by Arnold Zable
In the five years since, Amjed had been burdened by guilt at being the one chosen. There were times he wished he had not survived the sinking. When Ahmed stepped through the arrivals gate, the brothers embraced and wept.
Now, almost five years since Ahmed’s arrival, I am driving into the centre of the city. I am nearing the completion of my promise. I cast my thoughts back to a phone call that I received one night from Amal.
‘My brother, I cannot sleep. I must tell you something. When I was a girl I asked my father, “Can I be a singer?” And he told me, “This is not a good idea. It is a hard life. It is not a good life for a woman.” He loved Umm Khultum. He loved music. He sang to me when we walked by the Tigris, but he told me it was not good for me to be a singer. Sometimes I think if I had become a singer my life would have been better.’
I now see that, in ways she would never have wished for or imagined, Amal was the voice of those who survived and those who perished in the ocean. Her voice resonated with the power of Umm Khultum’s. Like her idol, she possessed a charisma that drew people to her. She was a consummate performer, recounting her tales with an incessant beat, a mesmerising rhythm. From quiet but intense beginnings, she built towards a state of tarab, of union between teller and listener.
I park the car in the inner city and set out, as Amal had done, from Flinders Street Station. The footpaths on Princes Bridge are crowded with peak-hour commuters. I descend the stone steps to the river. On this warm evening the riverside bar is overflowing with after-work drinkers, but I am focused on the banks opposite, at the palm trees rising from the lawns that slope down to the water.
I walk from the bridge on the concrete walkway, and step onto the sandy path beneath the Moreton Bay figs that line this side of the riverbank. I am beyond the busyness, but still in touch with the city.
I sit on the bench beneath the figs, where Amal sat, and look at the palms across the water, diagonally opposite. The sight of the palms from this bench, Amal once told me, was the goal of her night wanderings. It returned her to Baghdad, to the banks of the Tigris.
I think of her on the morning she came upon the gathering of weeping people and learned that a person can float long after they have ceased living. I see the fire in her eyes. She is haunted by what she had endured on the ocean.
And I hear her voice: ‘My brother, I cannot sleep. I just woke up from a dream. In the dream I am walking towards a door. It is the door to paradise. I open the door, and inside it is light. Everything is white, and I see the people who drowned, the three hundred and fifty-three men, women and children. They are together, they are laughing. They are happy and they are calling to me. “Come join us. Come join us.”
‘I want to go with them. I start to walk towards them, but I stop. I cannot leave the story of the children who are lying on the ocean, and of the women and their sons and daughters. I cannot forget what the ocean did to them. I must wake up. I must tell everyone what happened. My brother, this is what my life is for. To tell what happened.’
Author's Note
The stories in this collection range in time from 1970 to 2011. In several stories I have combined separate incidents and encounters into one composite tale and/or one composite character. These include: ‘The Music Box’, ‘Bella Ciao’, ‘Capriccio’, ‘The Wall’ and ‘A Chorus of Feet’. The names of characters depicted in these stories and some details have been changed to protect the anonymity of people I have lost touch with. The real names remain, with permission, in ‘Violin Lessons’, ‘The Partisan’s Song’ and ‘The Ancient Mariner’. ‘The Ancient Mariner’ is based on my many conversations with Amal Basry, and on additional material from filmmaker Steve Thomas’s interviews with Amal. One of Amal’s brothers, Dr Sahir Hassan Basry, has a different account of the death of their brother Bahir, which appears on the website sievx.com
I made use of the following books: Frederick Taylor, The Berlin Wall, Bloomsbury, London, 2006; John Berger and Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man, Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1975; Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Bodley Head, London, 2010; Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, translated by Kenneth Burke, Stinehour Press, New York, 1972; Michael Herr, Dispatches, Picador, London, 1978; Nadine Cohodas, Princess Noire: the tumultuous reign of Nina Simone, Panther Books, New York, 2010.
For additional information I am indebted to: Michael Rubbo, Sad Song of Yellow Skin, documentary film, 1970; Steve Thomas, Hope, Flying Carpet Films, 2007; Something to Declare, Actors for Refugees; Marg Hutton’s website sievx.com
Song credits include: ‘Pirate Jenny’, lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for The Threepenny Opera, 1928, adapted into English by Marc Blitzstein, 1954; Hirsh Glik, ‘Never Say’, 1943, and ‘Quiet the Night’, 1943; Shmerl Kaczerginsky, ‘Quiet, Quiet’, 1943; Mordechai Gebirtig, ‘Our Town Is Burning’, 1936; Y. Shpigel, ‘Close Your Little Eyes’, circa 1943; ‘Bella Ciao’ was a popular song of the Italian resistance, and is based on a much older folk song sung by the rice growers of the Po Valley.
I received valuable feedback from Richard Freadman, Majid Shokor, Naji and Myra Cohen, Mimi Kluger, Sonia Torly, Rose Offman, Gabrielle Fakhri, Alice Garner and Phillip Maisel. I thank Marg Hutton, Faris Khadem, Julian Burnside, Kate Durham, Dennis Sikiotis, Ephthimios and Aleka Varvarigos, Kavisha Mazzella, Abbas Al Shiakhly, Anne Horrigan-Dixon, Kon Karapanagiotidis, the Basry family, Graham Reilly and Helen Kokkinidis.
I thank Michael Heyward of Text for his perceptive advice and support, Jane Pearson, who edited the book with great skill and insight, and Chong Weng Ho for the striking cover design. The Literature Board of the Australia Council provided material support.
I thank my wife Dora and my son Alexander, who have supported me in many ways, as always.
