by Joanna Glen
‘You wait until we get to Spain,’ I said to Zion in our bedroom.
‘You do still want to go, don’t you?’ I said, though I think I might have been asking myself. I thought of mentioning the wind, but the truth is that I didn’t. I know I didn’t.
‘I think the priest wants us to stay,’ said Zion.
‘Why do you think that is?’ I said.
‘I think he wants to put us on a plane back to Burundi,’ said Zion. ‘I think he’s in cahoots with Víctor. He’s trying to tempt us with fishing trips.’
‘I think you may have a point,’ I said. ‘And what do you think we should do?’
‘I think go to Spain, and quickly,’ said Zion. ‘Otherwise it will all be for nothing.’
‘I agree,’ I said as fast as I could, in case I didn’t, I had to be sure I did.
Zion put his thumbs up.
‘Thank you for coming with me, Zion,’ I said, holding up the keyring with the gate key and the boat key, and a tiny plastic dolphin. ‘And for being so brave, Little Bro. And putting up with so much.’
‘Thank you for being braver,’ said Zion. ‘You’re the bravest. You’ve always been the bravest.’
That made me feel good.
Because I didn’t feel brave at all.
‘So shall we do it?’ I said, and I took out my mother’s metal daffodil and stroked it like Aladdin and the lamp, but no genie appeared to magic us to Spain.
‘Let’s do it,’ said Zion. ‘Let’s go and build our new life.’
‘Nothing will ever be the same for us again,’ I said, staring at the daffodil. ‘We’re actually leaving Africa, Zion! We’re off to Europe! Like we said, when we used to look up at the clouds.’
We did our special high-five with the up-down moves, looking into each other’s eyes for signs of cracking or weakness or lack of faith.
‘Will we stay there forever?’ said Zion. ‘Because I never want to go back. We’ll have houses next door to each other on the beach, and we’ll marry and have children and good jobs. When we have the money, we’ll invite the others over and we’ll pay for their plane tickets and we’ll have a huge party on the beach with Spanish wine and flamenco dancing. I can see it all in my mind.’
‘The new life is coming,’ I said, and I put my mother’s metal daffodil back in my pocket, and I tried to believe it.
‘Olé,’ said Zion.
‘Olé,’ I said back.
I left all my money in the priest’s soft leather shoe, and we set off through the dark streets, like children playing a game of hide and seek, creeping past the cubed houses which spilled down the hill, and into the port.
Augusta
My father couldn’t sleep.
He watched the digital clock going round, so he said in the morning, 10.30, 10.33, 10.56 – he always slept well – 11.17, 11.37, 11.51, 00.00, he didn’t like the look of that time, and he was never awake at midnight, so he woke my mother up, to keep him company.
Which, come to think of it, is rather sweet.
Though at the time, I thought it utterly pathetic.
While they were walking about not sleeping and worrying about the gas, and the wind, my father started to get his own gas and wind, as he used to call it, because he hadn’t had a hot meal, and his stomach liked a hot meal in the evening, ideally with potatoes.
Anyway, I assume my father was walking about with his terrible indigestion and I assume my mother might even have been off getting the Gaviscon out of his wash bag when a huge lizard ran out from under the sofa, and my father shrieked into the silent house and woke us all up.
Parfait
As I untied the rope in the port of Tangier, I expected to hear a shout, a searchlight, the roar of an engine.
I expected to be caught.
Wanted to be caught?
I don’t think so.
This was the fulfilment of a dream.
But I was terrified.
Getting through the gate and into the port was easy.
Starting the engine was easy.
I felt myself calm down.
It was going to be OK.
Spain was literally over there.
I was making a fuss about nothing.
We’d be there in no time.
The water in the port was calm, clinking against the side of the boats. But the sea, once we passed the harbour walls and were out in the open, was big – such a big unwieldy thing – bigger than you could imagine if you hadn’t seen it before, even if on a map it looked like a river.
The waves swelled and the boat pitched.
Our stomachs started to groan with the motion.
I tried to stop myself.
Tried.
Tried.
But it was impossible.
The chicken tagine was rolling around my stomach, and I was dizzy, couldn’t stop myself, I threw up over the side of the boat.
Then Zion did.
There was no relief from it.
We felt worse.
We didn’t speak.
It was so dark.
And the rolling sea seemed to be inside our bellies.
I was pretty sure I was still heading in the right direction. I had the compass, and I assumed it was working, but the needle danced in front of me – and I threw up again. The compass slipped out of my hands.
‘Not much longer,’ I shouted through the roar of the sea and the wind, through the acid in my throat, my head swimming.
But the waves were getting bigger all the time, and it was so dark, the sky like tar. I thought maybe we should go back, definitely we should go back, yes definitely, but I didn’t know any more where back was.
‘Tie yourself in,’ I said to Zion because I was terrified. ‘Tie yourself to this rope so you don’t get thrown over.’
