2

2 Yazz has a massive poster of Hendrix in her room at uni with his crazy hair, hippy headband, rippled chest, bulging crotch and electric guitar a cultural signifier for all those who enter her room to instantly know what kinda badass they dealin' wiv although her eclectic and unpredictable taste extends beyond the electric rock riffs of prehistory to A$AP Rocky to Mozart to Stormzy to the Priests to Angélique Kidjo to Wizkid to Bey to Chopin to RiRi to Scott Joplin to Dolly Parton to Amr Diab and so on she's even got a recording of the über basso profundo Oktavist singers of Russia who don't so much sing as make the earth rumble so much radness and who's way ahead of da mob dem? her room is the largest in her block on account of the 'extreme claustrophobia and social anxiety' stunt she pulled to get it it overlooks the canal that runs along the border of the campus through to the wetlands beyond with its otters (or is it badgers?) and herons (or is it geese?) and other birdy, animalistic things she doesn't recognize and can't be bothered to look up she'd rather fill her head with stuff that will help her get on in life and naming the wildlife of eastern England don't come into it the other side of her room overlooks the pathways that zig-zag through the campus, from which a stream of caners stagger past her window to their rooms most nights, usually drunk and selfishly loud, having been drinking in town or in the Student Union bar

she's only been in it once as it was crammed with the drunken dregs of humanity, i.e. the type of boys who get progressively malodorous as the term progresses because their mother isn't dunking them screaming into a bath every night the kind of boys who wear increasingly injured expressions because they don't understand why no one will sit next to them in lectures and no one wants to tell them, yo, you stink, bro Yazz thought she'd find romance at uni, a nice guy on her level who doesn't look like the back of a bus and is taller than her (prerequisite) someone to snuggle up to on Saturday evenings and to laze away Sunday mornings in bed listening to music while she catches up with the New Yorker, Observer, gal-dem, The Root, Atlantic and thegrio because one day she will write for them sadly, Mum has more pulling power than her and is actually considered hot in the lesbian world her girlfriends du jour, as Dad puts it (hey, why speak English when you can speak French?), are two white women, Dolores and Jackie, although Mum has been with every ethnicity known to humankind (it's called multiracial whoredom) they're all very cosy together which is quite heart-warming seeing as Mum's women have gone to war over her it's strange, and suspicious, because with Dolores and Jackie there are no screaming matches, no ranting answerphone messages, no one trying to kick in the front door in the middle of the night, and no one skulking in a corner looking daggers at her rival at Mum's parties it's like they actually like each other, Yazz suspects they have gruesome threesomes, and can't bring herself to ask besides, she's lost count of the women who've come and gone to the point that the new ones barely register on her Richter scale of annoyance there'll inevitably be a new face around the breakfast table trying to befriend the daughter of their new lover, running around making her toast, omelette with cheese and tomatoes, pouring her juice, washing up the dishes after her the daughter who'll drop numerous unsubtle hints when her birthday/Christmas/Easter are approaching (and why isn't the marmalade on the table?)

when Yazz talks about her unusual upbringing to people, the unworldly ones expect her to be emotionally damaged from it, like how can you not be when your mum's a polyamorous lesbian and your father's a gay narcissist (as she describes him), and you were shunted between both their homes and dumped with various godparents while your parents pursued their careers? this annoys Yazz who can't stand people saying anything negative about her parents that's her prerogative anyway, she's resigned herself to hanging out with the squad at uni rather than going out manhunting it's unfortunate that she's coming of age as one of the Swipe-Like-Chat- Invite-Fuck Generation where men expect you to give it up on the first (and only) date, have no pubic hair at all, and do the disgusting things they've seen women do in porn movies on the internet which she suspects the boys in her halls watch all day and all night, boys who are rarely seen outside their rooms (lectures? what lectures?) she's only been on one date at uni, which involved sitting at a bar with a male specimen she'd thought was an interesting person, who was obviously swiping his phone to see if someone more fanciable was in the vicinity before making his pathetic excuses about having to do revision she left shortly after he did, saw him chatting up a woman in a bar a few doors down when she passed on her way home Yazz reckons that by the time guys her age want to settle down, her ovaries will be busted and they'll be on to women half their age who can still drop babies at the drop of a hat so even though she's considered reasonably attractive (as in not 100% ugly), with her own unique style (part 90s Goth, part post-hip hop, part slutty ho, part alien), she's having to compete with images of girls on fucksites with collagen pouts and their bloated silicone tits out Yazz has considered dating older guys in their thirties (who are always up for banging teenagers), until she visualizes the nose hair, wrinkly cock and pot belly scenario so until such time as someone suitable comes along (if he ever will) who can offer proper commitment with a view to a monogamous relationship in the long term (her mother she is not), she's got herself a booty call in Steve,

