The F Team

by Rawah Arja

  After hours of gardening and listening to women sing and dance as they cooked and cleaned, I finally had the chance to rest. Saff and Abdul were trapped with Uncle Charlie collecting honey from the hives, so it was my chance to have our room all to myself and play any videogame I wanted. Anything with guns were my go-to games when I wanted to forget about the world. I zoned out, killing off characters one by one, until I was the last one standing.

  The day was almost over and it was time to head to the airport, three hours too early, to pick up Aunty Salma. Mum stood at the door and waited for each of us to leave, yelling that we’d somehow manage to be late. Feda rushed out of her room and put some lipstick on in the hallway mirror.

  ‘Yallah! Yallah! Yallah!’ Mum shouted. She sounded like an Arab siren.

  My brothers ran out and fought over the mirror before Mum smacked them both over the head. She sprayed us all with perfume and pushed us out the door. She then rushed around the house, turning on all the lights and TVs so that a thief wouldn’t be tempted to break in.

  That was our highly effective security system.

  All my cousins waited in their cars, parked in our neighbours’ driveways and on the footpaths, beeping and shouting to get a move on. Dad started our 1985 Mitsubishi L300 Express van, and off we went, followed by the family motorcade.

  We all had our designated seats: Amira sat between my parents and Uncle Charlie, Abdul and I sat in the middle row, which left Feda and Saff at the back. Dad fiddled with the radio until he stopped at Um Kalthoom, his favourite Arab singer.

  Saff threw his hands in the air. ‘Not this again! I don’t even understand what the hell she’s saying!’

  Dad swayed with the music and adjusted the radio before he explained the lyrics. ‘See here, she says that…that she have endless words in her heart…and…you are my bless and happy.’ It never made any sense to us but we had no choice but to pretend that we understood in order to get him to stop explaining.

  Dad never took the M5 motorway, the quick and mostly painless route to the airport, because he believed it gave people cancer. Don’t ask, I’ve never understood. Instead, he always went the long way around, through the suburbs, with a million more traffic lights which meant more music and singing.

  Uncle Charlie now joined my dad, only he sang at the top of his lungs – not in time and not the right words. To make things worse, because we had all of Punchbowl following us, we had to pull over every five minutes to make sure all the cars made the lights and no one was left behind.

  God forbid anyone use Google Maps!

  We finally arrived at the airport and parked our cars. Everyone opened up their boots and took out bouquets of flowers and balloons, ten times too big.

  Dad unwrapped a gigantic Australian flag and stuck it on top of the van through a hole he had drilled. He needed a quick and efficient method to find his van in the car park and apparently that was the best way to do it. My aunties and uncles clapped as though he’d thought of a brilliant idea.

  Feda rubbed her head. ‘I need to get out of this family.’

  ‘Find someone who will marry you first,’ I snickered.

  ‘Khalas, Tariq,’ Mum snapped in a hushed voice. ‘Not here in front of people.’

  Dad then pulled out his whistle. ‘And this if anyone get lost. I will blow this so you can find –’

  ‘Dad, isn’t it supposed to be the opposite?’ Feda interrupted. ‘Shouldn’t the person who’s lost blow the whistle so we know where to find them?’

  He stared at his whistle, then at her and shook his head. ‘Why always you argue? Can’t you just once say yes and agree?’

  Amira let go of Mum’s hand and ran over to me. I put her on my shoulders and off we went, ahead of the pack.

  ‘Hey, Tariq, you know when I become a millionaire, I’m going to let you buy whatever you want,’ she said from above. ‘Even a Ferrari.’

  ‘Really? How about a Lamborghini?’ I asked looking up at her face.

  ‘Don’t be greedy or I’ll give the car to Saff or Abdul.’

  I tickled her behind the knees until she finally agreed to give me both hypothetical cars.

  We looked like an army, marching into the airport, hurrying through the doors while people stopped and wondered what all the commotion was about.

  Picture this: an Arab man with a whistle around his neck, surrounded by other bearded Arab men, yelling in Arabic, followed by more Arabs who were also yelling in Arabic.

  To the outsider or the security guard calling for backup, it might have seemed a little terroristy, but it was just an extra-paranoid man, with a purple spotted beard, leading a bunch of men and women having a regular conversation twice as loud as average humans.

