‘No, little one. There will be all kinds of other ways to travel – a plane and a boat…I’ll find out what we have to do to get away as quickly as possible. This is not a good place to stay, even though it is safe and it’s more comfortable than the truck. I want us all to leave together.’
He kept saying this for three days while the owner of the house and the many men who visited said otherwise. Mahtab sat on the mattress inside as they squatted in the yard and went over and over the route to be taken, the money that was needed, the time and the dangers. Finally, her mother urged him to go ahead.
‘Maybe they are right. Maybe it is more expensive than we ever imagined. Go quickly. Discover the way and then, when you are there and are able to send more money, we will come too. We are safe here. The man will bring food and I will keep the children here, with me. I will not let them go out into the streets or put themselves in harm’s way. When you are safely there, you can send us word and tell us what we have to do.’
He was persuaded. Plans were made. Money changed hands. As the time drew closer, the family grew silent. Mahtab watched her father’s every move. Her eyes followed him as he crossed the yard to meet with the strangers who came to instruct him. She noticed the way he tugged at his beard as he tried to make up his mind, the way he sucked his bottom lip in as he concentrated, the way he tossed his head back and laughed, showing the gaps where three teeth were gone on the left-hand side. She stared at the curly dark hair on the backs of his fingers as he lifted his tea to drink, and at his back, laced with the purple, bulging scars, as he stood half dressed.
Farhad and Soraya clung to him. They rode on his back or walked with their arms wound tightly around his waist. When he sat they lay on the floor, their heads resting on his legs.
On the last night they all spooned meatballs and rich spinach sauce onto the flat rounds of bread.
‘I will not eat this well again until you are with me in Australia.’ Their father wiped the spilt sauce from his beard and put his arm across his wife’s shoulders. ‘It will not be long.’
Later that night, when Farhad and Soraya slept, he knelt on the floor beside Mahtab’s mattress.
‘I pray that we will be all together again soon but you know that many things can happen and the journey is long. You are the eldest and you understand that the next few months will be very difficult for your mother. She will need your help. The others are too young to understand when they are in danger. They will get very bored here. There is nowhere to play as there was at home. There are no toys, no books, no friends. It will be up to you to help Mum as much as you can.’ He put his arms around Mahtab and hugged her, tightly. ‘Play games with them. Tell them stories. Talk to them of the things I have told you about Australia. Try to keep them as calm as you can.’ He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. ‘We will be together again. We will be free, free from the fear and all that we have seen and we have suffered. I promise you that.’
How could she say to him what she was thinking? Without her watching over him, with him in strange lands, with strange men, so far away…Mahtab pushed these thoughts from her mind, wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face to his chest.
In the morning he was gone.
At first their days remained the same. They got up and washed and then Mahtab and her mother knelt in the second room to pray. They ate their morning meal and took turns imagining where their father might be and what he might be doing.
‘He is sailing on the sea like Sinbad,’ said Farhad. ‘He can see lots of fish and there are giant whales as big as islands.’
‘He is in the new country already,’ said Soraya, ‘and he has got us a house and there is a special room for each of us and an orange tree like the one we had before and the paddling pool for me is the biggest one in the whole world and soon he will tell us to come.’
Mahtab would tell them some of the things her father had told her that he had learnt from the young man from Australia. ‘Everyone can have a television and you don’t have to hide it away in a cupboard so that no one can find it.’ And ‘Everyone must go to school, even the girls, until they are fifteen and you cannot get married until you are eighteen,’ and ‘You can travel anywhere in the country, girls too, and there is not war and you are not scared that someone will take your money or your life.’ To herself she said, and I can study at the university like Grandma’s sister and be a doctor.
Weeks passed. The days grew longer and longer and they heard nothing of him. Everyone slept later. The hot sun was high above them as they drank the first tea of the morning. Then they pushed the mattress and the cushions back and that empty space became their world for the day. They talked less of him and more of their life before. They dredged up from their minds the memories of their home and their family, talking of Grandma, aunts and uncles and cousins until the pain of remembering became too great and they begged each other to stop. They cooked, taking time to mix flour and water and occasionally milk to prepare the dough for bread. Sometimes when Hairy Man delivered their food for the week there was meat, and then Mum would take her time and mix with it the spices she had carried across the border, firming the mixture into tight balls for cooking with vegetables. Whenever there was spinach sauce they thought back to that night, the night before their father left, when they had all eaten his favourite meal.
Weeks became months. Sometimes when they sat in the doorway with only the sunshine for company Farhad asked, ‘Where is our father now? Why haven’t we heard?’
Mahtab wasn’t sure how to answer. She knew that Malaysia and Indonesia were to the east of Pakistan. She knew too that at some stage of the journey there was a sea to be crossed, but she didn’t know the order they came in or how long any part of the journey would take. So she always said, ‘He is still travelling.’
At times Farhad stood silently in the doorway, listening to the sounds of boys playing beyond the wall: running feet, a ball kicked and thudding against the bricks, eager cries.
‘Let me go,’ he said to his mother one day. ‘Let me play with them.’