an American who's studying for a PhD on 'the interrelationship and aesthetics of hip hop and racial politics in the eighties' unfortunately, he's also got a girlfriend in Chicago, which provokes something of a moral conundrum when they're in bed together, and she calls and he lies about what he's doing Yazz sometimes has sleepless nights worrying she'll be alone for the whole of her life if she can't get a proper boyfriend at nineteen what hope is there for when she's older? a couple of Mum's female friends have been single for decades, not the lesbians who have little problem getting off with each other, but the straight ones who've got good jobs and houses and no partner to share it with, who say they're not prepared to settle at this stage in their lives Mum accuses them of 'Looking for Obama Syndrome' behind their backs Nenet, the third member of the squad, is engaged to Kadim who's studying in America, her parents chose him for her she resisted at first until they threatened to cast her out, and the thought of having to actually find a job after uni and earn her own money, like the rest of them, brought her round luckily, she hit it off with him once she actually met and got to know him, and is often off for long weekends (like Wednesday to Monday) in Connecticut where he's studying even so she gets As for her coursework, she's that clever she's also super-confident and the last person anyone should mess with when a boy on campus starting sending her explicit texts, she reported him to the university and he narrowly avoided being thrown out when a classmate was raped and broke down in front of her, Nenet paid for a lawyer who got the rapist imprisoned for six years after which, they all agree, he'll be back on the streets raping more women Waris is dating Einar, a Somali-Norwegian boy she's been with since they sat in History together at school they're both big anime fans and go to London Comic Con every year

Waris draws cartoons as a hobby and is developing a female Somali superhero who hunts down men who hurt women and castrates them, slowly without anaesthetics while they lounge around, Yazz makes everyone hot chocolate from sachets and offers the shortbread biscuits Mum makes for her as she's weirdly taken up baking since Yazz went to uni, almost like she realizes she's not been the perfect picket-fence mum and is making amends three-quarters of the squad don't drink much, if at all Yazz's mind is her most valuable asset and she's not going to mess with it Waris says yes to the hijab and sex outside marriage, no to booze and pork Nenet says she expects to start drinking after a few years of marriage to Kadim when he takes on his first official mistress, which is what happened with her own mother, who starts the day with a G&T and ends it with a liqueur, having consumed a bottle of wine or three in between Courtney's the only one whose social interactions are accompanied by red wine Yazz was drawn to Waris on the second day of Fresher Week at the welcome party in the sports hall where they both skulked on the periphery; Yazz gravitated towards Waris's resting bitch face, as she later told her, which Waris took in good humour, asking Yazz if she'd looked in the mirror recently they agreed that their peers were really immature, while sipping iced tea in a corner of a Starbucks on campus far away from the bedlam of the other freshers running around with their foam parties, disco paintballing, treasure hunts and group pub crawls that were bound to end up with A&E emergencies, Yazz predicted whose idea was it? she wrote on the official Fresher Week feedback form to introduce these poor young things to alcohol poisoning the first week they're away from home? why don't you also book them into rehab now instead of waiting for the first signs of liver damage to show in their second year?

Waris matches her headscarves with the colour of her flowing clothes she has green days, brown days, blue days, floral days, fluorescent days – never black days (she's not a traditionalist) she often sticks her phone just inside her hijab to carry out hands-free conversations, which Yazz tells her is an excellent blend of religiosity and practicality to which Waris replies that she wears a hijab to make a statement about her Muslim identity, and while there are those who make out it's a proper religious thing, there's nothing about women covering up in the Koran, you know? Waris doesn't ever leave her room without applying a smooth paste of foundation on to her already perfect complexion whole tubes of mascara to thicken already forested eyelashes and her eyebrows are painted into a high arch that practically stretches all the way to her ears Waris says she's ugly without her 'face on', even though Yazz reassures her that Somali women are the most beautiful in the world, and that includes you too, Waris Waris says she's fat, even though she's perfectly normal-sized, pinching her thighs so hard they go mottled then showing Yazz her 'cellulite', which is non-existent, Waris, it's just flesh being squeezed so tightly it nearly pops she sometimes wears sunglasses when there's no sun – at night and inside buildings she even tried it on in class, looking fierce and super-cool until one brave lecturer, Dr Sandra Reynolds (call me Sandy, guys and gals), showed she wasn't the pushover they thought she was when she ordered Waris to take them off unless she had a medical condition and certificate to prove it or to leave her class it's to make myself look fearless, Waris explained to Yazz after they'd treated themselves to a pizza one Saturday lunchtime and were making their way back to campus on the slippery and rainy cobbled streets of the university town where they stood out or maybe it's to hide your fear, Yazz suggested, you're actually feeling fear-ful, the words are separated by a few letters, fear-ful or fear-less, similar but diametrically different, see?

