The Marsh Birds (9 page)

It was a prison, no doubt about that. Dhurgham was faintly surprised. He wondered fleetingly whether anyone knew him, then dismissed the possibility. No one here knew him or Mr Hosni. They were in
Australia
.

The double perimeter fence, the blade-threaded wire rolled at the top, the disdain on the guards' faces—none of these seemed real. He stood up tall and expanded his fourteen year old chest. He was in a new country, among new people, freed from the terrible boat journey, freed from the grim drone and shudder of the road trip and the huddle with the others in the alien buses. He was tens of thousands of miles away from Mr Hosni. The wire, and the desert surrounding it, were a simple impediment, a short insignificant hiatus to be handled with grace and fortitude. His eyes shone and the guards looked at him as though he were mad. The mothers looked and saw a beautiful baby in the long, too-thin body, but their hands and hearts were too full and their own fears too pressing to do more than note it.

Sometime on that first day in Mawirrigun Aliens Processing Centre, Dhurgham suddenly thought his parents might be here, right here—and, if not, then somewhere in this country. It was the first time in a long while that he had thought of them in the present and he was for a moment washed with guilt and a strange reluctance to bring them to life again, to feed his hope. He felt dizzy. Then to his horror he could not recall their faces. His mother's form, movement, voice; but not her face. Nura's hair. His father's cloak. No more. But he might see them, any minute now! He was only four weeks away from Damascus—they could so easily be here before him! His heart lurched with guilt, hope and pain; he peered through chinks and wire to get glimpses of the people who occupied the main part of the centre. He and the two hundred and seventy-three boys from the
Hibiscus
were held separately. Later he found out that this was to make sure no one helped them. If they failed to say the right words, they were slipped into the deportation quota without a hearing, staying in this isolation wing until, bewildered and afraid, they were flown out of the country again to who knows where. This weeded out many of the uneducated, several of the younger children and all those who had not been as carefully briefed as Dhurgham. They were the unwanted the world over, he was later told.

The isolation wing was tense, with mothers rocking crying children, white-faced themselves at the indignities and petty cruelties some of the staff inflicted; bewildered by the kindness shown by others. One man sobbed, forbidden from contacting either his brother in Sydney or his family in Iraq in case someone helped him with the magic words. When he said that his family would not know whether he was dead or alive, an AID guard laughed. But this first day, Dhurgham was too happy and still too detached from the world to mind much. He merely noticed these things and remembered them later.

One by one, over several weeks, the boys of the
Hibiscus
were interviewed and were either left there to be deported or were sent into the main centre. The families from other boats could give no more information than the boys themselves had. No one in isolation knew why some were rejected and some accepted, as those who were accepted for processing didn't return to the isolation wing. One family ahead of Dhurgham were interviewed separately. The mother and the two daughters went straight into the main centre. The bewildered father and ten year old son returned and queued miserably every day for the interview they didn't understand was over.

Dhurgham was four weeks in isolation before he had his interview. He had stopped hoping that Nura was just the other side of the fence and had tried to calm himself to a rational expectancy. He had stopped straining to see whether he could catch a glimpse of his parents. He had once seen in the distance a slim woman in a white hijab with a very tall, willowy daughter and had told himself in rising excitement that Nooni would be grown up by now. His mother, he thought, might wear a white hijab now, thinking that he, Dhurgham, was dead. How exciting for them to discover him alive, to find what a journey he had made all by himself! But time dragged on and he tried to amuse himself by playing with the frustrated children who milled about, all well past their first fears and thoroughly bored. He was the only person unencumbered by stress and hardly tormented by the thought of a family elsewhere that might be yearning for news of him. It had been too long; and, if they were here, how he would surprise them! He was young and free. He could float around smiling, playful, untouched and giving.

In that first month, as the tension and bewilderment of their circumstances and the inexplicable behaviour of the guards had them all on edge and snappy, Dhurgham's bright, hopeful face and endless play with the children brought him close to many families. And in that first month he stayed somehow half detached and happy, rocked in the cradle of the terrible boat journey, remembering it with clarity, without fear, even occasionally with a strange pleasure.

His first interview was very brief. There was an interpreter, a middle-aged Lebanese man who looked at him in an unfriendly way, and a blank-faced official seated at a white table with a computer on it. Dhurgham told them who he was, his real name falling off his lips with a sweet sound and a bright inner pleasure. He stated that he was fourteen, from Iraq, and that he sought the protection of Australia from the certain horrible death that would await him in Iraq if he were returned; and he asked for their personal benevolence and indulgence in considering his youth and circumstances. He said he could see that they were men of honour and that Australia was a land of peace and happiness. He was glad they didn't ask many details, for he realised in that moment that he really didn't know anything about why it was dangerous for him in Iraq. He had heard many terrible stories from his fellow passengers and knew their reasons for fleeing, but had no idea about his own. He waffled vaguely about Saddam Hussein and, suddenly inspired by what others had told him, about the secret police. He was asked where his identity papers were and he told them he had left Iraq without them and then travelled on a false passport in a false name, a passport he threw overboard, as his travel agent had told him he should. The official was inscrutable. The translator sneered at him in a particularly Arab way and said something at the same time to the official. The official shrugged. A slim manila folder with his name on it was stamped; he was given the ID number RRN 230 and told to memorise it; and then he was in the searing and vapour-shaken heat of Florida Compound, the main part of the centre.

Dhurgham's donga could house sixteen but was less than half full when he moved in. Dhurgham was put in with the boys—rowdy, cheery, annoying boys, big and little. At first he was offended by their immaturity and then he found that the boys had a much better time than anyone else and he joined them.

