Act of Grace

by Anna Krien

  The musicians were thin. Decades of persecution wore at the corners of their mouths. Nasim feared for them. The theatre was safe now, as safe as one could expect – she knew this – but she could not shake the feeling. It was as though they were filing into the jaws of a lion. She also, desperately, wanted to join them. She had come all this way in the hope that one of them would recognise her. She clutched to her chest a book of Chopin’s nocturnes she had found in the rubble of a music shop targeted by Shi’a militia.

  Nasim took a step closer to the musicians as they lined up. One of the soldiers noticed, lifted his weapon and came over. A few of the musicians turned to see what the problem was. Nasim held her breath. Please remember me. Their eyes washed over her and swivelled back to the front as she was ordered to move away. ‘You want to be searched?’ the soldier asked.

  It was December 2003, the same month the bronze heads of Saddam were removed from the skyline. By then the American-led occupation had unleashed a catastrophe.

  ‘Damn place is a fucking hornet’s nest,’ a Marine had said to Nasim during a visit he and others from his unit paid to Nostalgia. There were more of them than there were girls, so they took turns, playing poker in the kitchen with cards bearing the faces of their most-wanted Iraqi enemies. ‘You got the Ace of Spades for Saddam,’ explained the Marine, laying the card face up on the table next to a decorative ashtray. Nasim peered cautiously at it and he laughed at her. ‘Don’t be nervous. Bastard can’t get you now,’ he said with pride. He flipped over another card. ‘Uuuu-day,’ he said, exaggerating his American drawl, not noticing how Nasim shrank back. ‘Ace of Hearts,’ he said, ‘because he was a lover, right? A real ladies’ man.’

  *

  ‘Are you going to play again?’ Robbie asked Nasim. She’d gathered up the crocheted rug; it was too hot for Sidney to be wrapped up. Nasim stiffened at the question. She was hoping the piano would no longer be there, disappearing as seamlessly as it had appeared. She shrugged, trying to appear casual.

  But the girl didn’t let it go. ‘I can’t believe you can play like that,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Nasim detected a needling in the girl’s tone. She glanced at Robbie’s face as they walked and saw her instinct was right. Robbie looked put out, suspicious even.

  ‘It is not important,’ Nasim said.

  Robbie arched her eyebrows. ‘Really? You were playing like a proper, I don’t know, a proper musician.’ Nasim shrugged again and strode ahead. ‘I mean,’ Robbie continued, catching up, ‘if I could play like that it would be pretty important to me.’

  Nasim was silent.

  ‘Sabeen?’ said Robbie. ‘I’m just wondering —’

  ‘Enough!’ Nasim snapped, turning on the girl furiously. ‘It is none of your business! Enough.’ She made a motion as if to zip her mouth.

  The girl stared back, eyes wide. ‘O-kay,’ she said slowly.

  They walked in silence after that. Nasim’s heart was racing. It was falling apart again, she worried. She’d become comfortable, even happy; how was she going to start over? What new incarnation was even possible from here?

  ‘No Yasemin today?’ Robbie asked after a time.

  ‘Not feeling well,’ Nasim said, not looking at Robbie.

  ‘Sharon, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nasim said, ‘Sharon, too.’

  In truth, the girls were gone. It was the first thing Nasim had decided after the men came to see her. Yasemin and Sharon were her favourites; they were regulars at the upstairs soirees, lively young women whose company and sharp jibes delighted her. But Nasim had learned this lesson long ago: the first to go must be the oldest and most assured, and most importantly of all, the confidantes. She told the two women the instant they arrived, in front of the other girls, handing them their pay and asking them to leave. Then she informed the others they would no longer be paid minimum wage and their earnings would be commission-based. If any of them were unhappy with this new arrangement, they too should leave.

  The men wanted money, of course. Their ‘cut’, they said, as if they had earned it. They did not say how much they knew. They demanded to see her books, and attributed seventy per cent of her earnings to themselves.

  ‘How do I explain it?’ Nasim asked numbly, though she knew the answer. ‘To the tax office?’

  The men smiled. ‘Insurance,’ the shorter one said.

  ‘In case of fire,’ added the taller man, his timing flawless.