She said no, and he grew angry and took a stick and gouged deep holes in the ground. He stomped on dried leaves, shattering them into hundreds of tiny pieces, grinding them into the dirt. When his mother called him to stop he shouted back, ‘Where is my father? Why did he go? He doesn’t want us.’ He pressed his face against the wall and would not look at anyone.
One day Hairy Man delivered paper and pencils along with the lentils and the green vegetables. ‘I asked him for these,’ Mum said. She took one sheet and drew a large square and then divided it up into many smaller squares.
‘What is it?’ Farhad was impatient.
‘You’ll see.’ She coloured in every second square along the row.
Mahtab knew. ‘It’s a chessboard,’ she whispered.
Her mother nodded. ‘We’ll make the pieces from paper too.’
They drew each piece of a chess set on the remaining paper and gently tore around the shapes: kings and queens, bishops, knights and rooks, and finally a whole collection of pawns.
‘But I don’t know how to play,’ said Farhad.
‘I’ll teach you.’ Mahtab remembered the nights at home when she used to sit beside her father and he pointed out to her the folly in a move she was about to make. He instructed her in the need to plan ahead, to think what move her opponent might be going to make and to find ways to escape that move. ‘It’s a game of the mind,’ he said. ‘A game of the mind.’ That set, left behind in Herat, was made of marble. She tried to remember the cool feel of the rounded shapes in her hand and she wondered if anyone played with them now.
Every day after breakfast they lay on their bellies on the floor, pushing the tiny bits of paper from square to square, claiming their victories as each outmanoeuvred the other. It wasn’t easy – a cough was enough to blow a piece from its place – but they persisted.
Gradually, Farhad’s skill increased and even Soraya spotted moments when danger
lurked for him. After an hour or so he would shrug his shoulders and announce that he had had enough. He stood at the open door and again begged their mother to let him go out; find some other boys to play with. Perhaps there would be a ball to kick around, a kite to fly.
She always said no.
Then it would be time for a story. Aladdin and His Lamp, Ali Baba, The Ebony Horse, Sinbad the Seaman. They knew them all, but they lay together across her bed and listened as the familiar words washed over them and took them out of the tiny room with its dark, bare walls and on to exotic lands.
One day, Soraya and Farhad begged for a different story.
‘You tell one,’ Mum said to Mahtab. ‘I want to lie down.’
‘But I don’t know any.’
‘Yes you do.’ Soraya climbed onto her sister’s lap. ‘There’s nothing to do here.’
‘Come on, Mahtab. You used to tell us good stories.’
‘All right.’ Mahtab thought for a moment. ‘Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Soraya who had a brother called Farhad. They used to live in Herat but now they are bigger and they live under a different sky in a land called Australia. They have a wonderful house with a big garden with fruit trees that feed them, and they grow oranges so big and juicy that when they suck them the juice runs all over their chin. And there are delicious almonds and flowers too, bright, gorgeous flowers that delight them, and the sun is always shining and Farhad has a great big kite and he can fly it with the other children in the street.’
‘What does Soraya have?’ the little girl asked, nestling down, her head pressed against Mahtab’s ribs so hard that they hurt. She placed her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it the way she had as a baby.
Mahtab remembered something her father had shown her in a book about Australia.
‘She is very lucky. For her birthday her father has been to the market and he doesn’t buy her a caged bird as he would in her old land. He buys her a kangaroo.’
‘A kangar – what? What’s that?’
‘A kangaroo. It is one of the most amazing of all the creatures on Earth. It has a small face and a big body and a strong tail so it can stand up on its tail and its back feet. And it doesn’t walk, it can’t walk like a donkey or a camel. Its front paws are too little. It jumps. Everywhere. That’s how it gets around. And the most special thing about it is that it has a pouch, here at the front.’ Mahtab patted her stomach. ‘And in that pouch it can put its babies and carry them around when it’s looking for food.’
‘A pocket?’ Soraya giggled. She picked up her small rag doll and tucked it into the top of her trousers and danced across the floor. ‘I’m a kang-ar-oo. I’m a kang-ar-oo.’ She was laughing. Farhad too. He picked up a sandal and tucked it into his pants. He jumped from the mattress across to the door and back and suddenly they were all laughing and rolling on the floor as if they were happy again in their own house, in their own land.
Later, their giggling done, Farhad said, ‘If they have such funny animals there, maybe the people are funny too and they have three legs.’
‘Or two heads,’ said Soraya.
‘Or their eyes are at the back of their head.’
‘Their two heads.’
Their giggling started again. Mahtab didn’t join them. She knew there would be things that were different, Dad had told her. But what would it really feel like, to go to school, to study, to try to find a friend?
That night when the younger children were asleep, Mahtab lay on the bed with her mother. ‘Do you think he is still travelling?’
‘I don’t know,’ her mother said. ‘I lie here at night trying to picture where he is. But I know nothing of the world. I have never been anywhere but Herat. I don’t know what those places he talked of look like. I don’t know how far away they are or how wide the ocean is that he has to cross. He told me much of the way he would go but I can’t remember it all.’
‘How long is it since he left?’
‘Five months. He must be there by now.’