  Dad blew his whistle a couple of times and waved his hands in the air. ‘Yallah. Yallah. We’re here. Everyone take seat.’

  An old woman looked at me. ‘What a strange man.’

  ‘Hey! That’s our dad,’ Amira said, annoyed.

  I pinched her leg. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ I told the woman. ‘She’s adopted.’

  We found a couple of seats while the rest of my family stood around and waited. The kids all ran up to the glass barrier to see who came through the arrival doors.

  Dad walked around, counting everyone and marking them off his list.

  Yes, he carried a roll of names.

  Huss: Where you at?

  Tariq: Airport. My Aunty’s comin 2day.

  Ibby: You guys doin a barby?

  Tariq: Yeah.

  Ibby: Done. I’m in.

  PJ: I’m in too.

  Huss: We’ll be there when we see the smoke in your street.

  Two hours went by with me answering Amira’s ‘Would You Rather?’ questions until we heard my cousins shout with joy that she had arrived. Aunty Salma walked out pushing her trolley, with seven Louis Vuitton suitcases stacked on top of each other. She looked like an Arab movie star covered in jewellery and a face full of plastic surgery. She wore a bedazzled denim onesie, which made her look like a disco ball. Aunty Salma stopped to take a couple of selfies in the middle of the ramp, then continued to push her trolley in her red high heels until she found us and waved.

  The kids all ran up and bombarded her with hugs. You could tell she was uncomfortable by how she tried to shuffle out of their hugs. Next, Mum and all the women rushed up to her, suffocating her with flowers and balloons. They tried to do the whole three-kiss-and-hug greeting, but Aunty Salma thought it would be better to respond with air kisses. My uncles then took over the luggage before a mini-fight broke out as each tried to outdo the others, arguing over who would carry her suitcases.

  If you didn’t know us, you’d think Aunty Salma was getting kidnapped. Security ran up the ramp, explaining to my family that they needed to wait until people reached the bottom. There was a massive line of people wanting to get out and my family were blocking the way.

  My brothers and I waited until she walked over to greet us. She looked like she’d come out of a tornado. Her red lipstick was smudged and her long black hair was a mess.

  Dad blew his whistle one more time and we gathered outside the doors. He counted us and marked off his list and back we paraded to our van. It was only when we were halfway home that Dad realised that the Australian flag was still stuck on top of the van, flapping in the breeze.

  Aunty Salma sat between Abdul and me, still trying to catch her breath. Her arms were clutched to her chest and she looked around our van like it was a moving rubbish tip. Mum asked about her flight and how everyone was doing in Lebanon, in particular my grandparents. The last time Mum had visited Lebanon was before Amira was born, so she wanted to know every detail – details my aunty couldn’t be bothered to share.

  ‘Don’t tell me you still have those bees, brother?’ she asked Uncle Charlie in her American accent.

  ‘Yes, Amira and I have business,’ he replied proudly from the backseat. ‘MashAllah, is doing very well. I show you when we get home.’

&n
bsp; ‘No,’ she said, looking in her compact mirror. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere near them.’

  Uncle Charlie’s smile slowly disappeared and his shoulders slumped. ‘Okay. Up to you.’

  Saff leaned forward and whispered in my ear. ‘Man, she’s savage. I feel like we should say something for Khorloo.’

  I nodded.

  A couple of minutes went by in silence before Saff leaned forward again. ‘I meant you should say something.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Cos I’m the oldest and you have to listen. Plus, Uncle C always has our back. He gave us money to buy the PS4 remember?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘You know, Khala, you can save a lot of money with Khorloo’s bees?’

  ‘What do you mean, Tariq?’ Aunty Salma asked.

  ‘Like, instead of all the botox you get on your face, you could just get some of his bees to sting you.’

  I could hear my brothers try to hold their laughter while Mum shook her head at me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘I don’t do botox,’ Aunty Salma said. ‘It’s a new treatment in Beirut that only certain people can afford. So no, I don’t need my brother’s cheap bees.’

  My uncle patted my hair a few times. Mum still stared at me through the mirror.

