Sanctuary

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Just as well they stick to the drapery side and their daughter Izzie orders in the clothes, otherwise we’d all look like we’d stepped out of the distant past.’

  As they neared North Terrace he pointed out the imposing hardware store, three times the width of the other shop facades.

  ‘Gordon and Sandra Shadforth,’ he told her. ‘They’re pretty well-off. The store services the whole area, fishers and farmers alike, but they also have a sizable property just out of town, wheat mainly, managed by their son. Gordon’s a nice enough bloke, but Sandra’s a bit of a snob.’

  Responding to Jalila’s blank look, he went on to explain, ‘Sandra thinks she’s better than other people, which doesn’t go down too well with some in Shoalhaven.’ He grinned. ‘She was furious when the locals started calling her Sandy in order to annoy her. “I’m not Sandy,” she’d say, “I’m not a beach. If you must use a diminutive, I’m Sahndy.” Now everyone calls her Sahndy,’ he said with clownish over-emphasis. ‘I don’t think she realises that by doing it they’re taking the mickey out of her even more.’

  He laughed and Jalila laughed too, not understanding much of what he was saying, but loving the sound of his voice and committing all that she could to memory, particularly people’s names. She considered this extremely important for she would be living in this town and meeting these people.

  ‘And over there,’ he said, pointing to the post office on the right, ‘is my parents’ business.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jalila was impressed, ‘is big too, like Gordon and Sahndy shop.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the post office and general store and newsagency all wrapped up in one – my father’s the town’s postmaster.’

  Paul didn’t add that if there was any form of self-imposed pecking order in Shoalhaven, which in a way there was, David Miller was at the very top right alongside the Shadforths. It was a fact Paul found personally irksome. This was a classless town, or so it was considered to be by most, and so it should be in his opinion.

  They rounded the corner into North Terrace.

  ‘And that,’ he said, indicating an attractive single-storey bungalow on the left with a leafy front garden, ‘is my parents’ house. That’s where we’ll be having dinner tomorrow night.’ He tried to sound jovial.

  ‘Ooh,’ she breathed admiringly, ‘is beautiful.’

  As they neared the junction of North Terrace and Marine Parade, he pointed out the community hall and the picturesque church that sat beside it, on the very corner, stalwartly facing the sea. The old stone church, complete with spire and cross, remained the weathered and welcoming beacon it had been for generations.

  ‘The church is the oldest building in town,’ he explained. ‘It was a mariners’ chapel, built in the late nineteenth century when the fisher community first started up here. The spire and cross served as a marker for boats coming into harbour. It still does.’

  ‘The hall was built about fifty years later,’ he continued as the Land Rover rounded the corner into Marine Parade. ‘It’s used for all sorts of things, fetes, community meetings, the odd dance now and then. And that cottage there,’ he said, ‘next to the church, that’s where the pastor, Sam Lyttleton, and his wife, Thelma, live.’

  Jalila committed another two names to memory.

  He kept up the guided tour as they headed down Marine Parade. ‘And that’s about it,’ he said as they approached Cooper Street. ‘The hotel’s just down there on the next corner and, apart from that, nothing much else to see. She’s a pretty small town all right.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jalila agreed heartily, ‘she is very pretty town.’

  He turned the Land Rover into Cooper Street and halfway down the block pulled up outside his cottage.

  ‘Welcome to your new home, Jalila,’ he said.

  The cottage was not altogether unlike those Jalila had known on the island. A typical fisher’s cottage, timber-framed with a corrugated iron roof and a small front verandah. But this cottage was much smarter in appearance than those on Gevaar Island, with its own little waist-high picket fence and its own little path leading up to the front steps. The cottage itself was painted a light aquamarine-blue, the colour of the sea on a mild day, and the picket fence, the gate, the front door and the window frames were all white. Paul had worked hard and was justifiably proud of his home, modest as it was.

  They alighted from the car and he opened the front gate. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’

  They walked together up the path and up the several steps to the verandah where he opened the front door for her, it was never locked, and together they stepped inside.

