‘We have to go back,’ he said. ‘There are more police at the port and they will stop us boarding the boat. This man tells us that there is another one we can get tomorrow but we must go back to the hotel tonight.’
‘Is it just money they want?’ Mahtab whispered to her mother.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will we have rooms at the hotel again?’ someone asked.
‘If there is a problem, we will go somewhere else. I will find you a place to sleep. Don’t worry.’ The Egyptian man spoke to the driver who slowly turned the coach around and headed back the way they had come. The second coach followed.
Mahtab half closed her eyes until they were narrow slits. She slumped down low in her seat, watching the tall, sleek-looking agent with his gleaming gold, his perfect hair, his spotless robe. What did he know of hiding in trucks, of men in black turbans, of a father who left in the night and never rang? She wanted to burst with screaming. She covered her face with her hands and turned to the wall.
There were rooms at the hotel but somehow the cool tiles and the soft beds felt different. Mahtab didn’t want the comfort of a shower, a circling fan and a hot meal. When Farhad and Ahmad urged her to come to the recreation room and watch television, even though they didn’t understand the language, she shook her head.
‘Come with us then,’ said her mother. She was nursing the new baby. Soraya stood on tiptoes, peering down at the sleeping girl. ‘Come and I’ll show you how to change her nappy.’
Mahtab shook her head again. She wandered through the corridors, her eyes down, barely lifting her feet as she walked. When she reached the verandah outside her room she flopped on the tiles and leant back against the post.
What would the story be tomorrow? Maybe that man organised it like this. He knew the police would stop them. Tomorrow he could have another reason why they couldn’t go and then he would demand the very last bit of money that everyone had. And they would have to pay. They had no choice. They were on the edge of the sea in a strange country. Strangers in a strange land. Strangers for ever. So near to where their fathers were. So far from their homeland. And if they didn’t have enough money?
Mahtab rolled onto her belly and stretched her hand out to the rock pool. She trailed her fingers again in the cool water. Thin weed fronds tickled her. Tiny red fish darted between the stones. She leant further forward and stared at her face in the water. Across that image floated a larger fish. Dead. Fatter than all the others, its body still, its eyes dull, lifeless.
Mahtab pulled back. Stop thinking like this. You really are going crazy. Of course we will get a boat tomorrow. We will have enough money if he asks for more and then we will sail to Australia and Dad will be there. Dad will be there. He will.
They left very early the next morning. The route they took was the same as the previous day – past the large hotels set back in lush gardens, past the suburbs with shops and houses pushing up against each other and then on to stretches of flat, open farmland. They passed through village after village where children on their way to school in shiny white-and-navy uniforms looked up at them and waved. They waved back.
They smelt the sea and the dockland before they saw it. A few hundred metres back from the water, their coach turned into a lane so narrow that other vehicles could not pass. They stepped down and around puddles of water, with slicks of gleaming oil. The rest of the group, those who had been on the other coach, were already ahead of them, standing and squatting in front of a dilapidated wooden building about fifty metres from the water’s edge.
‘Is that our boat?’ Farhad pointed at a small vessel pulled up at a rickety wooden pier.
‘Can’t be,’ said Mahtab. ‘It’s too small.’ She shielded her eyes and scanned the horizon.
It was as she had never seen it before. A straight line. No, a line that curved slightly down at each end. Blue met blue. Or was it green? The sea. The sky. It really was like glass. She breathed deeply, feeling the salt air go into her nostrils and dance its way down her throat. Her lungs filled and she knew she was smiling. There was a larger boat out there, she could see it now. It beckoned her with every dip and bob on the shifting, shimmering water. Beyond that: maybe Dad.
The Egyptian man had disappeared into the shed and he came out now with an Indonesian man who set up a table and a chair. He announced to the group that they would use the smaller boat to go out to the larger one, that this process would take about an hour and that then they would be leaving and heading for the port of Darwin, the northernmost city in Australia.
