Daughter of Bad Times

by Rohan Wilson

MR SLATON: Yes.

  MS NGUYEN: And you don’t see a contradiction there?

  MR SLATON: The only contradiction I see is in comparing the bravery of the AFP with the deadly cowardice of the detainees. The police action saved lives. The detainees wanted to end lives, as we saw with Archer Van Hooj.

 

  JUSTICE AMBROSE: Quiet please. Quiet.

  MR SLATON: Can’t you remove that idiot?

  JUSTICE AMBROSE: Yes, another word out of him and I’ll order him removed.

 

  MS NGUYEN: Sorry, Mr Slaton.

  MR SLATON: I don’t deserve that sort of treatment.

  MS NGUYEN: Mr Slaton, do you recall what led to the decision to send the AFP into the compound?

  MR SLATON: Yes.

  MS NGUYEN: We’ve heard evidence that Alessandra Michaela Braden personally requested AFP intervention. Do you recall her doing that?

  JUSTICE AMBROSE: Do you have a number for the evidence?

  MS NGUYEN: Yes, I do, your honour. My apologies. I call attention to the transcript of the testimony from Sergeant Sarah Dixon entered as evidence at B28L.

  JUSTICE AMBROSE: I see it. Yes.

  MS NGUYEN: Do you recall any such request from Alessandra Michaela Braden?

  MR SLATON: No, I do not. And I refute the idea that Cabey-Yasuda Corrections had that kind of influence over the Australian Federal Police.

  MS NGUYEN: The suggestion was that she wanted to rescue her daughter from any potential danger inside the compound. Was that the case?

  MR SLATON: What’s the implication here? That Cabey-Yasuda had bought out the Minister? I don’t like that implication at all. It’s slanderous.

  MS NGUYEN: Please answer the question.

  MR SLATON: A cadre of bad people controlled that facility. Daniel Howland was a leader of the group. So was Rin Sakurai. They incited violence inside Eaglehawk MTC. They caused violence through their words and their actions. We had to stop them.

  MS NGUYEN: Mr Slaton, I’m sure—

  MR SLATON: The suggestion that Alessandra Michaela Braden requested AFP intervention to rescue her daughter is a lie.

  MS NGUYEN: Are you certain about that?

  MR SLATON: Absolutely. Whoever started that lie was looking to gain something by it. It has no basis in fact.

  Yamaan

  Only now do I understand.

  Only now, with the islands drowned and our families lost and the last scraps of us locked in this Eaglehawk, only now do I see why my father wrote. Yes, and I thought Moosa selfish for acting the lion, even when it meant jail. He was selfish. He was also the best man I knew. His writing said one thing over and over—we are human. We are human and our lives have meaning. Such a plain message. Does anyone doubt that it’s true? Yet the need to repeat it became a morbid impulse for him. He knew our economic institutions, the banks, the companies, threw a shadow across our community so black that even the plainly true could be lost. He knew we must resist that.

  Only now, as the first gas grenade descends in the corner of my eye, do I understand why he wrote. The grenade skips across the gravel and sits fizzing among a group of men in anti-static smocks. They look on with big expressions. No one seems to comprehend how a can of gas just fell to earth. Then falls a second, a third, a fourth. They fall from the sky like meteors.

  He wrote to change the future.

  With the landing of the grenades, we run. Rin is ahead of me. We become jammed in the pack of frightened men pushing for the safety of Red Gate and the bovine smell of us is potent, but not so awful as the burning bleach of the gas that washes by in long white drifts so that we cough and cough and lose vision. I call to Rin. I can’t see her through the fog. In the pushing and shoving, I’m spun around.

  Drones, Rin called them. I would say tanks. War machines.

  They thud out of the mist on heavy feet, firing from the cylinders on their arms in synchronisation. They spray a noxious yellow fluid that causes men to grab for their eyes. A huge formation of them, twenty, thirty, too many to count, each with strobing red and blue police lights. Men on the slope scatter left and right looking for any safety they can find. I’m calling for Rin and wiping my eyes and, as I wedge through the crowd, a man pushing in the opposite direction collides with me. We study each other. His face comes to life.

  ‘Yammy!’

