The Marsh Birds (20 page)

The sea was endlessly moving and still. He thought fuzzily it was as exquisite and as terrible as life, and said so. He couldn't find the words, so he used
beautiful
and
bad
.
What do you know of life?
Stan snorted indulgently, then answered himself quietly, sadly.
Probably a lot
. And Joe topped up his glass.

Dhurgham's English got better the more he drank; that of the four rough angels got worse. He stretched his legs out in the sun and felt the heat tingle and spread under his skin. His happiness bubbled inside. He licked the salt off his arm and stared at the endless sky.
You're a very good-lookin' lad
, Joe said. Dhurgham giggled and looked his warm brown legs up and down.
Yes I am
, he said.

Dhurgham felt over the memories one by one, rolling each phrase through his mind. How he loved them all, these men!

Get off that fat arse
. Stan kicked at Joe but couldn't reach. He had been at the wheel a while, with Joe lounging in front of him on the deck. Joe didn't move.
Takes a big hammer to drive a big nail
, he said from under his hat. Dhurgham laughed with Stan, and Joe lifted the hat and said,
Hey, fellas, give him another—he'll be fluent soon.

Joe taught him to sail. Dhurgham was fascinated by the GPS and the compass, the precision by which they could pinpoint their moment and place on the endless ocean. The certainty of it all.

You a virgin, Tom?
Dhurgham thought for a while. He felt pure and calm. He struggled to find the English. He put his hand over his genitals.
Completely new
, he said, grinning. Joe put his hand over his own.
Past the use-by date
, he said. They all laughed. Jim told him all the mess the Australian legal system was in and what a
fuck up
its record on human rights was,
copying the crazy Americans, the Europeans, and for what?
Dhurgham told him a little bit about life in Mawirrigun but began to sob, unexpectedly, about Ammu's suicide attempt. They gave him whisky and put him to bed. It took all four of them to carry him down the gangway, giggling and cursing, and to tuck him in. He recited to them, suddenly:

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. When the sun ceases to shine; when the stars fall down and the mountains are blown away—

—when camels big with young are left untended, and the wild beast are brought together; when the seas are set alight and men's souls are reunited; when the infant girl buried alive is asked for what crime she was slain; when the records of men's deeds are laid open, and heaven is stripped bare—

—when Hell burns fiercely and Paradise is brought near: then each soul shall know what it has done.

Morning Star
, he said, trying to tell them, nodding seriously, his hand on his heart.

Fucken poetry, you can hear it, eh Stan? Muslim poetry.

How'd you choose us, eh, out of all the yachts at the squadron?

Dhurgham pointed to the blue
Say YES to Refugees
sticker on the coach-housing and Joe slapped his forehead.
We had the fucken
Boat Person Wanted
sign out!
As they sailed towards the Cook Strait, with Dhurgham at the helm and Joe directing him, Jim peeled it off.
Better not let them know we're mates, eh.

They did a collection and Jim tried to stuff his shirt pockets with about six hundred dollars. But Dhurgham laughed and hugged them all, and refused. He thought that the money might make him suspect, and, more than that, he felt like a man.

He smiled sleepily. They were angels. Angels with alcohol.

See ya, Tom, in a coupla years. You'll be a Kiwi, and with a girlfriend. We'll find you. You'll be the only Assamarrai in the phone book.

Their world was so decent it was worth raging over injustice and cursing the indecent bits.

The Last Lefties on Earth.

The Ship of Fools.

The
Morning Star.

He fell asleep in a calm that left him open.

His sleep was stalked by nightmares, each beginning and then peeling away to one that lay underneath it, until, after several layers, a dream of the red desert parted like a rotten fruit and, as if rising from dark water to become visible at the last moment, the marshes appeared, threaded with mists and long slags of thin cloud. He was wading with his family in high rushes and reeds. He could hear his mother's asthmatic breathing loud in the night. She was a dark shadow behind him with a huge bundle held high and balanced on her head, giving her a grotesque silhouette. His sister was sloshing in the sodden weeds to his right, her white hijab shining dimly and her teeth flashing at him now and then, between her muttered curses. His father didn't even tell Nura off, just trudged, a shadow behind them all. He knew that his uncle and cousins were to the left, that they had fanned out for some reason. He felt excited and began to trudge with energy, despite the weight he felt sewn into his clothes. He had all their money on him; the baby, the least likely to be searched. In Syria, it would be hard, his mother said, but at least they had each other. But he was glad they had left, regardless. It was such an adventure. And there were birds in the marshes. Now and then he disturbed one and it went whirring up into the night air. He would be the first across, leading the family in a great V behind him. He was humming, lifting his legs high and squelching his sneakers vigorously into the sucking mud. He could see the darker shapes of a low rolling land ahead. He was first! He turned to Nura to say that he was going to catch the next bird that whirled away from the sedge at his feet, but Nura wasn't there. Then he heard many small noises as he faced the way they had come, noises that seemed weirdly intimate, noises of an interior, not a wide open marsh. He stood still and peered into the darkness in which nothing stood out, nothing shone. He could see nothing, and a muddy, hammering panic rose to drown him. Then he heard it, clear as a bird cry in a still night.
Run Dhurgham! Darling run!