  We arrived home, and the women rushed out of the cars and ran inside to get everything ready. The men sat around the tables, smoked a few packets and waited for the food to be set up.

  ‘Yallah, food is ready,’ Dad called out, officially opening the buffet.

  People leaned over each other, filling their plates as Uncle Charlie threw sizzling chicken from the barbecue onto their plates. Even though Aunty Salma insulted him almost every minute, he still fixed her a plate of food with extra tabouli. The kefta and lamb skewers almost took out a couple of people’s eyes and the tabouli was gone before you could bat an eyelid. Aunty sat in the middle of everything, which meant that not only did everyone lean over her to get more food, but also that garlic oil dripped into her hair. My cousins laughed and ate while Mum ran from one side of the pergola to the other, making sure everyone was looked after.

  The boys arrived and wasted no time digging in. We sat away from the main crowd, under the mulberry tree, where my dad had set up some lights. Ibby and PJ licked their fingers like they hadn’t eaten in weeks then stole from Huss’s plate when he wasn’t looking.

  ‘So I heard Mariam gave it to ya?’ Huss asked with his mouth full.

  Ibby cracked up. ‘Bro, Uber put it on him too. Wallah that guy kills me.’

  ‘First of all, no one “put it on me” and secondly, it worked out alright in the end,’ I said, swinging on my chair. ‘There’s a girl called Jamila and she’s now my partner for this poetry thing.’

  ‘Is she hot?’ PJ wiped the garlic oil from the side of his mouth with a piece of chicken.

  ‘Yeah, but she’s also different.’ I had done a quick search for her online but I couldn’t find any trace of her.

  ‘Different how?’ Huss asked. ‘Like Mariam different?’

  ‘Nah, not like Mariam. I don’t know, man. If anyone put it on me, it was her.’

  Ibby slid my plate his way. ‘Bro, I wanna meet this girl now. The only girl in Punchbowl who’s put it on Tariq. I already like her.’

  Feda came over and sat with us. ‘If someone tells me one more time to be more like my cousins who are married, I’m going to explode.’

  ‘But you should’ve been married by now,’ I said. ‘You’re getting older you know.’

  ‘Watch your mouth bro,’ Huss said. ‘Don’t talk to your older sister like that.’

  Huss was always around women at home and treated Feda like she was his sister. Feda and Huss always talked when he came over. She was the oldest in our family, and when Huss’s dad left, she basically took care of him like a younger brother. Feda would help with his homework, and when Huss’s mum was too busy working at Big Haji’s shop, she’d sit in for parent-teacher interviews.

  ‘I’m studying and working,’ she said now. ‘I don’t have time to deal with the whole marriage thing.’ She shook her head. ‘Wait, why am I even explaining myself to your fat head?’

  All the boys nodded and Huss gave Feda a high five. ‘How do you live with that head? Wallah I’d knock him out if he spoke to me like he spoke to you.’ I knew Huss was just adding fuel to the fire so I kicked him a few times under the table.

  ‘But he’s the golden boy!’ she mocked. ‘God forbid he treats people like humans instead of his slaves.’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Ibby interrupted. ‘Wallah I luv ya, Feda, but Tariq’s my boy, man. He’s done stuff for me and all of us that I won’t forget. But yeah, he does have a big head.’

  They continued to make fun until Dad came over with more food. ‘You need to be strong for sport camp. And Huss, I tell Mr Archie if you make any trouble, for him to call me.’

  Damn! I’d completely forgotten about camp.

  ‘I don’t want to go, but this Archie man, he’s different,’ Huss complained. ‘Especially how he’s been spying at our school for all of Term 1 and we didn’t even know. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘Why don’t you boys actually try doing what he says?’ Feda pointed out. ‘I don’t know if you guys know, but another article came out and the school is in a lot of trouble. It’s not a joke.’

  Huss scowled but didn’t say anything.

  Ibby laughed out loud. ‘I can’t wait for our holiday camp. No school, no seeing my family. Bro, I’m just gonna sit and chill.’

  PJ stood up and rested his hands on his stomach. ‘Man, your mum makes the best food. I’m going inside to pack some for tomorrow.’

  Ibby stuffed in a few more bites of tabouli before he jumped up and followed him.

