Underground

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘Um . . . Are many of you members? In here?’

  ‘What? You mean Muslims? In the ghetto?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘A fair few of us.’ He was reading a folded newspaper, and glanced up from it. ‘Fact is, we’re all underground in here, aren’t we, like it or not.’

  It made sense, I supposed, although it still seemed unsettling—Muslims and the OU in alliance. But maybe I was just too brainwashed to imagine Muslims in alliance with anyone in Australia these days. They’d been the enemy for so long. Abashed, I found myself staring at the newspaper on his lap. It was a Herald Sun. The front page was taken up by the report of a crashed airliner in a paddock somewhere in New South Wales. One hundred and twenty dead. Australia’s worst-ever civilian air accident, it seemed. Terrorism not suspected.

  ‘You get papers in here?’ I asked.

  ‘We smuggle them in. This is a couple of days old, though . . .’

  A couple of days. I tried to remember—where was I a couple of days ago? Lost in the desert somewhere? Riding in the Humvee? But try as I might, I couldn’t piece it all together. I was too tired. I needed to sleep.

  Aisha, meanwhile, was engaged in an animated discussion with some of the others, over on the far side of the warehouse. She wouldn’t be worried or confused. She was probably feeling fine, amongst her own people at last. But I didn’t want to be anywhere close to Aisha. In fact, since our time together in that metal box, skin pressing against skin, my flesh crawled at the thought of being near her. I’d never liked her, obviously, because she was a fanatic who had wanted to kill me. Still, during those moments in the box, when I’d glimpsed the human being behind the terrorist, the girl named Nancy, I’d thought that my feelings might have softened. But the final revelation about her parents—that had crushed any such impulse. Could it really be true? Had she actually done it? It was unspeakable, even if it was only a story she’d made up to shock me. It spoke of a deeper psychosis than just religion or politics.

  The truth was, Nancy the human being actually depressed and repulsed me more than Aisha the terrorist had. Terrorists you can at least fear and hate, and that’s a kind of respect, really. A failed, mixed-up human being, however, with a hatred for her family, her background and probably herself . . . Well, the best thing you can feel is pity. But when that person has a gun and an ideology and a willingness to kill for it, then even pity doesn’t work.

  I looked away from her, lay back on the bags and slept a while. And somewhere in my dreams I’m sure I heard, from outside, on distant loudspeakers, a reedy voice calling the people of the ghetto to prayer.

  God is great, God is great, I bear witness . . .

  And I thought, if only it was that simple.

  The boy in the Essendon jumper was shaking me awake.

  ‘We’re outta here, pal.’

  ‘What?’ I saw darkness through the windows. ‘Where?’

  ‘The council.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, lumbering up.

  With the ghetto youths as escorts, we left the warehouse through a doorway that led into a small alley. The alley was deserted, but only fifty yards along we merged into the residential streets of Brunswick. And while at first it all looked familiar—the little old houses, the tree-lined footpaths, the corner shops—a sense of dislocation soon swept over me. This was like no night I’d ever experienced in Melbourne before. The sky had the usual orange glow, but in Brunswick itself, the streets were black. There were lights on in windows and doorways, but not a single streetlight shone anywhere. It was like being in some erratic blackout. There were no cars either, not parked, not driving. But people were everywhere. A mass of shadows and voices, moving slowly up and down the narrow streets. Cigarettes flared in the darkness and, somewhere further off, I could hear what sounded like drums and flutes playing.

  Aisha and I walked in the middle of our guards, a loose cordon around us, moving carefully at the crowd’s pace. The Essendon boy was beside me.

  ‘Does the whole place know we’re here?’ I asked him.

  His eyes were dimly visible, scanning the streets. ‘No.’

  ‘We won’t be recognised?’

  ‘There’s no reason why anyone should notice you. We got plenty of white faces in here. Albanians. Bosnians. Even fair-dinkum Aussies who were dumb enough to convert, and even more dumb not to convert back while they had the chance. Besides, it’s dark out here. Don’t worry.’

  I stared at the dead streetlights. ‘Have the authorities cut the power to them?’

  ‘They didn’t do it. We did. Smashed ’em all with rocks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Choppers. They fly over once or twice an hour. Keeping an eye on us. So we thought, fuck it, no reason to let the bastards see what we’re up to.’

  And true, the darkness was comforting. I caught smells of food cooking, and then heard a burst of singing, and more laughter amongst the crowd. I was reminded of a kind of fete or street party. A poorly lit street party, but one with a pleasant hum, on a good, warm summer’s evening. So where was the misery and poverty I’d heard so much about, where was the violence?

