On Fragile Waves

by E. Lily Yu

  The agent stepped smiling out of their tent, thrust his hands in his pockets, and went on his way.

  Funny, Atay said, as Firuzeh rejoined them. He laid his heavy hand lightly on Firuzeh’s hair. I’m still tired. I expected to be more—well, less tired.

  You’ll feel better tomorrow, Abay said.

  But we have so much to decide! Where we’ll go, how we’ll live—

  We’ll decide all that tomorrow, Abay said. For now—oh, look at us. Let’s see if the showers have any water. Please, Firuzeh, don’t make that face. I can’t remember the last time either of you got a good scrub.

  Indonesia, Nour muttered.

  That thunderstorm.

  Then we must have whole continents caked onto us. Grab your things now, let’s go.

  I’ll stay here, Atay said, and watch the tent.

  Oh no you don’t, Omid. You stink worst of all.

  So, you’re leaving, Nasima said to her.

  Oh yes. As soon as we can, or sooner. Nour says, fuck all these motherfuckers. Fuck our detainee numbers. Fuck these fences. That’s how I feel too.

  The moon was a slender yellow boat rowing through a drift of cloud. Firuzeh had lain awake for hours, waiting for Nasima to call her name.

  What will you do? she said to the dead girl.

  I told you. Wherever you go, I’ll go with you. We’ll be sisters. We’ll be best friends, you and me. It’s not like you have anybody else.

  What if—

  What if what?

  Nothing.

  You’ll need me, Firuzeh. Wait and see.

  They were both quiet then. The whispering of the distant sea hung like a bright diamond in each of their ears.

  I hate this place, Firuzeh said. I won’t miss it at all.

  That sounds about right.

  But tonight—it’s almost beautiful.

  Moonlight washed the gnawed coral pinnacles, frosted the skeletal phosphate cranes, and drenched the canvas tents where a hundred dreamers dreamed gray, grim, and miserable dreams. The sky was salted with stars.

  Nasima said, There’s something about beginnings and endings. That polishes them so smooth you can nearly see your face in them. Then you open your hands and let them go, and the current pulls you onward and away. Behind you, those stones sink down to the mud, where no one will ever find them again.

  Or maybe I’ve gone crazy from not sleeping, Firuzeh said. That happened to one of my cousins during the war. Forty days without sleep, he was so scared, Atay said. Then he ran screaming out of his house and into the street. They shot him immediately. No one knows which side, but it doesn’t matter.

  Well, you’re already outside your tent. If you want to scream—

  Tell me what Australia will be like.

  Cruel, but a different kind of cruelty. Lonely. Harder than you could ever imagine.

  Are you sure? Have you been there?

  I can hear my parents dreaming from a great distance. Like a few notes of a song you half remember when you hear someone humming it somewhere.

  They’re giving us visas called T-P-Vs. The V stands for visa. I think a T-P is a kind of home.

  Nasima said: I don’t remember what home means anymore.

  Firuzeh said: Home is where you’re safe, but sometimes it’s not safe. Sometimes it’s not yours, but you can shut your eyes and pretend it is. And your family is there, and you fight and kiss. There’s a bar on the gates, so no one can walk in unless you invite them. And when you do invite them, you offer them tea. And home is your school and your friends and your town.

  That sounds nice, Nasima said, and was silent again.

  It was bright in the tent, the light lemony. Abay was packing with neat flicks and tucks: spare clothing; rupiahs, afghanis, and cents; two photos creased past recognition; the mobile, dead with water, confiscated when they arrived.

  Abay said, Have you told your friends goodbye?

  Don’t have any, Nour said.

  Firuzeh said: Friends?

  You should go tell them. Later you’ll wish that you did.

  Abay latched the suitcase.

  The bus comes in an hour, so you’ll have to be quick.

  Firuzeh stood under the tamanu tree and called Zahra’s name, twice, then three times.

  Zahra emerged, looking rumpled and badly unslept.

  Hey, you. What did I tell you?

  We’re leaving, Firuzeh said.

  Back to Kabul?

  No, Melbourne. In Australia.

  Isn’t that lucky. When do you go?

