Free Sing Like You Know the Words by martin sowery

revealed to those who loved him. Much later on,
when he thought about some of the truly bad things he had done,
this incident seemed so trivial that it made him smile. Even so, it
was that night which brought him the dream; and the dream came to
define him. When he thought about it like that, a part of him
despised his own weakness and just for a moment he knew that he
hated David Thomas.
     
    ***
     
    The next year was their final
year of studies. It passed strangely. People kept to themselves
more, either determined to excel or desperate to retrieve some kind
of degree from the wreckage of their course work. Once Christmas
was over, everyone was looking forward to May – work hard until
then, and after one final long summer to enjoy whatever else should
happen. Not many of them were like David, carefully planning the
future with his next steps already worked out.
    At the end of March, the English
parliament passed a motion of no-confidence in the country’s
government, which meant there would be a general election soon. The
final year students hardly noticed. There was too much else to
think about.
    The election was at the
beginning of May and the Conservative party won a big majority. At
the end of that month, the students sat their last examinations,
said their unnatural sounding goodbyes, and went away determined to
forget about university until the results should be published.
Those whose parents could afford it went off on holidays. Others
looked for casual summer jobs or hung on in the city, struggling to
eke out the last of their grant finance. One or two already had
jobs to go to or, like Tim, obligations to honour.
    When the exam results were
published, Ali Abbas registered a sense of quiet satisfaction that
lasted for a whole day and a morning. Then he began to worry about
what he should do next. In the exams, he had done even better than
he’d hoped. His grades were more than good enough for him to take
up the postgraduate course that had been lined up for him. Everyone
in the family took for granted that his academic career was just
starting, and that it would be brilliant. Only Ali Abbas himself
was no longer sure that he even wanted to return to a
university.
    There was another problem. He
had been looking forward to spending time at home after the
discomfort and loneliness of college. Everything there would be
easy for him there, except that when he came home, he found that he
no longer belonged. The daily routines and private family concerns
of which he had once been part now felt silly and empty; like an
old and once treasured toy that makes you smile when you find it in
the back of a drawer. It was nice to see, but it no longer had any
meaning for him.
    He felt he’d lost both his
future and his past. In any case, the family, under the surface,
was not the same, even if no one else saw it, Ali Abbas had noticed
that his father had become old; worn down, not just by exile, but
by the life they had found in their new home.
    It was better that Grandfather
had not lived to see it. He had always been so proud of working for
the British, of being a civil servant, and of what he called his
English education. The family had understood what their passports
confirmed, that they were privileged participants in the great
British Empire. No wonder that some Ugandans hated them more than
the whites. The Asians in Africa were administrators; they didn’t
seek out or even desire great wealth, but they had education and
position, which for his family counted more.
    Things had started to change in
the time of his father’s generation. After independence, government
posts were quickly closed to Asians. For a time, that seemed to be
a blessing in disguise for the family. His father was young,
confident and resourceful and soon he was working for himself and
earning more money as a merchant than Grandfather could have
dreamed of at his humble clerk’s desk. Before Ali Abbas was born
they had moved into the big new house