I woke to Murphy braying. The light in the nearby toilet block flickered, the bottle of brandy lay empty beside me and through the branches of the Lexton Lone Pine I could see a black sky full of stars. Murphy brayed again and nodded his mule head. Now I saw: there was a man sitting huddled on a bench in the rotunda, shivering, moaning. He hadn’t seen me, sitting as I was cross-legged like a yogi contemplating the haystacks on my way down the eightfold path. He had brown skin, a rough beard and a Brisbane Lions beanie. He didn’t look well. Around his neck on a piece of string was a cardboard sign: PLase Help. I approached, and asked how long he’d been there. Three weeks, said the man, in an unfamiliar accent. Curious. And what is your story? I asked, fully aware of what I was letting myself in for. You will listen? said the man, looking up at me, surprised. That’s what I do, I said. My name is Jack Simpson, and that there is my donkey, Murphy. We made our names in the Great War, at Gallipoli, against the Turks. The country needed a martyr. Now I crisscross the countryside, doing good. I can afford to tarry awhile and listen to your tale: truth be told, I’ve just had a mighty good sleep. Who are you, I said, where do you come from, and in a land of fatted calves why do you look so horribly thin?
His name was Javed. He had just walked from the Murray via Wycheproof to a vineyard outside Avoca—but there was no work for him there. For the past two and a half years he had followed the seasonal trail, Mildura to Robinvale, over the border to Tooleybuc, back again and down through Wood Wood, Nyah and Swan Hill, and in the late season south to the vineyards of the Victorian Pyrenees. This was pretty much the way it had been since they let him out of the camp. He’d hacked meat, picked fruit, driven taxis and sent what he could back home. He had travelled and worked alongside his countrymen, including some he had shared the boat with, but then he had grown restless and for some time now had been travelling alone. His only real emotional tie was to the wife and three young children he had left behind. They were safe now, in a camp over the border, but he had not seen them since he left, nearly seven years ago.
No sooner had Javed mentioned his wife and children than he was blubbering into what I could see was a very dirty handkerchief. In fact, the closer I looked, the more I saw how truly filthy he was. His trousers were stained at the knees and cuffs with rich red Sunraysia soil; he had dirt under his fingernails and in the weathered cracks of his skin; his beard was unwashed and matted; one of his shoes was laced with twine. I offered him a clean rag, the one I use for polishing my buttons, and let him hoot and snort until he was breathing through his nose again. He took an untouched corner and dabbed his eyes. I have come to the end, he said: my journey is finished. I looked around us. What sort of place was this to finish a journey? I made up a tincture to put on his tongue. He was entirely trusting. Well if, as you say, this is the end, I said, then tell me, what was the beginning?
One hundred years of suffering had brought Javed to this place—his people had always been persecuted but more violently of late. He sought out an agent called Masooma, well known in their district, and paid him thirteen thousand Australian dollars in borrowed money to get him to the country many had spoken of as paradise. There, they said, he would find a job, save money, bring his wife and children out and start a new life.
In the middle of the night along with half a dozen other desperate men he was loaded into the back of a truck and driven to the capital, where, at the end of a quiet street, they were transferred to a minibus. It was covered in dust and had obviously been travelling roads far from the capital. Quickly, quietly, false passports in their hands, they made their way across the border. That night they slept on mats on the living-room floor of a man called Salim and after breakfast they boarded a bus that took them across mountains and through deep valleys to a port city in the south. They arrived there in the evening, hungry and tired, and were driven to the airport. There, said Javed, in his broken English, mingled with the smell of engine fumes and sweat, was the unmistakable and to him wholly new smell of the sea.
They flew all night, Javed half-dozing and looking out the window at the lights of the subcontinent below. The eastern horizon was lightening when they banked and began their descent. He looked around at the others and saw in them all the same anticipation and dread. At the airport they had been told to look for a man called Mr Puntodewo, and indeed, they had no sooner come off the travelator than a short man in a pink polo shirt with a cardboard sign saying Mr Puntodewo appeared. He led them to a side door where two policemen stood guard; Mr Puntodewo nodded and the door was pushed open for him. He led the group down a corridor, then another, then briefly out onto the tarmac and back in through another door. Now they were in the baggage-claim area. They collected their bags and followed Mr Puntodewo out into the heavy tropical air, then down a ramp into a car park where a new minibus was waiting.
Around lunchtime they arrived in a small village in the hinterland behind the sea and took a long winding driveway edged with tall palms up to a house high on stilts. This was Mr Hussein’s place, and one by one the men in the minibus were introduced to him. Mr Hussein was always smiling; Javed was not sure if this was a good thing or not. He told them they would be staying at his house for a while, that they would like it in Australia, that they would be there soon, that within a month they would have their permits and after three months their passports, that the Australian government was a kind and considerate one which would give them ten thousand dollars each in cash to start a new life there. Mr Hussein then held up a photograph of a big white cruise ship on a big blue ocean. Your ship, very soon, he said.