  *

  The purple piano was still there. A girl was sitting on the stool, two plaits sprouting from her head like handlebars, her fingers slow and clumsy. Nasim recognised the Minuet in G Major. Robbie went into a café to order while Nasim sat down, jiggling Sidney on her lap. She watched the girl with growing irritation. The minuet was tiresome. Her head hurt, a thump just behind her brow increasing as the mall’s cups, saucers and small spoons clattered, and the beep and whir of the pedestrian crossing pressed in on her.

  Near her feet, a male pigeon puffed his feathers, bobbing furiously as he pursued a female, cooing and rolling his Rs. ‘Why doesn’t she just fly away?’ Robbie said, as she appeared with a plate of falafel and dip. She still wore the baby carrier, its straps hanging loose near her thighs. Sidney wriggled on Nasim’s lap and reached for Robbie. Nasim passed him over, both women chuckling at the female pigeon walking in circles. Nasim felt ashamed for being nasty earlier. She wanted to give Robbie something, a story, to draw her close again.

  ‘You ever seen a baby pigeon?’ she asked.

  Robbie shook her head as she broke open the hot falafel balls, releasing the steam. ‘Wait, Sid,’ she warned, as he reached for them.

  ‘Ugliest things you ever saw,’ Nasim said. ‘Big hooked grey beak with,’ she held a hand above her nose and pinched her fingers upwards as if tugging on the skin, ‘a hump on them. Very ugly, like your Hundertwasser.’ Robbie looked up, catching Nasim’s eye, and grinned.

  ‘A man kept a flock on the roof of my apartment building in Baghdad,’ she continued, as Robbie delicately picked up a piece of falafel, bringing it to her lips to cool. ‘A funny man. We’ – she caught herself – ‘I used to think he looked like a baby pigeon himself. He had a nose just like them.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Robbie asked.

  Nasim frowned. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Maybe S’aid?’ She shrugged. ‘It stank up there. All these cages and roosting boxes, pegged shut with twisted wire. He let them out in the afternoons. It was too dangerous at dawn or dusk because the bigger birds, like the shikra, would be out hunting.’

  ‘Was it beautiful?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The flock. When they got out to fly?’

  Nasim thought a moment and nodded. It was. Before the fighting, the sky had filled with flocks of pigeons swooping and arcing in tight, ever-shifting circles. With the cloying heat and the distant hum of traffic, the muezzin’s call to prayer, it was beautiful. It was the place between skin and city, when it was all, ever so briefly, inseparable.

  ‘I used to go up to the roof to watch them,’ Nasim said, though this was only partly true. She had been on the roof just twice, the last time in the evening, and it had not been beautiful. She climbed the five sets of stairs, only remembering the pigeons when she opened the hatch, a sharp stink of rotting meat coiling in her nostrils. She had contemplated going back down to the apartment, but that was a ridiculous thought. Dead birds were the least of her worries. When she climbed up through the hatch, there was a scrambling in the boxes. A few of the birds were still alive. Nasim untwisted the wire and opened the cages. ‘Come on,’ she murmured, propping open the doors with empty water containers and bowls. The birds looked out; they were mostly naked, the white spines of their remaining feathers showing like ribs. Then, with a weak flutter of wings, the pigeons rose up as one, wheeling over the city, and immediately the shikra came out of their hiding places, beaks hooked, brown wings out like blades, talons ready. Nasim had unrolled her blanket and tried to sleep. />
  ‘It was very nice,’ she told Robbie.

  *

  Robbie’s phone chirruped and she walked a distance away to take the call. Nasim bounced the boy on her knees, singing softly. Sidney gurgled happily, with a gummy smile, his blue eyes slightly lolling. ‘Ya’aburnee,’ she whispered close to his ear. The boy giggled at the touch of her breath, his ear twitching like a horse’s might. ‘Ya’aburnee,’ she said again. You bury me. ‘You bury your mother, too. All us old people.’ He gurgled and grabbed her nose.

  Then, catching movement from the corner of her eye, she sensed them. She turned and saw the two men. They were in the café where Robbie had bought the falafel, at the counter. The shorter one was wearing the same brown leather jacket, tapping out a beat with his fingers. The café owner was busily shaving lamb off the spit. Nasim studied him carefully, watching for signs of stress. He turned back and filled two pitas with meat, tabouli and lettuce. When he finished, he wrapped the souvlakis and passed them to the men. They turned and left. The owner flicked his eyes up then, as if he could feel Nasim’s gaze through the window. He was Turkish, tall and good-looking, with coffee-brown eyes. Robbie thought he was handsome, was always flirting with him. He gave Nasim a slight nod, and she returned it.