He woke up.

A day later he was interviewed by a tiny lady in a tight blue suit. She was accompanied by an Egyptian interpreter whose voice sounded a little like Abu Nizar's and who looked at him kindly through thick spectacles. The lady shook her head and clicked her tongue every time the interpreter repeated anything that was particularly dramatic. Dhurgham felt he was truly in a safe place, and he was quite calm throughout the interview. He pretended he had poor comprehension of English, feeling instinctively that his time in Australia tainted him, made him less the object of their concern. And listening to the interpreter paced him, gave him time to think. His dream was near and luminous and gave him courage. He hugged it close. He answered all their questions about Australia clearly. When the lady in blue tipped her head to one side like a bright bird and said gently,‘Tell us what happened that made you leave Iraq,' and the interpreter leant forward and asked the same in Arabic, he told them Aziz's story. The dream radiated in his chest. He had no doubts. He could see this story clearly too, strengthened by the one he had retrieved. For fleeting moments he could see and hear Nura and his mother in the roles he gave them. He could see the street on which he made it all unfold, his street, as he spoke.

‘I and my father, mother and my sister were walking from our house to my uncle's house. Suddenly two black cars stopped beside us and just in front of us. Some men got out and told my father to get in the car. My mother grabbed his hand and stood in front of him. They told my mother that she shouldn't be on this street. My mother said,
It is my street
. The men shrugged and put us all into the cars. We were very scared.

‘They took us to an empty sports stadium. There were many people there, some families, some with children. We were there all night. My father wasn't with us. They took him in the other car, and I never saw him again. We didn't talk to the other families in the stadium. We just waited through the night. I got very hungry. The next day we were told to get on three buses that had tinted windows. Soldiers were driving the buses. We were driven out of the city. Then we left the road and drove over bumpy ground into a field. There were two groups of soldiers and a bulldozer, and some other empty buses. We were ordered to get off the buses.
Hold on tight to my hands
, my mother said. One group of soldiers was pushing people into a ditch they had dug, and the other group was shooting down into the ditch. We were pushed all together to the edge. My mother said,
Recite the Shahada with me, my babies, recite the Shahada
, and she held on very tight to me. We were pushed in all together. There were many layers of bodies under me, all warm and slippery. We were near the top of the ditch. The soldiers started shooting at us but I wasn't shot. One of them pulled at my clothes and said,
This one is still alive
. They shot again, but still I wasn't shot. The bulldozer came and began to fill in the hole. It was dusk. I struggled to the edge and kept my face in some reeds so I could breathe. Then I pulled myself out of the earth, and I went to the highway. A friendly soldier stopped and picked me up and took me to my uncle's house.'

The lady in blue said little. She couldn't speak. The interpreter was sobbing.

Dhurgham felt clean. His dream was from God. He started to weep softly in his happiness. He whispered through the words of the Shahada. His mother, his father and his sister were dead—they were killed then, that suddenly, that completely, and he had always known it. God had given him Aziz's story because he was never going to be able to put his own into words.

He looked up.‘I never told this story in Australia,' he said in a firm voice. ‘I was too young. I couldn't remember it clearly enough but I can now.'

Dhurgham remained three weeks in remand in Wellington with no news, then was released pending the outcome of the refugee determination process. He knew nothing more. He was met by Mr Johns, who smiled tiredly and told him that he would be billeted with the Johns family until his result was announced.

He looked at Mr Johns and smiled too, uncertain, grateful. He got into the car and watched New Zealand flit by. The shift was far shorter than the sudden journey from Mawirrigun to Kanugo Kagil, but he felt the same dislocation, as if his body had been taken somewhere and his mind and soul, caught out playing truant, found themselves left behind and having to follow on foot.

What he didn't know was that a powerful lobby group had got hold of the facts of his story and had demanded his release in accordance with the usual treatment of convention claimants. Mr Harwood had said all hostels were full, while consulting frantically with a team of legal advisers. Mr Johns, pushed by Janine, had offered to billet him and earned a filthy look from Mr Harwood and a direct accusation of being the ‘leak'. Dhurgham was still not released. A week later it was in the media in Australia and New Zealand, and the next day Dhurgham was out. He was New Zealand's darling. Mr Harwood told Mr Johns that he could forget ever being promoted and, if any evidence surfaced that he had spoken to the media on classified matters, he would be sacked without accrued benefits.

‘And keep that walking disaster away from the media, you hear?'

Mr Johns was silent.

Mr Harwood had a private meeting with the Prime Minister. Australia was in the process of signing billions in trade contracts and it was a bad time for New Zealand to say that Australia was an oppressive regime. As Dhurgham was released, Mr Harwood was on the phone to Mr Cowell, AID Minister in Canberra, in damage control. He got a cool reception and had to fight uphill to convince the Australians that he wanted what they did. ‘Of course he is not being treated as a convention claimant!' he said. ‘The idea is ludicrous. We have him held at the residence of one of our officers until we can resolve this matter at law and to
your
satisfaction. You know what these lobby groups are like—don't pay any attention to the papers.'