‘You’re burning up!’ you gasp.
You give her your share of the bottled water and encourage her to keep drinking.
You both try to get to sleep, but Jamilah wakes in the night moaning. Her body shivers all over, and she is doubled up with pain.
‘What is it?’ you ask her. ‘What hurts?’
‘My joints ache,’ she whimpers. ‘My head is pounding.’
You sit up and put your arm around her. Then you watch the BBC news channel while you pray for her fever to get better. The world news shows that the famine in Somalia is getting worse, fighting has broken out in Mali, and protestors are choking the streets of Egypt.
You want a glimpse of home, but all you see are ravaged lands in the countryside and black faces of despair. This isn’t your Africa. Is this what the rest of the world sees when they look at your home?
You nod off, but Jamilah’s gasp wakes you. She’s pointing at the TV.
‘Aunty Rahama!’ she cries.
‘Jamilah, whaaa—’
‘It was her! I saw her! It was Aunty Rahama on the TV!’
You touch her forehead. Still hot. She might be hallucinating. But you look at the TV, still on the BBC news channel, and it’s showing a segment about refugees arriving in Italy – desperate people, drenched in salt water, wearing orange lifejackets, being hauled aboard a coastguard’s boat. You search the faces. No Rahama.
‘Jamilah, you must have seen someone who looks like her, that’s all.’
‘It was her!’ Jamilah cries with all her strength, then doubles over coughing.
You’re about to say, ‘Let’s switch it off,’ when you see an image that makes you just about jump out of your skin.
‘Zayd!’ you gasp. You leap off the bed and run to the TV, as if you can cross through the glass screen and jump aboard that boat.
Now your heart is hammering like a rattling engine. You only got a glimpse, but you know that you saw the face of Zayd. You remember again his shout as al-Shabaab dragged him away to be killed: Cross the river on the banner of the eagle!
What if he wasn’t killed? What if he escaped? What if he’s now in Europe, with … Rahama?
But how could that be? You saw the bomb that destroyed the broadcast building, and her scarf at the window … and, no, she would never leave you and Jamilah alone like that, not without even telling you where she’d gone. You watch the news segment to the end regardless, but there is no more sign of Zayd or Rahama.
‘It can’t have been her,’ you say to Jamilah. ‘It can’t have been him, and it certainly can’t have been her …’
You just can’t get your head around what it would mean if it really was her.
‘It was!’ Jamilah sobs. ‘I promise, it was!’
She coughs again, her skinny body heaving, like a blanket when you shake the dirt off it. Then she stops. She’s looking at her hand, where she coughed. She looks worried.
You look at her hand too, and with horror see that she’s coughed up blood.
You run to the door. It’s locked. You hammer on it. ‘Help!’ you shout in English.
After a couple of minutes of shouting, Piggy comes to the door. He looks sleepy and cross.
‘No shout,’ he tells you in English. ‘You shout and police hear, they come and take you jail. Understand?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ you say. ‘But my sister … she’s very sick.’
Piggy comes into the room. He touches Jamilah’s burning head, sees the spots of blood on her hand and the sheets. Then he shrugs and shakes his head.
‘No doctor, no hospital in Malaysia for refugees,’ he tells you. ‘Only for Malaysians.’
‘I know,’ you say, boiling with frustration. Couldn’t he be more helpful?
You’re just about to offer him some of your stash of money to buy medicine when Jamilah shouts in English: ‘Take me and my brother to Europe! Please! We want to go to Italy!’
‘What?’ says Piggy. ‘You go Australia.’
‘No,’ insists Jamilah, sitting on the bed fighting for breath, tears running down her face. ‘We saw our aunty in Italy, on TV. You send us to Italy!’
Piggy’s eyes narrow. ‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Maybe is possible. Many people here go to Europe. But is expensive. Five hundred more.’
Jamilah looks at you. ‘I promise,’ she whispers. ‘It was her. Just trust me!’ Then she starts to cough again.
You have five hundred dollars. You might even be able to bargain Piggy down a bit, so you can still buy the medicine for Jamilah.