  Since purchasing the cottage, Paul had modernised its interior, replacing a dividing wall with a square timber arch, creating an open-plan living and kitchen area. His was one of the older dwellings, and had previously consisted of poky little rooms. The two bedrooms at the rear remained small, but the previous owner had added a proper bathroom, complete with lavatory.

  There was a decent-sized backyard too, in need of a bit of tidying up, he admitted, but with garden plots either side.

  ‘You’ll be able to grow vegetables and herbs and all that sort of stuff like you did on the island,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to plant things for ages, but I just never got around to it.’

  Jalila had said nothing at all throughout their general tour of the house and the yard.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he asked when they’d returned inside to the living area. ‘It could do with a bit of a female touch, that’s for sure,’ he said as she continued to gaze about in utter silence, ‘but it’s got everything you need. What do you think?’

  ‘I tell you what I think,’ she said, very slowly and very carefully, weighing the words as if each was as precious as the meaning she intended to convey. ‘I think this is most beautiful home in whole of world.’

  He gathered her to him and they kissed.

  ‘It’s your home, Jalila,’ he said. ‘This is your home now. This is where you belong.’

  They kissed again, and then …

  ‘Damn it, you’re my wife,’ he said as if he’d suddenly remembered, ‘I should’ve carried you over the threshold.’

  She had no idea what he meant.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged, taking her by the hand, ‘let’s do this properly.’

  He hauled her out onto the verandah, picked her up in his arms and carried her back through the front door.

  ‘There,’ he said, putting her down, ‘consider yourself properly married, you’ve now been carried over the threshold,’ and he laughed.

  She still wasn’t sure what he meant, but she laughed anyway because he was so happy. And she laughed because she was happy too, happier than she had ever imagined possible. But no, that was wrong. She had never imagined happiness. She had never imagined anything. Imagination had no place when the daily fight for survival relied upon the obliteration of thought.

  ‘We’ll buy you lots of new things,’ he said a little later as he watched her unpack her meagre belongings from the small suitcase, stowing them lovingly where they belonged, in the drawers and the wardrobe of the bedroom, and on the shelves of the bathroom. He found the sight touching. This humble little cottage was as grand to Jalila as a palace might have been to others, for this was obviously unlike any home she’d ever had, even as a child in Sinjar town.

  They cooked lunch together, a modest lunch of pasta with tinned tomatoes and garlic and parmesan cheese, but to both no lunch had ever tasted so good.

  ‘We’ll go shopping on Monday,’ he promised her, ‘and we’ll stock up the shelves and the cupboards and the fridge with everything you can think of, every kind of food you could possibly imagine.’

  Jalila smiled. Yes, imagination was now a luxury she could afford, but she would not take it for granted. She would treasure every single minute of her happiness, living each precious moment as if it were her last. Who knew when all this might come to an end?

  After lunch they walked down to the foreshore, c
rossing Marine Parade and turning left, heading away from the township. Paul rather hoped he wouldn’t bump into any of his mates: he wanted to keep this special day just for the two of them. As they passed the pub on the opposite side of the road, he half-expected someone to yell out, but no one did, for which he was thankful.

  They sat on the beach and talked.

  ‘Where is island?’ Jalila asked, staring at the vastness of the ocean that stretched to the horizon with no land in sight.

  ‘Out there,’ he said, pointing directly ahead, ‘forty kilometres off the coast. When I took you to Geraldton in the speedboat we went that way,’ he pointed to the south, ‘much, much further.’

  Jalila paused thoughtfully, then said, ‘We can go back to island, Paul? Just one time,’ she added, turning to him, hope in her eyes. ‘I can say goodbye to little Hamid and others?’

  He hesitated. That’s maybe not a good idea, he thought. Oh, no wait. There was a way he could make it work – it would actually help get the story around town.

  ‘Yes, Jalila,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll take you out to the island.’

