Mahtab's Story
Page 12
Day Thirty-six
Melbourne. Mum teased us today. She said we could get a hotel and we could stay the night and we could be like visitors to the city and look at everything there is here, even a zoo. Soraya was almost tempted because she so wants to see her first kangaroo but I could not believe that Mum would delay meeting with you for one second more than we must. Then she laughed and we knew she was joking. We take the train this afternoon and we will travel all night to you.
Will you be waiting for us on the platform?
Will you?
Chapter Fourteen
MAHTAB CANNOT SIT still. Up and down the aisle she walks, peering out at hour after hour of cows, sheep, cars and gum trees. There are small towns too. The train doesn’t stop at them, just at a larger one, but she doesn’t climb down.
‘I don’t know how long it will wait here,’ says her mother, her back pressed into the corner of her seat, Soraya asleep on her lap.
The train starts again. How can Soraya sleep? Mahtab thinks of counting the sheep, counting forwards, not backwards. Always counting. Will it make the time go more quickly? There are more farms. More small towns. More cows and sheep. And there are hills with soft yellow grasses and mountains – small ones but mountains nevertheless. This country is not all flat and reddish-brown.
Finally there are suburbs. Kilometre after kilometre, brick houses set back in rich green gardens with low fences, open to the street. Then neat brick stations, with signs, but the train moves so quickly that she cannot read their names. The train doesn’t stop at them.
Mahtab checks herself in the mirror. She brushes a stray strand of hair that has escaped her veil. She looks down at her hands, her scratched fingers, her chipped and broken nails. Will they recognise him? Will he have changed too? Will he know them? What is Mum feeling? She looks across at her mother. Her eyes are closed. Is she dreaming of him? Is she searching her mind for pictures of him, as I am? Can she see him that night he left us in Pakistan, the way he was before that, at home, by the table, warming his feet on the brazier, laughing and telling us stories as he took the bread and dipped it in the bowl?
Outside, the houses are closer together, older-looking with red roofs. Above them birds are flying, white against the deep, deep blue sky. The train is slowing. There are other trains now, heading in the opposite direction. The houses are further back from the tracks. Strangers in the carriage are standing up, straightening their clothes, taking down their luggage. It is nearly time. It must be time.
Slowly, slowly the train draws in alongside a platform. It stops. Mahtab looks beyond the signs and machines. People move and pour out of the door.
Mahtab takes her bag.
Drops it.
Pushes past strangers.
Steps from the train.
Searches faces.
Sees him.
Runs to him.
Throws herself and is caught by his arms, his beard, his breath, his voice, his tears, his loving, loving tears.
Three weeks later
Mahtab stands on a grassy hill looking down at the sea. Her mother, her father, her brother and sister stand with her. She takes in the naked arms and legs, the bare backs, the midriffs, the bodies stretched out on the sand and playing around the edges of the water. She gazes at the waves crashing and the board riders dazzling as they twist and turn and point the noses of their boards to the shore.
And above her, the kites.
It’s the Festival of the Winds. Kites from every nation are there. The sea breeze catches them and draws them higher and higher. Bold, bright red ones, long-tailed dangling ones, huge ones, baby ones for little children, rainbow kites, box kites, insect shapes, squares and triangles, they mix and dance together.
‘Let’s move along where there is more room,’ says her father. They walk past the pavilion, breathing in the smoke of meat, cooking on a host of barbecues and the tang of salt air. Soraya has taken off her sandals. Clutching them she runs down the sand to the water, laughing as the waves tickle, and then she retreats, before racing back to the spot they have chosen on the grass.
Their father opens a bag he has been carrying. Two kites tumble onto the grass: one purple and red, and one deep blue. He takes them up and tests the plastic handles and the strings.
‘No cutting strings,’ he says, ‘but good all the same.’
Farhad and Soraya run together, yelling, the kites trailing behind them. Down the grassy hill they go and the wind grabs the fabric and lifts the kites higher and higher.
They come back and fall down, laughing and gasping for breath.
‘My turn.’ Mahtab takes the red-and-purple kite. She wraps her fingers around the plastic handle. She has never done this before.
Slowly, she runs. The wind lifts the edges of her veil and the hem of her tunic. Faster and faster. Her father is smiling and her mother is clapping as the kite lifts and begins its drift upwards. Mahtab gazes up at it, mouth open, heart full. Happiness and joy. The kite is dancing, tugging against her, veering first left and then right. Caught by an eddy, it swirls round and then dives straight towards her. Mahtab holds her breath. She stands her ground. More wind comes. It takes the kite soaring again, higher and higher. The red-and-purple fabric is shimmering, triumphant against the cloudless sky.
About this story
Mahtab’s Story began in a classroom at Holroyd High School in western Sydney in 2004. I was interested in writing about the experience of being a Muslim girl in Australia in the twenty-first century and the principal, Dorothy Hoddinott, had arranged for me to meet some students in Year 11. The group was made up of girls who were refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. Their stories of persecution and fear in their own countries and of their escape to Australia were so compelling that I felt I had to write about that experience.
One girl, Nahid Karimi, expressed great interest in my work. She felt strongly that the story should be told of what she and others like her had been through. We became friends and she shared with me the details of her family’s flight from Herat, the long period of waiting in Pakistan while her father went ahead and then the journey to Australia and the period of imprisonment in a detention centre.
Nahid has now left school and is a student at the University of Western Sydney.
Mahtab’s Story is a novel, not a biography of Nahid. I have varied the events, added and subtracted to shape the story. Without her contribution, however, this book could not have been written. I am forever indebted to her and her family and I am in awe of their courage.
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