by Finn Óg
Habid sat stock-still and silent.
Tassels pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.
Habid held out, and so the smaller cop opened his palm again, as if sowing seeds, and Big Suit set about clipping Habid’s sweetmeats.
Sam burst two of his makeshift stitches as he bounded up the companionway and reached past the woman with the niqab and gripped the front of the burka on the second adult. He ripped it forward before realising it was all one garment, but despite the strength of the fightback from beneath he managed to get his fingers into the eye slot and tear it open. A black head of hair appeared first and Sam grabbed a fistful to turn the face upwards ready to strike it back down with his raised fist but was turned by the niqab-clad woman’s scream. All thoughts of violence vanished when he saw the look on his daughter’s face.
“Don’t hit him, Daddy,” she said, confused and terrified.
The woman had wrapped her salt-stained dress around what Sam assumed was her own child to shield her from the imminent beating.
Sam stared at the man’s stretched face, then at his little girl, his left hand still gripping the back of the man’s head. Isla couldn’t comprehend what had triggered her father’s sudden lurch from the bunk, brushing her aside to get above deck. To her, there had been no deception – she had no grasp of what the wearing of a burka signified and she’d obviously heard him speak while Sam was unconscious. Isla had no point of reference to understand the conceit.
Sam also struggled to compute what was going on, not helped by the fact that his judgement was clouded by the severe pain he was in. But one thing was plain; he couldn’t allow Isla to witness a beating.
He dropped the man backwards with a thud. They stared at one another but Sam was utterly lost for words. He simply shook his head at the other adults in turn, demanding an explanation as the robed and curled form cowered beneath him on the cockpit floor. The palms of the man’s hands were open, his arms bent at the elbows, his knees raised expecting an attack, appealing to prevent one. When none came he gradually, gingerly, allowed his posture to relax and he slowly edged towards the woman, keeping one hand raised in an appeal for mercy. Sam watched and rotated to mirror the man’s progress as he reached towards the woman. She initially recoiled before relenting as he placed his arm around her. He babbled furiously in Arabic throughout – his free hand open in conciliation as his wrist flicked between himself and the woman with an occasional gesture towards the little girl. Then he clasped his hand to his heart and his eyes looked up at Sam, again appealing for understanding. Although Sam had spent considerable time in the Arab world, he only caught one phrase repeated over and over: “Min faDlak, min faDlak”, which he’d always understood to mean a mixture of excuse me, sorry and please.
Sam watched the display for a few minutes and somehow drew the conclusion that the man was the woman’s husband and the child’s father. He turned to Isla. “I think he’s saying he’s the girl’s daddy.” He looked to his daughter for confirmation but she plainly had no idea what was going on. Sam realised that Isla was still confused as to why he’d been so angry. “Men aren’t supposed to wear the face cover, darlin’. That’s why I was cross. I thought he was being sneaky, trying to tell lies and fool us.”
“Why can’t men wear the mask?” she asked, which was too profound a question for Sam to attempt to answer in the circumstances.
“I don’t know, Isla. It’s their culture.”
The man was still gabbling away.
“What’s culture?”
“I’ll explain later,” Sam said.
“So why did he wear the mask?” Isla asked, which was a very good question.
Sam reached forward and clasped the remains of the head covering that hung limply like a hood around the man’s neck. He shook it at the man. “What’s this all about?” he barked with real anger.
That sparked a new series of gestures, none of which Sam followed. Then, noticing something, the man placed his palms in the air, apparently seeking some indulgence, and shimmied sideways, pleading again, appealing. He pointed at something to Sam’s right.
“What’s he looking at, Isla?” Sam said, refusing to alter his gaze or stance.
“I don’t know, Daddy. I think it might be my colouring book,” she said.
“Hand it to me, please.”
Isla got the book and gave it to her father. Sam handed it to the man who then began to mime writing.
“Pass me one of the felt tips, Isla,” Sam said, ensuring his daughter remained behind him and at a distance from the man who eagerly took the pen and began drawing.
Reluctantly Sam allowed his gaze to fall to the page where the man was outlining a rubber dinghy. He then drew lines shooting from a dot he’d drawn and blew through his lips, allowing them to smack together like a horse whinny.
“Oh, Daddy, I think he says their boat sank,” said Isla.
“Yes,” said Sam, who had worked that much out. He reached forward impatiently to shake the burka again, motioning the winding of a fishing reel: get to the point.
The man nodded vigorously and began a mixture of gestures and scribbles. He drew what could have passed as a ship and requested the bag of colouring pens. He selected a red one and drew a solid red cross on the side of the ship.
“Yes,” said Sam, “I understand. You wanted to be rescued by the Red Cross.”
“Red Cross,” the man repeated, nodding endlessly and returning to his picture. “Loo-joo,” he seemed to be saying, “Meh-men,” was all Sam could grasp until he started hugging himself before gesturing to the woman and child. He then returned to the page and drew a man, a woman and a child but crossed the man out. He kept pointing to himself and shaking a finger like an epileptic metronome. He returned to the page to draw arrows from the woman and child in the dinghy towards the ship but kept crossing out the man and looking to Sam, seeking understanding.