He was at first delighted with the remoteness, secrecy and security of Mawirrigun. He felt an irrepressible happiness and his step had a spring to it. No doubt about it, this was a new opportunity for life. And the guards were mostly nice, especially once you got to know them.

He even prayed, feeling like a little kid. He had not prayed formally since leaving the mosque. Lots of people prayed, usually desperately, but Dhurgham prayed, smelling his clean palms, delighted. He felt special, chosen, saved even, and that was good cause to pray.

Mr Hosni would have a great deal of trouble finding him. Out in this red desert where he had a number, not a name! But he tried not to think about Mr Hosni. He liked the feel of the heat sizzling around him. He liked his thin warm brown arms and the red sand running between his fingers.

He was wary of men but befriended women and children in the centre easily. Many of the men here glowered with rage and shame, hopelessness and humiliation. They were strange and frightening to be around.

He quickly established that Nura, his mother and father were not there, and not known to have been there in the past. Mawirrigun was an old camp of some kind with new fencing and new demountables. Issam Dawsary and Julia Aquino, the oldest known inmates, had been there for eighteen months, and Julia said that they were with the first boatload to be imprisoned there. Dhurgham was jolted by the word prison; Julia was the first person he heard use it.

Dhurgham could not get to all compounds but nonetheless found out something of each of the seven hundred and fifty-four inmates who were not in initial processing in Vanuatu Compound. The centre was divided into seven compounds with the names of exotic holiday destinations. Some he had heard of: Hawaii, Fiji. Others, such as Vanuatu, Bali, were new to him. The main compound, Florida, had on the far side another small isolation compound named Paradise, reserved for wrongdoers. He found out that Australia had eleven such centres but his hopes barely flickered. The country was not real to him. His family quickly faded again, present to him as a dreamy ache that he suppressed. Occasionally, when he felt bored and trapped, he put it down to the ache, not the wire, and he almost wished he were some precocious street child of Damascus—cheeky, nameless, stateless— survivor born free.

On his second day in the communal dongas after his interview, Dhurgham noticed a girl about his age with breasts. They were small, very pointed, round. They lifted her abaya, making it swirl around her belly, long legs and fine, dusty ankles. It had to be the breasts, for no other girl walked like that. He stared at her feet to avoid watching her breasts. He wandered back to his donga, thinking. That movement, that sway! He lay down on his bunk and recalled the image of her breasts again and again until he wore it out. ‘Ma sha' Allah!' he said aloud, feeling the delight of a small transgression in even commenting on such beauty. Breasts! He felt as though he was the first person ever to notice them, ever to find such wonder and appreciation. They wobbled, firmly, softly. So round! He fingered his own nipple. Hers must be three times the size, at least, to be able to make the faint point in her abaya. And then his cock thickened and he stroked his hands down his bare belly, feeling himself rush through his skin and hands out to the tip of his taut penis. He touched it in delight. It was a sign. Here, all was right with the world. His body sang. His body was right.

Of course he would marry her. It would be difficult, as he had no parents to speak for him; but then, everything was different here.

He couldn't stand it any more. He leapt up to find her again.

He discovered that Thurayya Zahr lived with her mother and three other family groups in a donga four down from his. Thurayya! The name thrilled him. So fine sounding with his own. Dhurgham As-Samarra' i and Thurayya Zahr. She had a walk that made him dizzy.

After two weeks Thurayya stopped wearing her veil. She swayed around the compound with her mother, wearing the maddening abaya and a white embroidered hijab. Dhurgham followed her in an ecstasy of shyness and expectation until she turned around. She had a narrow face and huge dark eyes that for a moment Dhurgham thought unbearably beautiful. She looked him straight in the face and laughed.

‘Mother-fucker,' she hissed.‘Cock-sucker. In your wildest dreams and then only my bum hole.'

His love for Laila Qahramani was of much longer duration. She was sixteen and Christian. Laila never affronted him. She didn't notice him. She could speak English and taught as a volunteer in the classes. The brush of her abaya on his forearm burned for hours. He would convert her, he thought. His steadfast punctuality and one hundred percent attendance in her classes would slowly attract her attention and she would see that he was a man of good character and decent aspirations.

His love for Laila only faded when he noticed Marwa. He had taken to staring surreptitiously at all the women and girls, studying them, trying to get a notion of their shape, their different forms, their breasts, necks, faces, legs. They were endlessly fascinating, endlessly different from each other. Marwa was just another object of fascination at first.

But Marwa became a friend, and his feelings about her body and his love became much more complicated. At the height of their friendship, he thought with some pride that he was really becoming a man, really learning to be responsible about passion. At the height of their friendship, he stopped staring at other women. He noticed them but without needing to divert himself all day with studying them.

Dhurgham noticed Marwa first because of her eyes. They were gazelle's eyes. Large, almond-shaped, black-rimmed. She was also tiny. She was about the size he was when he was maybe ten years old. And she had breasts—perfect, conical, pointy ones, with nipples pointing outwards. They were, suddenly, his favourite sort.

She was like a perfect miniature woman.

Marwa was dark and fiery. She spoke to him first, which shocked him. He didn't know that girls like her could do that. She was from Somalia but spoke perfect Arabic.‘I am as Arab as you are,' she said haughtily. She was pleased to tell him what an ignoramus he was about everything. Within two weeks they were as inseparable as they could be while flattering themselves that they were preserving the secrecy of their friendship.