Where was Jadda? Was she lost in the deep of the ocean too?
‘No!’ It wasn’t a cry, but a promise. He moved his hands purposefully now, propelling himself up, up, up, till suddenly the sea burst open and there was air and light.
‘Jadda!’ he screamed, pushing with his feet and legs to keep his head above the water, instinctively moving as he had seen Mudurra do out in the sea as he’d hauled Nafeesa to safety …
Waves slopped against him — not monsters now, but large enough to batter him and to fill his mouth with salty water. He gulped air in the brief gaps when his face was clear, frantically gazing around him.
A man shouted a name, above the noise of water. A voice cried, ‘Pray for us!’ And then the sea was silent as the wrecked and wretched used their strength to cling to life. A tangle of clothes and feet that had already become a body floated near him, part of the sea’s debris and not a living person. It was as though the beach he’d left had never been.
They’d fought the sea there and won. He wouldn’t give up now. I’ll beat you, he told the ocean. Somewhere there is a real beach, a real Australia. All I have to do to find it is to live.
‘Jadda!’ he shouted again. It was impossible to see above the slapping waves.
‘Faris!’ The word was choked, desperate. He managed to force his body part of the way around. There was Jadda, her hand on one of the big kerosene tins that had been filled with water. But this one floated under her hand.
It must be empty, he thought, remembering how Mudurra’s water bladders had floated, even as Jadda pushed the empty tin towards him.
He grasped it.
For a second the tin sank under his added weight, so he thought it couldn’t support them both. But it stayed only a little way below the splashing, slapping surface, enough to keep them both floating. All around them bits of wood and rag floated. From somewhere, too far beyond the white-tipped waves to see, he heard the sound of thrashing arms or legs, a sudden harsh wail of anguish, grief, pain or terror.
Jadda called out something above the noise of water. He thought she was asking if he was all right, but the sea slaps sucked her words away. He tried to nod at her, to say he wasn’t hurt.
He glanced up at the sky. A grey sky still: too grey — not just cloud, but the coming night.
He tried not to think of the water growing dark about them, or of sharks, drawn by the smell of blood. Was it worse to be taken by an invisible shark, or to catch a glimpse before it lunged at you? Did a shark’s bite kill you straight away?
He didn’t know.
How long could they float here? Already his arms screamed with the strain of clinging to the container; his legs seemed too big, swollen with kicking to help them stay afloat. How long would Jadda’s strength last?
He looked at her and then he knew: Jadda would hold on for his sake. Love would give as much strength as she needed.
Jadda shouted again. Once more he tried to answer her.
And then he understood. Jadda was looking at something behind his head.
It was a ship.
CHAPTER 27
The ship was grey, like sky and sea. Men moved on the deck. All at once something orange splashed into the ocean next to Faris. A rock, he thought, remembering how Mei Ling’s ship had met pirates.
This was no rescue ship! They were pirates, trying to kill every witness …
But even as he thought it, he realised that there was no reason for pirates to kill survivors from a shipwreck — if there had been anything on board worth stealing it was gone now, with the boat.
The rock hadn’t sunk. It floated a few metres away. A lifebuoy? he thought in confusion. He pushed himself across to it, leaving the air-filled tin to Jadda, then splashed back to her, so they could both keep a hand each on the tin and one on the buoy, almost making their own boat, nearly stable in the waves.
For the first time he thought that they might live.
Time stretched. He was too weak now to keep the ship in sight as he and Jadda were washed by waves and currents. The world was water, numbness beyond pain. Then at last, after what seemed a century of hoping, a lifetime of gulping salt, a rubber boat bobbed next to them.
A man reached for him, a big man in what looked like a uniform. Faris shook his head. He tried to tell them to rescue Jadda first, but the salt had frozen his throat and swollen his mouth. He saw Jadda was gesturing to him. He let the man take him, grabbing his shirt and hauling him headfirst into the shallow water at the bottom of the rubber boat, knowing that Jadda would wait — would always wait — till he was safe.