  ‘There’s no curfew? People can just wander around?’

  My companion laughed. ‘Shit, man, this ain’t Warsaw under the Nazis. We live pretty much as we please. And it works in a way. Plenty of people still get out to go to their jobs, and bring in money, and food. And the government supplies us with most of the basics. It’s crowded, sure. Two or three families to a house. But no one’s dying in the streets.’

  ‘I’ve read stories about gang wars . . .’

  ‘Yeah, well, the papers like to pretend we’re all animals in here.’

  Indeed. We were coming up to Sydney Road now, and if you ignored the lack of street lighting, and the absence of cars, it might have been Sydney Road just the same as always. There were shops and restaurants and cafes open, and a steady stream of people moving up and down the footpaths. There was even, to my amazement, a single tram running along the tracks in the middle of the road, its bell dinging as the vehicle eased through the pedestrians. The faces of two old ladies, their heads wrapped in scarves, peered out from the front seat.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, nodding at the tram.

  Essendon boy was amused. ‘Yeah. They left us one old rattler, and power in the overhead lines. The bloody thing just runs up and down the street, from the south wall to the north wall. But hey, we got no shortage of unemployed tram drivers in here. The poor buggers aren’t allowed to work outside anymore. The government says their jobs are too sensitive.’

  ‘Driving a tram is too sensitive?’

  ‘I know. As if you could crash one of them into a building.’

  We sauntered on, still loosely surrounded by the guards. I caught a glimpse, over roof tops, of the city skyscrapers only a few kilometres away, a whole different world. But there in Sydney Road, families walked in and out of restaurants, and children ran about shrieking, and groups of men sipped coffee and smoked and studied the sky. I still couldn’t shake the image of a street party from my mind. Except that it was too peaceful. At a normal Australian street party there would have been beer, and drunks spilling out of pubs, and sausages and steaks frying on barbecues. Here the cooking smells were of spices and rice, and there was no beer, no drunks reeling about—indeed, the one pub we passed appeared to have been converted into a coffee house. Brunswick had become a ‘dry’ suburb at last, just like dear old leafy Camberwell had been in my childhood.

  And then, as the street ran down towards the city, I saw ahead of us the south wall of the ghetto. It was a rigid barrier of upright concrete slabs, maybe three times man-height, topped with barbed wire, the inner side of the wall festooned with graffiti. There were two guard towers visible, about a hundred yards apart, and I could see men up there—soldiers or police, I couldn’t remember right then who was responsible for the precincts. But even as shadows they did not appear threatening, they were just shapes leaning on rai
lings, seeming to stare out in indifference. And amidst the throng, still far away from them, I had no fear of being seen.

  A yelling voice caught my attention. It came from an old man standing outside a brightly lit shop. He was bearded and dark and dressed in some sort of traditional Middle Eastern garb, and was declaiming to his audience in bad, heavily accented English. A kind of street preacher, I decided, reminded of the Christian ministers who always ranted and raved on the steps of Flinders Street Station. I couldn’t really catch what he was saying, only that he was angry, and that the shop behind him was the source of his anger. It was a music and video store—and the music pulsing from inside was unmistakably modern. Young folk were coming and going through the door, and the preacher glared at them one by one, pointing and shaking and promising—so it sounded—all kinds of eternal damnation.

  The Essendon boy was watching me with a knowing expression. ‘He’s here every night. He thinks dance music comes straight from Satan. They find it the toughest in here, the old hardliners. They can’t believe that, seeing we’re all Muslims in the ghetto, we haven’t brought in shari’a law yet.’

  ‘Are there many like him around? Extremists?’

  He didn’t seem to like the word. ‘Not so many. How could there be? Anyone like that the government had marked down years ago. They’re in the high security centres now, or they’re dead. They’re not in places like this.’

  ‘So, it’s mostly just the average Muslims left?’

  ‘I dunno. What’s “mostly”? What’s “average”? We’ve got about fifty nationalities in here, and about twenty different languages. We’ve got Shiites and Sunnis. We’ve got all five major legal schools. We’ve got a dozen mosques and just as many colleges, all with different imams. We’ve got conservatives and moderates and liberals and everything in between. It’s a mess, really. The only thing anyone in here agrees on is that God is great, and that your brother is a total dickhead. And you could probably find people to argue even that.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  He thought, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sick of this, that’s all I am. It’s so stupid. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of these people are completely harmless. The government knows that. They could open all the ghettos tomorrow and not a thing would change. It’s all just for show.’

