Rain Born

by Zoha Kazemi

  Tirad goes out of the booth, stepping on the harbour. He takes a deep breath, taking in the cool, fresh breeze. He stretches his arms again and yawns. There are so many children playing in the water, laughing and screaming with joy. The Oxan harbour divides into many branches and there are boats docked on both side of every branch. Tirad walks along the main, longest branch. Some boats are embarking their supplies and boarding their passenger and some are disembarking the goods and sending off their tired travellers. He counts the boats. There are at least fifty boats docked by each branch, smaller boats closer to the main land and larger ones at the ends. He tries to guess which boats have been laying there for a few days and see which ones are idle. But how can he know for sure? The port officer must have arrived by now. He turns around, heading back to the booth.

  But he stops, stares ahead at the east side of the Island. He walks again to the end of the main harbour to take a better look. The floating harbour of the refugees impairs the beautiful scene of the sunrise. He tries to focus and see more details from where he stands. The floating harbour is at least twice the size of the main harbour where he is standing on, stretching deep into the sea. It slightly moves with the waves, or maybe it is because of the dancing light of the dawn that makes it look like being in motion. It doesn’t seem to have any strong foundations. It is made up of wood and plastic planes, scattered on the water and pinned together to make a floating surface. There are many small shelters made up of plastic and wooden pieces and covered with the ragged remains of sailcloth, all shagged and garbled. It has been put up without any thoughts and considerations and would probably be torn into pieces with the first storm of the rain season. The floating harbour is filled with people, although he can’t clearly see them from here but he identifies the womanly figures roaming on the floating surface, attending their daily chores and the children swimming around the harbour.

  He wishes to go there and ask them directly what has driven them away from their homes having made them live like this in such awful and unsafe condition. It would be better if he prepared a first-hand report of the refugee situation and took it back with him. At least he won’t be so empty-handed when he gets to the Saviour ship. But he doesn’t have time, even a half a day could be too late for saving Hurmaz’s life. He hastens his steps towards the gate booth. The lines have shortened and the port officer is sitting behind his desk, trying to calm down an old woman who is quarrelling about something. The woman finally gets out and walks to the docks, cursing the officer. Tirad goes to the desk and introduces himself. The officer is a good-looking young man with a broad shoulder and he has grown his light-brown hair and beard like dedicated Saviour followers. He gets up and Tirad feels small when the tall officer stands in front of him, greeting him with kind, respectful words.

  Tirad sorts out the boat trip to Avij for Dalia and her mother first. Even though the boat sailing tomorrow doesn’t have any vacancies, the officer accepts and writes their names down in the passenger list, among seeing the Circle order. Tirad gives him the coins for the journey and the officer promises that the two women will be taken good care of. Tirad then goes about his main business, telling him he needs an emergency boat to the Saviour Island. The fine-looking officer frowns as he looks into his books. It is obvious that his hands are tight in the matter. Tirad offers to pay him twice the coins needed to get a speedboat taking him today and arriving at the Island in a day and a half. But the officer shakes his head and says he can’t do anything to help and he will need time to find something for him. Most boats are already fully booked and speedboats usually won’t accept such long journeys. The officer goes ahead explaining the regulations and arrangements of the port, telling him everything is always in order on the Oxan harbour and the port schedule is always tight. He needs more time to find what Tirad wants. Tirad becomes furious. He doesn’t have time to listen to all the useless explanations or to waste any more time arguing to the officer while he should already be sailing home.

  “What I’m telling you is an order. I don’t want to hear any more excuses… It’s a very critical matter! A matter of life and death! And if I don’t get there on time, you will be blamed for it!” Tirad says to him boldly. The officer needs time to speak to the boatmen. He needs at least till noon to figure something out. Tirad doesn’t stand there listening to the excuses he makes.

  “That would be too long! I will get back in two hours. The speed boat must be ready by then!” Tirad says and hands the pre-payment coins to the officer and gets out of the booth with quick steps. Tirad enters the gate and walks along the surrounding wall to the east side. He has two hours to speak to Lealy, inform Dalia about her confirmed trip and to take a closer look at the floating refugee harbour. He hasn’t taken more than a hundred steps that he remembers he had forgotten to ask the guards about the dead, pregnant woman they had found three days back. He can do that when he returns for the speedboat. The route by the long stonewall is narrow and there are no one passing there except for the guards. He sees two guards trying to stop him but he just shows them his arm tattoo and passes along. He reached the east gate of the Island that used to open to a short dock before and now it has turned into a long, stretched, floating surface that goes on a few hundred meters into the sea. The gate is closed. If they open the gate, the refugees will rush towards it trying to get in to the main land. There are ten armed guards behind the gate. One of them stops Tirad, as he approaches the gate booth.