He took a breath, and then another, drawing in strength to struggle to his knees, to look around as the two men dragged Jadda into the rubber boat too, her clothes and hair grey in the grey light and water, everything grey, except her white face.
Her eyes found him as they laid her down.
He tried to stand. His legs wouldn’t obey. He crawled over to Jadda instead, across the rubber floor of the boat. Her lips were blue, the area around them blue too. But she smiled when she saw him. She lifted a weak hand and stroked his wet hair.
He lay beside her for a minute or perhaps a year, perhaps eternity. If time had no place on the beach, then it had too many places here.
Voices yelled, in English.
‘Any more alive, do you think?’
‘Don’t think so.’
Faris tried not to think of the other faces on the boat, of the voice that had called ‘pray for us’.
One man spoke into what looked like a large mobile phone. Faris caught only the tail end of the words: ‘… you keep on here. These two need the medic … Over and out.’
An engine noise, a different sound from the engine of the boat from Indonesia. The rubber boat moved in a different way now, across the waves instead of bobbing on them. One of the voices asked, ‘Madam, do you speak English?’
A face peered down. Jadda muttered something, too low to hear.
Faris struggled to sit up. Strong hands helped him. ‘She is an English teacher. We speak English well.’ His voice sounded like the sea had washed most of it away.
The man gave an almost-smile. ‘You do indeed, mate. You OK sitting there? We’ll get a blanket around you. And one for your mother too.’
‘She is my grandmother,’ said Faris. ‘My mother is dead.’
The man glanced out at the wreckage-strewn sea. ‘I’m sorry. We’ll try to find —’
‘She died years ago,’ said Faris. He hesitated. ‘Please, are we going to Australia?’
The man’s face seemed to lose expression. ‘To Christmas Island. Maybe after that, to Australia.’
His papers! Faris felt under his shirt. They were still there, tied in their plastic bags. He could only hope that the water hadn’t soaked them.
The man in uniform helped Faris lift Jadda so she could sit too. Suddenly there were blankets around them, strange shiny blankets, and mugs of something hot and sweet. He sipped his, but Jadda’s mug dropped, her hands shaking too much to hold it. Faris held his mug to her mouth while she tried to sip it.
Thunder growled. The storm had circled back. A wave slopped into the rubber boat. Jadda gave a short sharp cry. But their boat had nearly reached the big ship now.
Faris looked at the crew. Had these men risked their lives, riding in this rubber boat on a storm-boiled sea to save them? Or had they stayed away, till the storm was gone and it was safe? Were they good men trying to help, or men who just did their job? He didn’t know. Perhaps it didn’t matter. But deep down he knew it did. He wanted the gift of life to come from heroes.
He shut his eyes briefly. There was too much to think about. Too much to feel. The refuge he had known was still with him, along with Susannah and Nikko, Jamila, Nafeesa, Billy, David, Mudurra and Juhi, but it was fading, like the storm. A storm was hard and real, and then it was gone, and the beach felt like that too.
It couldn’t have been real.
It was the realest thing that he had ever
known.
‘Faris,’ whispered Jadda. He was shocked at how old she looked. The grandmother he had been seeing had been younger, her face unlined and happy, not this ghost-faced Jadda with shadowed eyes.
He put his arm around her. ‘Yes?’ She felt as light as Nafeesa, even in her wet clothes.
Her voice was just a breath. ‘Tell the officials about your father. Who he is, why we had to leave. Show them your papers. Tell them how old you are.’
He was scared by the blue around her lips. ‘Yes. I’ll tell them. Rest now. We’re safe.’
He didn’t know if that was true. But somehow now it was his job to look after Jadda, not hers to look after him.
‘Such a sweet boy,’ whispered Jadda. ‘He used to sing to me, his own songs, lalalala. I thought, he will be a musician. But when it mattered, he was strong.’
