bigger than a dachshund, but he was a good dog. And he was so loyal, just like lovely little Rolf here …” She looked as if she were about to continue the story, but her eyes turned misty and she trailed off and turned back to Mira instead.
“Your German. It is strange. You speak with an accent. Where are you from?”
“Aleppo,” Mira replied.
“Aleppo?” the old woman grunted. “Where is that?”
“Syria.”
“A refugee, are you? I’m sure they do not have horses where you are from, so you know nothing and think that you can come along like that and just throw yourself on to his back?”
“We have horses,” Mira objected. “And I know how to ride. I rode in Syria. There was a stable in the city. I went every week on a Wednesday.”
“Well, that makes it even worse! You should know better than to try to mount a strange horse like that!” the old woman shot back. “And just because you rode some donkey back in the desert, don’t think that makes you a rider.”
“It wasn’t a donkey, they were good horses,” Mira insisted. “I do know how to ride. I had proper lessons.”
The old woman screwed up her face. “Perhaps you have ridden a little. But nothing you have ridden in the past could have prepared you for him.” She gave a whistle and the stallion, who had been standing at a distance on the far side of the arena, pricked his ears and stepped obediently towards her. The old woman waited for him to get closer and then she waved one hand in the air above her head and made a clucking sound with her tongue. Suddenly the stallion rocked back on his hocks and pivoted round so that he was facing the far side of the arena and in one swift powerful bound he accelerated forward and leapt up into a trot. His head and his tail were both held high and his front hooves seemed to flick out in front of him, as if he were dancing across the sand.
“Do you see that trot?” The old woman watched him proudly. “So expressive, the way he covers the ground. He is an amazing mover and the power of his paces is far too much for all except the very best of riders. If you had managed to climb on to his back, he would have put you on the floor in an instant. You are not prepared for a horse like Emir.”
Mira watched, entranced by the movement of the horse. “He must be valuable.”
“He is priceless,” the old woman replied. “His bloodlines are the very best in the world. An Arabian from Poland – like me.”
“You’re Arabian?”
This made the old woman chuckle. “I’m Polish, child. And you are Syrian. So it seems the only one of us here who is a true German is Rolf.”
She cocked an eyebrow at Mira.
“You speak German very well for a refugee. Tell me, can you write it too?”
“Yes,” Mira said. “Yes, at school they say my writing is very good.”
“Then,” the old woman said, “you had better come inside. We will have some tea, I think. I’ve baked some angel wings, and you may have some if you like? Do you like sweets? Bring the dog. He will want some too.”
And without turning to look back to see if Mira was following her, she set off across the yard towards the door to her house, shuffling in her slippers, with Rolf bounding at her heels.
***
The house was divided from the stables by an archway. Turn one way and there were three looseboxes and a hay barn, turn the other and you were almost immediately inside the old lady’s living room. This was where Mira found herself now, staring at a room that was decorated with needlepoint tapestries all over the walls. It was furnished with old wooden furniture and armchairs that seemed to be covered in a floral print similar to the old woman’s shirt, so that when she’d made the tea and put the angel wing biscuits on the table and sat down, she almost disappeared into the upholstery.
“Do you read?” she asked Mira as she passed her the plate of biscuits and tossed one on to the floor for Rolf.
“Yes,” Mira said. “I love books.” And she realised as she said the words that this was what was bothering her when she looked around the room. There were bookshelves on the far wall but they were covered in ornaments. No books. She couldn’t see a single book in the whole house. Mira didn’t have many books of her own. She mostly read what she could from the school library, but she did have a few copies on her little bookshelf in her room, and she loved them. They were her most prized possessions.
“Hmmm.” The old lady seemed pleased with the reply. “Reading is good. I should like to be able to do it myself. But I can’t.” She looked at Mira. “Oh, yes, I tried! And I went to a very good school, so my education wasn’t lacking. My parents expected that I should be clever. My father was a professor and my mother had been a teacher. All my uncles and cousins were very intellectual, but … for me … it was never possible. From the very beginning, the words bounced around on the page and would not behave. My mother couldn’t understand it, because she had always read to me. We had a library full of books! They decided I must be stupid. I wasn’t, of course. It was dyslexia. These days people know all about it. It is a condition that means you get the letters jumbled up in your eyes and your brain and to decipher them becomes impossible. But back then, no one knew this. And so I was just the half-witted girl who couldn’t read. And I guess that was what they always thought of me …”
The old woman trailed off and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that she took from her sleeve. “Anyway. It is not reading I wish to do. It is writing.”
She put the handkerchief down and threw Rolf another angel wing, although she did not offer another biscuit to Mira.
“I am dying,” she said.
Mira looked shocked, until the old woman added, “We are all dying, of course, but I am old, very old – I’m eighty-nine, if you can believe it, so I am closer to death than you. One day I will die from old age, and it might not be that long. And before I do, I have a story – one that I would like to see recorded so that it might be told. It is important, I think. I lived in remarkable times.”
She reached out to Mira with the plate of biscuits now, but Mira noticed how she held it back a little, as if the offer of the biscuit itself was contingent on what happened next.
“You will write for me,” the old woman said. “I will tell you my story and you will put it down in words on paper.”
“And why would I do that?” Mira asked.
“Because,” the old woman replied, “I will be making you an exchange. If you will write my story for me, then I will do something for you.”
“What?” Mira asked.
The old woman took a biscuit herself now and mashed it between her gums and followed it with a vigorous slurp of tea.
“I’ll teach you to be a horsewoman,” she said. “And if you are a good student and you mind what I say, then, yes, I’ll let you ride Emir.”
Mira couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“What do you say, then?” the old woman asked.
Mira leant forward and very slowly and deliberately she took an angel wing from the plate.
“Excellent!” The old woman smiled and Mira saw just how gappy her grin was and how much work it must have been to chew that biscuit. “We shall start tomorrow. You will come back to my house. Bring the little dog with you if you like.”
“I have school tomorrow,” Mira said.
“Well, come before school, then,” the old woman replied, as if this solution were obvious. “I wake early.”
“OK,” Mira agreed.
The old woman stood up and made it clear that, with the arrangements sorted, their afternoon tea was now over. As they walked to the door, she