Story
The London train station was busy, full of girls bustling about orderly, and boys bashing around, making a racket. All this English life was new to Iza. She clutched her trunk tightly and her dog, Whippy’s lead in the other.
It was too busy, too loud, and too cold. It was Iza’s first time ever in England. Her parents weren’t here. Her carer was but had left her at the station, “You are thirteen you no longer need somebody to care for you!”
This was new talk for Iza, because all her life she had been waited on, hand and foot by plenty of maids and governesses.
She felt someone thump her hard in the back. A large boy ran past her, quickly followed by a screaming toddler, around six. “Stupid boy,” Iza thought.
It would have been kind of Iza to comfort the little girl, but Iza had never had any practise in doing so. She had Miss Fatima and Fatoosha to wait on her, her only friends was an elephant brought over from India and a local Arabian leopard and her horse.
The train began to puff and hiss out steamy smoke. Iza dragged her trunk and her small dog along and boarded the steam train.
She settled herself down in an empty compartment and watched thankfully and sadly as London station disappearing; the train leading her steadily closer to her new life and a new lifestyle at St. Barsons boarding school.
St. Barsons was said to be the best boarding school in Europe. It contained an old castle, split into two sections, a part the boys, a part for the girls. It had hundreds of acres of lands, stables to keep horses in, thank goodness. It meant that Iza could bring along her Arabian horse, Hazoon.
There were also two lakes, one for swimming in, and one where the boys could get out their fishing equipment and fish in peace for the weekend. They boyish girls could also do this, but Iza thought of this as disgraceful. But then again she had been bought up in a community where girls did sewing, made carpets, cooked and cleaned if they had no maids, and rode elegantly on horseback. They dressed in fine silk and were swamped in gold, far beyond any common English girl’s imagination.
There was a forest and a couple of miles up was a small village where you could post parcels and go shopping if you needed to.
Iza snuggled further inside her new red blazer, and tipped her hat in front of her face, blocking out fake sunlight that was streaming inside the carriage; of course it was real sunlight but the air was so icy that it felt as if there was a new star that had taken the sun’s place and could not give off any warm rays. Iza shivered. She longed to be back in Arabia, being waited on in her grand mansion in the dessert. There was always the familiar cry of the mosque, the sand storms, which left the house a strange orange colour, her elephant and her leopard. Iza decided as soon as she got to St. Barsons she would go and see Hazoon, then write in Arabic to her evil mother and father who had abandoned her in this foreign country, and she would tell them how terribly horrid it was.
She sniffed and snuggled down even further into her blazer.
There was a noise and the compartment door slid open and two boys and a girl walked in.
“Hello?” said a voice, a deep boyish voice.
Iza took her hat off and sat up straight. This boy had pale skin, unlike Iza’s hazel tanned skin, his hair was short, and he wore glasses that rested on his pointy nose.
A girl spoke, she had long plaited hair, blonde, “Oh, we’re jolly sorry for disturbing you, but do you mind if we sit down?”
At first what the girl said didn’t make sense. Iza was used to speaking Arabic, but then when she got her head around the words she nodded.
“Good sport,” said another boy, he had relatively long hair, down to the top of his jaw.
Iza watched them without talking. She must have been scowling because at some points the three of them shot them nervous glances.
“So,” said the girl, “I’m Alice, this is Robbie,” she said pointing towards the boy with glasses, “And this is Jack,” the one with long hair black hair, “Who are you?”
“Iza Jenkins,” said Iza.
“Where have you come from, Iza Jenkins?” asked Jack.
“Arabia,” said Iza. It was easy to tell that Iza was not used to speaking English. Her voice was deep and wobbly, like how any foreign person would speak.
“You don’t look Arabian,” said Robbie, “You look English. You skin isn’t the right colour,”
Iza felt hurt. She had always been proud of her lovely, freckled skin.
“My parents are English, my mother is from London, my father from Wales. I was born in Arabia.” She pulled out a picture from inside her blazer pocket. It was blurry but you could always see the desert and her marvellous house in the middle of it. But Iza never liked the picture. It was in black and white and grey. It made the desert loose it’s rich oranges and reds and made it look a lot like the top of the world where it snowed.
“Oh, how gorgeous,” cried Alice, “Your house is lovely. How simply wizard! Is it hot?”
“Of course,” replied Iza, tilting her head, so her long hazel curls tumbled over her shoulder and rested on her chest.
“It must be strange,” said Robbie, “Living in a foreign country with all those foreign people.”
“It is going to be strange for me,” replied Iza, “I shall get used to it.”
“No,” cried Alice, “He means living in Arabia.”
“Why would I find it strange? It is my home. I have lived there all my life.”
“They speak a different language, though,” added Jack.
“English is my second language,” said Iza, “I speak Arabic at home.”
They three children looked at her in aw.
“What a jolly life you must have lived,” cried Alice happily, “But, you’ll keep on living a jolly life that’s for sure. I am thirteen, going into my second year, here at Old Barsons. The lessons are fun, and there are so many other girls. I even have my own horse. He’s called Mossy.”
“I am keeping Hazoon, my horse here also. He is already there waiting for me,” said Iza. It comforted her to know he would be there, whinnying softly over the stable door at Whippy and herself.
Perhaps whippy would be scared of darling Hazoon. Whippy was from her London carer. She gave him to Iza for company, quite unaware that Hazoon was waiting for Iza at school. But how Iza wished she could have bought her leopard with her.
The train chugged onwards and soon, they turned a corner and, there was the most magnificent castle Iza had ever seen.