Kyle had hoped he’d be able to contact a group like Guilt Trips or a journalist and whip up a storm of outrage. But Aizat’s fate seemed to be a common one for poor people all over the region. He was actually luckier than most because on Langkawi the government had been planning to evacuate the villagers before the tsunami and had pre-built somewhere for displaced people to go.
Kyle felt depressed, but he liked Aizat and didn’t want to let him down before he’d at least tried a few more options.
Over the years Kyle had made money on a variety of scams, including selling pirate movies and video games on campus. The least he could do was use some of his ill-gotten gains to send Aizat the books he’d asked for, and maybe throw in a few quid from his savings to help him out.
*
Kyle had a maths class first thing the next morning. He avoided James, who was in an absolutely vile mood after the four-two defeat. Kyle had a free second period and while he didn’t hold out much hope, he went to his room and called the number for Guilt Trips’ London office.
The woman who picked up was called Helena Bayliss. She’d written several of the articles Kyle had read on the website the night before, and sounded much younger than he’d imagined her being.
He told Helena what had happened during and after the tsunami, though for the purposes of his explanation he said he’d been holidaying with a youth group rather than conducting a training exercise for a top secret organisation.
‘There’s nothing particularly unique about Aizat’s situation, sadly,’ Helena explained. ‘There’s not been much media coverage of the tsunami’s effect on Malaysia, but obviously there isn’t going to be when the damage in other places was so much greater.’
Kyle sighed. ‘That’s pretty much what I thought you were going to say.’
Helena laughed. ‘Let me finish. The one thing that makes your case interesting to me is that you said your friend Aizat was willing to start some sort of local campaign and that yourself and perhaps some other members of your youth group might be willing to give him help and some financial support. Guilt Trips is a small charity with limited resources. We can’t launch a major campaign on your behalf, but we’d certainly be willing to offer support and advice to any activists who want to start their own campaign.’
Kyle smiled. ‘That does sound quite useful. I mean, I want to help and Aizat says he’s got a group of friends together who want to try doing something on Langkawi. The trouble is, none of us have a clue how to go about it.’
‘I think we should probably meet,’ Helena said. ‘I’d be willing for either myself or one of our volunteers to come and give a talk to your youth group. And I can get in touch with Aizat directly.’
Kyle smiled at the thought of Helena turning up on CHERUB campus.
‘Your offices are in London,’ he said. ‘I’m down that way on Saturday. I was thinking I could meet up with you somewhere and we could talk about this. Sort out a strategy, both for here and some things we can do to help Aizat.’
‘Let me check my diary,’ Helena said. ‘Yes, looks like I’m free any time up until 4 p.m. Will you be able to find your way to our offices? Or I could meet you at the station.’
‘I’m only slightly stupid,’ Kyle replied, with a laugh. ‘I’m sure I’ll find my way.’
18. JUNKET
Helena Bayliss was twenty-three years old. She had the tall slender figure of a fashion model but a beakish nose and squeamishness about having it doctored ensured that she’d never become one. She’d studied law at university, but found it boring and now lived an impoverished existence writing one-off articles on travel and environmental issues for newspapers while working part-time as a campaigner for Guilt Trips.
Shortly after meeting Kyle she’d called in a favour from a friend who worked on a national newspaper, securing herself an invite to the official opening of the Regency Plaza Hotel on Langkawi. The flight from London was on a luxury 737, accompanied by thirty journalists, golf pundits and travel industry professionals.
Helena’s editor at the newspaper gave a simple brief: a thousand words on the newly opened resort, and she’d been enrolled in a beginner’s golf package in order to give the story an interesting angle.
The newspaper travel supplement had just inked an advertising deal with Regency Plaza Hotels and Tourism Malaysia, so the piece had to be upbeat. She might be allowed a few jabs about towels in the room, or mediocre restaurants, but demolished villages and refugee camps wouldn’t do at all.