  Today. In an hour. Less, actually. I should go back.

  Hang on.

  Zahra vanished into her tent. Then returned, her arms full.

  Okay. Hold out your skirt.

  She dropped bags of crisps and popcorn into Firuzeh’s skirt, stuffed chocolates in her pockets, wedged colas under her arms. As a finishing touch, she tucked a cigarette behind Firuzeh’s ear. That’s for your father.

  Khala Zahra, this is too much!

  This is a time to celebrate. And I doubt you have anything to celebrate with. Besides, you called me Khala, and you came to say goodbye.

  She lit a cigarette of her own and clamped it tight between her teeth.

  Don’t let them break you or turn you hard. This world is a harsh place and not made for you.

  Khala Zahra, you’re crying.

  Don’t be silly. I don’t cry.

  Will you be okay?

  Always am. Go back before you miss the bus—and don’t you drop those!

  They boarded their flight at Nauru’s tiny airport. Although the plane was all but empty, they sat as close together as they could. Atay held Nour’s hand; Abay, Firuzeh’s. Firuzeh’s heart beat as loud as a rabbit’s. At any moment an officer might come by to tell them, so sorry, Mr. Daizangi, there’s been a mistake—

  Where in the world did you get these, Firuzeh?

  A friend.

  I thought you didn’t have friends.

  I guess I was wrong, Firuzeh said.

  She unwrapped a bar of Turkish delight and held each bite in her mouth for a minute. The chocolate coated her tongue and teeth. The jelly dissolved.

  The plane taxied away from the gate. Suddenly Firuzeh was compressed into her seat. Her teeth began to throb and ache. Outside the round window, Nauru shrank to a spot.

  Beginnings and endings sank like stones through the mind.

  Several hours later, they fell out of the blue and shining sky, down and down, into autumn, and Melbourne, and a blood-thicking cold.

  PART

  TWO

  Chapter One

  In Melbourne you could find anything you wanted, if you had the money and knew where to look. On the weekends when Atay had to meet with a caseworker, the entire family took the train into town. From their crane-littered suburb it was a short ride. Firuzeh stood and swayed, staring, as grey eucalyptus, mica towers, and concrete flats rushed past.

  Flinders Street Station, glazed gold on the inside, echoed like an enormous shell. Metal trams screeched and clanged in the street. Traffic signals clicked and flittered: walk, walk, wait. Steam curled and coiled in alleyways. Graffiti glistened and glowed on walls.

  Every time they passed the State Library Victoria, Atay pointed to the statue in front.

  It’s Rostam slaying the dragon! And Rakhsh with him! How did these Australians know?

  Abay kept a tight grip on Nour’s slight shoulder. Otherwise he hurled himself at every shop window rainbowed with candy, fussing until Atay scooped him up or he was permitted a cheekful of lollies.

  Disgraceful, Abay sighed. You weren’t like this when we lived in Kabul. What happened, Nour?

  Nour shrugged and chewed.

  Firuzeh would sooner have died of shame than mash her face into shop windows like Nour. Her teachers wrote notes about her polite shyness that Abay and Atay could not translate.

  What does this say? Atay asked, holding one up.

  It says I am the best possible daughter, that my
homework is without equal in my class, and you should thank God for blessing our family with me.

  Atay snorted. Very funny. What does it really say?

  That I’m polite and very quiet.

  Even funnier. You?

  Can’t help it, she said. I was raised that way.

  But the Firuzeh who slapped one palm on her desk and shot her other hand high into the air, the Firuzeh fizzing with answers and fishing for praise, had been left in a locked-up, empty house on a dusty street in a past Kabul.

  The other students twittered and chirped, words flickering and flashing too quickly to catch. Firuzeh laughed slowly and laughed last, under impatient, silent stares, on the rare occasions when she grasped the joke. She never found herself on the right page of the book, much less the right paragraph, and she blushed and sank low when her teachers called her name. It did not matter which class she sat in; maths, English, or science, it was all the same. She was unprepared, ignorant, behind.

  Morning recess was her only reprieve. The whole primary school spilled into the yard, where chalk faces and game squares whitened the asphalt. Gaggles of children, Nour among them, shouted What time is it, Mister Wolf, then scattered with shrieks.