Yazz felt a surge of preternatural wisdom beyond her years it was one of those moments Waris looked pensive as they walked on in silence, and then replied, equally sagaciously, perhaps it's both in that moment Yazz understood why they got on so well, they were on the same intellectual wavelength life was different before 9/11, Waris said, as they left the town behind and walked along a busy main road passing big old houses made of thick slabs of grey stone; she was too young to remember the 'before era', when her mother said people looked at hijabbed women with surprise, curiosity or pity then there was the 'after era', when her mother said they began to be viewed with a blatant hostility that gets worse every time a jihadist blows white people up, or mows them down in a truck at times like these Waris braces herself to get even more shoved, spat at and called names such as dirty Arab when I'm not even Arab, Yazz Waris said it's crazy that people are so stupid to think over one and a half billion Muslims all think and act the same way, a Muslim man carries out a mass shooting or blows people up and he's called a terrorist, a white man does the exact same thing and he's called a madman both sets are mad, Yazz I know, Waris, I know Yazz sees the dirty looks Waris gets when they're walking through town she gives dirty looks back on her friend's behalf Waris said her grandmother rarely left their council flat in Wolverhampton any more, it was too hard for her to walk the street and get such hostility, and she's never stopped mourning everything she's lost she lived a well-off lifestyle in Mogadishu until 1991, in a family where all the adult men worked in the family dental practice, until they were killed and she fled here with her daughters these days her grandmother pops prescription pills she sits in the living room disappearing into herself until one day she'll be lost to them for ever Xaanan, her mother, is completely different, though, she drummed it into us kids that we could either decide to be crushed by the weight of history,

and modern-day atrocities, or we could go into warrior pose Dad works in a factory, Mum has two jobs, the first is working in a refuge for Muslim women and the second is teaching self-defence to women who cover up, so they can learn how to protect themselves from the 'hijab grab' and related assaults she teaches a mixture of Krav Maga, Jiu Jitsu, Aikido and Pencak Silat at the local community centre, Waris said proudly; Waris herself learned mixed martial arts alongside her mother Yazz and Waris arrive back at the campus and walk down the lane, rain abating, skies clearing, rainbow appearing they pass the gym with students in sporty gear entering and leaving they pass the laundry, students in a zombie daze watching the machines rotate or playing with their phones they pass the arts centre with a gallery and a café inside it selling unaffordable coffee and unaffordable cakes for the posh people who come on to campus to use it they walk past the blocks of the accommodation quarter with music and weed drifting out, until they get to theirs they go inside the building and climb the stairs as Waris continues talking, says she's learned to give as good as she gets if anyone says any of the following that terrorism is synonymous with Islam that she's oppressed and they feel her pain if anyone asks her if she's related to Osama bin Laden if anyone tells her she's responsible for them being unemployed if anyone tells her she's a cockroach immigrant if anyone tells her to go back to her jihadist boyfriend if anyone asks her if she knows any suicide bombers if anyone tells her she doesn't belong here and when are you leaving? if anyone asks if she's going to have an arranged marriage if anyone asks her why she dresses like a nun if anyone speaks slowly to her like she can't speak English if anyone tells her that her English is really good if anyone asks her if she's had FGM, you poor thing if anyone says they're going to kill her and her family

you've really suffered, Yazz says, I feel sorry for you, not in a patronizing way, it's empathy, actually I haven't suffered, not really, my mother and grandmother suffered because they lost their loved ones and their homeland, whereas my suffering is mainly in my head it's not in your head when people deliberately barge into you it is compared to half a million people who died in the Somali civil war, I was born here and I'm going to succeed in this country, I can't afford not to work my butt off, I know it's going to be tough when I go on the job market but you know what, Yazz? I'm not a victim, don't ever treat me like a victim, my mother didn't raise me to be a victim.