Into My Arms Read Online Free PDF Page A

“t”.’
    Zia didn’t respond, continuing to stare at his hands. Skye flicked through the remaining drawings and found they were almost all recurring geometric patterns, some taking the shape of tiny, intertwined flowers.
    ‘These are very good,’ she said. ‘I think they’d be a bit complex for what we’re doing, though.’
    ‘They are not meant for here,’ murmured Zia. ‘I made a copy from the picture at home.’
    ‘Of the mosque—the one in Shiraz?’ asked Skye. Zia nodded. ‘I’d love to see it,’ she said, tracing the precise designs with her finger while she worked out how they fitted into one another. Then she looked up. ‘Have you ever seen it? The mosque, I mean. For real, not just a picture.’
    ‘No,’ Zia replied, then frowned and corrected himself. ‘Yes, as a child, but I was too young to remember. My father told me that he took me there—that he held me on his shoulders so I could see the colours on the roof.’
    ‘You were born in Iran then? When did you leave?’ He was too thin, Skye found herself thinking, his dark skin pulled taut across his bones, stretched as tightly as one of her mother’s canvases.
    ‘A few years ago,’ he said, ‘when I was ten.’
    ‘How old are you now?’ Skye asked, confused. The rest of the class were only ten, and he looked much the same as them.
    ‘I am twelve,’ Zia said quietly, finally glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘Thirteen in two months. I did not know English when we came to Australia. The school held me down.’
    ‘Held you back, you mean? Repeated a class.’
    ‘Repeated, yes. I repeated grade three, and repeated grade four. I would like to get through grade five in one year.’
    He smiled shyly and Skye couldn’t help but laugh. ‘That’s a great aim, Zia. Seriously, do you need any help? Are you getting extra tutoring?’
    He shook his head. ‘In grade three, but not now. The school said there were worse than me.’
    Skye sighed. He was probably right.
    ‘Mr Cunningham is very helpful, though,’ Zia continued. ‘I can tell him if I do not understand, and he will explain to me.’
    ‘Do you speak English at home?’ asked Skye. ‘You need to use it as much as you can, so it comes easily.’
    ‘A little. Not much. My mother has no English. My father tries to teach her but she will not listen.’
    ‘Why not? Surely she wants to fit in.’
    Zia shrugged and looked down at his hands again, his face blank and closed. She’d overstepped, thought Skye, and just as she was getting somewhere. Keen to keep the conversation going, she tried again.
    ‘Zia’s a lovely name. What does it mean?’
    ‘Light,’ he said softly.
    ‘Light,’ Skye repeated. ‘It’s nice. A bit like mine.’
    He peeked up at her from underneath long eyelashes. ‘Like yours?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My first name. Skye. It’s Scottish, not Arabic, but they’re similar, aren’t they? Sky and light. Sky, like in your design.’ She took up his sketchbook again and opened it to the drawing of the soaring bird. ‘This is good too, you know,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could include something like this in the mosaic. What gave you the idea? Is the bird for freedom, like your family coming to Australia?’
    Zia looked at her levelly. ‘The bird is flying away so it can eat the frog it has just caught. See?’ He pointed to a detail Skye had failed to notice: two spindly legs dangling from the beak of the bird, no doubt belonging to the creature in his previous design.
    Skye blushed. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘we need to find you a group to work with. Who are your friends in the grade?’
    ‘There are none really,’ Zia admitted, with what Skye thought was practised nonchalance. ‘The ones I had moved up classes, while I stayed behind.’
    Skye scanned the groups now huddled together, looking for a place where Zia would fit in. The trouble was that he didn’t fit, not with any of them. He was older and quieter; he probably knew nothing