  Nour never had trouble making friends.

  Firuzeh, meanwhile, stood in a shady corner and watched, wishing she were young enough to join in. It was nevertheless a relief to be briefly invisible, and not pinned like an insect by the teacher’s finger.

  This lasted six weeks, give or take. Then a Greek girl from maths class, Mia, walked up to Firuzeh and stuck out a hand. Two other girls trailed her, one pimpled, one peeved.

  Gulalai here says you’re a queue jumper. Is that true? Did you come here in a boat? What was that like? Mia swung her head, and her rhinestone earrings flashed. Could you shower? Did it stink? Did anyone drown?

  This is Gulalai, the sugar-spotted girl said, patting the third girl’s shoulder. In case you wanted to punch her. I’m Shirin. Gulalai’s gullible, so please excuse her.

  Am not.

  She repeats whatever’s blabbed on TV. Welcome to Australia, I guess.

  You people, Gulalai said, didn’t wait your turn. Your visas should have gone to my uncle and aunt. Her face was flushed.

  Gul, Dad calls the Immigration Minister a right bastard. A lot of what he says isn’t true.

  That’s a pollie for you, Mia said with a shrug.

  Shirin said: So we figured—I figured—you didn’t have any friends.

  Mia said, beaming: We decided to let you join us for now.

  Gulalai said, I didn’t.

  Shut up, Gulalai.

  Mia said, You don’t have to listen to her.

  Firuzeh said, Actually, I have a friend.

  Where is she? Shirin said, spinning to scan the schoolyard.

  Not—not here. Her family’s gone to a city called Perth.

  Mia said, That’s so far west you fall off the continent.

  Shirin said, She doesn’t count.

  Gulalai said, squinting, I think you’re lying. I think she doesn’t exist.

  In the mazy April sunlight, it was possible to believe her. Nauru was thousands of miles away, nothing left of it but a pebble in Firuzeh’s pocket. Perhaps even now Nasima sat on a throne of foam and counted herds of sea serpents and cuttlefish, the memory of Firuzeh washed blank and smooth, like writing on intertidal sand. Perhaps Firuzeh had moved into a simpler world, where dead girls stayed dead and living girls played, innocent of mortar, rifle, and mine.

  Shirin said: We all know about your imaginary friends, Gul.

  Tell Froozay, Mia said. It’s Froozay, right? That’s what Mrs Pierce calls you . . .

  Or not simpler, but different.

  Gulalai said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Oh, Gul, come on. You used to tell us all about them. How you’d talk for hours while bullets zapped your house. They’d hide with you and say when to get up. When to stay down. Then they’d tell you stories—

  Gulalai’s face had grown blotchy and dark. I didn’t, Shirin. I never said that. Stop.

  Can’t take what you dish, Mia said, clicking her tongue. Don’t cry now. You wouldn’t feel so bad if you weren’t such a cunt to Froozay here.

  It’s not fair, Gulalai said. Five minutes and you’ve gone and ruined everything. Just like a queue jumper. Boat trash. Bitch.

  Firuzeh said in Dari, I spit on your mother.

  Shirin laughed and clapped her hands.

  Gulalai said, You watch your back.

  I don’t have to, Firuzeh said. I have friends.

  That’s what you think. You’ll see. Some friends.

  Gulalai spun around and swept inside.

  Mia said, Now what was that about?

  Our Firuzeh has guts.

  That’s good. We need guts. Guts and brains.

  Shirin said, Gulalai can be fun, but she’s two sandwiches short of a picnic. You seem much sharper than her. Are you, Firuzeh?

  Yes, Firuzeh said. Would have said the same if the given quality had been reptilian, feckless, or weak. Yes to anything; she’d be all of these. Already the weeks of her lonely watch were dimming in her memory. Already new courage flowed molten in her veins. She could climb mountains now. Crush automobiles.

  For a moment she wondered if Gulalai’s unseen friends were drowned, burned, shot—had names—if they, like Nasima, had once lived and breathed.

  And then the bell rang, and the thought was lost to her.