  Tirad show the guard his mission papers signed by the Circle. He has to show it again to the head-guard. As soon as they find who he is, all the guards come to him, circling around him and beg him to do something about the refugees. What they want is for the Circle to put an end to the situation. They seem to have been under a lot of pressure since the refugees had come. One of them says they have to stop them climbing the wall in the middle of the night. Another one says they are scared that the refugees might attack the eastern gate trying to enter by force. Tirad assures them that they will take care of the matter very soon and the refugees shall return to their homes. The two guards slightly open the gate for Tirad, giving him enough room to slide through the door and step outside.

  As soon as he sets foot on the docks, the refugee children surrender him. Their mothers come to scatter them away and see who the newcomer is and what he wants. Tirad finds himself caught between the many young and old women that circle around him. From their shaved heads, it’s clear that they are mostly fishers and divers and through their dirty shagged clothes, it is obvious that are not in good conditions. Tirad doesn’t have to introduce himself; his tattoo has said it all. They start talking at once, complaining about their unsuitable conditions. They interrupt one another, pushing each other trying to get closer to Tirad and speak. Tirad lowers his face trying not to look straight at any of them and only listen to what they have to say. Most of the women are half-naked, their bare breasts hang freely around their busts. Tirad feels uncomfortable, both for their nudity and the ruckus that makes him unable to hear their words correctly. They keep saying that they are hungry and thirsty. Oxan gives them a small share of water and fish in return for the human faeces they gather twice a week used for fertilisers. They have to boil the seawater and distil it to make drinking water but they don’t have enough fuel or the combustive material. They have to eat the fish uncooked and save their fires for boiling water.

  Tirad asks them why they won’t go back to their ships, although he knows the answer but he wants to hear it directly. They say the same things that the giant fish had attacked them, some of the ships have become partly damaged and the fishers and divers were attacked and killed. They couldn’t bear the danger anymore and risk going out to sea to fish. All of them are grieving, having lost at least one member of their family, a husband, brother or sister or even their young sons and daughters. They start telling him whom they have lost with spite and grief and some burst into tears. Tirad asks them how huge the giant fish were. They all start answering giving th
eir own definition of ‘huge’. One of them says three times as a man, the other says the size of a fishing boat and another one declares as four times as a dolphin. The sizes they give do not match. They might have seen different things or perhaps they are deluded, caught up in the amnesiac state of the sea people. It is, however, clear that the fish were large enough for them, and they didn’t have the means to fight them back without help, not unless they had to disobey the Saviour Rules. An old woman makes her way to Tirad and points to a young woman who is holding a baby in her arms.

  “We haven’t seen a baby born on the southern ships for more than two years. The giant fish take our pregnant women. They kill them and eat their babies. If we hadn’t come here, on land, this woman would have died as well…her baby too,” she says, showing the young woman again. Tirad silences the crowd and looks closely at the old woman and the new mother. He wants her to explain further.

  “They conjure our pregnant women in the middle of the night… The women throw themselves into the sea as if they are spellbound… I’ve seen it with my own eyes!” she explains.

  “How do they do that? The fish put a spell on the women?” Tirad asks.

  “I don’t know how they do it…but I’ve seen it. It was a school of large fish, not as big as the ones that attacked the ships and fishing boats. But they were large,” she continues. Tirad still wants his straight answer. He asks the young mother how she was bewitched by the fish. But the woman doesn’t answer. The older woman replies instead.

  “I saw her wanting to jump off into the sea, she was seven months pregnant. I stopped her. That’s when I saw the fish. But she hasn’t said a word since that night,” she says and puts her hands on her mouth and ears to show how she has lost her hearing and voice. She then explains if they hadn’t come there looking over her at all times, who knows what would have happened to her.

  “But why do they spellbind the women? To eat their babies? Why not eat the women themselves?” Tirad asks. He feels his sentence was hilarious and smiles. But the women look at him with a serious look as if it is not a laughing matter but a very drastic situation.

  “Some say they do this to take revenge…but we never killed any of the giant fish. What have we done wrong to be punished for?” The old woman replies with tears rolling down her wrinkled dry face. Another woman starts to talk.

  “We have heard that some northern ships were given high-tech boats by Oxan and they have been fishing the large fish without the Saviour permission…but the fish don’t know who is who. They have been attacking us, seeking for revenge,” she says. Tirad asks further questions about the illegal fishing and their relevance to the eaten babies. But the women keep repeating themselves. They start talking simultaneously, confirming the words of the old woman and the other refugee woman who explained about the new fishing boats. Tirad can’t keep them calm anymore. He doesn’t believe their words; it all seems like another myth made up by the people of the sea. How could there be such fishing boats and hunting activities in the north and he had never heard anything about them? How could the fish understand such things and want to revenge? They might attack the boats for food, killing and eating the fishers, but a new born baby? Why should they eat the baby and leave the mother? He doesn’t understand which is the main reason for their fleeting? Having their ships attacked by the revengeful fish or their babies being eaten by them? It seems more like an imaginative tale told by the weary women. While it could all just be random incidents, and the death of the pregnant women might be due to some kind of sickness.