Mahtab still stared at the sea. She looked up as birds shrieked above them and then darted down into the water. One disappeared then rose skyward again, a struggling silver fish in its beak. She left the others and walked down to where small waves nibbled at the sand. She squatted and stretched out her hand and let the water run over it. The sun glinted off her golden bracelet. Tiny white bubbles of foam clung to her skin for a moment and then were gone. Mahtab laughed and pushed her fingers into the yielding sand. She found a shell, a small one with a smooth underside although the outer edge was ribbed and bumpy. She rinsed it. It was like the tiny ear of some creature that lived in the depths of the sea. Where had it come from? Had it started somewhere else and been brought by the sea, carried on these curling waves? She tucked it into her pocket and looked back to where her mother stood talking to the man at the table.
Hamida was there. Farhad, Ahmad and Soraya too. They beckoned to Mahtab.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Money. They want more money for the baby.’
‘That’s stupid. She doesn’t take up any room.’
‘It doesn’t matter. They can ask for whatever they want.’
‘Well, give it to them.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘Hamida doesn’t have enough money left.’
‘What will they do? They can’t leave her behind?’
‘That’s what they are saying.’
‘Do we have much left?’
‘There is a little. I spent most of it on food for the next few days.’
The motor boat carrying the first load of people for the fishing boat started up. People jostled forward like birds squabbling for a food scrap.
‘Give her our money, Mum. Dad will meet us and he will have more.’ Farhad looked serious.
Mahtab’s mother hesitated. ‘It’s not that simple.’
The man at the table tapped his pencil. Hamida’s shoulders dropped. Mahtab’s mother put her arm around the younger woman and spoke quickly. The expression on the face of the man at the table didn’t change.
Mahtab reached inside her sleeve and felt the coins that hung from the chain around her wrist. Grandma’s chain. Could she?
A squawking bird landed at her feet. It pushed its red beak hard into the sand, then rose triumphant, a small creature dangling from its mouth.
Mahtab slid the bracelet into her hand. Her wrist felt cold, bare. She ran her thumb over the rough edges of the coins.
‘Give them this, Mum.’
‘No, Mahtab. That is yours. It is not to be used.’
‘Do you have any other idea? You said they are family now.’ She pressed the bracelet into her mother’s hand. ‘Grandma would understand.’
Her mother lifted her daughter’s hands to her lips. ‘You are a girl to be proud of. I will buy you another in Australia. With the first money we have.’
Mahtab turned away. She tasted salt on her lips – sea spray or tears? She wasn’t sure.
There were so many people on the small boat that they had to stand, clinging to each other as it pushed through the water. Mahtab didn’t care. She stood, wedged against the outer rail, feeling the salt spray on her face, her hands and her bare lower arms. She breathed in the diesel and stared at the horizon. Somewhere out there, over that edge of the sea, was Australia. We are coming. We are coming.
It was hard pulling themselves up onto the fishing boat. First the luggage went and then
the children, almost passed hand over hand. Hamida kept the baby bound tightly to her chest. Then it was Mahtab’s turn. She pushed the fisherman’s hand away and gripped the metal rungs. The ladder bounced and crashed against the boat as she climbed, but she hung on and reached the top with only a bruise to her knee.
There was barely enough room. Men and the bigger boys gathered in groups on the deck. They made positions for themselves, marking off areas with their boxes and bags. Almost all the women and children had gone down below. A crewman pointed to the steps going down into the belly of the boat.
‘No, Farhad.’ Their mother called the boy back. ‘No. We are not going down there.’ She pulled Farhad, Soraya and Mahtab to her. ‘We are staying up here with Hamida and Ahmad.’ She pushed past the sailor and forced her way to a position on the far side of the deck. ‘I think this is a big mistake,’ she whispered to Mahtab. ‘This boat is too small and too flimsy. Look at that.’ She pointed to the rotting wooden frame that made a small shelter for the man who held the wheel. ‘They told me we were getting a fine steel boat with special equipment for storms.’ She stamped her foot and left an indent on the decking. ‘If it’s as rotten down underneath as it is on the top we’ll all end up at the bottom of the sea.’
