The Invisible Hero (4 page)

I found the new girl crying in the library today, her gold hair hanging down her face, pretending to read a book. I said, ‘Raphael, what's up?' and she said nothing. But I knew it was not nothing and I said, ‘I know you should not be seen talking to me or you'll be picked on more, but maybe I can help.' And she said, ‘I don't have a single friend here and I have been here two weeks and none of the kids in the class will talk to me and I don't know why. I even tried to help with the sausage sizzle, but Genelle said
We don't need you.
'

Raphael looked at me so sadly that my heart twisted. I said, ‘I think I know why.'

‘Tell me,' she said. I said, ‘I'll tell you what I know, but it might not help. Well,' I said, ‘on Tuesday, some of Macca's mates chucked my lunch in the bin and they got caught because someone saw and told Mrs Canmore and they are getting an after-school because she says she's sick of bullying and someone else told Macca it was you who dobbed.'

‘I never did,' sobbed Raphael.

‘I know,' I said. ‘I think it was a teacher who saw.'

I wanted to hold her hand to comfort her, but was scared she wouldn't want that. And I said, ‘It doesn't help if people see you and me like this 'cos I'm the bottom of the pile and that's bad luck for you and they'll think you're my friend and you really did dob. So I'm going to pretend that I have no time for you either, but I do. And if you need my help in any way, I'll be there for you.' Then someone walked down
the stack as we were crouching, so I got up and left.

And all this makes me think about why good people can have such pain and bad people seem to win. It makes being a hero very hard and sometimes not seeming to be worth it. But when I said this to my Nan, she held her thumb and index finger up about half a centimetre apart, and slow and strong she said, ‘Even if our efforts only make it this much better, it is still worth it.'

When I went to bed I thought about what Nan said and how she took me on after my Mum dumped me as a baby and went off with another man; and how no one knew who my dad was, but even though Nan was 67 years old, she never thought twice about having another baby to look after. And now Nan is 82 with varicose veins and a limp and fingers knotted with arthritis. I usually check on her a couple of times at night as well as early in the morning.

Sometimes when I first check earlier in the night, I'll see Nan in her dressing gown kneeling by her bed. She'll be saying her prayers, her worn-out hands pressed together, just like Christopher Robin does in that poem. Later, when she's asleep, she lies on her back, her flowery flannelette nighty buttoned to her neck and, when she breathes, her lips suck in and out. On her bedside table are her teeth smiling in a glass of water.

Nan's my whole family wrapped up in a tiny little bird body. And she still tells me I'm the best thing that happened in her life. Well that's brave of her to say that because I came with problems like my hearing and my dyslexia. When I was 7 they found out I
had bad hearing which makes the dyslexia worse.

But it's not just me. Nan is an angel too. Anyone what comes through her door is welcome. And I mean anyone. We live in a suburb with lots of migrants and refugees. In our neighbourhood there are Sikhs, Serbs, Bosnians, Nigerians, Sri Lankans, Afghans and Iraqis. There might be more than that even. Nan has got to know some of these people when she walks to the shops. She's the sort to stop and chat to people when they're in their front gardens. She says quite a few of them feel lost and lonely. Sometimes she drops a meal off if someone in the family is sick. And she helps them up at Centrelink. Every so often on a Friday night, our kitchen is wall-to-wall with people.

The Friday night thing began with Mr Rajendra Singh Bajwa about three years back. He's a Sikh. He emigrated from the Punjab in India with his wife Sangeeta and his son, Pardeep. Rajendra and Sangeeta are both medical scientists. They have important jobs working for the government. Rajendra wears a turban. On the day Nan met him, he'd had a scary note in his letter box calling him ‘an effen terrorist'. Whoever had seen him in his turban must have muddled him up with Osama bin Laden and didn't know that Sikhs believe in tolerance of all faiths as well as the equality and brotherhood of all people. Anyway, Rajendra was standing next to his letterbox clutching that letter and looking very worried and sad when Nan walked past. Nan invited him and his family home for a cup of tea.

The Singhs were still sitting there talking when I walked in from school. I remember thinking that some sort of Indian royal family must have visited. Mr Singh looked handsome in
his royal blue turban and Mrs Singh looked like a princess from a Bollywood film – drop-dead gorgeous in fact. Pardeep was about six then. His hair was in a little topknot tied up in a scarf. Rajendra was telling Nan about one of the Sikh heroes. It is such an incredible story I have never forgotten it and anyway I get Mr Singh to tell me bits of it again and again.

About three hundred and fifty years ago, there was this very wise Sikh man called Guru Tegh Bahadur who lived in the Punjab (which is up the north part of India and Pakistan). Even though the guru was not Hindu, a whole lot of Hindus travelled a long way to the guru because he was good and wise and they said to him,
The emperor wants to force all Hindus to convert to Islam. If we don't we might die. Please help us.
Now Guru Teg Bahadr knew everything about the emperor, Aurangzeb. This emperor was a bad leader. His parents must have been ashamed and terrified of him. He might even have been nastier than Hitler 'cos Aurangzeb went and killed his two brothers and his father. But even knowing how crazily dangerous Aurangzeb was, the Sikh guru went to the emperor and said something like
Everybody on earth has to obey God. If God allowed more than one religion in the world, then it's not for you to change that. The Hindus have the right to have their religion. Do what you want with me.
So the brave guru was beheaded. Can you imagine that? Being put to death for someone else's beliefs? That really is a hero.