She was talking about his father, Faris realised. ‘Hush,’ he said softly, under the engine’s noise. ‘Lean on me. We’re nearly there.’
He didn’t mean the ship, though it was there too, a grey wall above them. He meant safety. A real refuge, not the one where he had been. A new life, a real one, for them both.
A strange sling thing descended. The man who had spoken to them kneeled down by Jadda. ‘Madam, we need to …’
She gave a sudden cry. For a terrible second Faris thought the man had stabbed her. He looked for a knife, then saw the alarm on the man’s face. The man called out something unintelligible to someone on the ship above.
Jadda slumped to the boat’s rubber floor. Her body twitched.
Faris clasped her to him. ‘Jadda! What’s wrong …?’
She looked at him, her face unmoving, her eyes helpless. Her lips moved. He bent to try to hear the words, but there was no breath behind them. He thought he heard ‘love’.
Her body jerked once more, as though a giant had straightened her limbs. Her eyes stared up. Her mouth fell open.
‘Jadda! We are nearly there!’
But Jadda didn’t move.
CHAPTER 28
Christmas Island Detention Centre, Australia
The room was small. The desk was neat. The woman on the other side looked tired. Beyond this room were more rooms. But mostly there were walls and fences, real ones and legal ones, to keep him and the other detainees from Australia.
He hadn’t understood, on the sagging boat on its way here, how much Australia didn’t want him.
But he had nowhere else to go.
He had spent his time in this place lying on his bed, staring at the blank wall, trying to make his mind blank too, trying not to think of the lives that he had lost, of Jadda, or Susannah and Billy, Nafeesa and Jamila, David his face lost and intent as he played his violin. He had given them all up, the golden beach and the laughing waves, the comfort of Jadda’s arms. He had given them all up, for this.
Each time Faris remembered them he forced his mind away.
His life on the beach could not have happened. Didn’t happen. And if it had, then it was gone, just as Jadda was gone. This was his world now. There was no door to step through this time.
You breathed in fear, in detention. Fear of being sent back to wherever you had come from. Fear that no one would want you, that you would spend your life behind barbed wire. Fear of other inmates sometimes. Anger was so sharp you could almost touch it. Angry men shouted and shoved; men sat unmoving on their beds, their eyes down, but when they looked up you could not bear the bitterness in their eyes. Children yelled, turning their terror into anger too. But mostly they just waited. They were good at waiting. These children had waited most of their lives.
Faris was so lonely it was almost as if he wasn’t there. Everyone in the camp was in the same place, but none shared his past, or future. No one knew him. Dimly he knew he would have to battle laws he didn’t know anything about before Australia would allow him to make a new existence.
He was supposed to call someone, to say he had arrived in Australia — the ‘alive’ call so the owner of the boat would get his money. But he had no number to ring.
Days had passed. Weeks or months, perhaps, as someone, somewhere, checked out the papers that had survived the journey and his story. Some of the inmates said that you had to wait years here or in some other camp. Faris didn’t count the time. It simply passed. In a strange way the beach had been more vivid than real life.
This was not the Australia he had dreamed of. But it was all he had.
The woman with tired eyes tapped notes into her laptop. Faris thought of Jadda and forced himself to speak, referring the woman again to his papers. ‘I am thirteen, just like my birth certificate says, and the report from my school. No, I have no family, except for my father. He lives in Sydney. He is a good man, a doctor …’
It almost felt like a lie. The man who waited for him didn’t seem like a father. A father didn’t abandon you for years. Once again Faris felt the helpless terror of that night his father had vanished.
What had his father done to bring this upon his son? Why had he done it? How could any man sacrifice his family like that?
Now — perhaps — he could ask him.
At last the woman met his eyes. She smiled and nodded. Faris felt that she was glad that she could nod, not shake her head. Had an exception been made for him, because he had lost his grandmother, because he had a father who was in Australia? He didn’t know the rules. It didn’t matter. He had a classification now: he was an unaccompanied minor. A child.