Mahtab saw the chipped and flaking timber. Paint had peeled from it long ago and there was glass in only one of the window frames of the tiny room around the wheel. Truly what the man had said and what they now sailed on were as alike as a fish and a bird. She pushed from her mind her thoughts that anything else he said might also be untrue.
‘I think we should leave, right now,’ said her mother. ‘I haven’t brought you so far to end up dead at sea. I don’t trust this.’
‘No.’ Farhad sat down at her feet. ‘We have to stay on board. You said I could be Sinbad.’
‘Hmm, we all know what happened to him,’ said his mother.
They heard raised voices then. The Iraqi men at the front of the boat were yelling at a crewman. They waved their arms and made punching gestures into their fists. The sailor was much smaller than them and he drew back until another man who Mahtab decided was the captain came forward. He spoke just as angrily as his passengers and they shrugged then and turned away and sat down on the deck.
‘It’ll be all right, Mum,’ said Mahtab. ‘They wouldn’t sail this boat if it wasn’t strong enough. We have to stay on board. It’s the only way we’ll get to Dad. He’s waiting for us.’
Her mother pulled her burqa around her and sat down with her back to the wheelhouse. Hamida joined her and the younger children too found a place near them. Only Mahtab stayed standing, her damp clothes stuck to her body. She leant against the rail as she had on the smaller boat. She lifted her face to the wind and thought of the ride into Quetta. She stared down at the water and imagined the sandy bottom, the shells, the fish of all the shapes and sizes she had ever seen in the market. And would there be a whale? She turned to the horizon and pushed from her mind any thought that her father would not be there to meet them.
Chapter Eight
THE ENGINE OF the boat started and Mahtab felt the movement change. They were no longer moving up and down with a gentle rhythm but were heading away from the land and the smaller boat. The man from Egypt stood in that one, his hand raised in a wave to them all. Long after they could no longer see the boat, his white robe was still visible against the darkness of the land.
For about half an hour, Mahtab stood there, staring at the water and the sea ahead of her. The hot sun had dried her clothes in minutes. Gradually, she realised that she was thirsty. She joined her mother and the others and shared some bread and a mug of water.
‘Tell us about Sinbad, Mum,’ said Farhad. ‘Tell me about me.’
So their mother told them one of the stories of the great Sinbad who sought his fortune on the sea. She chose the one when Sinbad set out from his home in Baghdad with lots of things to trade with other countries. ‘The voyage was good,’ she said, ‘until one day the captain landed his boat on an island and the crew and the passengers were relaxing and enjoying the break from the harsher life at sea. Suddenly that island moved and the captain called to everyone that this was not an island at all where he had landed. It was the back of a whale. They were terrified. They raced to the boat and cast off. Sinbad didn’t make it. He was further from what he thought was the beach and so when he reached the water he saw his ship moving away from him as fast as its sails would take it. All his money and his goods were on that ship. Poor Sinbad. After that he was thrown into the water and he thought he would drown, but he didn’t. He was washed up on a real island where he had lots and lots of different adventures.’
‘Will that happen to me?’ Farhad’s eyes were large.
His mother reached out and drew him close to her.
‘No, my Sinbad. You won’t fall off a whale. That’s just the story.’
‘What about the adventure?’
‘I think,’ said Mahtab, ‘that what will happen to you, as it did to Sinbad, is that you’ll grow rich and marry a beautiful girl. What do you think?’
‘Yuk. I’ll be rich but I’m not marrying anybody.’
The stories went on till it was almost night. On the lower deck someone was cooking fish and the smell of that mixed with the diesel fumes drifted up and over the family.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Soraya. ‘Have we got some kebab?’
Their mother shook her head. She passed them more bread and cold cooked vegetables, nuts and dried fruit. ‘This will be fine for us for a few days,’ she said. ‘We’ll be in Australia by then.’
They slept, wrapped around each other against the chill of the breeze off the water, like puppies in a box of straw. Some time in the night Mahtab woke. Hamida was rocking her baby, softly singing to it the same words Mahtab remembered her mother singing in the truck so many weeks ago.