Anyways, a few days after having afternoon tea with us, Mr Singh and his wife brought Nan a lovely gift of a beautiful antique box inlaid with mother of pearl that had been in the Singh family a
long, long time. Nan had a pot of soup on, so the Singhs stayed for dinner. Mr Singh said that, apart from being invited to his Australian boss' home, it was the first time in three years living in Australia that they had been invited to share a meal with Australian neighbours.

That got Nan thinking. She decided to occasionally have a soup night for people in the neighbourhood like the Singhs. These nights are like the United Nations. Nan cooks huge pots of soup and she bakes her own bread. Anyone is welcome. She's a real good cook and can make something from nothing.

The Singhs are like family now, so they're always there on soup nights and we get invited to their place a lot. We've come to love a good spicy curry. Pardeep is now nine years old and a genius with chess and he usually brings a little travel chess set with him. Over the years he has taught me how to play. Our other closest friends are the Wahidi family who are refugees from Afghanistan, Tawka Ko from Burma (Tawka and Nan don't like the name Myanmar that the military government have given Burma), and Ago Cejvan from Bosnia.

Ehsan and Roshan Wahidi have two little girls, Gulshan and Leeza, 6 and 4 years old. At the moment Ehsan and Roshan are studying English. When their English is good enough, Roshan wants to become a primary teacher and Ehsan wants to be a lawyer. He is always saying that the British legal system is the best in the world, ‘Magna Carta, habeas corpus, I love it all!' he laughs.

Tawka is the youngest adult in our group. He's 23 years old, small and delicate looking, gentle and quiet – a bit too quiet. He
was apprenticed to his uncle who was an artist in Rangoon. He is brilliant with pencil and watercolour portraits. He did one of Nan and we had it framed. His escape from Burma had something to do with government persecution. He's a supporter of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the lady who lived for years in her house and was not allowed out because the government don't like her. Tawka spent two years in a Thai refugee camp. He is now studying graphic design.

Then there is Ago Cejvan – middle-aged, medium height, broad chest with a big kind heart, hazel eyes and crinkly laugh lines, moustache and short, very curly hair. Ago always puts others first. At meal times, he makes sure everyone is served before he takes food, and he shows an interest in everyone and what they've been doing.

Ago never sits still. He's always making stuff for people or fixing something for Nan. And while he works, he cracks jokes and sings. He sounds like Pavarotti. Emotional songs. Ago calls them Sevdalinka – little soulful songs about love or impossible dreams like having your dead wife and child back maybe. Because that's what happened to Ago in Bosnia. His family got killed in the genocide. Sometimes when he sings, the tears well up in his eyes and fall down his cheeks. He wipes away the tears and just goes back to what he's doing.

When Ago visits, he always gives me a bear hug. Sometimes I pretend he's my father. Tawka likes him, too. Nan says Ago is fixing Tawka. They both have motor bikes they're working on. Ago spreads newspaper on Nan's kitchen floor for all the oily bits of engine. Ago has this amazing energy. He can be squatting
down teaching Tawka about motor bike repairs, singing and testing me on the capital cities of the world – all at the same time. Ago says that knowing about other countries, not just your own, is important. That's how come I know Ougadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso in Africa. And Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia.

It has changed my life having these friends. It makes up for the loneliness at school. Those soup nights are such noisy, happy nights. Little Gulshan and Leeza trying to be helpful to Nan, demanding to be taught chess by Pardeep, wanting me and Pardeep to play hide and seek, racing in and out of the back door. The adults and their lively, philosophical discussions, and Nan cheerfully weaving her way in and out, refilling soup bowls and giving her own simple, down-to-earth opinions about things.

There's an old man next door, Mr Fred Clark, who said to Nan the other day, ‘What are you taking on them foreign bastards for, feeding them and all, when you can't hardly look after your own? Leave the wogs to look after the wogs.'

And Nan said, ‘I know what it's like to be an outsider in your own country, Fred. That's why.'

I was going to ask her what she meant, but she asked me to bike down to the supermarket because she needed some onions. Those onions meant another big pot of soup was coming.

I try to make it easier for her by doing the heavy housework – chopping the wood for Nan's pot belly in winter and helping Ago fix things that are broken etc. I also keep Nan's vegie garden weeded. After a day at school and all that, I don't need rocking when I go to bed.

Nan's kept all my paintings from primary school, my poetry and woodwork. They are on the fridge and the mantel piece over the fire and the bookshelf. She makes me feel as clever as Michelangelo. And this makes me realise that when people respect each other and help each other, they are happy. Money and power truly can't buy love.

PS ... This is the most I've ever written in one go, probably because I feel so strongly about all this so that I forgot how tough it is to write it all down, but when Mr Quayle saw it, he said, ‘I always knew you could write a heck of a lot more, Dugan. You're a lazy so-and-so, Dugan, pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.'