*
The brochure Helena had been handed by a Tourism Malaysia official had promised year-round hot weather and the sun seemed to be delivering. The tarmac steamed in the aftermath of a tropical storm as she walked down the aircraft steps, behind the boss of Britain’s biggest online travel website and a man of unknown origin who’d tried chatting her up three hours into the flight.
A VIP channel was opened through customs for the distinguished guests. Documents weren’t checked and bags travelled unmolested from the aircraft hold to a luxury coach. Within an hour of touching down, Helena had showered and lay on a king-sized bed in a soft hotel robe.
Her room was huge, with a balcony overlooking the ocean. There were three gift baskets: one hamper of chocolates and champagne, a bigger one packed with Malaysian produce from whisky and luxury toiletries to native carvings, and a final basket holding a huge spread of flowers in a cut-glass vase. Slid underneath was a letter and a CD-ROM containing a press kit of information and photographs about Malaysia and the hotel.
Dear Miss Bayliss,
Regency Plaza Hotels and Tourism Malaysia would like to welcome you to our new Langkawi Golf Resort & Spa.
As a VIP guest, you are welcome to use any of the hotel’s restaurants, spas, golf courses or other facilities. Mini bar and all other in-room facilities are also complimentary, including your Regency Spa robe.
You are also invited to our hotel’s official spectacular opening dinner at 8 p.m. on Saturday. Our roster of special guests will include Langkawi governor Tan Abdullah, celebrity entertainment and a surprise appearance by one of the world’s most distinguished golf professionals.
Our staff is available twenty-four hours a day, so please get in touch if you require any assistance, or would like us to put together an itinerary for you to explore Langkawi island.
We hope you enjoy your stay,
Michael Stephens
European Director for Tourism Malaysia
Helena brushed her face against the soft robe, and thought it would make a great replacement for the scrappy towelling rag she had in her London flat. She also remembered how excited she’d been, aged ten, staying in her first ever hotel. Sharing a room with her older sister and getting yelled at by their dad because they’d drunk Sprites from the mini bar without realising they were $7.50 each.
This hotel was far more luxurious and a part of Helena wanted to spend her three days eating, boozing and indulging every whim, just like she’d wanted to do when she was ten. But the slogan at the bottom of the letter snapped her out of the fantasy: Tourism Malaysia — forging onwards.
The bland slogan was a subtle reminder that Malaysia was doing fine, while most rival destinations in the region were rebuilding after the tsunami.
Helena felt a surge of anger as she looked around her opulent room and thought about all the resources that had been used to put all this luxury in a remote corner of Langkawi island, just so that some rich people could sunbathe and play golf.
Steel and cement from China, carpets from India, towels made in Vietnam, flowers from Saudi Arabia, TV and surround sound system manufactured in the Philippines. On top of that were the enormous amounts of energy used to keep the vast hotel building lit and air-conditioned, huge quantities of water and sewage and jet fuel burned to fly tourists in and out.
Helena dreaded her golf lessons most of all. She’d always hated golf, but a golf outfit had been provided by the newspaper and a fashion photographer was travelling from the mainland to
take her picture. Helena might not have been up to catwalk standard, but she wouldn’t have got this assignment if she’d been short and dumpy.
The mix of awe and horror at her surroundings made Helena want to lob something breakable at the wall. She didn’t because her mess would only create work for some underpaid chamber maid.
But Helen wasn’t just here for a thousand words on the joys of massage and golf lessons in Malaysia’s newest resort. She perked up as she took her mobile phone from a glass-topped desk, stepped out on to the balcony and dialled a stored number as she looked out to sea.
‘Hai.’
‘Aizat, hello!’ Helena said cheerfully. ‘I’m glad I could get through.’
Aizat laughed. ‘The only good thing about the new hotel: mobile reception around here is great now. How are you? Was your flight OK?’
‘Not too bad,’ Helena said. ‘Comfy plane, so I slept for most of the flight. I’m in my room and I’ve got a few hours free. I’d really like to meet up somewhere and chat. Are you busy?’