  ‘Why hello, Nasim,’ said a voice, and Nasim jumped, her hands tightening around Sidney’s waist. The two men were standing next to her table with their souvlakis. A thin dribble of white sauce ran down the short one’s wrist from the paper bag. He held up his arm so the sleeve of his jacket fell away and slurped it off his skin. Nasim gritted her teeth, not saying anything. ‘Who’s this?’ the taller one asked, leaning forward as if to tickle Sidney’s chin. Nasim jerked the boy away.

  ‘Sabeen?’ Robbie was back, standing next to her with a quizzical expression. The two men nodded at the girl and then at Nasim before making their way out to the street. Robbie watched them, then began to gather up her things. ‘Sabeen?’ she said again. Her voice was excited now. She reached out for Sidney. ‘Can you do me a favour? Come with us?’

  *

  Danny died when he forgot how to swallow. ‘Have you ever heard of a death so determined to come full circle?’ Robbie had asked.

  ‘Listen,’ Claire told them after the day Beverley came to see Danny. ‘I’m not sure what I want when I die. I don’t know if I want to be buried, and I also have Nathan to think of. I’m not sure your father would appreciate having his wife’s boyfriend buried with him.’ She paused. ‘So,’ she said slowly, ‘I’m afraid this is on you two. It’s your decision, and I’ll do whatever you want.’ Claire put her hands in Robbie’s and Otis’s. ‘And I promise I’ll only say this once, but if anyone ever took either of you away from me, I don’t know if I’d have been able to survive.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears and she shook them loose. ‘That’s not true. I would have survived, because that’s just what you do. But that girl of Bev’s is right. I would have always felt as if you had been cut out of me. I don’t even know if I could be dead peacefully.’

  Robbie glared at her mother. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘That is a hell of a thing to only say once.’ She looked at Otis and saw he’d already decided. It was up to her.

  And so, Danny O’Farrell was buried with his mother, Betsy Carol. They were Christians, Beverley and her family, Robbie learned with surprise. She wasn’t sure her father would have been so keen on a church service, but by then it was too late to object.

  ‘We’re letting go,’ Claire liked to say to her, and annoying as it was, Robbie didn’t mind hearing it. It was stupid, too, she had begun to realise, to go on about what Danny wanted, because since when did he ever get what he wanted? And maybe if things had been left well alone, a church service in Geelong would have been the natural way of things.

  At the cemetery, the small crowd clustered around the pastor, who stood next to a hole in the ground in his black robe and white collar, a shiny granite marker for Betsy Carol already in place. On one side of the grave stood Beverley and her daughters, their arms linked, their clan clustered around them, while Robbie, Otis, Claire, Nathan, Jack and Nasim stood on the other side. People fidgeted in the heat. A mosquito landed on the pastor’s cheek. ‘There is reason to rejoice,’ the pastor said solemnly, brushing the mosquito away only for it to land on his brow. ‘There is reason to rejoice,’ the pastor repeated – flinching as the mosquito sank its black proboscis in – ‘for Danny O’Farrell is returning to God.’

  There was a cough. It was Beverley’s daughter, Penny. ‘Um, to his mother actually,’ Penny said loudly, and across the grave, the families grinned.

  *

  Robbie took the slip road and turned the corner into a highway thick with traffic. There were crammed cars and minibuses, vans flying the Aboriginal flag from their windows, speakers belting out tunes – a mix of Archie Roach, Thelma Plum, Ruby Hunter, Dan Sultan and Baker Boy floated on the breeze. Robbie heard the tinny sound of the Warumpi Band. She laughed. There was the ordinary traffic, too, cars with just a driver staring ahead, cabs and petrol tankers, trucks hauling sheep, woolly bums pressed against the sidings. Up ahead, the service station was buzzing with television crews and vans with satellite dishes, and further on, flanking the highway, was a long line of police, some on horseback, others in vehicles parked at an angle, blue lights flashing. At the beginning of the bridge, police in hi-vis vests waved traffic wands, funnelling the vehicles in and upwards.

