We, the Survivors

by Tash Aw

  Keong’s hunch was right. Uzzal knew all the Bangladeshis in the area – knew which ones were good workers, the ones with a bad attitude, the ones hiding an injury or a sickness that was soon going to finish them off. He knew the ones who were planning to run away from their jobs, knew where they hid – the invisible slums in town, on stretches of the riverbank, or out in the countryside, in the middle of the forest. He knew all the different routes migrants used to get into the country, by sea and especially by land, across the border from Thailand. He was familiar with all the techniques the smugglers used, from hiding human cargo in containers to plain old bribery. That was the most common. Customs officers see a big lorry loaded with sacks of rice or cages of live chickens, of course they know what’s underneath all that. They could spend an hour unloading the lorry and finding the migrants hidden underneath, but pay them enough and they won’t bother. Maybe they don’t want to find the real stash; maybe they’re afraid of discovering dead bodies, children suffocated in that tiny hollowed-out space under a mound of squawking chickens. Just because you work at a job like that, it doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings. But a tiny bit of cash makes it easy to turn your head and look the other way – someone actually pays you not to see dirty, upsetting shit. Anyone would do the same.

  Uzzal knew all these tricks. He stashed them away in his head the way other people might do with money stuffed into a mattress. All that information – how to get in, how to get out, how to survive. He kept it secret, never revealing any of it to anyone except people who’d pay. Foreigners and employers alike. That was how he made his money.

  ‘Like I said’ – Keong smiled, finishing his Carlsberg – ‘I know a player when I see one.’

  ‘You go and see him yourself,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Hey, do you want your workers or not? You’re going to get your ass fired.’ He stood up and checked his watch. ‘We’ll find out from Uzzal where the workers are, then you can go home and tell your wife and boss that you’ve got things covered. Tomorrow I’ll deliver the men to your farm, and you’ll look back at this evening and think, “Why the hell was I so grumpy? A favour for a friend. It was the easiest thing I ever did.”’

  The singer and her accompanist stopped for a break, sitting on a couple of plastic folding chairs next to the bar. Suddenly the lobby felt empty and silent – the cluster of people at the reception area had disappeared, and there was no one in the bar apart from us. Keong was staring at his empty glass, turning it slightly as if examining the traces of foam that left a snakeskin pattern. ‘We’re brothers, you have to back me up,’ he said, his voice sounding flat and deflated once more. ‘All I’m doing is trying to help you out here.’

  You’re thinking, Why didn’t I just get up and leave? That moment of escape, of flight, presented itself, as it had done before and would do again. I recognised it for exactly what it was – an opportunity to say, ‘You know what? This is too messy for me’ – but spotting a chance and taking it are two separate and unconnected things. When faced with a door that’s wide open, how many of us actually walk through it? We never take the chance to flee. We stay. We recognise the danger, but something in our brains tells us it isn’t going to be so bad. We believe in life’s power to iron out the kinks in our existence and make things turn out OK. We don’t think anything fundamentally evil will occur to us. Everything will turn out just fine.

  I said, ‘I’m tired. My head hurts.’

  Keong looked around the empty lobby, then reached into a pocket and took out a small plastic bag with three or four pills in it. ‘Panadol.’ He smiled. ‘For your headache.’

  I knew what they were – definitely not painkillers. I shook my head. ‘Call the waiter. Let’s just get this deal done.’

  The meeting point was a car park in the Old Town, an empty space in a row of shophouses where an old building had collapsed over time, or been torn down. The far end of the unsurfaced yard was shaded by a large tree from which vines hung thickly towards the ground, as impenetrable as curtains. It was here that we waited for Uzzal, listening to the traffic on the highway drifting across the night. It began to drizzle very lightly, and the sound of the rain on the leaves overhead seemed muffled, as if it was occurring some distance away, hundreds of feet in the air, and I had the impression of being separated from the noise around me, as if I was insulated by a giant bubble of invisible foam.

  Keong had taken a pill and was standing perfectly still, concentrating his gaze on the street. The pills gave him concentration, he said, made everything as clear and bright and optimistic as a magnificent sunrise. I remembered how he’d been a decade earlier, how he wouldn’t sleep all night because the pills he’d taken gave him too much energy. ‘Even if I climb Mount Everest I won’t be able to sleep,’ he used to say. Now he no longer displayed the nervous energy of before – he stood with his hands in his pockets, occasionally kicking at the gravel underfoot, but otherwise he moved very little. Every time a car approached he would stiffen and shrink back slightly into the shadows before relaxing once the glare of the headlights had faded. We stood well back from the soft orange glow of the street lamps. At that time of night there were few cars in this part of town, but I’d seen enough of Keong’s work to know that caution was part of the job. It was part of him, I thought. He didn’t know any other way to live than in the shadows.

  When we heard the scooter approach we both knew it was Uzzal. The stutter of its motor as it slowed down. The way it glided into the unlit parts of the street, like a creature that instinctively seeks the margins. The deliberate dimming of its headlight before it was switched off altogether as it neared the parking lot. He killed the engine as he drew close, hopped off and pushed the scooter towards us. He seemed younger now than he had at the hotel, where he’d been dressed up in his waiter’s uniform. His movements were quick and easy, and he covered the ground swiftly. I found it hard to believe he’d been in the country for ten years – he must have been a teenager when he arrived, I thought. A boy.

