by Rohan Wilson
‘What are you doing?’ I say. ‘Stop it. Stop.’
Shadi grunts. It’s so like the horseplay of our youth, the beach wrestling, the games of bai bala, that I almost smile. I’ve missed this side of Shadi, the playful and joyous side. But Shadi isn’t playing. There’s pain in my ribs and I grab his wrist and when I raise his hand it’s shiny with blood.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘I stabbed you, cousin.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘I’m going to do it again.’
‘Why?’
Shadi forces my head against the wall. I can’t breathe for the sharpness in my ribs. He forces my head back and, for a time, I can see only the ceiling, the unpainted concrete, the strip lights glued there, and beside it the dark dome of a camera. When he strikes again, it has the deep hot sting of a jellyfish. Foolishly, I’m thinking being stabbed is like being stung by a jellyfish—yes, there’s heat and there’s sharp, deep pain. Yes, quite similar. That’s when I understand I’m going to die. My mind is circling between past and present and landing in foolish places. One moment, I’m on that drifting house at Feydhoo Finolhu, waving to Muslima; the next, I have my head pressed against a toilet stall. One moment, I’m drinking coconut water with Shadi on the Hulhumalé sea wall; the next, I’m wrestling off his bloodied hands. Dying—it’s become a common deed for me. It might be why I’m not in a panic, given all the practice lately.
‘Hey, get off him.’
Hassan’s come back.
‘I said get off him.’
His toothbrush is sticking out of his mouth. In a couple of unhurried steps, he’s on Shadi and scruffing him by the t-shirt and using his well-fed weight to ragdoll Shadi onto the floor. In relief, I drop to my knees. When Hassan tries to kick Shadi in the legs, he spiders backwards and breaks for the exit in a stumble.
‘You crazy shit,’ he calls around his toothbrush.
It feels as though I’ve swallowed that jellyfish now. I look down. The bright green shard is stuck between two of my lower ribs. The pain makes me sweat, makes me tremble. I slump against the stalls. All I can think about is Rin Braden and how much I wish the world could be different, so we could meet in a different time, in a different place, without our earthly worries. There’s blood on my sweatpants. Blood everywhere. With great effort, I loosen the shard and remove it. The blood runs over my t-shirt and I press my hand there but it runs through my fingers anyway, emitting with my heartbeat. There’s nothing else I can do.
‘Well, this is a pretty mess,’ Hassan says.
‘They won’t keep us apart,’ I say. ‘Without you, Anand, life is ash.’
‘Would you stop with that movie crap. This is heavy.’
He takes off his t-shirt to pad the wounds. I’m dizzy enough that I find it hard to keep a grip on it.
‘Push it,’ he says.
‘Do you think there’s anything on the other side?’ I say.
‘Who says that? Kanu?’
‘It’s me. It’s my question.’
‘Then stay on this side, you dope.’
Hassan comes around beneath the camera dome and starts waving his arms. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hey. Help. We need help.’
‘My cousin really hates me,’ I say.
CYC INTERNAL EMAIL, ENTERED AS EVIDENCE IN THE EAGLEHAWK MTC ROYAL COMMISSION AT J84S
From: Jack Slaton, Department of National Integrity
To: Charlie Chadwick, Warden, Eaglehawk MTC
Subject: RE: Client #40575, Daniel Jason Howland
Date: Friday, 9 February 2074
charlie,
client 40575, howland, daniel j, is subject to judicial proceedings so im asking you to delete this msg once you’ve read it. your concerns are valid absolutely valid. its likely his supporters will be the real issue though. theyre a feral bunch. tasmania police will enforce the exclusion zone around the facility for protestors. expect contact from them today to discuss. we have systems in place to control clients like howland. use the system to the fullest.
understand: this goes no further than the two of us. the case against 40575 has not been made public. under the terror at home act the attorney general cant make it public until after he’s been deported. tom always said you were better than him at keeping secrets but he was better at lying so i tell you knowing youre a woman of discretion haha. i miss tom, although probably not a tenth as much as you do. he was a wanker, but a loveable wanker.