  It’s Hassan.

  ‘They’re trying to kill us,’ he says.

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘This is worse than Malé. At least the president used honest weapons.’

  Hassan is wheezing but he keeps up.

  ‘These Australians, they just poison everyone.’

  ‘Hassan,’ I say. ‘She’s here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s in here. The American. She leaked the emails.’

  ‘A small woman in a suit? I think Rasheed saw her.’

  ‘We have to find her.’

  ‘What’s she doing in here?’

  I wheeze too and the gas smoulders in our throats and our eyes with a chemical fury. Ahead of us looms Red Gate and I can barely see it through the tears. It’s still closed. Men are climbing the chain-link to escape the crush below and many are caught in the loops of razor wire on top and hang by their clothes or cry out in pain. Perhaps if we fight, we can make it. They’re shaking the gate and prying it apart. There’s a dry metal squeal, a thud, and then the gate starts to roll back on its motor. A cheer goes up.

  ‘That’s her,’ I say. ‘She did that.’

  ‘What kind of woman can open a gate in this Eaglehawk?’

  ‘She’s an executive vice president. Her mother is the CEO.’

  His eyes swell. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘She can open anything.’

  ‘Let’s find her.’

  ‘She must be close.’

  We join the men pushing their way into the central sallyport. My elbows are packed hard against my ribs. We jam up and shove and wedge and fight our way in. Passing into the sallyport, it feels extravagantly wide open. We’re no longer being crushed. Still, there must be hundreds of men here and I realise with some alarm that it could be a task to find Rin. More and more people tumble through the gate.

  ‘Have you seen the woman?’ I say to them. ‘Did you see her? She came through here. Did you see?’

  Hassan goes left. I go right.

  ‘Have you seen the woman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘A woman? I would love to see a woman.’

  ‘There’s a woman. Where did she go?’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  As more men enter the sallyport, the crowding grows tighter and tighter until it starts a wave of panic. It can’t hold all of us. The men on the inside begin dragging the gate closed. Outside, the huge scrum presses in hard so that many are crushed against the wire and some are trodden under. The insiders begin to jeer and call on the men to stop. They throw handfuls of gravel through the chain-link.

  The crying out of so many people shakes the air in my lungs. It’s so loud I can’t think correctly and I’m looking at the men fighting in the mouth of Red Gate for a long time before I realise it’s not them who are making the noise. The noise comes from behind me. I turn around.

  How long has it been? Two days? We stopped work two days ago and during that time, a geologic era, I’d forgotten there were other compounds. The central sallyport links them all. Behind Blue Gate, inside Kilo compound, the men chant Visa! Freedom! Visa! in a single voice so loud it stirs the hair on my arms. Behind Green Gate, inside Mike compound, they shake the fence and set the coils on top rattling. And in Oscar, at the far end, behind White Gate, the mood is more hushed, no doubt because they see the drones through the wire. They see the end of our uprising. There are a thousand men in each compound. We, the two or three hundred in the sallyport, we are the only ones who have escaped.

  ‘I don’t see her anywhere,’ Hassan says. ‘Wa
it, is that Howland?’

  Yes. Howland. He stands with a gang of orange jumpsuits. He’s watching the gate with concern.

  ‘Where is she?’ I say.

  ‘A real ball-tearer you got there, mate. Fair dinkum. She tried some karate on me.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  Howland snorts.

  ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘No,’ he says, turning his head. ‘Lost her after we come in here.’

  The men of Kilo compound chant behind him.

  ‘Quiet,’ he calls. ‘Can’t hear myself think.’

  The racket grows.

  ‘Quiet.’

  He fires once, twice, through the links of the fence.

  ‘Daniel,’ I say.

  A riffling dust blows above the heads of the crowd. He looks to the sky and across at the gate.

  ‘She came to help us.’

  ‘I know.’

  I stare hard into his face.

  ‘All right,’ he says and slings his rifle. ‘All right. We better bloody find her then.’

  We spread outwards through the crowd. I ask every man I pass if they have seen the woman with white hair. No, brother, they say. What woman? they say. The sallyport is long, stretching like an alleyway to the foot of the manufactory. Where would she go except towards it? I press further through the packs. Half in my heart, I’m expecting to see her sprawled on the ground, bloodied, and with her clothes torn. I check the battery lights on the plaser. Full charge. It may be time to use it.