  She hugged him gratefully.

  Half an hour later, as they walked hand in hand back towards town, someone did wave from the pub’s verandah.

  ‘Hey, Paul,’ a voice called across the street, ‘fancy a wee drink?’ A beefy arm beckoned. ‘Come on over.’

  Mac was starting earlier than usual; Arch and Ian hadn’t arrived as yet and he was in need of a drinking companion.

  ‘G’day, Mac,’ Paul waved back, ‘no thanks, mate, heading home.’

  When they got home, they talked some more. In fact they talked for quite a long time, sitting cosily at the small dining table drinking cups of tea. Jalila even told him a little about her family, not of their deaths, but of her early childhood days in Sinjar town, memories she had suppressed for years. She felt that, as she was about to meet his family the following day, he was owed some knowledge of hers, but most importantly, she felt safe enough now to remember her parents and her sister. She told him so.

  ‘I not think family for long, long time, Paul,’ she said. ‘It make me sad. I think now and I not feel so sad. This good, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Jalila,’ he agreed, ‘this is very good.’ Another breakthrough, Paul thought, further evidence of her healing. He longed to know more, but he would never ask.

  They ate sardines on toast for dinner. He made the toast from the sliced bread he kept in the freezer. ‘Bachelor tucker,’ he said. ‘There’s always plenty of tins and frozen food around here. But from now on we’ll stock up on heaps of fresh stuff, I promise.’

  And then later, in the half-light of dusk they made love. Tenderly, as they always did, she willingly offering herself, he as gentle as was humanly possible.

  Afterwards, lying in his arms, Jalila felt that her happiness was complete with this man who loved her.

  ‘I love you, Paul,’ she whispered, ‘you is my life.’

  ‘You are my life too, Jalila,’ he whispered in return, holding her close.

  Then he smiled as in the gloom of the small bedroom he heard her scold herself.

  ‘Are,’ she said, ‘yes. You are my life.’

  The next day, filling in time before the ordeal that loomed that evening, and perhaps also to distract himself, Paul took Jalila on a drive north to Kalbarri National Park, where he showed her the sights. The magnificent gorge that extended as far as the eye could see on the lower reaches of the Murchison River; then near the town of Kalbarri itself, the spectacular coastal cliffs over a hundred metres high at the mouth of the mighty Murchison.

  ‘The Yamatji people who’ve inhabited this area for many thousands of years have a Dreaming story about how the Murchison River was created by the Rainbow Serpent,’ he told her.

  ‘The Rainbow Serpent?’

  ‘Yes. To Aboriginal people, the Rainbow Serpent is the creator of all things,’ he explained. ‘Their beliefs are very connected to the land and very spiritual. The Rainbow Serpent is central to all these beliefs.’

  Looking up at the towering cliffs that had possibly been there from the beginning of time, Jalila found the explanation eminently believable. There was without doubt a spiritual presence in this place, just as she had felt at the Pinnacles. This was an ageless land. And the Rainbow Serpent sounded to her not unlike the Peacock Angel of her own peoples’ ancient religion. To the Yazidi, God was the creator of the world, but of the seven Holy Beings to whom He had entrusted its care, Tawuse Melek, the Peacock Angel, reigned supreme. The Peacock Angel was as central to Yazidi creational beliefs as the Rainbow Serpent was to the Aboriginal people of this country. Or so it would appear.

  Jalila found comfort in the thought. And as she did, she realised that here was yet another area, once so important in her life, to which she had long closed her mind. The faith of her people; the very reason they had been persecuted and massacred by the thousands. She had abandoned her religion in the belief that God had deserted her. Yet now, in this spiritual landscape and with this man she loved, her faith was creeping back.

  They had a late lunch, just a sandwich and coffee at a café in the small township of Kalbarri, after which Paul decided he’d eked out the pleasure of the day as long as was possible, and it was now time to gird his loins for the evening ahead. They drove back to Shoalhaven and prepared themselves for the family dinner at his parents’ house.