“What’s he saying, Daddy?”
“I think he’s saying that women and children get rescued by ships but men don’t,” Sam muttered vaguely, “or that men don’t get asylum.”
With mention of the word the man became over animated, as if he’d just won a game of charades.
“Ass-ee-lum, ass-ee-lum,” he kept saying, nodding and smiling.
“I think you’re right, Daddy,” said Isla. “What’s ass-ee-lum?”
“Not now, Isla,” he said, staring at the man and more determined than ever to get the passengers off his boat.
The screaming was disturbing. So much so that Tassels took a break and left the corridor of cells to stand outside and strike up a smoke. Acrid Egyptian-dried tobacco, sweepings off some grotesque, blackened floor. He’d found them in a drawer of the custody officer’s desk. They rasped his throat like a wood file.
Three walls of separation plus thirty feet and he could still hear the whining. Big Suit was evidently having fun. That big ass better not kill the rat, thought Tassels, who sensed a real opportunity. He just needed more time to work out what was going on. This was direct policing, he mused: no faffing around with permissions and detection, just cut off a few balls and all will become clear.
Inside the interrogation room Big Suit stood back and began to panic. Blood was gushing down the rat’s legs. He’d been overzealous; nipped and tucked tighter than usual. Habid began to fail. His legs jellified and his sway became a fall, leaving him hanging from the hook. Big Suit dithered. He knew he was in trouble. The options were unattractive: summon Tassels and receive a roasting, or wait it out and see if the bleeding stopped. He knew in his heart that the flow wouldn’t cease of its own accord, so he dropped the cutters and ran outside.
“What?” Tassels coughed as Big Suit burst into the yard.
“He’s weak – he can’t take it,” Big Suit blubbed. “I think we need to get him some medical help.”
Grim and thick as he was, Big Suit had never actually managed to murder anyone before.
“What have you done, you idiot?”
“He’s bleeding. He’s losing consciousness.”
Tassels ran inside and lifted Habid’s head by the hair.
“This is your last chance – that donkey dick has managed to slice an artery,” he said but Habid was barely able to listen. Life was draining from his eyes.
“If you tell me now what your scam was, I’ll get you a doctor.”
Habid had endured all he was prepared to. There was just enough blood left around his brain to do the calculations: if I tell them, I’ll die on this hook like halal.
He mustered a few words. “Doctor first, then we cut a deal, then I tell you,” he said, and he promptly passed out.
“Why don't you like the man daddy?”
Sam smiled as warmly as he could at Isla, but his brow was bunched tight.
“It’s just going to take time to trust him.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't know what he wants.”
“I think he just wants to get to a nice country,” she said.
You’re so like your mam, he thought, but avoided saying so as he knew it would send her into silence and sadness.
“I’m just trying to understand what happened wee love.”
“You got really cross, Daddy.”
“I’m sorry darlin’, I’m really trying not to get so cross.”
“I thought you were going to punch his head in.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Punch his head in.”
Isla just shrugged.
“I don’t really want to punch anyone’s head in.”
“Yes you do,” she said, not looking at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Mammy said it was your way of minding us.”
“When?”
She shrugged again.
“What did mammy say?”
“She told me you had seen bad stuff and it made you cross sometimes, but it was just your way of looking after us.”
Sam stood at the wheel, slightly bemused that this conversation had taken place.
“Did she talk about the stuff I had seen, the bad stuff?”
“No, but I know it was in the army.”
“Not the army.”
“The navy then.”
“What do you know about that?” he said, peering below to see where the migrant family was. Isla shrugged once more and looked out to sea.
“I’m working on it wee love.”
“It’s OK. But you can't kill that man, Daddy.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone,” he raised his voice, then immediately hushed it – despite the fact that his instinct was to do just as his daughter described. In the dark corner of his consciousness he could see the scrawny man being left in the wake of the boat before disappearing into darkness.
“You promise?”
“Isla, I don’t just go round killing people,” he said, incredulously.
She gave him a look he had never known her capable of, a searching yet soft stare. It was broken only by his need to look away, guilty at his half-truth.
“I’m just confused about what happened, Isla. I don’t really know how or why he helped me on board.”
“I don't know, Daddy,” she said, confused and on the cusp of upset. He knew to leave her alone, she was too young to understand or explain.
He hunted for the positive and sought empathy for the man that, like Sam, was a father, a husband and someone who wanted – and strove for – a better life for his family. That, Sam could identify with. He resolved, therefore, to approach the man with an open mind rather than a hammer.
Tassels stared at Habid, half-dead in the bed. Of course a hospital was out of the question – there was no way of explaining how a prisoner had lost a thumb, a toe and a testicle while in custody. Even in Egypt that would cause consternation – even if the mutilated patient was a Libyan. Not that he looked like one now: white as a European, the blood drained from his face and arms.