Italy … You know even less about that country than you do about Australia. But it would be a safe place – you just saw the news segment about refugees being saved from the sea and cared for there. You’re certain that Zayd is there. Is it possible that Rahama’s there too?
Will you risk everything to find out?
If you offer Piggy your money to send you to Italy, go to scene 31
If you stick with the plan to go to Australia, turn to scene 30.
You keep gazing at the pen, and the longer you look at it, the more you see that it has become the source of all your misfortune. It’s the reason your aunty’s dead; the reason you’ve never been safe since, not in any of the places you’ve tried to make home. Why haven’t you considered getting rid of it before now?
‘If you’re going to give them the pen,’ says Abshir, ‘I think we should copy the information on it first. We can email it to Aadan. I should have done it as soon as you got here, I was just so busy looking after you—’
‘Can you do that?’ you splutter.
‘Of course, walaal! You don’t know much about computers, do you?’
‘So, I can give them the pen – they’ll leave me alone – but we don’t have to lose Aunty Rahama’s story?’
‘Exactly.’
It’s the perfect solution – so long as the al-Shabaab terrorists believe you really have handed over the last copy in existence. You cling to the belief that it’s possible.
You pause, then ask Abshir: ‘But how will we get the pen to them?’
‘I think,’ replies Abshir, ‘we just need to wait here.’
He takes the pen from you, and unlocks the drawer where, thankfully, his laptop lies untouched.
ABSHIR HAS SENT the email, and the three of you have cleared up the worst of the damage and are taking turns trying to sleep on the couch, when at two o’clock in the morning you hear a group of people coming up the stairwell.
The three of you hold hands tightly and wait. You’re unarmed and unprotected, because you don’t want to give them any reason to start a fight. You couldn’t close the busted door even if you wanted to.
Fear rises in your stomach like a cold flood.
Take the pen and go, you think in a fast-repeating loop, take the pen and go.
Your palms are damp with sweat. One hand holds Jamilah’s, the other holds the pen.
Five men walk into the apartment. You recognise the driver from the ute in the desert. There are three more heavily muscled men and, lastly, looking at his feet …
‘Hassan?’ you gasp. So it was them! you think.
Hassan can’t look at you. The ute-driver glares at him. You can see from Hassan’s body language that he doesn’t want to be here but has no choice.
You walk over to Hassan and put the pen in his hand.
‘Take it,’ you say. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you guys. Just take it and leave us in peace.’
Hassan takes the pen, but he still won’t meet your eye. You don’t know why the men don’t seem more pleased to have got what they wanted. Then you hear a squeal from behind you, and a shout from Abshir.
You whirl around. The ute-driver is holding Jamilah by the neck. Two of the muscled men push Abshir against a wall and pin him there.
‘Let her go!’ you shout, springing towards Jamilah, but the third muscled man grabs you too.
‘She hasn’t done anything wrong. She has nothing to do with this,’ chokes Abshir.<
br />
‘Oh, we know she doesn’t,’ replies the ute-driver in his gravelly voice. Is that the gun you gave him in the desert that’s slung over his side? ‘But she’s valuable to us nonetheless. You see,’ he goes on, ‘it’s nice of you to give us the pen, but how do we know you haven’t copied the information?’
Your panic mounts.
‘We haven’t!’ protests Abshir, but they seem to know he’s lying. ‘Check my computer!’ he begs.
Tears are running down Jamilah’s face and onto the ute-driver’s arm. She is squirming futilely. Please, say her eyes. Please.
Your heart is jumping wildly, like it wants to break out of your ribcage. You fight against the muscled guy holding you, but he’s too strong.
‘No,’ says the driver, ‘we’ll take this girl. We’ll keep her with us. In a couple of years, she’ll make a lovely wife. And if you ever, ever make the information on that pen public – if anyone at all comes sniffing around Bright Dream ever again – we will kill her.’
Jamilah lets out a loud sob of terror.
A volcano of rage explodes inside you, so powerful that your whole body is possessed with violent, superhuman energy. You thrash and twist like a blade of grass in a storm, and suddenly you’re free of the muscly man holding you. You fling yourself at Jamilah as the driver drags her backwards out of the door.
