We longed only to find a boat to escape over the sea to Lilliput, but many had tried and many had died, or been caught and beaten and imprisoned by Bronar’s soldiers. Bronar’s warships patrolled the coast to stop us from escaping. He built a high wall all the way round the shore. Our island became our prison. We weren’t allowed even to speak the name of Lilliput. Instead we had to call Lilliput and all Lilliputians ‘the enemy’.
But Zaya and me, we never gave up, no matter how cold and hungry we were. In the middle of the night we burrowed a hole under the wall, stole a boat and rowed across to Lilliput, where we found a warm welcome, where Gran Baruta and Tapit took us in, looked after us, and the whole island adopted us, as they adopt all of us who have managed to escape from Blufescu. To everyone on Lilliput, a stranger is a friend.
But our escape had not gone unnoticed on Blufescu. The hole in the wall was discovered. A boat had been stolen. The emperor Bronar spread it about all over Blufescu that two children had been kidnapped by the Lilliputians, that the Lilliputians were child-snatchers, and a threat to every child on Blufescu. He told the people that soon his mighty warships would sail over to Lilliput, and rescue the two kidnapped children of Blufescu, that right was on their side, that Lilliput must be conquered, that the enemy over there open their eggs round end first, which meant they were wicked and uncivilised, and anyway they had no right to be there, that many years before they had stolen Lilliput from Blufescu, whose people were superior in every way because they ate their eggs from the sharp end first.
Bronar had more than a hundred ships in the harbour, all the guns and sailors he needed. He knew that we had no warships, only a small fishing fleet, and that no one on Lilliput ever carried weapons – Gulliver’s Law, we call it. Gran Baruta and Tapit and the council went across the channel to talk to him, to try to reason with him. But he would not listen. He told them that he was emperor of both islands, and he could come across the sea, with a fleet of warships, and occupy Lilliput whenever he pleased.
And then he came, Son of Gulliver, Owzat, our Mountain Man. He was why Bronar’s ships stayed in the harbour, why the invasion did not come. That was why he was needed. His coming was like a miracle for us.
J.J. was brushing the tears from her cheeks. Zaya and Natoban were looking to me now to take up the story again.
So I did.
I made up my mind what to do then and there, after Natoban told me everything about Blufescu, about the emperor Bronar. I was not brave. I was angry, angry that my Lilliputian friends, the kindest, most fair-minded and most generous people I had ever met, might soon be enslaved by this tyrant across the water. Something had to be done. And wasn’t I called Son of Gulliver?
I would do as he had done all those years before, as he would do if he were here now.
I remember looking out to sea towards Blufescu that same evening. The water in the channel seemed dark and deep, the waves rolling in towards me. I could not swim. But I knew Gulliver had swum across before me. Son of Gulliver would go where he had gone. Come what may, I would do what my father had done.
I said nothing of what I had in mind to Zaya and Natoban. I said nothing to Baruta or Tapit, nothing to anyone except Mother. I lay awake for a long time that night, telling her what I was going to try to do the next day. I was more worried about crossing the sea than anything else, I told her. I knew it was too deep out in the middle for me to be able to wade all the way across. After all, even Gulliver, a full-grown man, had found himself out of his depth, and been forced to swim. And I could not swim. I had an idea that might work, I told her, but I knew I could be in trouble if it didn’t, because I had seen how rough it could be out there in the channel between the islands. I was far less worried by anything the emperor Bronar, and his Blufescuan army, could do to me when I got there – however many there were of them. They’d be the same size as the Lilliputians, so no threat to me at all.
I set off very early the next morning before anyone on Lilliput was stirring – it was in the half-dark – and found just what I was looking for, tied up to the quayside in the harbour: two of the biggest fishing boats I could have hoped for. I untied the ropes and waded out of the harbour, towards the open sea, hauling the fishing boats behind me. By this time some of the islanders had woken up and spotted what I was doing. They came hurrying out of their houses and running down to the harbour, shouting at me to come back. I lifted a hand, waved to them cheerily and waded on.
The sea was soon up over my knees, up to my waist, then over my chest, and still I was only halfway across. I would need my fishing boats. When I found my feet were hardly touching the bottom and I could no longer walk, I put my plan into action. Holding the fishing boats out in front of me, one in each hand, and grasping them firmly, I lay in the water and let the boats float me across, kicking hard with my legs to help propel myself. Time and again, the waves washed over my head, into my mouth, but my fishing boats kept me afloat just long enough. I kept kicking and kicking, until at last I felt my toes were touching rocks and seaweed below me. I could walk again. Ahead I could see the harbour of Blufescu, and behind it the great high wall the emperor had built all around the island. Both the harbour and the wall, and all the warships, were lined with men. They had seen me coming. They were ready for me. As I came closer I could see they were certainly not there to welcome me. They were all armed, with bows and arrows, with spears and swords, and muskets too.
There were hundreds of them, thousands maybe, and their war cries were shrill and angry, and deafening. Each of them may have been small, but in these numbers they were terrifying, even though I knew they could not harm me. I did not want to harm them either. That was not what I was there for. It was the fleet of warships in the harbour that I was after.