you know most of it, right? howland drummed up plenty of attention. mayor of a town on the west coast called tullah where they set up in the communal model. it was big news at the time. they call themselves anarchists though for you and me theyre oldfashioned anticapitalists. the town owns the land through a common fund and everyone shares work duties and draws a regulated wage. that stuff is common knowledge. youll have read about it.
trouble is, howland made enemies when he started pulling that robin hood shit. i mean, they banned all corporate presence in the town. no supermarkets, no chains, no forestry. it worried people. it worried the minister. thats commonly known too, but what you wont know is that federal police started monitoring howland. data. movement. all of it. they found some shocking stuff. he has links to an anarchist group in spain. probably communicates with them through encrypted apps which is illegal. also turns out he doesnt have citizenship haha.
bang, thats all we needed.
born in manchester. brought out by his mother as a four year old and never naturalised. that makes howland a problem for the mother country to deal with. the minister has started the deportation proceedings to send him home. thats why he is coming to your facility. certainly will make for a change; us sending a convict back their way. sometimes i reckon the universe must have a sense of humour.
the charges (and this goes no further than the two of us of course) the charges he faces are mostly around using encryption. serious stuff.
charlie, be careful with him. there will be enormous media attention. dont let him near a phone. dont let him near any visitors. he knows how to manipulate the bloggers and streamers. im ashamed to admit he has some sympathy in the community.
what is the country coming to?
xxx
jack
Rin
Alessandra hugged me and kissed me and said we’re going to love it here and I had to fight the urge to punch her. I didn’t say anything. I was still trying to project my total dissatisfaction with the place. We were standing on a path shaded with coconut palms, staring up at the house. The house—oh boy, what a sight. It was incredible. They’d built it on stilts over a bay. A beach of silver. A sea of blue glass. As much as I wanted to hate it, the little kid inside me squealed with delight. So, you’ve got to imagine me projecting total dissatisfaction for the sake of winning the argument while admitting secretly to myself that maybe Alessandra was on to something. In my defence, I was a lot younger then. Laugh if you like, but remember: I was young.
I loitered around, half stunned, letting my hand trail over the stone countertops and the hardwood tables. The hall was full of hot swathes of equatorial light. There was a hollow through the centre of the house, a light well of glass, with spiral stairs that led down to the water. Wherever you stood you could hear that lapping of waves. You could smell the ocean. It was like the house had torn free and sailed off. Within ten minutes of walking in, I’d fallen begrudgingly in love.
‘What did I tell you. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘I’d rather be in Cancun,’ I said.
‘Oh, shut up.’
I lifted a vase off a side table and looked it over and put it back. I felt like I had to touch everything to make sure it was real.
‘Three weeks,’ Alessandra said. ‘You can last that long.’
I exhaled.
‘Cancun’s not going anywhere. Go to Cancun next year.’
‘It won’t be Cancun next year. It’ll be Florida or somewhere else I’ve been a hundred times.’
The beach house
was built on an island called Feydhoo Finolhu, about twenty minutes in a boat from Malé. The island had once been a prison of some kind. It might as well have still been a prison. I didn’t want to spend three weeks there with my mother. I must have been about twenty at the time. A sophomore at Yale. I wanted to go on spring break with Daisy and Luciana, the two friends I’d made. Daisy and Luciana were in Cancun, of course.
On the flight over I’d watched their live feeds. They were in swimsuits on a rooftop pool of some hotel. Blowing kisses to me through the camera. Luciana’s father owned the company that made EnergyBliss, the cannabis lemonade. He’d sponsored a music festival and brought in VIPs on private jets. They’d been at parties with Hype-Lo, the rapper. Darnell Laurent, the baller. And here I was, spending spring break in the Maldives with my mother.
‘Three weeks,’ Alessandra said. ‘I have meetings for a few days. After that it’s you and me.’
‘Meetings with who?’
‘The president. Ministers. Important people.’
‘Like I’m not important.’