Abshir is shouting, ‘Stop! No! Take me instead!’ and trying to punch the two men who are still pinning him to the wall. Hassan is shuffling towards the door.
‘Hassan!’ you scream, knowing he’s your last hope, the weak link in the chain. ‘Save her! Hassan!’
Hassan finally meets your eye, and you see something awful there. First, a little boy looks out from his face – a little boy who tried so hard to be the good boy his parents believed he could be, before they were killed by the war and he lost everything. Then Hassan’s face seems to close over. The little boy vanishes. His eyes go dead and narrow, his mouth pulls tight. He raises a gun at you, and the gun is shaking.
You keep looking him in the eye as he backs away towards the door.
A sob from Jamilah wrenches your eyes back to her, just as she disappears through the doorway and out of your sight.
You throw yourself towards her, and Hassan fires his gun. Pain rips through your leg and you drop to the floor. The two men holding Abshir punch him and throw him to the ground too, and as you both struggle to get up, they all vanish.
YOU DIDN’T KNOW there was something worse than dying, but now you do. The wound in your leg heals – you always wonder whether Hassan was being merciful or if it was just a bad shot – but the pain in your heart will never heal. Every day, awake and asleep, you little sister is in your mind.
Time passes. The first months are frantic and full of action, attempts to rescue her. Then action gives way to despair as it becomes clear that she will never be found.
Aadan still wants to bring you to Australia, but you refuse to go. You won’t leave Jamilah behind to face a fate you were spared from. You won’t leave Africa, the continent that made you, that made all the beautiful and terrible things you have ever known.
Like the desert dust, instead you drift back across the border into Somalia, never settling, always searching. For revenge. For clues. For a sign.
Like the dust, people try to get rid of you, but you find your way back, through corners and cracks. Like the dust, you are loose and dry, stripped of meaning, only looking for that one deep drink of water that will make you whole again, but which you will never find: your lost sister, Jamilah.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 27.
‘Look,’ you say to Jamilah in Somali, ‘even if you’re right about Aunty Rahama, us trying to go to Italy is pointless. If she’s alive, she’ll find us – you know she will. Aadan will look after us in Australia. We can search for Aunty Rahama from there. And we need to make that money last, not give it all to Piggy.’
To Piggy, you say in English: ‘No. We still want to go to Australia. Soon – we want to go this week. No waiting.’
Piggy looks from one of you to the other. He’s clearly pissed off. ‘Stupid kids. Wake me up with shouting.’ He turns to go.
‘Wait!’ you cry, taking fifty dollars from your shoe. ‘I know we can’t see a doctor, but at least buy her some medicine. And a Malaysian simcard,’ you add hastily, as he snatches the money.
‘Shops closed now,’ Piggy snaps. ‘I get it tomorrow.’
You sit on the bed with your arms around Jamilah as she drifts into a feverish sleep. A long time ago, you think, we lived in Mogadishu, and we were kids.
You don’t feel like you’re a kid anymore. Kids get to have adults who look after them and friends who play with them. You’re not sure you can even remember how to play. Can you ever go back to being a kid, once you’ve stopped? you wonder. Or is it a one-way door?
The morning comes and goes. Mid-afternoon, Piggy comes in and throws a battered box of medicine at you.
‘Wait!’ you shout when you look inside the box, which says ‘Panadol’ on the front. All the tablets have been popped out and used except for the last two. ‘That’s not fifty dollars’ worth of medicine! Get her some proper medicine! She needs—’
But the door is slammed in your face, and fifty dollars of your money is gone. You have no idea if he’ll get you the simcard.
Seething with anger, you snap a tablet in half to try to make the medicine last longer and give it to Jamilah.
The Panadol does seem to bring down her fever, at least a little. But you never get the simcard. You know Abshir will be worried, and you wonder how long he’ll keep lying to Aadan about where you really are.
The next morning, Piggy wakes you and Jamilah before dawn and drives you to the coast.
