. I wonder if he is drunk or mentally ill or some tragic combo.

He finds a seat two rows or so behind me and continues to blab nothingness.   A woman is talking on the phone about someone in hospital. She has been talking for at least 10 minutes for all the bus stop people to hear and now the passengers to hear. The guy in hospital has a kidney problem, is on dialysis, a breathing problem, is wearing a mask, has a low sugar level, is on gluclose(her spelling) is an amputee and what not. She's so loud we all know the sick man's medical history. The Somali man now mimicks her. She says hospital, he says osbitaal. He interspers the odd intelligible word he says with a lot of nonsense. I quit reading my book.

He goes quiet.

And then in Somali and very clearly he says something so vulgar, so out of place, so vulgar, so loud, hot air slaps me in the neck and floats upwards toawards my freshly cleansed face.

God, he did not intend that for me. Please God, let this not be one of those nights. I just want to go home.

I wait.

The man returns to mimicking the woman on the phone. How she continues to talk I don't know. The bus passengers shift uneasily. He starts to sing Somlai songs. The woman says nurse and he says, naaris, naaris, dhiiga igu shub(nurse give me blood except funnier in Somali).  Aduuunyooo, blah blah hees Somaaali oo qaraami ah.

I bite my lip.

He then starts to sing Reggae.

With a Somali accent.

I breathe to control a guffaw.

10 minutes later, it isn't funny anymore. He's singing, Sugzi laydee, whachu doin. Sugsi laydee whachu doin and stomping his feet to the beat. Sugzi laydee! Baadhi! Shaba! Laba dheh!

He thinks he's Hassan Aden Samatar and Shagi rolled into one.

I wonder if he's ill and feel bad for him. I wonder if he's drunk and want to tell him to shut the hell up. In Somali. My mind flits back and forth between the two possibilties. When he's going to get off? becomes my mantra.

Finally I see him stand from the corner of my eye but I daren't look. I've lasted this long without being addressed and want to keep it that way. As he walks down I notice a cigarette between his fingers and a mineral water bottle in his hand. Somali men don't do rehydration through the carrying of a 500ml water bottle. The fluid in the bottle doesn't look like water; it looks like piss.

He's still singing loudly like he's on stage and stands before the doors and laughs. As he stands there I want to give him a helping foot. The doors whoosh open and he jumps out singing in a Reggae rhythm and ending dramatically with, wa alaykum asalaam!