La la la la sleep,
Because the night is long,
It’s too early for you to count the stars yet,
Some people are smiling even in their dreams,
Some people have wet eyes even in their sleep,
La la la la sleep.
Mahtab rolled over and looked up at the stars. The night was clear. There was a full moon and that scattering of diamonds again. She hadn’t looked, not properly, since that icy cold night in the mountains. So long ago.
She tried to find the stars that she knew, but there were so many, and she was confused. Some looked like Castor, Pollux and the Great Bear but they weren’t where she remembered them, so she wasn’t sure. She tried to imagine the different clusters as animal shapes from pictures she had seen in books a long time ago.
The next night was the same. The boat rocked gently, someone was singing and Mahtab lay staring upwards. Maybe these were the stars that looked down on Australia. Maybe they were different because it was a different land. She tried to imagine the country and how her life would be. Uncle Karim had sent a storybook from Paris and the children in the pictures had golden hair and rosy cheeks and they wore short dresses that showed their knees and they had kittens and little dogs that licked their hands and faces. The same children were in the television show that came from America. She could remember from before the time when the televisions were thrown into the street and their own set had been hidden away and only turned on when it was safe to do so. Shiny-topped kitchen benches, smiling mothers. Would Mum smile again in Australia?
On the fourth day they woke early. The sun was not yet up but streaks of light caught the edges of the cloud that had gathered above them in the night. A strong wind blew on their faces, not cold but salt-laden and drying. Mahtab pulled the end of her veil across her mouth. The boat rocked, more strongly than before. Boxes slid along the deck.
‘It’s like the swing at home.’ Farhad clapped but Mahtab saw the look in her mother’s eye and held on tightly to his waist.
All morning they rode the waves like wild camels. First one way, then another, the wind and the water
conspired like angry herdsmen determined to break the animals’ spirit. They gripped hold of each other, the children sheltered in the centre of their group. Mahtab clung to her mother on one side and Hamida on the other. Sea spray soaked them and all their possessions. Food and utensils, clothing and sheets of paper flew past them and into the water. Hour after hour. The clouds grew black. Over the sound of the roaring sea came rumblings of thunder and fearsome slashes of lightning. Again and again white light broke the darkness. And then the rain started.
Rain.
Rain.
Rain.
Buckets of hard, driving water pounded their heads, their shoulders and their bodies. Like stones hurled from the sky, the rain struck and then bounced to the deck. They could not speak for the lashing, screaming sound and the effort needed to hold onto each other. Soraya’s arms were wrapped tightly around Mahtab’s legs, her face pressed almost to the ground.
Then the rain came sideways, blasting into them, sending sheets of water across the deck, into the wheelhouse, pushing all before it. Heads tucked down, bodies braced against the wall of water, they endured. Again and again, the boat heaved and stretched. The sea was tall mountains and deep valleys and they were tossed from crest to crest as it raged and boiled beneath them.
Mahtab tried to count backwards. It didn’t work. It needed a calmer, focused mind. Each time she started, a sudden different twist of the boat or blast of water jolted her into grasping more tightly, straining to cling to those who held on with her.
Clothes soaked and clinging to her skin, her veil blown from her head so that her wild, wet hair blew across her face, Mahtab tried to pray. Allah, deliver me from this and I will be the best daughter anyone could be. Save me from this and I will say my prayers diligently, learn the Koran off by heart, do everything that you or my parents and my teachers ask of me. I will work hard and I will give my money to the mosque. I will be the best person. Save us all, please, please, please.
For hours it went on. Mahtab’s body ached from the effort of bracing herself against the wind. And then, when she was shivering, taut, numb with the wet and the cold, the storm died. As quickly as it had arisen, it dropped away. They loosened their hold on each other and collapsed onto the deck. ‘We are alive. Thank God we are alive,’ whispered Mahtab’s mother. The colour was gone from her face; her lips were cracked and bleeding.
Mahtab's Story Page 7