‘Earthquakes, floods, fires and daughters. Yeah, we know you’re important.’
That’s why she’d bought the place in the Maldives, so she could be near these people of high importance. I didn’t know what sort of money was in it, but it had to be tens of millions. She wouldn’t come this far for less than tens of millions. The gig? Finding bodies to fill the new facilities Cabey-Yasuda had built in Australia. The Maldives brimmed with the internally displaced, the refugees from sunken islands, and Alessandra figured she could make a pitch for some of them. I mean, where else would they go when their country drowned?
‘Besides, you’ve got work to do,’ she said.
‘Don’t I know it.’
‘Time to learn how the company works.’
‘I know how it works.’
Alessandra crossed her arms. ‘You know how it works?’
‘We build McDungeons. We profit out of people’s misery.’
‘They’re criminals. They deserve to be miserable.’
I didn’t say anything. What was the point?
‘Finish your review. And stay away from the weed. They whip girls caught smoking weed here.’
Alessandra left for Malé in a water taxi. Time slowed with the gravity of the heat. I sat on a sunbed on the front balcony flicking through brochures for luxury spas and salons and watching Daisy and Luciana at a beach party with Rock Joe, the pro gamer. They danced, they drank. Rock Joe rifled a can of EnergyBliss down his throat and crushed the can on his forehead. We miss you, we love you, they said. I took off the glasses. I lay back and watched the seabirds hover in the breeze. Watched them dive. The dark shapes of reefs below the surface. After a while I stood and tied my hair in a topknot and went inside to find the house boy.
He was unpacking our luggage in a wardrobe in the master bedroom, squatting in his neatly pressed shorts. When I came into the room he stood and stepped back and made a small bow. A tropical heat passed over me. I fanned myself with a brochure. He was unreasonably beautiful—heavy-jawed, hard-eyed, with skin the colour of strong tea. Alessandra only hired the best-looking men. Most of the time that made me angry. Not this time. The house boy stood with his arms by his sides waiting.
‘Hey, ahh,’ I said. ‘You speak English?’
His eyebrows drew in a brief expression of doubt. ‘Of course.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Yamaan.’
‘Yemen?’
‘Yamaan.’
‘Whatever. Listen, I mean I know it’s haram so I’ll understand if you can’t do it.’ He was watching me intently. I figured he didn’t understand English as well as he made out. ‘But I was hoping, you know, hoping you might help me buy some weed,’ I said. ‘Or hash. Or whatever you people smoke around here.’
The house boy frowned.
‘You know anywhere?’ I said.
‘Haram, yes. It’s also illegal.’
‘Right. I know.’
He looked me up and down. Not in a dirty way, not like a college guy. He was making an appraisal.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I’m an American. The cops won’t touch me.’
‘It’s not the police. It’s your mother that worries me.’
‘She won’t even know.’
‘I could lose my job.’
‘Not if you’re good at keeping secrets. Come on.’
‘Do you keep the secret or does the secret keep you? That’s the problem.’
It was hard to be sure if he was serious. His expression never changed.
‘You’re not going to get fired.’
‘I sincerely hope not.’
A moment passed where he just stared at me. The natural dip of his eyebrows made his gaze seem intense. ‘My cousin,’ he said. ‘My cousin will know.’
‘Great. You’re saving my life. I mean, saving it. For real.’
The service that hired out Yamaan sent a dhoni to Feydhoo Finolhu three times a week to take him back to Malé. We’d been told by the service that he’d have Alessandra’s suits dry-cleaned and stock up on whatever we wanted, except alcohol. He wouldn’t carry alcohol, nor would he be available during prayer times. Otherwise, he would do as he was asked. I could have lived without weed for a week or two if I’d had some wine. The way I figured it, it was Yamaan’s fault I couldn’t drink so he owed me a good time.
Later that day I went on the dhoni with him. I had plaited my hair and pinned it back. This was before Houston. My hair was still long and black and so straight it would barely hold a braid. I remember I dressed in a shirt and pants. It was hot and the pants were killing me but I’d been to Turkey. To Jordan. I knew how it worked in these countries.