‘You go to Indonesia on fishing boat,’ he says, pointing to where a blue wooden boat sits waiting in the mangrove shallows. ‘In Indonesia, man will meet you. Then get on boat to Australia. Okay?’
You nod. Piggy says something in Malaysian to the fisherman, a wiry man dressed in a singlet and a chequered sarong, who lifts up the deck of his boat. Inside the hull is a splintery, damp hole just big enough to lie down in. It smells of fish guts and mud.
‘We nail you in here, okay?’ says Piggy.
‘What? You’ll nail us in?’ cries Jamilah. You exchange horrified glances.
‘Sometimes police helicopter fly here. Sometimes police boat come to do inspection. They think maybe this fisherman is people smuggler. You must be very, very hidden, so we use nails. Okay?’ says Piggy.
It’s the third time he’s asked you ‘Okay?’ and you realise now that it’s a question with only one answer. It’s really not okay, but there is no other way, so you swallow your fear and reply, ‘Okay.’
The deck of the boat is made of latticed wood, with small square holes through which you can see the sky, and the faces of Piggy and the fisherman as they bend over to nail you in.
Bang. Bang. Every blow of the hammer makes the boat jump.
You hold Jamilah tight as you lie beside her. ‘We’ll be okay,’ you whisper.
Jamilah bites her lip and nods. She is sweating – from fear, or the fever, or both. You remember the feeling of squeezing her hot, damp, frightened body in a hug on the night you made it home after Aunty Rahama died. You stop and correct yourself: after Aunty Rahama disappeared.
The pen in your pocket pokes your thigh. If only you had a computer and knew the password to unlock the file called ‘My Story’. There must be more information there. Aunty Rahama wouldn’t have disappeared without leaving more for you. It’s the last piece of the puzzle, you’re sure of it.
The trip from Malaysia to Indonesia would usually take five hours by boat, but the fisherman doesn’t go directly there – that would look too suspicious to any helicopters overhead.
Instead, he motors out into the water and then does what fishermen actually do: throws nets and waits.
Sometimes fish bodies land on the
deck of the boat and a slimy mix of salt water and fish blood drips onto your face. A couple of times, you hear helicopters whirring overhead.
You try to lie as still as a body in a coffin. Sometimes a restless rage fills your limbs and you want to scream, Get me out of here! I can’t stand it! but you know there’s no alternative.
The sun climbs to its full height. The sea breeze can’t reach you down in the hull, and the stench of fish guts and petrol is overpowering. You help Jamilah to sip from the plastic bottle of warm water you have in your hidey-hole. Then you close your eyes and whisper prayers to Allah.
The heat fades out of the day, the engine roars to life again, and the waves bounce beneath your back as the boat skips towards the Indonesian coast. You left before dawn, and now it is getting dark – you’ve spent around fourteen hours on the water, you guess.
When the nails are removed and you try to stand up, you are so dizzy and stiff that your legs threaten to give way under you.
The Indonesian people smuggler has come to meet you. He yanks you and Jamilah roughly into the thick jungle and leaves you sitting under a tree with broad, yellow-ish leaves a short way from the boat as he goes back and pays the fisherman, then offers him a smoke.
Their cigarette tips glow red as the ruby on the end of your pen. The smell of clove tobacco snakes its way through the jungle in the gathering dark.
You sit under the tree, your limbs shaking, your belly growling. Jamilah slumps beside you and moans quietly. Suddenly, you hear the sound of sirens, wailing like ghosts in the yellow-grey jungle.
The fisherman shouts what can only be a swear word in his language, and he hastily shoves the boat back into the sea, while the other guy runs in the opposite direction. They’re leaving you behind.
You yank Jamilah to her feet. You are smuggled goods – children in a country where no one can help you and you don’t speak the language. If the police catch you, you’re dead meat.
Your feet pound across the leaf-littered jungle floor, away from the sound of the sirens and the smell of the cigarettes. Your breath comes in and out in hot shoves. Jamilah is choking down her coughs, and you are pulling her forward, over buttress roots and ditches, deep into the jungle, where the vines are thickest.
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