‘They want chocolate? Maybe I’ll come with you. I’m going that way, for a stamp,’ I say, even though its probably obvious to her that I’m going in the opposite direction and have already posted my letter. Was I being a shonky detective? Would she guess I was on a mission of discovery?
‘Okay,’ she says, and you can tell she isn’t one bit suspicious.
So, as we wander back up the street, I begin to gently prod her with questions. First of all I ask her how she finds Australia, because I can’t even imagine what Afghanistan is like. I think of pale yellow ground and palm trees and houses made of stone.
She laughs. ‘Oh, Afghanistan is a beautiful country. Very beautiful.’ As she says this you can tell she’s picturing it in her mind, and it’s as if whatever she’s seeing makes her sad because she seems to hold the memory quietly, then bends her head forward to shelter it.
‘Why did you leave?’ I know this is a big question, and one you maybe shouldn’t ask because it must be painful to have to leave your country, but the question just popped out before I could catch it and hold it back. She turns towards me with a frown.
‘You’ve heard about the Taliban?’
I nod. She shrugs and tilts her head. ‘You know what they do? They stone you to death for nothing; even if you read a book that is not the Koran.’ I hold myself back from prodding, because it doesn’t seem right to prod now. It feels too big.
After a moment she sighs and says, ‘There is no life in Afghanistan for a girl. I was not free to go outside. Girls are not allowed. You get stolen or you get raped. Sometimes I prayed, “Just make me a boy so I can go outside, at least, just not stay inside all the time.” It is really hard there. I get here and I think,“How lucky they are – the women, the ladies – at least they get to have a life.” In Afghanistan the women have to go to the rule of the husband; women do not have any choices. Men can do anything they want to – they can hit them, they can make them have this much children. Women are just nothing, they are just to work, clean, look after men.’
She has become quite fierce and intense, as if it’s important that I understand. She shakes her head sadly. ‘I feel sorry for my people. They grow up being spiteful.’
‘Yeah,’ I shake my head with her, ‘that’s bad.’
She smiles, but it isn’t a cheerful smile, it’s an accepting smile, like when someone gives you something you don’t want for Christmas, like a pair of pink shorts; you smile because that’s just the way life is. You have to act as if you’re okay with your shorts, even if you’re not.
I change the topic to what I hope might be a happier one because I don’t feel I know enough to talk well about extreme situations, and I am ashamed of how little I know.
‘How long have you been here in Australia?’
‘Three years now. At first when we arrive we are in Baxter detention and then we live in Adelaide. But we do not like Adelaide, so now we come here.’
‘What was it like, in the detention centre?’
‘Oh, you know, compared to how we live before we are glad to be there, at least we are alive and we have showers and food. For us it is not as bad as it is now because we come earlier, before the Tampa, and they are not so crowded, and we stay one year instead of for many years, and we are not separated from each other.’
I wonder what it must have been like for her before, if it was worse than being in detention, but I don’t want to ask her about something that might bring back bad memories so I just say that I’m glad she has made it here to Australia, even if it isn’t as beautiful as her own country.
She looks at me as if she is really looking, for the first time, to see who I am or at least what sort of a person I am. I look at her right back in the eyes; I’m not afraid of being seen, because I mean it, I really do. She doesn’t say anything for a while and neither do I, but just before we part she bursts out:
‘You know here some people tell me I am a geek. But I think,“You have the opportunity to get education, why not use it – instead you waste it?” I see girls, they just talk and talk, they do nothing else. I talk too, but I do my work. Like in our country, girls are dying for some education. Here people just waste their time.’
‘Yeah,’ I say again, as if I’ve never wasted time myself. But she’s on a roll anyway; she keeps going,
‘I feel bad, you know, because you have got such a good country and you do not feel grateful. Here people are so fortunate. They get to have everything. I mean, what else do you want?’