I tried to sound strong and calm, but my breathing was laboured now, and the boat wasn’t handling right, it was being knocked about, side to side, up and down, and I was throwing up again, and the waves were getting bigger and coming into the boat, and our feet were soaking wet to our ankles, lurching lurching in the dark, water bursting over the sides as we rocked and rolled, side to side, back, forward, back forward – and I was more frightened by far, by far, than I had ever been in the whole of my frightening life.
‘Tie yourself in,’ I shouted again, slipping on the wet rubber and falling, and getting up, and falling again.
Zion tried to steady himself, but he slipped too, was thrown into the rising water gathering at the bottom of the boat, soaked through now and flailing about.
‘I’m frightened,’ he yelped, lying on his back, struggling to tie the rope to his belt. ‘I want to go back.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, swallowing my own vomit, eyes and throat stinging with salt. ‘It’s OK.’
We were diving down, then flying up to the peak of the swell, and down again, and we were being jolted from one side, and then another, the boat spinning, and from below came what seemed like a giant fist punching the bottom of the boat, and I saw Zion flung down, flipped on his side, smashed into the bow, flattened against the floor, up again, like a ragdoll.
I reached for him.
Augusta
‘As we’re awake,’ my mother said, coming into our room at seven o’clock in the morning, with her fake cheerful voice on, the one she uses when my father is in a sweat, ‘we thought we might go down to the beach and see the sunrise, like Raúl said. We thought we’d go down to our special spot for breakfast. Wouldn’t that be lovely?’
Julia leapt out of bed and opened the shutters.
‘It’s still pretty dark,’ she said.
‘We’ve been up for hours,’ said my mother. ‘Wouldn’t it be special to have breakfast on the beach. In our special spot?’
‘I think I’ll stay,’ I said.
‘What about the lizard?’ said my mother.
‘I like lizards,’ I said.
‘Do you think it’s safe?’ said my mother. ‘Leaving you here. It’s not so much th
e lizard as, you know, strangers.’
‘Of course it’s safe,’ I said. ‘I’m going to turn over and go back to sleep.’
‘I’d prefer you to come with us,’ said my mother.
‘You know she’s not good in the morning,’ said Julia. ‘Let’s leave her. We won’t be long.’
The three of them left, and I was – gloriously – alone.
Which was what I’d been hoping for.
Longing for.
Selfishly.
Yes, so selfishly.
I got up and put on Lola Alvárez’s Moroccan robe, and I wandered from room to room, imagining that the house was mine, that I was a famous writer, who lived here on my own. I thought how much I’d like to spend my whole life writing stories. And perhaps I’d start by telling stories about people in Burundi who never seemed to get their story told anywhere.
I picked up my leather notebook, which I’d bought with my birthday money at the market, and I grabbed my ink pen, and carelessly wrote down anything that came into my head.
Then I went around to the side of the house to climb the steps to the roof terrace, from where I planned to watch the sun rise behind the mountains.
The wind had died, very suddenly, and the clouds were shaped like puffer fish, fat-bodied with little fins and tails. As the sun rose, flaming behind me, the puffer fish clouds swam, in a shoal, down the beach, where I assumed that my mother and father and Julia would see them as they ate their dawn breakfast. The clouds left behind a perfect morning, the sky glowing magenta to indigo to turquoise blue which merged, dazzling, with the sea.
I lay down with the sun on my face, inviting the right words into my brain in A–Z formation as was my way. And here came the words: argan, Berber, carnelian – I started to write. A list in English – A to Z. A list in Spanish, which took me longer.
I still have the lists – they’re here with me in the caravan.
I turn the pages.
Salvación, tragedia, ultramarino.
Ultramarine, the pigment made from lapis lazuli, a brilliant deep blue.
I stared at the sky and I was flying.
Free.
Volante.
Peces volantes.
Flying fish.
We went out on a boat trip that day, where we had a chance of seeing flying fish – though, in the end, we didn’t.
The minute the three of them came back, they started emptying out the beach bags and repacking them with things we might need for the trip. Cagoules in case we got wet on the boat. Camera. A pair of binoculars. A change of clothes. My father put money in the strange plastic container he liked to wear around his neck on the beach.
As they made these preparations, at lightning speed, they didn’t speak to each other.
I stared at them all.
Julia had a red cheek, like one side of her had been burnt by the sun.
‘In the end, we stopped and had breakfast on the beach in front of the shop,’ said my father. ‘We didn’t bother to go down to the end. As I said, we didn’t go down to the end. We had our breakfast in front of the shop.’
‘Did you see how the clouds looked like puffer fish?’ I said, to try and take my mind off my mother and father’s tendency to repeat things.
‘Clouds?’ said my father.
‘Puffer fish?’ said my mother.
‘You must have seen them,’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ said my mother.
‘Julia, did you see the clouds?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘You don’t know what puffer fish look like?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ said Julia.
‘I think Julia’s just excited about the boat trip,’ said my mother.
But it wasn’t excitement I saw in her face.
‘Your cheek looks burnt,’ I said to Julia. ‘Is it sore? Right there …’
I moved my hand towards her cheek.