Mr Puntodewo drove away and the visitors were taken from the main house to a big barn-like structure with its own bathroom and toilet and a small balcony from where you could glimpse the ocean through the trees. They were well fed, three meals a day, and when it was not raining, which it often was, they would spend their daylight hours wandering in the lush tropical garden and at night would lie under mosquito nets writing letters by lamplight home. There were others like themselves, in other huts dotted around the property, and every other day more people arrived.
By the end of the third week, the huts on Mr Hussein’s villa were full to overflowing; Javed estimated there would have been at least three hundred people. Rumour came to him that this was the quota and then, soon after that, eight big buses appeared, snaking up Mr Hussein’s driveway. Everyone was loaded in. There was no air-conditioning, the hot rain pelted down; they left the main road and wended their way down to a tiny fishing village on the far western side of the island. Javed could see the beach, and some fishing boats moored offshore. The buses stopped, the drivers got out and started talking to a man who kept pointing out to sea. Presumably they were waiting for the white ship to appear. It was very stuffy in the bus now that it had stopped, and everyone was desperate to get outside. But the driver had locked the doors. The sky darkened, there was still no white ship. All the drivers were sitting on the sand at the water’s edge, smoking and talking, looking out at the darkening sea. A half-moon rose and hung above the water. They must have waited a couple of hours, said Javed, while the beach slowly widened, until it was all beach, way out, and the last fishing boat was resting on the sand. The man who had spoken to the drivers earlier walked out across the sand flats. He wore white trousers and in the dull moonlight you could see him pushing here and there with his foot. He turned and waved a white handkerchief back towards the shore.
Then it was all action. The bus doors opened and everyone got out. The driver went round the back and started unloading the bags—they were allowed one small bag only, barely enough to keep a change of clothes in—and then, from a box in the luggage compartment they were each given a bottle of water and a biscuit. This, apparently, was all they needed, and it was precisely this gesture, Javed recalled, above all other things, that convinced him their dash to freedom would be over in a matter of hours. By now the man out on the sand had rolled his trousers up and was waving the white handkerchief even more vigorousl
y, indicating they should follow. Three other crew members had joined him out there now, one with a rope slung over his shoulder. As a mass, everyone rolled up their own trousers and skirts and set out across the wet sand.
Javed could still not see the ship. He kept his eyes on the person in front of him, or on his own feet. He could hear the buses whining their way back up the hill. Crabs scurried sideways, in the puddles and pools small fish shook themselves out of the sand. They weren’t walking long before the person in front of him stopped. It took Javed a while to realise what was going on. The captain and his three crew were climbing aboard one of the fishing boats, an old, rickety-looking thing, more a toy boat held together with tape and string than a vessel built to take three hundred people out to sea. The crew members were holding out their hands and hissing at the people to hurry up and get on board. The captain was already at the wheel. So this was it, thought Javed: this was the white ship, this was the white ship that would take them to Australia. When Javed looked back towards the shore he could just make out the four policemen, their trousers rolled up, submachine guns in their hands.
He was still asleep when the sun came up. During the night he had found a relatively comfortable position, half-resting his head on the shoulder of his neighbour. There was murmuring and movement: he opened his eyes. One portion of the sky was turning pink, the engine was still making its monotonous noise. Javed’s biscuit had gone soggy, so he ate it. People were stirring, stretching their limbs: you could feel the boat gently rocking. Somewhere a baby was crying. There were shouts and arguments. Javed looked out at the horizon: it looked higher than the night before. Then he realised: the boat was sinking—the seat of his pants was wet, water was slowly seeping up through the planks. The captain began handing out buckets and tins, yelling at people to bail. Some next to Javed were already using their empty water bottles, cut in half, frantically throwing little cupfuls over the side.
Throughout the morning, the bailing buckets did the rounds of the men on board; it was late morning when Javed’s turn came and the day was already hot. He was put below decks with another man of a similar age whose name was Shawali: they worked well together and soon had a good rhythm going, handing their full buckets up to the two men stationed above. Javed was grateful for the exercise; he said this to Shawali and he agreed. They speculated on how far they might have come in the night—the engine never stopped throbbing—and agreed they must be close to, perhaps only hours away from, Australia. They agreed they had made a good choice—Shawali even had a distant relative there, and this relative was always sending money back and praising his adopted home. Shawali was an engineer and he was quite sure, he told Javed, that in such a new country, with so much building to be done, he would soon find work.
When the bucket-carriers above called down that it was time to hand over to a new team, it was well past midday. Shawali led Javed to his spot below the wheelhouse on the starboard side and introduced him to his wife and young daughter. He took a plastic bag of food from a canvas pack and from that a ring-pull can of tuna and some bread: his wife spread them on a small cloth and invited Javed to eat. Javed was very hungry now—he picked out a chunk of tuna with his fingers and put it on some bread, felt a shiver of pleasure as he put it in his mouth. Shawali smiled and handed Javed an apple.
The two talked all afternoon but by evening they had run out of things to say. The sun was sinking, a big orange ball; Javed watched it go down. Shawali and his family shared the last of their bread. Javed was tired, the day had been long. He had already drunk all his water. He excused himself and with his bag for a pillow he curled up against the wheelhouse wall.