I can’t answer her because I know there is lots that I want, and suddenly it doesn’t seem right to be wanting when I can go and play in my street whenever I choose. As we walk back to our street, I can’t get her words, what else do you want? out of my head. I think of me wanting to be a circus star, wanting it even more than ever now that the possibility of joining a real circus is here. I even think of Marnie always wanting to look pretty and great, and Mum wanting to one day buy a house, and Barnaby wanting to play his songs to the world. And then I think of all the girls in Afghanistan who just want to be able to go outside and play. It confuses me. Maybe wanting something is just what you do. It’s not really about what you have or what you need, it’s about something else.
And then I figure that there’s all these people wanting all over the world, all wanting something, all wanting with all their hearts, all wanting just one bit more than what they already have. How do you know when what you have is enough? And if it is enough, why do you still want more?
Don’t worry, I didn’t hit Inisiya with any Philosophy According to Cedar B. Hartley. I just listened to her, and when I got home I asked Aunt Squeezy what she thought. She said there’re two ways to make people richer: one is to give them more money and the other is to teach them how to desire less.
I went around for the rest of the evening practising believing I had everything I wanted, and it felt so very peaceful inside me I could hardly recognise myself.
Chapter 20
Not for long, though. I was woken up by the old familiar whirls of thinking and wanting. For one thing, I was thinking about Inisiya and how even though she was from a different land and spoke a different language and all that stuff she was still a girl, just like me or any other girl around. Just like a tree is a tree. In fact, if Inisiya was a tree she’d be a claret ash tree, because she seems to glow just the way a claret ash does in autumn. It’s as if we all have trunks and leaves, but then we grow in different shapes and colours. Some people put more energy into their leaves, or stretch their branches in every direction; others concentrate on their trunks, and others become beautiful colours or bear fruits or blossoms or canopies of shade. Like I could never, even if I really tried, be a tidy tree or a tree that is part of a hedge, because I would have unruly bits sticking out. And then you get trees who just don’t get enough sun, like hungry people or the people in Afghanistan who can’t go out and play, so they have to reach more and then once they find the sun you have to hope it’s not too late for them to lean into it and grow the parts that couldn’t grow before. Because maybe they are good at reaching, like Inisiya. Not like Harold Barton, who has never had to reach for anything because his parents buy him anything he wants.
‘Harold may have things, but he might not have people who understand him or show him love,’ said Aunt Squeezy when I triumphantly filled her in on my new slant on trees.
I snorted unsympathetically and poured the cornflakes into my bowl. ‘Anyway, I’m going to try and bump into Inisiya again because I’ve got things I want to give her, or if she doesn’t need them she might know other refugees who do.’
Mum glanced up from the newspaper and smiled at me. I stuck my tongue out and said, ‘It will keep my room tidier if there’s less stuff in it,’ because I didn’t want anyone thinking I was trying to do a good deed. Good deeds are something Girl Guides do, and I don’t like the way they smell.
For the next week I kept trying to bump into Inisiya, but it didn’t happen. You never bump into
anyone unless you’re not expecting to. That’s the nature of bumping. In the end, Aunt Squeezy suggested that she could invite Inisiya over for lunch when she saw her at the Network. I said that would be too formal and kind of daggy, but Aunt Squeezy said that Inisiya came from a culture that was very hospitable, anyway, and also she might not have ideas about what is and isn’t daggy. So in order to prove that I, too, wasn’t so superficial as to care about being daggy or not, I let myself be convinced.
Inisiya came for lunch the next Saturday. I really wanted to invite Caramella as well, but since I hadn’t heard from her I figured she was still annoyed at me. And I couldn’t handle two delicate situations at once.
When a good buddy like Caramella comes over you don’t exactly want the grown-ups hanging around, but since I hardly knew Inisiya and I’d never before invited someone for lunch I was actually relieved that Aunt Squeezy and Mum were there to do all that nice welcoming, breaking-the-ice stuff, because that’s one of the things grown-ups are better at. I only had to hover like a teenager and smile and make interested comments. Mum had made her famous vegetarian lasagne, and we all sat around the kitchen table and of course Aunt Squeezy drove the conversation because she knew what to say and she knew a lot of people that Inisiya knew. After lunch was over, she said to Inisiya, ‘Cedar has got a pile of things together for you to take to the Network to see if they can be distributed to the others.’ She looked at me.‘Why don’t you show Inisiya your room?’