‘I’ll get the aftersun,’ said my mother a bit too loudly.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Julia, and she didn’t look at me – she looked at the floor.
My mother rushed out of the room and rushed back in again, and then she started slathering the aftersun onto Julia’s cheek, staring into Julia’s eyes, the way she did when she was trying to stop you saying something.
We left in the hire car, accelerating out of the gate with the air conditioning blasting.
I leaned over to Julia.
‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ I whispered.
Julia shrugged and looked out of the window.
‘Have they had an argument?’ I whispered.
She shook her head.
‘Well what happened then? You all seem so stressed out.’
‘Let’s talk when we get there,’ said Julia, and she looked out of the window at the beach, straining her neck.
Parfait
I looked around me at the huge beach.
‘We’re here,’ I said, as the beach spun.
‘We’re here,’ I said again, looking around, closing my salty eyes, rubbing my temples.
‘Zion, we made it,’ I said. ‘We made it!’
I touched my arms to check I was real.
God grant me the serenity.
I tried to find myself, to remember how we got here, to see a picture in my mind of us reaching the beach. But my head spun only with memories of the thwack of waves and the spinning boat and the dark and my feet slipping on wet rubber and the living thing, the ocean, like a broiling liquid beast – and the beach was turning around me, and I was in the centre, and it spun faster.
‘Zion!’ I said, quieter at first, then louder.
‘Zion!’
To accept the things I cannot change.
The courage.
Yes, I must have the courage.
Zion was tying himself into the boat, that’s what I’d told him to do.
‘Zion!’
I felt a jolt inside me.
The giant fist of the wave.
To change the things I can.
And the wisdom.
I couldn’t see the priest’s boat anywhere, but perhaps if I went down to the rocks.
The wisdom, the wisdom.
I got up, with difficulty, legs gelatinous, wondering if I could get myself together to walk. I was rocking, but I pulled myself up and concentrating hard, focusing on a rock, I headed down the beach.
Perhaps if you tie yourself in.
To know the difference.
‘Zion!’ I said.
But there was no answer.
I remembered.
He was flipped like a ragdoll.
But I reached out for him.
Screaming for him.
I leapt into the sea, I was grabbing at the rubber, I was reaching for him, I struggled, I fought, I slipped between the waves, water shot up my nose and in my eyes and burned my throat, and then nothing but turning, turning, nothing but salt and water, and gasping, and praying, and gasping, and fighting, and the sudden shock of sand.
‘Zion!’ I said, dizzy again, watery, spinning.
We shall stay in the country we love, that’s what my father said, didn’t he?
And we’ll go on dreaming of the city that is to come.
Everything went round and round, round and round.
Stop, I said, stop.
I’m falling, I thought.
I’m going to be sick.
The boat isn’t here.
He isn’t here.
I started walking up the beach.
Everything was falling, falling with me, the trees, the three houses along the back of the beach, all sliding down into the sea.
Augusta
At the marine centre in Tarifa, there was a short talk, where the lecturer told us we might see pilot whales, different species of dolphins, flying fish. She told us the seas were filling up with plastic, not only the big Pacific blob we all knew about, but tiny beads of plastic, which fish were eating, which were floating through the baleen
of whales, making their stomachs feel so full that they thought they didn’t need to eat, and swam about, plastically dying.
‘Don’t buy plastic bags,’ said the woman, who had a strong German accent.
‘I definitely won’t,’ I said.
My mother gave me the strange look, as if the rules about plastic didn’t apply to us, they were just something for lectures.
My father was tapping his fingers on the table.
When they held up the photos of the different species of dolphins and whales, I kept saying, ‘I hope we see that one,’ but nobody else spoke. Not even Julia, who normally got excited about things like this.
The dolphins were beautiful. Full of such joy.
I want to be a dolphin, I thought.
I want to be joyful.
As I ran about the deck, right to left, left to right, gasping at every dolphin-leap, Julia stood in one place, staring.
‘You’ll miss them if you stay there,’ I said. ‘You won’t see anything.’
But still she didn’t move.
‘Why are you being so weird?’ I said, and I knew I sounded frustrated, and I didn’t care. ‘Come and see the dolphins with me.’
‘It’s fine,’ she said in an angry voice.
‘It quite obviously isn’t fine,’ I said and I’d raised my voice now, almost to a shout, and my mother turned around to glare at us because this was a public place and she didn’t approve of raising your voice in a public place, she didn’t approve of airing your dirty linen.
And Julia went red in the face and exploded.
‘I’m FINE!’ she said. ‘Can you stop bloody asking me all the time?’
It felt as if every single person on the boat had stopped talking.
And my mother was paralysed at the bow because Julia had sworn in public.
Then a dolphin leapt over to the right.
The volume of voices rose again.
Julia stood at the bow of the boat.
I ignored her.
After the trip, we went to a hot bar in Tarifa which had English television, and my mother wasn’t talking to us.
‘Did something happen on the beach?’ I said to them.