‘You should cover your hair as well,’ Yamaan said.
The dhoni pulled away. I stood in the prow tying a scarf over my head while Yamaan crouched in the stern. I couldn’t stop myself from taking sidelong glances at him. The shape of his arms in his polo shirt. The intensity of his eyes. He was like the guy you’d cast as the married woman’s temptation in a sexy movie. It didn’t help that I was slightly older than him. Everything about the situation just revved me up.
I came along the gunwale, holding tight, and bracing myself against the movement of the deck. He had an old pair of Apple glasses—before they slimmed down the arms—and from the way he would flick the air in front of him every so often I could tell he was reading. My shadow fell across him. He looked up.
‘What is it?’ I said.
He took off the glasses. ‘Sorry?’
‘Your book. What is it?’
He looked at the glasses and he looked at me. ‘Al-Hakîm al-Tirmidhî,’ he said.
I nodded like I knew who that was.
‘It’s dense,’ he said. ‘But I’m beginning to understand.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I feel his words here.’ He touched the company logo on his shirt or maybe touched his heart. I couldn’t be sure which.
‘You’re a student?’ I said.
‘I almost had my PhD in literature before my father left. Now I have to work to support my mother.’
‘Where’d he go?’
‘Maafushi island.’
‘Right. So you read that stuff for fun?’
‘No. I want to learn how to live a good life.’
I looked at the roughness of his hands, the cheap runners he wore, the cheap oil in his hair. He had a lot to learn about the good life.
‘Al-Hakîm al-Tirmidhî has an interesting philosophy.’
‘I don’t go much for the philosophers.’
‘He says we are created with a piece of flesh called Heart. Its troops are intellect and mindfulness and knowledge of God. Its object is the preservation of the limbs.’
He spoke like he was talking about the most important thing ever. It just sounded confusing to me. I was never much of a reader, at least not outside of my textbooks at Yale.
‘Arranged against the He
art are the troops of the Psyche. Psyche inclines towards the yearnings and appetites and adornments of life. Its object is the imprisonment of the Heart and the disempowering of it.’
The dhoni rose and fell on the water. I held the handrail tightly.
‘Whoever loses a battle with his Psyche,’ he said. ‘Whoever loses that battle has no power left to restrict or control his cravings and his depths become a base of the enemy’s force. But lose a battle with your Heart and you grow listless and your love of life wanes. For the Heart will take sovereign authority in matters otherwise belonging to the deeper limbs of the soul.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Okay.’
‘There’s a battle,’ he said. ‘In each of us. Do you believe that?’
I smiled with the corner of my mouth. ‘Should I?’
‘Yes. It’s a battle for knowledge. For understanding. Where the troops of the Heart face the troops of the Psyche.’
He looked at me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t know what to say.
‘They fight,’ he said. ‘From the fight emerges knowledge. You see? This is what I’ve learned from al-Tirmidhî. That from the fight emerges knowledge.’
‘Knowledge of the self,’ I said.
‘The self. The soul. Call it whatever you like.’
He might have thought to say more, to explain how this pertained to us here in the real world, but something seemed to stop him. I suppose it was probably my expression. A smirk? It felt to me like a smile, caused, to be totally honest, by the thought of undressing him right there on the deck. Like, his jaw was the most perfectly shaped jaw I’d ever seen, as square as the grille of a football helmet. I was hardly even listening to what he said. Whatever the case, he put on the glasses and returned to his reading.
I made a decision then. Three weeks I had to stay here. Three weeks, with nothing else to do. Maybe I’d fuck this house boy if I found the chance. Anyway, it was something to think about.
The dhoni tied up at a pier among the white fibreglass cruisers and trawlers and luxury yachts. Yamaan jumped off and then he held his hand out to me. I tried not to meet his eyes. He didn’t need to know what I was thinking. When I took his hand, I held it a little too long, just to suggest the possibility to him. The long summer afternoons of possibility.