Aunt Squeezy should have been a diplomat.
It was a great way to get out of grown-up territory and into the land where kids grow. Bedrooms.
Once there, I flopped on my bed and let out a big breath to get rid of all the politeness.
Inisiya didn’t seem bothered by it. She looked out the window and said, ‘You got a lovely house.’
‘It’s not ours, really. We just rent it,’ I said.
‘In Afghanistan we have no windows in our house. The glass all got broke by the bombs and guns going off. So we have black plastic over them.’
‘That must have been terrible. That means you couldn’t even see outside.’
She shrugged. ‘There are courtyards. You can go in them. We live all together, my grandmother and cousins.’
‘Did they all come here too?’
‘No.’ She shook her head and stared out the window again, and I could tell she didn’t want to talk about them, so instead I asked what she brought with her when she came because I was wondering what I would take with me if I had to leave my house and my street for ever. Stinky, of course; the photo of my dad smiling, my diary, my corduroy coat, my letter from Kite…But how would I say goodbye to Caramella?
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Whatever luggage we take with us we have to throw it in the sea when we are on the boat.’
I tried to imagine throwing all those things overboard – the photo of my dad smiling, Stinky, my corduroy coat – but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine having nothing; nothing to guard your memories with, nothing to say ‘this is me’. It made me panic, made me feel as if I would lose some of myself.
‘Oh my God. Nothing! So what was it like to arrive here, like that, with nothing?’
She laughed and shook her head.
‘No. We are so happy to arrive, finally. We no longer care about our things. We are happy to be alive.’
‘Yeah, I guess…’
I looked at the pile of things I had made and wondered if any of it would be useful. Maybe things are only important when they mean something, and even then?
She looked at it too and smiled. ‘It is nice of you to do that,’ she said.
I felt silly, though, as if the things weren’t nearly enough to make even a small difference. I drew our attention away from them.
‘Well, what was it like to go to school? Could you speak English?’
‘I learn as much as I can in detention centre. I talk to the securities, to practise. But still, Aussie kids talk different to how we learn English. At first, I cannot understand. Also, I am different from other kids.’
I looked at her and she didn’t look different, she looked exactly like a teenager should look. She was wearing a black hippy shirt with embroidery on the front and hipster jeans and she had enviable golden skin that would never burn in the sun and turn to freckles like mine did.
‘How were you different?’ I said.
‘Oh, you know, the clothes. Also they look and act different – even the teachers. And then, also, I do not know how to play. You know, I never play before in Afghanistan. I do not know monkey bars or netball or anything. At first I hate school but my mother says to me,“You will speak one day English, and then you will like it.”’
I can’t imagine how you could be a kid and not play. Isn’t that what being a kid is all about? What kind of kids are they creating in Afghanistan? I wondered to myself, but I didn’t say that. I said a really good thing. I said, ‘Hey, have you ever been hedge walking?’
She giggled and shook her head.
‘Come on then. I’ll show you.’
One thing I know is there’s nothing like a bit of playing to soften the edges of a new friendship. So that’s what we did. We didn’t talk about Afghanistan or black windows or lost cousins and things thrown overboard, we just went and climbed the hedge and hung there like two different-coloured parrots squawking on about girl things, like best friends and falling in love. I even told her about Kite.
Chapter 21
The next day I was in my room sorting through my things, determined to make more piles of stuff to give to the Learning Network for all those refugee kids who arrived here without anything. Don’t worry, I wasn’t becoming a Good Samaritan, it’s just that I couldn’t stop thinking about them having nothing. Barnaby popped his head into my room.
‘God, what a mess! Phone call for you.’