Tassels had a cousin who’d been a doctor. The cousin had been sent for and had savagely cauterised the rat’s wounds. The doc had performed the searing smoky procedure on Habid where he hung, peering up and stroking a soldering iron of sorts into the seething tissue.
Then there was the need for blood, and the lack of testing facilities, and the gamble they took syphoning Big Suit – the first part of his punishment – the proceeds of which were pumped into the rat. The kit the cousin possessed was far from sufficient but calling for medical reinforcements wasn’t an option financially. The three men assembled a grubby ICU in the police station’s ‘infirmary’. The mood was intense, the care coarse and the unit a filthy former cell. Tassels became more agitated and angrier as the operation grew increasingly uncontainable. The outcome was inevitable. What should have been a two-way uneven cut of whatever scam the rat was running had now turned into a three-way split: the doctor and one-and-a-half cops. Still, Tassels suspected it would prove worthwhile, if the rat ever woke up.
The woman came to sit in the cockpit, the man followed. Sam found himself wanting to atone for his outburst, to show some hospitality, regardless of how inhospitable he felt. He looked at them, the salt crusting her niqab in the sun, grading her in salt beneath. The discomfort must have been enormous. He couldn't help hoping the man’s balls were chafing.
“Do you want to wash your clothes?” he ventured.
She turned to look towards him, but he had no means of knowing what was going on beneath the veil. The man too stared at him.
Sam called below deck. “Isla, pass up the washing liquid please.”
A bottle of Fairy was landed by a little arm on the step.
“No Isla, the clothes liquid.”
The Fairy disappeared and was replaced by a small capsule of blue and green liquid. Sam began to point at their black garments, before making a gushing sound and a rubbing motion which he imagined conveyed the cleaning of clothes. The man began to shake his head. Sam ignored him and looked at the woman. He fluttered his fingers over his head, then pretended to hold a shower head and rubbed his armpits. He felt like an ape.
The man became more agitated and immediately sent the woman below. Sam shook his head at the bloke in wonder.
“You’re not making it easy to like you,” he said, feeling safe in the knowledge that the man could not understand him. “I don’t know who you guys think you are.”
The man stared, then turned away, but not in shame.
“You think she needs your permission?” Sam’s anger rose again, but the man ignored him. “Do you think we’re going to watch her shower or what? Do you think she’ll pick up some western affliction off the soap?”
He tried to calm down. If Shannon had been there, she’d have ripped the man’s head off. The man got up and followed the woman below.
“Why doesn’t she say anything, Daddy?” Isla called up from below.
“Don't earywig, Isla,” he snapped, cross that he had been caught out so soon after promising to be nice. He sighed. “What do you mean?” he tried to moderate his tone. Her head appeared in the companionway.
“The mammy. She never says anything. He’s the only one who speaks.”
“They do things differently,” Sam tried.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, which wasn’t entirely untrue. He’d spent enough time among misogynists, white, black, Arab and otherwise to have knowledge, if not understanding. Senior officers who commanded their wives like staff, Taliban who treated their women like slaves.
“You do know, Daddy,” Isla said, “you’re just not telling me.”
Sam sighed and looked at his little girl brimming with determination and frustration.
“I promise I will explain it best I can when I’m better, ok?”
“Oh-kay,” she said, slowly.
Little apples, Sam thought.
Seven
A lollipop was the first thing he noticed.
His gluey eyes sucked slowly apart, one
after the other, although it took a while for his vision to find focus. When it did it conjured a maroon marker plonked directly in his sight line. Habid was sure it must be a piece of confectionery – red and purple and glistening with sugar. It looked like it ought to be licked.
It wasn’t until a solid ten minutes had passed that he realised what he was staring at: his own toe, or half of it, bulging like a toffee-coated apple, burnt and bright. The realisation heightened his agony and he tried to scream but couldn’t. His throat was so dry, his tongue carpeted and stuck to his palate. His airway had been blown through with a thousand sands, his body sapped of all moisture. His bellow exited like a dying gasp followed by a horrified choke as he raised his hand to his mouth and was reminded of what had happened his finger.
“Don’t worry,” came a voice from the side.
He tried to move his head but pain shot in all directions. He caught sight of an IV bag. Blood. He longed to swap it for a bottle of water.
“Your torment is over. We have removed your interrogators.”
Habid realised he was in a different cell. One marginally more habitable than his last. There was a window, somewhere, high and behind him. His gaze fell again to his foot and he began to wretch.
“It’s ok,” he heard, as a small sponge pressed to his lips, its moisture immediately vanishing into the intensely dehydrated cracks. “They are gone. I am a doctor. I am here to care for you now.”
“Shukran,” Habid muttered, opening his mouth for more.
The hand waved the little stick with the sponge on the end and squeezed a little into his mouth.
“Let me go and get some more,” the doctor said, and walked to the door.
Habid felt an overwhelming sense of hope. They’d kept him alive and he was about to get some water. He would trade anything for water – anything. Another toe? Take it. Just bring me the water.
The doctor closed the door behind him and came face-to-face with his cousin leaning against the wall in the corridor. Tassels raised his eyebrows for an assessment, which came by way of a whisper.