But he had not been sleeping long when a strange feeling woke him. Others were stirring too. The engine had stopped. One of the crew members came up from below and spoke quietly to the captain; the captain followed him back down. Now everyone was waking up, unsettled by the unfamiliar silence. The captain reappeared, looked up at the sky, then went inside the wheelhouse to check his equipment. A delegation of men approached the cabin window and started remonstrating with the captain, who, in his native tongue, told them to go away. But the men would not, and others pressed in around the window too. Then there was a shot and everyone ducked. The captain was waving a pistol, telling the troublemakers to back off; he had the situation under control, they would be in Australia soon.
They drifted all night and all the following day. There was no food and the only fresh water was in a plastic barrel that a delegated crew member guarded carefully, doling out small and ever-diminishing quantities. The bailing didn’t stop. The heat was unbearable. Everyone started to get sick; a toilet had been improvised off the stern with a couple of planks and a curtain hung for privacy and, aside from the bailing, the only other sound was of liquid shit hitting the water.
The next day a plane flew overhead and circled around; everyone shouted and waved, some people shook their orange life jackets over their heads, others held their children up high in the air for the plane to see. A crew member doused a rag with diesel fuel and lit it, then dropped it into a tin bucket from where a big column of black smoke rose into the air. The plane flew away.
Later that day the weather turned. A strong wind blew up from the south and waves crashed over the deck. Some of the parents tied their children down, to prevent them being washed away. The storm went on most of the night.
Next morning, far off, finally, a ship appeared, a navy ship to judge by its markings. It took a long while to assume its proper size. It came alongside, a rope ladder was lowered, and one by one they all made their way up.
Javed, I said, please eat. I held out a dry biscuit. His face hung heavy, his shoulders drooped; he had carried his burden so long he looked crushed. I will never eat, he said, until I see my wife and children again. But please, Javed, I said, I am a miracle worker, not a migration agent. Javed put his head in his hands.
He spent the next two years in his new home—khaki tents, razor wire, dripping taps, stinking toilets—on a speck of an island out in the blue. He was already a broken man when at last they said to him: You have been approved. They put him on a plane with twelve others and flew him to Brisbane airport, where a van was waiting out the front. He stared at the flat-roofed factories, lush vegetation, the houses with their big front yards. It was hard for him to remember if this was what he imagined when he’d imagined Australia; he had long put all dreaming, all wishing, all hoping from his mind.
They stayed a week at a volunteer’s house—Welcome, welcome, said the woman, waddling down the drive—sleeping on mattresses spread across the floor. On the second night their host felt duty bound to let them know the reality of their situation. They were temporary residents only, she said. They could work, but their previous qualifications would not necessarily be recognised and their access to social-security payments was restricted. And no, said the woman, sadly, you will not see your families, you have no reunion rights. All this was relayed to the group via an interpreter, a short, thin man called Saed who seemed ashamed of every word.
The men talked among themselves that night and every night after, lying on their mattresses on the floor. Some were prepared to wait and see how the woman might help them, but others wanted to leave now. A brash young man called Ali told the group he had a brother-in-law in a town to the south: Haidar was his name, he had come out four years ago and found work in an abattoir. Ali was going down there, the others were welcome to join him, his brother-in-law would find them work for sure. Most argued against it: weren’t they more likely to find jobs here, in the big city, than in the countryside far away? And it is not good to turn down hospitality when it is offered. Javed didn’t especially like Ali, if anything he deeply distrusted him, but he could see he was a man of adventure: he would get him out of this cloying household and help him see what his new country had to offer. In the end, he was in the minority: of the thirteen arrivals, nine decided to stay in Brisbane and try to find work as taxi drivers, car washers, w
aiters. Only four, including Javed, followed Ali south.
They were given five hundred dollars each out of the host charity’s coffers and a volunteer, Brad, a stout young man with a droning voice, offered to drive them as far as Sydney. From there they would take the train. Of the journey Javed remembered little: crossings, bridges, thinning suburbs, then the flatness going on forever. He knew he would have to understand that line out there, where the sky met the earth, if he were to get any kind of foothold in his new land. He’d need to get his heart out of the mountains, he told himself, his head out of the clouds: level himself out, stretch himself thin, find a voice that droned like Brad’s.
From the old brick railway station, Ali led the odd little party down the town’s main street to the pub. He told them to wait outside, then went inside to ask with few words and many gestures where the abattoir might be. Some men came out, all with glasses of beer in their hands, and each started giving directions. Eventually one of them took out his car keys and handed his glass to one of the others. Come on, he said to the visitors, I’ll drop you there. They followed him around the corner to his ute. There was a dog in the back, tied to the roll bar. Don’t worry about him, said the man. They all got in. A little way down the road the man stopped, got out and gestured for them to follow. They approached a big tin shed; there was a conversation at the side door, then all of a sudden their fellow countrymen were there; ten, a dozen men, all dressed in blood-smeared white coats with funny white hats on their heads. One of them pushed forward, tore off his rubber gloves and grabbed Ali in an embrace. The other men started cheering and clapping; they tore off their gloves too and began shaking the arrivals’ hands.
Simpson Returns Page 5