I dragged myself away from my piles of things, vaguely hoping it might be Caramella, because I still hadn’t heard from her since I slipped that letter under her door.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hi, it’s Kite.’ (Voice slow and trickling.)
‘Kite! Wow. How are you?’ (I’m suddenly breathless.)
‘I’m good. (Laugh.) Hey, I just got your letter.’
‘Did you?’ (What a stupid thing to say; he just said he did.)
‘Yeah. And I figured by the time I got round to writing back it would be too late, so I’ve rung you up instead.’
‘That’s good.’
‘You still sound like you.’
‘So do you.’ (Luckily.)
‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I’m really stoked you’re going to come up.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I reckon you’ve got a good chance of getting in. Only you have to work out a bit of an act, you know. Just the kind of stuff we were doing.’
‘Oh.’ (How would I do that on my own?)
‘But also I was thinking you could help me with mine, because I want to do some of our old moves. There’s a girl here, Lola. I’ve been practising with her and she’s pretty good. She really wants to do it, so I have to let her know.
But if you come, I’ll do it with you.’ (There’s a pause.) ‘You’re lighter.’
‘I bet she’s better, though.’
‘Nah, she probably knows more moves and she’s got a really hot hoop act, but for this stuff you’re just as good.’
‘Oh.’ (Is she really pretty though, like Marnie?)
‘Anyway, I think it would help you get in if they see you do adagio, ’cause you’re great at it.’
‘Adagio? What’s that?’
‘Double balancing – that’s what they call it here.’ (We never called it that.)
‘I see. Well, I’ll try. I’m not sure yet how I’ll get there…’ (What am I saying? I’m not even allowed to go.)
‘Aren’t you going to come with Barnaby?’
‘Barnaby? Is he going?’
‘Yeah. He and I were talking about it before
I left. He’s doing a gig here at the Termo. I told him to bring you with him. That’s how I knew you’d be able to make it, ’cause the audition just happens to be in the same week.’ He laughs.‘Must be meant to be.’
‘Yeah, right.’ (Pause, while I let all this sink in.) ‘Barnaby hasn’t mentioned it to me yet.’ (Maybe Ada doesn’t want me to go. Maybe he made a pact with Mum.)
‘Well, just tell him, tell him you’re coming.’
‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’
‘Yeah, great. It’ll be ace to see you.’
(I laugh nervously. Kite pauses. Perhaps there’s an awkward silence.)
‘Anyway, I’d better get off the phone,’ he says.
‘Yeah, it’s long distance.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thanks for ringing.’
‘No worries.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye, Cedar.’
I hang up. My heart is swelling up and down. Maybe I feel swoony. Maybe if I was in a movie, in a long white dress, I would faint right now, but instead I just swan back to my room and flop on my bed.
And then I remember: Lola. It jerks me out of my swoon in quite a disagreeable way. Lola who wants to be his adagio partner. Lola with the hot hoop act. If I don’t go, Lola will be his new partner and then one thing will lead to another, like it did with us, and soon she’ll be his new girlfriend (if she isn’t already).
I absolutely have to go.
And then I remember: I’m not allowed to go. It completely sinks me into despair. I won’t be able to live in Albury, I can’t join the Flying Fruit Flies. I’m only pretending to myself that I can because I’m a mad, mad dreamer.
This is a dangerous thing to do.
Must stop it.
Must stop being a mad, mad dreamer.
I get up off my bed. I need to talk to someone, someone who isn’t a mad, mad dreamer; someone sensible like Caramella. But then I remember that she doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. So I sit there, stuck halfway, with my legs dangling and droopy. Can’t dream, but can’t get sensible either. I look at Stinky curled up in a hairy pile; he doesn’t have to do either. Best thing to do when you’re in a pickle, particularly a hotted-up one, is take some time out and pat Stinky. He always makes you relax a little, and when you relax you get more ideas. So I get down on the floor and Stinky starts thumping his tail in anticipation and I rub his ears, and just then Aunt Squeezy pokes her head in the door.
The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley Page 8