Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark Twain.
There's a lot of advice out there about how to attract the eye of that special someone. It ranges from the usual beauty and personal grooming tips down to deeper things like attitude but while some of that advice is good and a lot is just plain rubbish, one thing I look for in a potential partner is a kind heart or more simply kindness.
The country where I spent the first ten years of my life has been torn apart for the last five years by hatred, it spirals outwards, infecting neighbouring countries with its cancer as refugees flee the terror, only to meet a wall of hatred and bigotry. Every now and then some person commits a random act of kindness and it gets tweeted and shared around the globe. People ask why can't we have more of that? And others pour scorn on the act as if screaming loudly will destroy the random act of kindness. My stepmother says if humans committed as many acts of kindness as acts of terror we could stand down all the armies and put the generals into retirement homes.
Dania was born in Syria and for the first ten years or so she was just my dad's interpreter. Dad worked with the Foreign Office in Damascus, I was born to Alistair and Catriona Henderson in a Damascus hospital. I was brought to Britain at the age of six months when my parents came home for Christmas but the next time I came back to Britain was in 2005.
Mum had just died the week before when she tripped on a rug at home and fell down. Her head struck the coffee table and she died from a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. It's one of those silly accidents you read about on page ten and after reading it you flip over to the crossword page and forget all about it.
Coming to terms with life in Britain was tough for me, which sounds odd because I actually am a British citizen by birth. I have my mother's dark colouring and black hair though but my accent has a slight foreign twang to it. I also inherited her poor eyesight and have worn glasses since I was quite young. My birth certificate says I was born in Damascus and when dad returned with my mother's body to lay her to rest, he arranged to have Dania return with him to become the nanny. In the tradition of the best love stories, these two became lovers and then married when I was twelve, which led to racial abuse at school.
It was a combination of all those things that led to my botched suicide attempt not long after dad and Dania tied the knot, a handful of headache tablets just made me puke but it was a cry for help that drove Dania to enrol me in a local horse riding school. She'd seen me staring at the riders making their way along a country lane.
Sian was a volunteer tutor at the school, I knew her from high school but she was a year ahead of me and always hanging out with her friends so we'd never spoken. I remember the attention she paid to me that first day, taking time to get me mounted and leading the horse around a pen as she asked about life in general. She was one of five girls in an Irish household and I warmed to her because she was a foreigner like me, at least that's how she put it. Her father's family were Protestant and her mother's were staunch Catholics and they'd moved from Belfast to Liverpool years ago to try and start a normal life.
One side of the family wouldn't talk to the other side or even acknowledge their existence, Sian's parents were persona non grata for betraying the code. That kind of bigotry either produces more bigotry in the children or it hardens them against bigotry. In Sian's case, it made her embrace a more progressive and enlightened lifestyle. She deliberately cultivated friends from different cultures and avoided the posh kids at school.
She used to talk to Dania a lot for that first year, she wanted to know more about Syria, a country that in those days existed on the periphery of acceptability, ruled by a dictator who was both feared and respected by Western governments. Now that she was dad's wife, Dania's tongue had loosened somewhat, she told of secret police and the disappeared. Sian talked of the bitter divide between Catholic and Protestant and being forbidden from speaking her native tongue.
I found much in common with Sian. Like me, she was in a strange country, outwardly she looked like she blended in. On the inside she struggled with the old stereotypes of the hard drinking, fast living, deeply religious Irish.
You could say that I fell in love with Sian the first day I saw her but that's romantic bullshit, I was only thirteen years old and going through puberty. I did however gravitate towards her, she became the girl I wanted to be most like when I was older. Sian had a quiet confidence about her that seemed to fill the space between us. I did develop a crush on her when she went to Sixth Form college at Birkenhead but that wasn't unusual. Like any normal teenager I had weekly crushes on different people from kids my own age to teachers.
To be honest the first time I acknowledged any feelings towards Sian was when she went away to Australia on a gap year. Absence makes the heart grow fonder as they say, but I followed her progress from Sydney to Melbourne, a brief few weeks in Adelaide and then north east to the Gold Coast and Brisbane. I liked her picture in front of Uluru and that was the time she came out as gay. It would have shocked me a few years previously. But the most disturbing thing for me was actually liking the idea of her being gay.
That was when I first started questioning my sexuality. It's a minefield when you're at high school especially these days. People are so P.C it's embarrassing, and then you have the old stereotypical names that are flung at you. I never admitted I was questioning it to anyone because I wanted to avoid the bullshit and get on with my studies.
Even after I graduated from high school I still managed to sidestep sex for a very good reason. By then I was a regular at gymkhana events and as any horse owner knows, a horse requires regular exercise and attention. It kind of sabotages any sexual liaisons. I was always out riding and by the time I turned eighteen I was riding competition in dressage events. For me it's where I'm most at peace. It's just me and the horse working as one to execute a series of manoeuvres. The first time I ever did it I was as nervous as hell but I soon became better at it and by the time I turned sixteen it had become second nature to me.
Sometimes after a show I would have girlfriends or Dania tell me that a certain guy was paying extra attention to me, now and then they'd even come up to say hello but I never got past the smiling stage even when I turned eighteen. By that stage I was a seasoned performer who could be counted on to put on a good performance without faltering but all that changed the moment Sian returned from Australia.
I'd heard she was back a few weeks prior, but then someone told me she'd gone back to Belfast to see a cousin. I checked her Facebook page but nothing had been added for a month, the last picture showed her in front of the Opera House with some woman who could have been a girlfriend for all I knew. The message read.
Last day in Sydney.
The first time I saw her again was when I was taking part in a gymkhana not far from home. I'd almost pulled out at the last moment because I'd enrolled in an introductory course for veterinary science and the workload was quite a lot but for some reason I found myself agreeing. It was close to home and I could always catch up on some homework after the show. My Saturday nights were pretty dull, after watching
Strictly
or
The Voice,
I'd retire to my bedroom to work through yet another assignment.
I didn't see Sian until I was halfway through my routine, she'd been hemmed in by several people but then she managed to get to the front and I lost concentration. She was wearing a white shirt, tan trousers, jacket and boots. The wind had caught her hair and blown it across her face because she swept it aside quickly and I felt my heart skip a beat. She's always been a beautiful girl, but that day she looked ravishing and by the time I recovered, my horse was showing signs of hesitation. Mischief is aptly named because he likes mischief, and if I'm not careful he flicks his tail or dips his head at the wrong moment. I was able to bring him under control but I knew I'd made a few mistakes. Nevertheless, I did finish my routine and wound up with a score of 8, one down from my usual 9. Sian met me in a holding yard where I was brushing Mischief down. She reached out to touch his forehead and he whinnied with pleasure as she scratched it.
"He's looking good."
"So are you," I replied, "you distracted me out there."
"Sorry, I shouldn't have waved, it's an Irish thing."
I laughed at the familiar joke and she moved a little closer.
"I've missed this so much."
"Are you going to get back in the saddle again?"