  Chapter Two

  Every day, Atay searched for work. He rode buses on routes that spiralled farther and farther from home, watching for garages. When he spotted a likely prospect through the window, he pulled the cord and got off at the next stop. If the owners were Afghan or Iranian, he was invited in for a cup of tea.

  By and by, the ordinary, courteous questions always looped around to his visa status.

  Ah, TPV, now that is hard—

  We already have all the men we need—

  Someone will want you, I’m sure of it.

  When the owners were white, there was no tea, which was a blessing on his poor abused bladder, he said. Their questions, too, were different.

  Do you have your own tools?

  You speak English, mate? English? You—speak?

  Sorry, you seem like a good bloke, but we can’t use you here.

  And at each place Atay would nod his thanks and leave, desperately wishing to use the bathroom but too embarrassed to ask. He slipped into fast food joints instead.

  He drank, he told Abay, whole oceans of tea.

  But no job, she said.

  But no job.

  In the evening, after dinner was cleared off from the flowered plastic dastarkhan, Abay and Atay had Firuzeh sit and review her language homework with them. At these times, Nour smartly disappeared.

  Her materials were deadly dull. The girl Anna had a blue face. No one knew why. She might be a dead girl, Firuzeh suggested. Her teacher had raised her eyebrows at this. The lizard was named English, and that too went unexplained.

  We go thorough terrees—

  Through, Atay.

  No, through is, I through ti ball.

  That’s throw.

  Yes, yes, Abay said. Anna go throw terrees to estreet.

  Firuzeh mangled her pencil with her teeth.

  In Kabul, Atay knew the names of everyone and everything, which streets were safest each day and why, how many Pine cigarettes each checkpoint required, and who to call when a bomb went off. Abay knew the shifting prices of tomatoes, eggs, flour, salt, and vinegar as if she smelled them in the morning on the wind, and how to sting village dogs on the snout with stones and climb over old walls in heavy skirts.

  Here they expected Firuzeh to teach them letters.

  The world had bruised and gone soft, and now impossible things teemed and wormed out of it.

  Here were monsters, the most monstrous being daily life.

  I can’t do this, Firuzeh said.

 
; I know it’s hard, janam, but we need you to.

  Can’t you watch TV?

  We have to buy a TV first.

  Atay said: You’re our daughter. We have nobody else.

  Abay said: I could tell you a story afterward—

  I don’t want, Firuzeh said, your dumb old stories. You keep forgetting the middle parts.

  It’s true, Abay said. There are white holes in parts of my stories. I don’t know what happened to my mind.

  Atay said: I don’t know what happened to this girl. Did she use to speak to her parents like that?

  The pencil wood was mealy upon her tongue. The graphite tip had its own smooth taste, like metal and ink and unwritten things.

  I can’t teach you. I’m not good enough. Or maybe you’re unteachable. I want to be normal, Atay-o-Abay. Normal girls don’t teach their parents English. Normal girls go to the shopping centre. Or movies.

  Abay said: We’re not normal anything, Firuzeh. Not yet.

  We should be. I want to be.

  Atay said: It’s no use talking to her. Aren’t you ashamed, Firuzeh? Acting like this at your age?

  All right, Firuzeh said, her face and chest aflame. Let’s try again. Where should Anna go to find English?

  Throw terrees to estreet—

  Wrong, she said. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

  In her restless hands, the pencil snapped.

  The breezeblock flat assigned to them was cold and reeked of paint, and the cheap carpet scuffed the soles of their feet, but it was theirs for now, theirs and theirs alone. Firuzeh was queen of half a room, whose small, high window overlooked a hedge. Black-and-white magpies sometimes sang songs outside that were different from the songs of magpies in Kabul.

  The other half of the room was Nour’s. Two mattresses occupied most of the floor.

  Firuzeh had just unslung her bag when the doorbell shrilled its acid note. Atay was on a bus somewhere, hunting for work in the city suburbs, and Nour had gone to the park with his soccer-mad friends. Abay, caught in the middle of her ceaseless scrubbing, rolled down her sleeves and dried her hands. Firuzeh climbed onto the kitchen counter and craned her neck to peer outside.