  ‘I’m not scared of Mr Archie you know?’ Huss muttered. I nodded and smiled, too tired to argue. It wound him up anyway. ‘I’m serious. I’m not!’ he said, standing up. ‘It’s just he came to the shop on Friday and told Big Haji about some of the stuff I’ve done. She was so upset. Wallah if something happened to her, I was going to kill him.’

  Feda stood up as well. ‘Relax, Huss. Just give it a shot, yeah?’ She patted his back and gave me a look to keep my mouth shut. ‘Do it for Big Haji, even if you won’t do it for yourself. Think about how hard it’ll be for them if you have to go to another school, further away. Who’d help your mum and grandma if you’re sitting around on a bus all day?’

  My brothers came over with a few of my cousins before Huss could say anything else and challenged us to a game of backyard footy.

  ‘First to five wins,’ Abdul said, throwing the ball to me. ‘Feda will ref.’

  ‘Loser has to go with Uncle Charlie to his dentist appointment tomorrow,’ I said.

  Chapter 8

  My alarm clock shook me out of my peaceful sleep at 4:30 a.m. My brothers tossed around in their beds, mumbling as Dad flicked the light switch on and off until I got up.

  ‘Yallah, yallah,’ he called. ‘I have to leave for work so I take you with me.’

  Before we headed out, Mum got up and gave me one final hug.

  ‘Mum. I’m only two hours away,’ I reassured her as she held me tight. I saw her eyes light up, and knew what she was thinking. ‘No, Mum. You can’t visit.’

  Her eyes began to fill with tears and she kissed me again as Amira walked out of her room, rubbing her eyes. ‘Tariq, you going now?’

  I knelt down and hugged her. ‘Yeah, Bob. Make sure you don’t burn the house down.’

  ‘Get me something nice,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m trying to sleep here!’ Feda shouted from her room. She’d just started a run of night shifts and was especially sensitive about her sleep these days. Abdul and Saff yelled from their beds, ‘Piss off already!’

  It was still dark outside and I could hear the garbage truck a couple of streets away. Dad walked me to school, reminding me at each step what he expected of me.

  ‘You are Muslim, Tariq. You need best
behaviour and show respect,’ he said. ‘If I think this Mr Archie was bad, believe me, I take you out of this school and put you somewhere else.’

  ‘Dad, I feel like he doesn’t let things go. It’s like, he’s been here for a week and it’s just been lecture after lecture about everything we do wrong,’ I said. ‘We do stuff right, too.’

  ‘Then show him the right stuff. Please Tariq, I expect you be good and remind boys, especially Huss, to control anger. You not animals, okay?’

  He hugged me goodbye and left. I walked over to where Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed waited under the flickering streetlights outside our school.

  ‘Mornin’, Tariq,’ Mr Archie said, shaking my hand. ‘I thought you would’ve changed your mind.’

  ‘Why? Did I have a choice?’

  He laughed to himself. ‘Ahh, this is going to be a fun week.’

  I sat on the brick wall beside our flagpole. Huss and PJ arrived, headphones on, too tired to talk. A speeding car came flying around the corner and slammed the brakes in front of us.

  ‘Hurry up! Get out of the car, ya jahash,’ I heard Ibby’s brother yell.

  Ibby tumbled out of the car, trying to grab all his things before his brother sped off with the music pumping. He wore a Bulldogs jersey, black shorts and thongs like we were still in the middle of summer. Ibby always overheated, even in subzero temperatures.

  ‘Shoo, we ready, sir?’ he said with a spring in his step. ‘Where are my new white friends?’

  Mr Archie tilted his head to a blue bus parked across the road. It was them, all four Cronulla boys with their families.

  ‘Be nice,’ Mr Ahmed warned as we all walked over. He wasn’t coming to camp with us – he had to make sure the other boys didn’t blow up the school.

  Some of the Cronulla mums stared at us as we approached. They were probably trying to figure out if they’d seen us on the news in a report about terrorism.

  We shook the other boys’ hands and introduced ourselves, but that was about it. We huddled in our separate groups until they told us it was time to get on the bus. Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed tried to get us all talking, but we just eyed each other, trying to figure out where we all stood. I started sussing out the Cronulla boys as we waited.