As I came wading waist-deep into the harbour I found myself in range of the showers of falling arrows they were shooting at me. Each arrow was just a pinprick, but too many were finding their target, on my legs and arms, on my face and neck. It was like being stung by insects all over. I feared some of the arrows might hit me in the eyes, and held up my hand to protect them. With the other hand I reached down and grabbed handfuls of anchor chains from the decks of the warships, and began to haul as many of them as I could out of the harbour. Everywhere sailors were abandoning their warships, leaping overboard in their hundreds.
Once out in the open sea, I let the warships go, and left them to drift away. Then I waded back into the harbour on Blufescu to fetch some more of them. I made the journey several times in and out of the harbour, each time under a shower of arrows, and there were musket balls and cannon balls bouncing off me too. Some of those did hurt, but not enough to trouble me much. And all the time the Blufescuans were shaking their fists at me, yelling at me, cursing me.
Soon all the warships were clear of the harbour, and drifting away out to sea. I was herding them like a flock of sheep, jumping up and down, slapping the water and making great waves that were driving them on, some on to the rocks, some further out to sea.
All along the shores of Lilliput the people were cheering and waving. I could hear a distant chanting, echoing over the ocean: ‘Owzat! Owzat! Owzat!’
But I had not yet finished with Emperor Bronar and his soldiers. This tyrant of an emperor had driven these dear friends of mine, Zaya and Natoban, from their home, made orphans of them, and enslaved all the people of Blufescu. I determined I would set them free.
I waded back into the harbour and came up on to the shore. I saw the soldiers throwing down their weapons and scattering. I picked up all the bows and swords and muskets I could and hurled them into the water. I roared and raged and stamped, as only angry giants can – it was all I had to do – until most of the soldiers ran away. Those that were left were on their knees holding their hands up in surrender. I told them I would not hurt them, that they had nothing to fear from me. I was roaring no more by now. There was no need.
The people of Blufescu were all watching me now, fearful of what I might do ne
xt.
They were at my mercy, and they knew it. As I strode through the streets of the town I found I could see well enough over the great wall. One look was enough. Everything Zaya and Natoban had told me had been true. I could see for myself now what this tyrant had done to his people. The countryside behind the wall was a scene of devastation. Nothing was left but ruins and dereliction. The people there were hiding where they could, looking up at me terrified. All of them were thin, and pale and dirty, their clothes in tatters. And there in the middle of the island surrounded by a great moat was the emperor’s palace. I knew what to do with that.
I set about pulling that palace down, wall by wall, room by room, and then I trampled on it. This took me a while, and as I was finishing I heard behind me a giant cheer. I saw the enslaved people of Blufescu charging towards the great stone wall that surrounded the island. They had ladders, they had hammers, and they were angry. Soon they were knocking it down with anything they could find. Some were sitting up there astride the wall and pulling away the stones with their bare hands. I went to help them. Between us we flattened that great wall to the ground in a few hours, leaving in its place nothing but scattered stones, strewn everywhere. Nothing was left standing.
Afterwards, we all stood there breathless and exhausted, but all of us laughing, exultant with joy, the joy of freedom. No one ever discovered where the emperor Bronar and his cronies went. And no one cared. He was gone – that was all that mattered. When I left the island of Blufescu that evening, I left it as their friend. No one feared me. No one feared anyone. I told them all that their brothers and sisters across the water in Lilliput were longing to be friends with them again, and they told me they felt the same.
I walked and swam back to Lilliput with the help of my two fishing boats, and arrived back to a hero’s welcome. Gran Baruta was there on the quayside to greet me, but I could see she was not at all happy.
‘It was a very foolish thing you did,’ she told me. ‘You could have drowned out there in the channel. You may have saved us, but it was still very foolish. I was very worried, we all were. We never want any harm to come to you.’ She was smiling up at me now. ‘You know what you have done today, Son of Gulliver? You have conquered fear, driven it away, and brought us our peace again. It’s a wonderful thing you have given us.’
Back in my house, lying on my bed that evening, Zaya and Natoban stayed with me, didn’t you? You pulled all the arrows out of me – and there were hundreds of them – and then rubbed me all over with marigold ointment, which stung me at first but then soothed me. When they left that night I was ready for sleep. I had a lot I wanted to tell Mother, mostly about my plans for all those scattered stones on Blufescu, but I was so tired that I fell asleep almost at once.
‘Our turn,’ Zaya said, tweaking my earlobe again, quite insistently. ‘We know the rest as well as you do, Owzat.’
‘We were there, remember? At the great gathering,’ Natoban went on, tweaking my other earlobe. ‘So we can tell it now.’
And between them, they did. Zaya first.
It was the best idea Owzat ever had, the best thing he ever did. The very next day everyone on Lilliput got in fishing boats and sailed over to Blufescu – Owzat wading across ahead of us. The people on Blufescu greeted us like long-lost friends. And then we did it, did it together. All of us Lilliputians and Blufescuans, we began to build Owzat’s bridge – all his idea. We used the scattered stones from the palace and built a causeway from Blufescu over the sea to Lilliput. Even with Owzat’s help, it took weeks and months, but we did it.