  Jalila wore her pretty dress with the pink flowers, and insisted he teach her the proper formal response she should make upon her introduction.

  ‘How do you do, Mr Miller,’ she enunciated perfectly, and when Paul held out his hand she shook it with just the right degree of firmness.

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Miller,’ she repeated the process as they rehearsed the introduction to his mother.

  ‘Honestly, Jalila,’ he protested, ‘I can’t be sure how they’ll receive you, honestly I can’t. They’ll be polite, I know that much. And my father’s bound to be formal,’ he added, ‘he’s a stitched-up bloke, always very proper, but apart from that …’

  ‘Is no matter,’ Jalila assured him, wondering why he seemed anxious. ‘I want to get right is all.’

  Paul knew he was being jumpy, which couldn’t be helping her, but the attitude he was expecting from his father was already making him want to punch the man’s lights out.

  ‘Everything’ll be fine,’ he said, trying to calm himself. ‘They’ll like you, I know they will.’

  ‘I hope this.’ Jalila smiled, she was very much looking forward to meeting his parents. Lou and Bev would be there too. It would be a real family gathering.

  They arrived on the dot of six-thirty, the allotted time, to discover Lou and Bev already there, seated in the lounge room, having arrived early as a sign of solidarity. Paul signalled his thanks as his mother ushered them inside.

  ‘Hello, my darling,’ Maria said, kissing him on the cheek and smiling brightly at Jalila. ‘Come in, come in.’

  Lou and Bev rose from their respective chairs. David was already on his feet; he’d stood the moment the doorbell had sounded, and was waiting, stiff-backed and solemn for the official introduction.

  Paul bristled at the mere sight of him. Couldn’t the bastard at least pretend a welcome? Couldn’t he paint on the vestige of a smile? But no, of course, David Miller never pretended.

  Stepping forward, Bev embraced Jalila affectionately.

  ‘Hello, Jalila,’ she said, ‘you look lovely.’

  ‘G’day, Jalila.’ Lou remained where he was but grinned and gave a friendly wave. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Hello, Bev; hello, Lou.’ Jalila smiled. ‘Is good to see you also.’

  ‘Mum, Dad.’ Paul addressed his introduction to both parents, but his eyes remained solely upon his father. ‘I’d like you to meet Jalila Domle.’

  A distinct flicker of surprise from Lou and Bev, although they tried not to show it. So Jalila finally had a surname.

  ‘Jalila is a Yazidi refugee from North
ern Iraq.’ Paul went on without drawing breath. ‘She also happens to be my wife.’

  Jesus Christ, Lou thought, does the boy have to come on so bloody strong!

  Oh hell, Bev thought, he’s just declared war.

  In the brief but awkward pause that followed, Jalila smiled at Paul’s parents, awaiting the offer of a handshake.

  Instead, Maria stepped forwards and embraced the girl.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ she said, ‘welcome to our home.’ Maria was cursing her son for deliberately annoying his father, but she was also cursing her husband for being as aloof as she’d anticipated he might be.

  ‘You will try and be pleasant to the girl, won’t you, dear?’ she’d said tightly when they’d talked about the impending meeting.

  ‘I will reserve my judgement,’ he’d replied just as tightly. ‘If this girl is attempting to use our son as a means of illegally entering this country, as she very well may be, she will receive no welcome from me, I can assure you.’

  It had appeared to Maria that her husband had already passed judgement before even laying eyes on the girl. But Maria had not.

  ‘I’ve looked forward very much to meeting you, Jalila,’ she said, knowing the warmth of her reception would grate with David.

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Miller.’ How beautiful Paul’s mother is, Jalila thought, just like Bev, only older.

  ‘And this is my husband, David.’

  David extended his hand. ‘How do you do,’ he said frostily; he would not refer to the girl by name.

  Jalila performed her handshake to perfection. ‘How do you do, Mr Miller,’ she said, looking him directly and unflinchingly in the eyes as they shook.