  Robbie peered at the sky. ‘I can see them!’

  Nasim leaned forward. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘So can I.’

  The West Gate Bridge was like a sauropod, a long grey tail of concrete and steel arching up into the sky, its back stretching over the water, and then, lazily, a neck curving its way to the ground. At some time in the night, workers had received the go-ahead from the government to climb the two concrete towers jutting from the bridge. They had hauled down the tattered Australian flags and clipped on the black, yellow and red flags the size of houses. Then up and up the flags went, bold against the skyline.

  ‘They must have wanted to do it without any warning,’ Robbie said out loud, though more to herself. ‘In case,’ she added over her shoulder, ‘there were any protests.’ Nasim nodded. It was beyond her, this fixation of Robbie’s on whose country this was. Small-minded, too, for surely it was a mere cigarette paper of sediment in the history of the earth. ‘All countries are the inheritance of murderers,’ she had said once to Robbie.

  ‘And all history is inscribed by the inheritors,’ she had replied.

  Nasim had nodded. At least they agreed on this.

  From there, they differed. ‘Fifty thousand years of culture before the Brits came,’ said Robbie. To which Nasim would think, lucky them. Once, she’d countered that it was unlikely that those fifty thousand years had been peaceful. To this, Robbie had snorted impatiently. ‘Of course not. But they didn’t fuck up the country in the process.’ Nasim said nothing in reply. How could she? As the flotsam of history herself, it was hardly her place.

  Robbie inched the car forward. She’d wound down the windows, waving at people in adjoining lanes. ‘Treaty now!’ someone yelled, and Robbie cheered. Behind them a policeman on a motorbike was weaving, making his way through the maze of traffic, when he paused alongside their car. He peered in at them. Robbie scowled as he gestured at them to pull over. Nasim felt worry build in her stomach.

  On the side of the road, he put his hands on either side of his helmet, lifted it off and placed it on the bike’s seat. Then, with a purposeful stride, he went to Nasim’s window. ‘What’s your name, ma’am?’

  Heat rushed into Nasim’s face. Robbie was livid. She twisted in her seat to glare at the cop. ‘What the hell is this for? It’s because she’s wearing a hijab, isn’t it?’

  The cop looked at her coldly. ‘Just a random check,’ he answered.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Robbie said. ‘It’s racial profiling, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Nasim Amin,’ Nasim said quickly, to quell Robbie�
�s anger, and immediately a sick feeling took hold in her throat. Never before had she made this mistake. Robbie fell silent, looking at her, confused. ‘I mean, Sabeen,’ she stammered. ‘S-Sabeen Tahir.’

  The policeman cocked his head. ‘So which is it, ma’am?’ he enquired.

  Nasim felt her skin prickle with sweat. ‘Sabeen,’ she said again. ‘Sabeen Tahir.’

  ‘May I see your ID, ma’am?’

  Nasim nodded, reaching for her handbag at her feet, wishing she could somehow disappear.

  ‘Slowly, ma’am,’ the policeman warned.

  Nasim held out her licence. Her hand was trembling, the little plastic card already wet with her sweaty fingerprints.

  The policeman took it. He looked at Nasim and at the licence, back and forth. Nasim could feel Robbie watching her.

  ‘Where are you from, Sabeen?’ said the officer.

  ‘Iraq, sir.’

  ‘How long you been in Australia?’

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘You like it here, Sabeen?’

  Nasim nodded, trying to make her eyes shine with gratitude as if it were he who had built the country and let her in. ‘Oh yes, very much so.’

  Robbie snorted. ‘Excuse me, officer, do you think I could see your ID?’

  The policeman looked at her. ‘Your licence, too,’ he said.

  Robbie glared back, thinking on it, then Sidney made a sound and she relented. She rifled through her bag, pulling out her licence. The policeman took it, along with Nasim’s, and returned to his bike. Robbie stared after him. ‘Fucking cunt,’ she muttered.

  ‘Shh,’ Nasim whispered.

  Robbie looked at her again, suspicion growing. ‘What’s going on, Sabeen? Or should I call you Nasim? Those men back in the mall called you that too,’ she said.