  Hassan is pointing.

  ‘They saw her. This way.’

  Standing ahead is the huge battlement of the manufactory. We follow him the length of the sallyport until we see the entry point of metal detectors and turnstile gates. Beyond that, steel roller doors. There would usually be officers positioned here to watch us. Today, there are no officers. Today, there are men bashing at the doors with rocks and bits of wood.

  ‘What a fucking circus,’ Howland says.

  ‘Maybe she went inside,’ I say.

  The men in Kilo compound are chanting Visa! Freedom! Visa!

  ‘She could go inside,’ Hassan says. ‘She’s the daughter of the CEO. She can go anywhere.’

  When Howland hears the word daughter his head snaps about.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s—he did not mean daughter.’

  ‘You told me,’ Hassan says. ‘You said her mother is CEO.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Hassan pokes me in the chest. ‘You said she’s executive vice president.’

  ‘No, you misunderstood. Rin’s an analyst. She’s a functionary.’

  But Howland wears a bitter sort of expression.

  ‘An analyst,’ he says.

  ‘A functionary,’ I say. ‘No one important.’

  Howland breathes in and breathes out and seems to lose some patience with me. I see it slip. Patience—believing we shared a solidarity. He shrugs the rifle off his shoulder and swipes the power toggle and the battery lights cycle to life. He gives me a long, cold look like a man who has at last understood, and then stalks off towards the security point. It takes a second or two before I realise what I’ve started. Then there’s a buzz in my brain that runs to the points of my fingers and the pits of my stomach. What will he do to Rin? It’s an endless question, a question that eats its own tail. I follow the circle and everything I picture is a terror.

  That’s not the whole of it, though. I run the looping question around and around and in the long seconds as I watch Howland applying the flame of his torch to the roller doors it’s clear that here, now, at last, he’s fully revealed. The man is split with anger. It sets him off on roads that can only lead to the worst and the blackest places. Howland works the torch back and forth and the paint bubbles. The truth is, I wanted to trust the Tasmanian, I wanted him to be good at heart, but the shadow can never be straight when the rod is crooked.

  ‘Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut?’ I say to Hassan.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he says.

  But he isn’t talking to me. No, he’s looking at Blue Gate.

  The men behind the wire have shaken the gate off its guide rails. It sends a tremor running through the crowd, a tremor of excitement at what lays beyond. The fence sways and bends. Not violent men, not villains—ordinary men with small, cramped lives who worked day after day in good faith, believing they had a chance. A chance at what? They never had a chance. The gate buckles. It tips backward.

  They burst out.

  ‘That’s a problem,’ Hassan says.

  ‘Run,’ I say but there’s nowhere to go.

  Maldivians, yes, but Micronesians and Bangladeshis too. Nigerians. The men who, like us, lost their homes to the sea or to a fool’s war. They stampede past us and I cling to Hassan. Our fingers lock together. He’s swept along and I’m swept with him. I think of the Haj and the crush in Al-Masjid al Haram and I think of holding to my father’s fingers as we circled the Kaaba so soaked in sweat that my clothes dripped and then it strikes me that I’m about to die here, crushed, in this Eaglehawk. I need air. I fight just to breathe. We’re swept towards the manufactory and my heart is in my ears, thundering.

  But I don’t die. There’s a shift, the pressure falls, and I suck a chest full of air. I can move. Hassan is close by among the crests of black hair and he’s looking at me in shock, open-mouthed, and I yell at him but everyone is shouting, everyone is cheering, and my voice is lost. Along the sallyport, Green Gate and White Gate shake and buckle. That’s why they cheer. The gates jump off the rails and buckle and out pour the wild, unhappy men of Mike compound and Oscar compound. The full length of the sallyport is now filled with thousands of us. There’s pushing. I’m knocked off balance and dragged a few steps under the surge of the crowd. I’m dragged and my feet hardly touch the ground.

  Through the morass of bodies, I see Howland.

  ‘You’re not Maldivians anymore,’ he calls and they turn to him.