  Keong didn’t move; he waited until Uzzal was close to us before speaking. ‘I keep telling you,’ he said, ‘you should quit that lousy job of yours. The uniform makes you look like a penguin.’

  The way Uzzal laughed gave me the impression that he and Keong knew each other better than I’d assumed. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he said. ‘Just wait for you to turn up and pay me a few hundred ringgit now and then? I got a wife and a kid to feed.’ He parked the scooter, propping it up gently to make sure it didn’t fall over on the uneven ground.

  ‘I forgot you’re a dad now.’

  ‘Ya. Like being a waiter.’

  Keong laughed. ‘You’re a real joker.’

  Uzzal was still smiling, but he was eyeing me, while also looking around as though there might have been others lurking in the darkness.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s an old friend of mine,’ Keong said. ‘From childhood. A local boy. He’s helping me sort out this mess.’

  Uzzal kept his gaze on me for a while, taking in every bit of me, as if he might find something that would test the truth of Keong’s statement about me. I wanted him to notice a detail – the way I dressed, the way I deliberately refrained from smiling, the heavy shoes I wore, suitable for light agricultural work, whatever minuscule note he’d think was suspicious, and that would indicate to him that I wasn’t any of the things Keong had made me out to be. I was willing him on, silently urging him to say, That guy, he’s no friend of yours, he’s not like you. He’s not one of us. Get him out of here, I don’t trust him. I even shook my head, wanting to communicate to him that I was there by accident, that I had a home, a job, a wife – a whole separate life away from this shabby parking lot surrounded by derelict buildings.

  He continued to stare at me for a few moments, and that was when I experienced, for the first time, that curious sensation I would encounter later that week, and again during my time in prison – of time slowing down, folding in on itself, almost as
if it had taken a physical form and was collapsing, just like the buildings around us. I remembered the feeling I had when I was a child, of joyously sliding down an imaginary rabbit hole and emerging on another continent, or even another planet altogether, with landscapes and people that were so familiar to me I’d sometimes have trouble believing I was in a new place – only I was, because in these new surroundings I would understand how to make decisions, choices that would turn out all right for me and my family, and everyone else who populated this world would behave with similar clarity and ease. But now I wasn’t a child. I knew such things couldn’t happen. I don’t know why that thought came to me at that moment. It was so ridiculous that I smiled to myself.

  Uzzal turned to Keong and said, ‘I know what you want, but I can’t help you.’

  Keong laughed. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘My friend, I can’t help you.’

  Keong took a step towards Uzzal. Just a small, quick step, but it was enough to make Uzzal react – a tiny shuffle of his feet, a hardening of his stance to mask the instinctive reaction to back away.

  ‘I pay you but you don’t help me,’ said Keong. I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

  ‘It’s the boss. The one who got them into the country. He has the people you’re looking for.’

  ‘My company paid that bastard to get them in, now he’s hiding them. I’m going to get that damned Bangla, make him pay.’

  Uzzal remained silent for a while, and in the half-dark I saw him look up towards the canopy of leaves overhead. It was still drizzling – so lightly that it felt like a fine mist on my face. He laughed, making a noise like a soft snort. ‘He’s doing you a favour.’

  ‘He’ll do me a favour when he delivers the people he owes me, and gets the fuck out of here.’

  ‘You were supposed to get permits for them but you didn’t, so what’s he supposed to do? He can’t just let them loose.’

  Keong took another step towards Uzzal. This time he did back away. ‘That guy – he smuggles people into our country. And now he’s telling me to get permits?’

  ‘I’m just telling you what he told me,’ Uzzal said firmly. ‘If those people don’t have permits, they can’t work.’

  Keong laughed. A loud, full-throated roar that cut through the gentle hush of the rain and echoed against the walls of the parking lot. I looked around us, checking to see if there were any stray pedestrians passing by who might have heard the noise, but there was no one about. I was becoming like Keong and Uzzal, I thought – cautious, afraid.

  ‘Look at you, mister lawyer,’ Keong said. ‘Who the fuck cares about permits? Today we saw two hundred workers. Two hundred people without papers, working away happily. So don’t give me that bullshit.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what he said.’ Uzzal turned and walked to his scooter.

  ‘How much do you want?’ said Keong. ‘Find out where they are, I give you a thousand.’

  Uzzal laughed but didn’t turn around.

  ‘Hey, how much?’ Keong shouted.

  Uzzal climbed onto the scooter, but didn’t turn on the engine. ‘There are women in that group,’ he said. ‘And two children. They need papers.’

  ‘Which Bangla need papers? Once I have them, I’ll sort things out.’

  ‘They’re not from Bangladesh. They’re Rohingya. They need refugee papers.’

  ‘Rohingya, Bangladesh – whatever. You’re all the same.’

  Uzzal started the engine and eased the scooter towards the road.

  ‘My friend will call round tomorrow,’ Keong said. I knew he meant me. ‘You give him the news. I’m going to sort out your Bangla boss.’