He wasn’t a child. Not any more. But at least this was the first step to staying in Australia.
A plane trip. Below him, briefly, stretched long beaches, a sea almost the colour of the one he’d known, and then the grey of clouds. He was as unsubstantial as the clouds, a package to be delivered.
An airport, like every other airport. He sat in a chair bolted to other chairs with a woman to look after him, as though he had not crossed the world, fought an ocean, as though a woman was needed to protect him now. The woman was kind, the sort of practised kindness that said: you are a stranger. Soon you will leave and another will take your place, and I will give him the same smile that I give you.
Another plane trip, a glimpse of long white beach and deep blue sea; then more clouds then into darkness broken by the muttering of a movie on the screen above, too blurred to see; food in a plastic tray and then an iceblock, its coldness suddenly real, the first thing he had really tasted since the bitterness of the ocean.
The plane dropped slowly towards the lights of Sydney. He looked out the window and saw darkness that must be the sea, then the plane bumped down onto the ground.
I should be excited, Faris thought. He wasn’t.
He walked along the big plastic tube from the plane, looking at the waiting faces.
A man stepped forwards. A tired thin man, with short hair that was grey as well as black, a smooth shaved face and shadowed eyes. A stranger. But this stranger was his father.
Faris stared at him. Why did you leave us? he thought. Why did you bring all this upon us?
The stranger hesitated, then reached out his arms. Faris participated in the hug. He thought they were both relieved when it was over.
They sat side by side on the bus as it bumped through tunnels of light and dark. He thought he saw tears glint on the man’s face, but when he looked again they were gone. It was a reflection, he thought, from the glass.
‘Soon be there,’ said the man. He spoke English, as he had since they had met. Faris didn’t know if his father always spoke English now, or just didn’t want to draw attention by speaking another language. Faris understood the need to be discreet. He had lived with it ever since his father was taken. This was not the time to talk of Jadda either, or what had happened years before.
The man hesitated again. ‘I am afraid the flat is small. Only one bedroom. But the school is only a few streets away.’
‘Is the beach near too?’
The man looked startled. ‘A beach? No. We’re on the wrong side
of Sydney. An hour away by bus. Two hours maybe.’
The bus stopped. They walked along a street and round a corner, then up concrete stairs that smelled of garbage.
The flat smelled of garbage too, but it was clean. There was not much in it: an old TV set, the smallest Faris had ever seen. A flimsy table, two chairs, a fridge like a small box. A bedroom, with two small beds on either side.
‘Take whichever bed you like,’ said the man, and suddenly, even though the man was a stranger, Faris wanted to cry for him, because all he had to offer was a choice of beds.
Faris put his small bag on the nearest bed. He waited for the man to talk of Jadda, to speak of home. Instead the man said: ‘Faris, I’m sorry, I need to go to work.’
‘At the hospital?’
The man’s face was carefully blank. ‘I drive a taxi here. I need to pass examinations to practise again as a doctor. Until I do …’ He paused, then said again, ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to be here on your first night, but one of the other drivers is sick and …’ He shrugged. ‘I must take what work I can. Is there anything you want before I go?’
I want Jadda, thought Faris. I want my real life, our house, my old school. I want my friends! ‘What did you do?’ he asked abruptly.
The man stared, not understanding.
‘Why did the police take you away? What secrets did you hide from us?’
The man sat on the other bed. He clasped his hands together. Faris saw them shaking. ‘I kept no secrets from you. Or your grandmother.’
‘Then why did they take you? Was it a mistake?’
‘No. Or partly.’ His father looked at his hands. ‘That day. That terrible day. The traffic was bad. A demonstration. The driver let me off three blocks from the hospital. It was quicker to walk than be driven. I was careful to stay well away from the demonstration. I heard shots and screams.’
His father hesitated. ‘One block from the hospital a man lay in a doorway. He had been shot through the temporal lobe, the forehead. The bullet must have missed the brain. He was still alive. He stared at me, blood around his head.’
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