The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis Read Free Book Online Page B

weeds. Part of the high wall was pushed down, as if by a bulldozer. The front door was gone, the interior fire-scarred in the shadows. He had a sudden revelation that his fleeting seconds on this same pavement two and a half years before had marked the house. That this was all part of his story and he had only the flimsiest hold on who he was in the world. The loss washed over him, pummelled him before he could deflect it. He was choking, again, again. A passing old man with broken teeth chanted in a singsong voice, ‘ Tears of parting sorrow over the cold ash of the beloved’s campfire ,’ and then winked at him. ‘You’re too young, sonny!’
    He walked away, still feeling the ghostly press of Ali’s lips, feeling his sight darken and blister, and his legs weaken.
    Who was Ali? Who was Dhurgham Mohammad As-Samarra’i?

D hurgham stepped off the plane into a buffet of humid heat. Indonesia. Indonesia leapt in to greet him with the call of the muezzin floating over lush green palms, heady green verges. Green. He felt the joy of it course through him. He was just fourteen; he was in a new land, beginning a new life. He had been on an aeroplane for the first time in his life. He could feel Damascus leaving him like an old stink peeling off under a hot shower.
    He walked into the sudden cool of the terminal building with the others and stood with a kind of happy uncertainty in a sequence of queues.
    The Indonesian official looked him in the eye and stamped his false passport without looking at it. Dhurgham came down to earth. He walked away with something nagging him. That official, he knew . His happy sense of freedom drained away. Mr Hosni and Mr Leon had of course arranged it.
    Finding Mr Leon’s contact in the car park was easy. A cluster of bewildered Iraqi and Afghan boys, covered women and shy, exhausted-looking children huddled together, eyeing everyone who passed. A dirty white minibus pulled up with Hotel Intan Sunray written on the side in English. The lettering formed the calyx of a magenta and orange flower. They were herded on by a hand-flapping Indonesian who seemed to know only rude words in Arabic. Their driver, by contrast, spoke Arabic and Dari, and said everything in both. Mr Leon, their driver said, had it all arranged. Mr Leon was the best travel agent, the best. They would be staying at the beautiful Hotel Intan Sunray in glorious Indonesia. They were to relax, recuperate until their boat was made ready to take them to freedom and prosperity in Australia.
    â€˜Boat?’ a voice interjected with a rising inflection. She was a thin young woman in chador, clutching two children in a white-knuckled grip.
    â€˜Not boat, madame—ship! A Titanic, with three swimming pools,’ the driver said waggishly, ‘Not to forget the bathers!’
    The Hotel Intan Sunray was halfway between a hotel and a hostel. It was owned, their driver had said, by Mr Leon’s brother-in-law. It was beautiful to Dhurgham but he couldn’t enjoy it. All the staff knew. He heard ‘taliby-l-luju’,‘asylum seekers’, muttered here and there.
    He became acutely conscious of the difference between his clothing and that of genuine tourists. He blushed as only fourteen year olds can over his sneakers, his jeans, his shirt, his hairstyle, his downy upper lip, his Arab eyes, his language, his overgrown fingernails and his lack of swimming trunks. He pestered his fellow travellers for a set of nailclippers and made a mess of his own hair trying to cut it. He tried to wear a keffiyeh to cover his damaged hair but took it off almost in tears after he got a filthy look from a beautiful American backpacker. The week spent on the gracious lawns and around the shining pool, in the foyer under the woodcarvings or with six others in the room, was agony.
    The food was strange—rice, bean shoots, peanut sauce. He was curious and asked what everything was. He ate everything. He