  ‘Even I don’t know where he is,’ Uzzal called out as he rode away slowly. Once he reached the road he flicked the headlight on, but it wasn’t until he was some distance away that he began to accelerate.

  Keong cursed. Called Uzzal that name again, the one he used all the time for dark-skinned people. We walked towards my car, and the only thought in my mind was whether anyone had noticed it, parked where it shouldn’t have been at that time of night, and been suspicious enough to write down the registration number. But of course no one had. I wouldn’t have. It was ridiculous even to think that someone might have done, but that was what a couple of days with Keong did to my way of thinking.

  ‘Refugee papers. Do they know how long it takes to process those? None of the Rohingyas have them.’ Keong lit a cigarette as he climbed into the car. ‘I don’t understand the difference between Rohingya and Bangladeshi. They all look the same to me. Can you tell which is which?’

  I shook my head. ‘Listen, it’s too complicated,’ I said. ‘Let’s just forget the whole thing.’ I was expecting him to argue with me, give me all the reasons I should continue to help him, make excuses for not telling me earlier all the things I’d suspected, which were now out in the open: that he was dealing not just with illegal migrants, which was bad enough, but half-dead refugees. I expected him to say that it wasn’t such a big deal, because let’s face it, how many foreigners are legal in the country these days, so why would he bother to tell me? He’d try to convince me that I needed to help him in order to help myself. He’d refer to the bonds of a friendship that had never really existed, but it would sound convincing because they meant something to me.

  Instead, he kept silent and lowered the window to let out the cigarette smoke. The wind shuddered through the car, reminding me of the long day we’d spent together, reminding me of my fatigue. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said after a while. ‘Maybe we should just forget this whole business. Pack up, go live on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.’ He held his face close to the window and felt the rushing of the air, as if tasting it.

  I wanted to say, You fool, there are no desert islands in the Atlantic. But I was too tired to speak any more that night.

  A noise. Nothing unusual, just a car. But I sit here all day, so I know the tiny variations in the sounds outside. Without even looking, I know that the car is a taxi, and that she is in it. For the first time since we started our talks, she is late.

  She checks her watch as she comes through the gate.

  Sorry I’m late.

  What happened to your car?

  I have a problem with it. But it’s cool. I took the KTM Komuter to Klang, then a cab. It’s no big deal.

  Your car broke down?

  She steps into the house and sits down in her usual seat. Breathes out, slumps back in the chair as if she’s just run ten miles and doesn’t have enough strength to sit up straight.

  No, it got taken away.

  Ha? Stolen?

  No, towed away. DBKL guys did it right in front of my eyes. I was parked perfectly legally, my ticket had run out like one fucking minute before, and they were standing by ready to tow it away. Said if I paid them the fine they’d let me go, so I said, Fine, what fine? You mean BRIBE, and they just laughed in my face. Ei Ah Moy, janganlah macam tu. Jesus. I could have slapped them. Why the fuck do I put up with such misogyny? How dare they call me Ah Moy? Racist misogynists. I’d forgotten all about that sort of thing. Fuck.

  Your language. You’re sounding like me.

  I don’t care. Can you believe it? One minute. One stupid minute. They were laughing at me while I argued with them. Laughing and smoking. I couldn’t do a damn thing. Right up until the truck came and took the car away.

  Why didn’t you just pay?

  She stops and looks at me as if she can’t understand what I said.

  It’s only fifty, a hundred bucks, I say. You should have just paid.

  She narrows her eyes, and I get the feeling that I’m the one who’s done something wrong, not the DBKL men who took her car away.

  That’s not the point! Why should I pay? I did nothing wrong. They were just out to make some extra cash, and I was not going to pay. Hello? That’s called corruption. That’s what’s wrong with this country – everyone’s just looking out for themselves,
looking to make a quick buck at someone else’s expense. Those idiots, they can just go fuck themselves.

  Calm down, stop shouting.

  I’m like, Do you even recognise this as corruption?

  Please.

  She pulls some papers out of her folder and puts her phone on the table, ready to record as usual.

  Anyway, no use in complaining. I’ll deal with the process in due course. Now we have to get to work.

  No. We’re going to get your car back.

  I go into my bedroom to get the cash I keep in a biscuit tin in the wardrobe – the money I’ve managed to save over the last six or seven months. I don’t know how much there is, so I take it all. Better to be safe. I come out and head straight to the door.

  Waiting for what? I say to her. Better deal with the problem now.

  At the car pound she insists I stand to one side, tells me not to say anything.

  You think just because I’m a woman I can’t deal with this sort of thing? she says.

  Aiya, don’t say like that. I’m just coming to support you. What can a guy like me do to help anyway?

  I pretend to read the announcements on the noticeboard, but actually I’m listening to the argument she’s having with the guy at the desk. I say argument, but in fact she’s the only one talking, trying to persuade him to cancel the fine.

  The parking warden should have exercised discretion, she says, I was only one minute late. We should reform the system to make it fair and flexible.

  The guy isn’t even looking at her. He’s staring at the screen of his phone, his thumb gently swiping at it every few seconds.