  He’s taller than all of us. He looks about with a snarl.

  ‘You’re not Nigerians or Bangladeshis. You’ve left those places behind.’

  Somehow the crowd falls quiet.

  ‘Now you’re members of Eaglehawk Nation.’

  No one speaks.

  ‘This is our country. We swear allegiance to the nation of Eaglehawk.’

  In the moment of stillness that Howland has created I sense something. It’s a vibration in my pocket. If I twist and heave I can reach my hand around and liberate the pair of glasses from my pants. When I slide them on, I see that Rin is calling.

  ‘Where are you?’ she says. ‘I lost you.’

  ‘Are you all right? Where are you?’

  ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ she says and it’s pitched in a panicky register.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘There was gas everywhere. Jesus, Yammy. I couldn’t find you.’

  ‘I lost you in the gas. You disappeared.’

  ‘Someone had to open the gate. Who else was going to open it?’

  There are Nigerians staring at the frames on my nose. One says, ‘He got the glasses. This man got the glasses.’

  ‘The gates are down,’ I say. ‘All the gates.’

  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m in the—’

  I don’t hear what she says. The Nigerian is talking to me. I hold up one finger to him. ‘Just a moment.’

  ‘Be ready,’ Rin says. ‘Tell Howland. I’m doing it right now.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘What are you doing? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘You give me the glasses. Give to me.’

  The Nigerian takes a handful of my t-shirt.

  ‘The loading bay,’ she says. ‘Understand?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a guardhouse by the loading bay. It’s really small. Find me.’

  He has the empty stare of a fish, this Nigerian. I remember my cousin holding me in a similar way, driving a TabaPet shell into my ribs. My mouth is dry with
fear. ‘Give to me,’ he says.

  ‘Wait. Rin. The compounds are open. There’s thousands of us.’

  She doesn’t wait.

  A siren howls somewhere inside the manufactory. We know that siren, we know what it means. We hear that siren every morning. A rotating beacon starts and, in the flashing amber light, the security door takes on a new complexion. The Nigerian drops his grip on my shirt. We both look towards the rollers. Where there was noise before, now there’s silence. The siren cuts. There passes a second or two where nothing happens and we watch and we wait and then the motor whines and the roller door starts to lift.

  I don’t know what I expect. Probably what I expect is the Centre Emergency Response Team or drones or police or some sort of defensive line waiting for us, someone to stop us entering. We’ve come to pillage and destroy. Someone would stop us, surely? The roller lifts, clanking and banging, and there are just two officers standing in the great dark cave of the entryway. Two officers facing a crowd four thousand strong. One of them is Rahmatullah. He’s carrying a bright yellow box on a strap over his shoulder. It looks like a bullhorn.

  When I see that box, I turn and swim into the crowd.

  ‘Move back,’ Rahmatullah shouts but it’s unconvincing. ‘Back. Back.’

  At once the crowd pushes forward.

  I’m turning, attempting to swim away, but I’m carried along in the tidal surge of bodies and, as I finally right myself, I see that the captain has tucked the butt against his shoulder and is levelling the bullhorn at us. He seems confused at its operation. He yanks the trigger perhaps without being aware of what he’s carrying. I know what he’s carrying. I’ve seen it carried before by the police outside the People’s Majlis where they used it on demonstrators. I have time to cover my ears before Rahmatullah pulls the trigger.

  What hits us is a psycho-acoustic waveform so bracing that it penetrates the hidden parts of us. We feel it, rather than hear it. The pain is impossible to bear and the men close to me flinch as if they’ve been hit with hot water. Some fall, some cry out. We all hold our ears. I hold my ears and close my eyes and wait for the meaty part of my brain to stop vibrating.

  When it cuts out we all look at each other in wonder. We reorient ourselves. All I see of the captain as he disappears under seven or eight men is the thrashing of his booted feet and then we’re flooding forward again and I’m carried along into the manufactory. In the heavy surge of the crowd, I try to twist and lean, I try to spot Hassan. He’s behind me. We lock eyes. The weight of bodies pushes me into the production aisles where the crowd splinters off and I tuck myself out of sight behind a station in row 89c. Hassan comes past. I grab his arm.