  Tirad makes them quiet again and asks the number of pregnant women who were killed. The numbers don’t add up with the reports received by Hurmaz. The old woman says six from their ship and at least thirty women in their area. Another one says at least fifty women and the number goes higher to hundreds as the others try to guess. He can’t take in these words anymore. The refugee children run along between his legs and the women constantly try to send them away. Tirad feels dizzy from standing on the floating surface that drifts all the time, making it hard for him to stand still. He is also annoyed by the buzzing sound of the woman talking simultaneously and the moist breeze that fills his ears. He feels like throwing up and he should get out of there before he really gets sick and embarrass himself in front of the refugee women. He needs to go to Lealy and then head back to the harbour. Although he hasn’t found much from these women, but at least he can tell Hurmaz that he has started the investigation, if Hurmaz is alive by the time he gets back. Tirad takes another look at the slum, makeshift shelters of the floating harbour and the poor women who are still speaking loudly. He promises them that he will take care of the problem and hastens towards the eastern iron gate of the Island, trying to pass through the naked bodies and hands that are begging him for help.

  Chapter 18

  Asin takes the leather sack from Lealy and carries it on her shoulder. She walks behind Lealy and Dalia. Lealy is mumbling, upset and worried about Tirad that no one knows where he is. But Asin had seen Tirad going out of the house in the middle of the night and she had seen Dalia following him. Dalia had come back a little later and had slept by her side without saying anything. She must know where Tirad had ran off to but she won’t say it, not to her and not to Lealy who could hardly eat her breakfast, being so worried. The roofed alleys of Oxan are not new to Asin, but it is the first Dalia has seen such a place, Asin wants to tell her daughter about her past, especially now that she has finally set foot on land and can understand what it is like to live on an island. She needs a time alone with her but Lealy won’t let leave them to themselves and Dalia is obeying her every command without objection, asking Asin to do the same. She may be right to be so thankful. Who knows if anyone else had given the ruling, what could have happened to them? But Asin refuses to accept that she owes her life to Master Tirad, not the way Dalia has devoted herself to the idea. Not that she doesn’t like Tirad but she is torn by the thought of what she knows will happen to Dalia. Her maternal instinct tells her that Dalia has fallen for Tirad and since she has to leave him within the following days and go back to their ship, her heart will be broken. Even if they didn’t separate, Tirad would break her heart. Not only because he is young, but for having devoted his love to the Saviour. She knows his type, wandering men who have reached where they are with many difficulties, men who try to do the right thing their whole lives and never know what they wanted from life until it is too late; they spend their first half of their lives losing all their chances of happiness and spend the second half regretting it.

  Asin knows her daughter well. She is similar to her, never too scared or too careful, sticking to her best opportunities. All she needs is a little more luck. She usually takes her time getting what she needs and achieving what she wants. But this newly flourished love has made her cautious. She didn’t smell like coming from a man’s arms last night when she returned. She hasn’t gained Tirad’s trust yet. She needs more time to subdue him, something she doesn’t have. She doesn’t want her daughter to fall into a similar fate as she did, having to get used the mundane life on the ship after a burning heartache. She feels too useless, not being able to help her daughter. She couldn’t help anyone and that disappoints her. If she could, she would have saved the life of her stillborn babies. Perhaps saving someone from death is easier than saving them from falling in love and have their hearts broken. She can’t help either of them; Dalia and Tirad have to go down this path alone as every other human being has done, a path of pains and inner wounds never fully healed and treated. They shall soon look for remedies to soothe the soaring pain of separation and seek shelter in mundane thoughts to dissipate the memories of these days. But Tirad will never even be truthful enough to himself to understand when and how his heart had been wounded. He will face his inner self too late to be able to fill in the hole that would always make him feel incomplete. Asin feels helpless more than ever as he had been feeling for the last sixteen years, since she was found passed out on
the sea by Avij divers.

  The Oxan market is crowded like all the other markets she had seen before. It’s like a beating heart pumping people in and out of its shops and stalls like blood rushing through the veins. The most important part of any island is the market where fishers layout their fished goods around the main square and wholesalers stand in their stalls dealing with their customers. The wholesalers buy and sell water, fuel, oxygen tanks and dived out goods like steel, plastic, soil and glass. Their storehouses are in the northern storage cabins of the island and they send their orders directly to the port. The Saviour Missioners also have a stand where missioners or healer-maids sit, giving council to people who have problems in their lives, explaining the Saviour Rules and attending to the sick and wounded. The Saviour donation box is by the stand and people usually throw coins in it as the cost of their treatment or as alms to the Saviour Ship. Lealy makes her way through the laid out fished goods to the Saviour stand, trying not to step on the dried fish, octopuses and prawns. She orders Dalia and Asin to put the sacks behind the stand and she sits in front of it. People line up by the stand before she gets a chance to take her breath. She starts looking into their throats, taking out the loose teeth of the children and attending to the wounds of the boatmen and harbour foremen. She keeps ordering Dalia to hand her different tools, bottles of medicine, ointment tins and the pre-prepared napkins from the leather sacks.