‘Just a few things, but nothing I can’t interrupt,’ Aizat said.
‘I’d also like to take some pictures for the Guilt Trips website,’ Helena explained. ‘Showing where your village used to be, and where you live now. We’re putting together an educational resource pack on sustainable development. So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to record a short video interview with you.’
‘Make me famous if you like,’ Aizat answered. ‘How about I meet you where my village used to be. It’s beyond the hotel, near the breakwater.’
Helena looked along the golden sand. ‘I see it,’ she said.
‘After that I’ll take you up to see the camp and you can meet the other members of our campaign. Does that sound good?’
‘Perfect! When do you want to meet? I’ve got to unpack my camera and things and get dressed, but apart from that I’m free.’
‘Five o’clock then,’ Aizat suggested. ‘Do you have a flash? It might be getting dark by the time we get back from the village.’
*
Helena had been on all-expenses-paid junkets like this before and knew that the people running the trips liked to keep a close eye on their pampered guests: a journalist getting mugged, or stumbling drunk into a storm drain doesn’t make for good press coverage.
To deflect attention from her exit, Helena dressed in Lycra and running shoes, with just a water bottle and camera in the small pack on her back. She set off at a jog from the side entrance, unnoticed by hotel employees and Tourism Malaysia officials.
Aizat sat in the sand by the breakwater less than two hundred metres from the hotel. He was muscular, good looking and surprisingly well dressed, in counterfeit Nikes, cargo shorts and a linen shirt. It seemed like he’d put on his best clothes, which was disappointing. Helena could have done with someone more desperate in her photographs.
She unzipped her pack and took out a pen and a small notepad, then began confirming and jotting down basic facts.
‘So you’re sixteen?’
‘Seventeen now,’ Aizat corrected. ‘Wati is still eight, and my grandma is seventy.’
‘And do you go to school, or work, or … ?’
‘Wati has a teacher who comes into the camp. I work, otherwise we’d be broke.’
‘Kyle said you’d been doing some jobs for a carpenter.’
Aizat nodded. ‘I have a boat now, as well. I run errands, take fish to the mainland, carry passengers.’
‘Wasn’t your boat destroyed?’
‘We repaired it after the wave, but the thugs pissed off with it. It wasn’t there when we went to get it. So now I have another boat.’
‘How?’ Helena asked, as she double-checked to make sure that her voice recorder was running.
‘Some people clubbed together,’ Aizat said vaguely. Then he changed the subject. ‘So how is Kyle? Do you see him often?’
‘I’ve met him twice since he contacted me at the beginning of last month,’ Helena explained. ‘Once at the Guilt Trips offices and once at a demonstration we held outside the Kenyan embassy. But he lives a fair way from London and seems to lead a busy life. Exams and things, I guess.’
‘Kyle’s a great guy,’ Aizat said brightly. ‘He even sent me an Arsenal shirt, and some old match programmes.’
‘So you said you’ve got a new boat. Did you get a grant or anything to buy it?’
‘Grant!’ Aizat laughed. ‘I like that, but I’d rather not talk about business on tape. Come along the beach, I’ll show you where our huts used to be.’
Kyle had explained that Aizat had been a kind of leader in the village before it was destroyed, but Helena was surprised at the way he acted. He looked seventeen, but seemed far more grown-up than the pimple-faced teens she caught eyeing her up in London.
Aizat found a stick and burrowed into sand until he found a splintered wooden post. ‘That’s one of the huts that took the full brunt when the scaffolding came washing along the beach. There were two babies trapped inside. Kyle and his youth group helped to rescue them.’
Helena was disappointed. She’d hoped that there would be some trace of the abandoned huts that would be more photogenic than a broken stick poking out of the ground.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, pointing to a greyish-brown layer uncovered by Aizat’s stick.