‘So why doesn’t he call us? He said that he’d phone.’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
After that, Mahtab didn’t ask again. She sat all day on the floor or on the mattress, sometimes occupying her thoughts with memories of the past or imaginings of the future. More often, her mind was blank. When she got up to go into the other room, she moved slowly, her limbs heavy. She saw her mother was the same. They grew pale and quiet. It felt as if only Farhad and Soraya had any life in them. They still giggled as they played the kangaroo game, seeing which one could jump higher and further, which one could stuff the most sandals and shoes into their pouch. Once when Hairy Man came to deliver their weekly food, they demanded he watch and judge which of them made the better creature. He shook his head and hastened away even more quickly than usual.
Chapter Five
ONE WEEK INTO their eighth month without their father, Hairy Man knocked on the door and called their mother out to talk with him. He spoke curtly to Mahtab, insisting that she stay inside.
When their mother returned, she brushed Soraya away and went straight into the other room, drawing the curtain across the doorway.
After a few moments, Mahtab followed her.
‘What is it? Has something happened to our father? Is everything all right?’
‘No. Nothing has happened to your father and no, everything is not all right.’ She was frowning, her hands in her lap, twisting her rings till they pressed hard into the skin of her fingers.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Sit down.’ She patted the space beside her on the bed. ‘You’re a big girl now, Mahtab. I need you to understand exactly what is going on and what we will have to go through. The man has just told me of something very worrying. There are others – people fleeing Afghanistan who are in safe houses and in refugee camps in this district. Lots are like us – the husband and father has gone first and the mother and the children are waiting for money to begin their next stage of travelling. Now there is a gang that has decided the men who are in Australia already must have money, so they are kidnapping the women and children and holding them hostage. They take them off into the tribal lands and no one knows exactly where they are. The police don’t care. The government doesn’t care. They just want money – the money which was for travel is paid to these brigands to buy the family’s freedom.’
Brigands. The robbers of Ali Baba, the cut-throat thieves and murderers of every story she had ever heard. She felt the heavy ice stone sink into her stomach again. ‘What can we do? Will they come for us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did Hairy Man think?’
‘He says we should stay out of sight. He doesn’t think anyone knows we are here.’
‘Do you trust him?’
‘I have to.’
‘I wish Dad would write or phone.’
‘So do I. For now it’s even more important that we stay inside, away from any visitor who comes.’
For days, their mother insisted the children stay as quiet as possible. She refused to explain when challenged by Farhad and Soraya, saying only that she did as she did for good reason. Mahtab jumped at any noise from the yard outside. The slamming of a door, the barking of a dog, the call of a strange voice sent her to retreat to the second room, curtain drawn. She drew her brother and sister to her and whispered to them anything she could remember about Australia.
‘In Australia we will not have to stay inside all the time. You, Farhad, will play football whenever you want to and girls too can play. No one will tell us that we must be quiet all the time. We will all go to school and play games, new games too that we don’t even know of yet. And many of our teachers will be women like Ms Mahboubeh but they will not be sad and their brothers will not have disappeared. Our father told me that we will be as surprised as he is at all the things we can do. You can fly kites every day, in the garden or in the public park like Dad did when he was young, and no one w
ill try to stop you.’
‘Does anything bad happen in Australia?’ asked Soraya.
‘I don’t think so.’ Mahtab paused. ‘Dad said that sometimes there are robbers and maybe even a murderer but then the government doesn’t hang them or shoot them, they put them in jail for ever and ever.’
‘What a strange place,’ Farhad said.
A strange place. Mahtab rolled the words around in her mind. Strangers in a strange land. Their father had said so much more than she had told the others. Weird things like young girls in public with their hair and shoulders uncovered and young people out without their parents to guide them. When she asked if she would have to do these things, he had laughed and said of course not. She would still be her parents’ daughter and she would do as they wished.
‘Do you wish me to study hard?’ she had asked.
He had nodded. ‘That I do, but it will not be easy. First, you will have to learn English.’
‘Will that be difficult?’
‘I believe so. I cannot be sure. I have heard it but I do not speak it myself.’
On the third night after the conversation with her mother, Mahtab couldn’t sleep. She waited until Farhad and Soraya’s breathing grew deeper and then she knelt beside the bed and whispered urgently, ‘Mum, can I talk to you about something?’
‘Of course.’
‘We may be in danger from those that you told me of, right?’
‘Yes. I believe so.’
‘And we have not heard from my father.’
‘No.’
‘Well, why don’t we follow him? Hairy Man can tell us what we have to do. He can organise things the way he did for Dad. I don’t want to stay here.’
‘We have to stay here. I don’t like it any more than you do, but your father said that when he was settled he would contact us and then we could follow.’
‘But what if…’
‘No what ifs. We will hear from him in time. There is nothing we can do. Now go to sleep.’
Mahtab crept back to her mattress but sleep did not come. What if Dad was not settled? What if he was never settled? What if something had happened to him when he was in one of the countries he had to cross? He could be like Sinbad, wrecked by whales or giant waves. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to picture his face in those days before he left, the smile as he had held her tightly on that last evening. We will be together again, I promise you that. Could he keep that promise?
Mahtab's Story Page 4