So now the two islands were joined, and everyone could come and go as they pleased.
It was Natoban’s turn.
Not long afterwards, the people of both islands held a great gathering on the Cricket Field – as we all called it. Everyone was there. It began with a scrambled-egg feast. Gran Baruta stood up and told everyone: ‘Never again, not for eggs or for anything else, will we ever break the peace between Lilliput and Blufescu. We shall fish together, trade with one another, be friends again as we always were for hundreds of years. We shall come and go from island to island freely, and tell our children our story of the coming of Gulliver, and now the story of the Son of Gulliver. There will be no more walls, no more tyrants. Never again will we be strangers to one another.’
Great cheers went up from all around. Gran Baruta held up her hand. ‘Three hundred years ago, Gulliver brought us peace. And now this Son of Gulliver, this Owzat as some of you love to call him, has done the same. They both came to us with a warning of what tyranny and greed and war can do, how strangers can so easily become enemies – they have seen it in their own world, with their own eyes. Their world will be the world of our future, if we do not listen to them. We have seen how it can happen. This Son of Gulliver has reminded us of everything Gulliver told us, that we should always live for one another, that when we abandon kindness and understanding, cruelty and fear will take their place.’
Zaya took up the story.
The whole island seemed to have fallen quite silent as Gran Baruta was speaking. There was no sound of wind or waves, no birdsong even. It was as if the land itself and every creature that lived there were listening.
But this was when Gran Baruta told us something that saddened everyone on Lilliput, and Natoban and me more than anyone else. ‘You all know from the story of Gulliver,’ Gran Baruta said, ‘that I tell on Gulliver’s Day, under the blossoming apple tree, how he spent only a few years with us, and then left us because he missed his wife and his family and wanted to return to his own country. You all know how we built him a boat big enough so that he could sail safely home.
‘Well – and I am so sad to have to tell you this – I have discovered that Owzat, our dear Son of Gulliver, has a great longing inside him to go to find his long-lost mother again. As you know, Zaya and Natoban have been guardians, good companions and best of friends to our Son of Gulliver ever since he came to Lilliput. Often, at night-times, they have heard him talking aloud to his mother, who is waiting for him far away across the seas in England. They have heard him telling her how much he loves living here on Lilliput with us all, how much he loves us, but also how he longs to go home and see her again. He told her often, they told me, how he could not leave the people of Lilliput and Blufescu until he was quite sure that this was a lasting peace between them. And they also heard him telling her that anyway he did not know how he could ever find a boat big enough to carry him across the sea to England.
‘It was Zaya and Natoban who suggested to me that we should do what our ancestors did before us for Gulliver, and together build a great boat for our Son of Gulliver. We do not want him to go, of course – Zaya and Natoban least of all. But he has a mother he longs to be with again. We all know he has been a dear friend, the best of friends, to all of us here, on both our islands. He gave us back our peace. So I think we should help him find his mother, don’t you?’
Everyone stood up then and clapped and cheered, all of us happy we had our peace again, but sad at heart because we knew you would be leaving us.
That night lying on your bed – and both of us were there to hear it – you told your mother in England that a boat was going to be built by the people of Lilliput and Blufescu, and that you would be coming home, that you would see her soon in England, in Fore Street, Mevagissey.
We heard you, Owzat, calling to her and calling – so loud she could have heard it far, far away: ‘I am coming home to you across the sea, Mother. I am coming home to England, to Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street. Mevagissey. Be there, please, Mother. Be there.’
As Zaya finished, Natoban was turning my face towards his, his eyes looking deep into mine. ‘Your mother will be there, Owzat; she will be there. You have to believe she will be there, waiting for you.’
‘I believed it,’ I told him, ‘and I believe it still.’
Zaya tapped my arm. I could tell she was passing the story back to me, and I could tell too that J.J. wa
s longing to hear it, to hear how our story joined her story, how our boat had met hers out there on the wide ocean.
‘My time on Lilliput was coming to an end …’ I began.
It was a strange time. I wanted to leave and yet I didn’t want to leave. I seemed to have spent my last few months on the island, as the boat was being built for me, learning and teaching, learning more English, and teaching cricket. Gran Baruta decided that even after all this time with them my English was not good enough, that by the time I reached England I should be able to speak the language as well as she could, as well as everyone could on Lilliput. So every day now she, and Tapit too, gave me lessons.
I loved my lessons with them because, as it turned out, these became two-way classes. They were anxious whilst I was with them to learn as much of my language as they could – so that in the end we could have a conversation in which I spoke English and they spoke Pashto.
We wrote nothing down. They did not seem at all interested in the written word. There were, as I had discovered, no books on Lilliput. ‘We do not need them,’ Gran Baruta once told me. ‘Gulliver told us all about books, but we told him that on Lilliput we believe words are for speaking as air is for breathing. Air gives us only life, the spoken word gives us stories and life.’
But if I’m honest, teaching cricket to the children of Lilliput and Blufescu was my chief joy. We had cleared a field now on Blufescu and made a pitch over there too – which quickly became known as Owzat’s Cricket Field. So now we could play on Lilliput and on Blufescu, home games and away games. Every game we played drew huge crowds.
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