‘A lot of our beaches are still covered with silt,’ Aizat explained. ‘But with the hotel opening, they didn’t bother cleaning up properly. They just shipped in container loads of sand and dumped it on top of the silt. If you take a boat along the coast, you’ll see that the sand here and all around the hotel is yellowish, not white like you’ll see everywhere else on the island.’
A strange voice came from the other side of the breakwater. It belonged to a fearsome looking man in a blue shirt with epaulettes marked Regency Plaza Guest Security.
‘Is this gentleman bothering you?’ the guard asked, as he glowered at Aizat through mirrored sunglasses.
Helena shook her head and smiled sweetly. ‘We got chatting,’ she said. ‘Admiring the new hotel.’
‘I’m afraid that this section of beach is for hotel guests only,’ the guard explained.
Helena looked around. ‘But there are no fences, or signs.’
‘We don’t need them,’ the guard explained. ‘There are only a few hundred people living on this part of the island. Most of them work in the hotel, and those that don’t know where they can and can’t go. Would you like me to escort you back to the hotel, madam?’
‘Is the road public?’ Helena asked. ‘Am I OK to carry on my conversation up there?’
‘I suppose,’ the guard said reluctantly. ‘You know, if you want to exercise there’s a good gymnasium in the hotel. It’s got all the latest equipment.’
Helena laughed and spread her arms out wide. ‘Why on earth would I want to drip sweat on to a Stairmaster in some air-conditioned room when it’s so beautiful out here?’
She then gave the guard an I’ll be fine wave and started walking up towards the road, with Aizat close behind.
‘He’s the big boss, that one,’ Aizat explained. ‘He was beside the police chief the night they threw us out of our village. It probably wasn’t a good idea to meet you this close to the hotel in daylight.’
‘This is supposed to be a free country, isn’t it?’ Helena complained.
‘Are you fit to walk?’ Aizat asked. ‘I’ll take you up to the camp to meet everyone.’
19. EYES
The sun was dropping behind the treetops by the time Aizat and Helena reached the resettlement camp in the jungle. Although many people had left for the mainland immediately after the tsunami, those that remained had either chosen to stay or had no other option.
The sterile environment that Kyle had seen three months earlier had changed as the huts became homes. Kids had formed gangs, people had built screens for privacy and adapted their huts with ventilation holes, extra windows and even extra rooms built from scrap.
&nb
sp; But the situation was far from ideal. In particular the drains had been poorly installed. The toilet blocks swarmed with flies and had a heave-inducing stench, while the paths through the camp weren’t suited to heavy foot and cycle traffic and the tropical rains had turned them into a bog.
Helena’s white running shoes sloshed in thick mud as Aizat led her towards his home. He’d found his family a pair of the best huts, far away from a toilet block and on high ground where the soil drained. To make extra space, he’d built a waterproof wood and polythene extension between the two structures.
Inside Aizat had filled the space with furniture rescued from his hut on the beach and some western-style items from the Starfish Hotel. Mrs Leung had given the hotel furniture to the displaced villagers after selling the property to Tan Abdullah and moving to the mainland.
As Helena stepped out of her trainers and entered the hut in sodden white socks, she noticed Aizat’s collection of books piled against one wall. Beyond these were thousands of items that she recognised from her hotel room: towels, flannels, soap dishes, sheets, table lamps, matchbooks, glassware and light bulbs stacked all the way up to the ceiling.
‘I’m a hustler,’ Aizat confessed, as Helena admired the stash. ‘Tan Abdullah steals our land, so we steal from his hotel. The workers pilfer and bring it to me. I take it back to the mainland, and sell it to the stallholders in the markets.’
Helena clapped her hands and howled with laughter. She also imagined the wonderful newspaper article she could write about stolen land, corrupt politicians building vast hotels and the poor refugees who end up stealing from them to survive. She badly wanted to take a picture of the stolen hotel goodies, but didn’t because it would be bad for Aizat if it got published.
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