  ‘You think it’ll ever happen? Opening the ghettos?’

  ‘Why not? This isn’t the way Australia is meant to be. The rest of the country just let itself be taken in by a prick of a Prime Minister. People will wake up. That’s why I’m in the Underground. Overthrow this joke of a government and get a proper one in, and half the problem would be solved.’

  I wasn’t convinced. ‘What about Canberra? I don’t think anyone outside is going to be forgiving or forgetting that event any time soon.’

  He frowned. ‘That was a fuck-up, I won’t argue. I knew we were stuffed when that mushroom cloud went up.’ He stared about in perplexity at his fellow inmates. ‘But it’s the weirdest thing. I’m not one of those conspiracy idiots who think that the West is behind everything bad. I know it had to be fanatics from our side that did it. But I’ve met a few of the militants left in here. I’ve talked to them. And hey, they loved the bomb. They thought it was great. But they don’t have any idea who actually did it. It wasn’t any of their own people.’

  I glanced back at Aisha. ‘She says her people did it.’

  He followed my eyes, startled. ‘Her lot?’

  ‘It might not be true. Harry doesn’t believe her. But either way, it all goes back to Islam in the end. And that’s what scares the rest of the country. As long as cells like hers remain, they’ll never let you out of here.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, disheartened.

  We walked on. A thudding sound rose in the air, and a helicopter hove into view over the wall, flying north along Sydney Road. The crowd barely paused to acknowledge it, but a few eyes turned up, cold and disapproving. A spotlight beam leapt down from the aircraft, probing the street, but it seemed almost disinterested as it flicked about. There was nothing to be seen anyway. Except people. Life. Normality.

  The Essendon boy spoke again. ‘I’ll tell you this, though, that girl of yours is a puzzle. Okay, so she’s supposed to be some sort of Islamic activist. But I’ve been listening to her this afternoon. And like I said, I’ve met militants before. They’re crazy as loons, no mistake, but they are Muslims. They’ve warped it and twisted it into something else entirely, and what they do is far more political than religious, but at least you can recognise their starting point.’ He shook his head. ‘But that chick there . . . I don’t have the remotest clue what she’s on about.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The meeting took place in a church hall.

  Of course, the church to which the hall was attached—St Ambrose’s Catholic Church on Sydney Road—had been abandoned by its parishioners when the ghetto walls went up. It had since been converted into a mosque. My Essendon friend gave me a look through the doors as we passed by. The pews were all gone, along with the altar, as well as any statues of Jesus or Mary—and the stained-glass windows were hidden by wall hangings that bore verses from the Koran.

  ‘We haven’t done any permanent damage, though,’ he said. ‘Like, we haven’t removed the crucifixes from the roof.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s just polite. The Catholics will be wanting this place back one day.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  One happy day when the ghetto was thrown open, he meant. And it was good to see him optimistic again, even if history would suggest that ghettos didn’t often get thrown open—usually they just got liquidated.

  But I let it go. We moved around to the rear of the church and entered the hall. And church halls, let’s face it, are never inspiring places. The echoing wooden floors, the peeling paint, the dusty windows, the memory of a thousand dreary functions that have taken place in years previous. This one was no different. As for the High Council of the Australian Underground—well, at a glance, they looked for all the world like a meeting of some church fete cake-stall committee. There were about twenty men and women waiting there for us, perched on plastic chairs arranged in a circle, sipping tea and coffee from old chipped cups. They could have been anyone. It was only on closer inspection, when their faces turned as we entered . . .

  But I don’t really need to go into names here, do I, interrogators? I mean, you know, don’t you? Harry was there, of course. It was the others, however, that surprised me. The faces I recognised. The famous investigative journalist. The famous football coach. The famous film director. I mean, I hadn’t expected celebrities. Not to mention the High Court judge, or the three serving senators from the emasculated Federal Parliament—two from the Labor side, and a Green. And even the people that I’d never seen before—they weren’t just your average street-level resistance fighters. They were older, sober figures, most of them in suits, as if they’d come to the ghetto straight from their work in the high levels of state bureaucracy, or in the senior financial realms, or in the law.

  This was no bake sale committee. These people represented money and influence. And that was a shock. I suppose I’d got used to the idea of the Underground being a collection of anonymous nobodies. Like Harry. Like the wiry old truck driver. Like Staff Sergeant Daphne. Like the bus full of fake Patriots back in Hervey Bay. Small folk—in useful positions, perhaps, but basically just angry individuals thumbing their noses at the authorities. It had never occurred to me that the Underground would include members of the establishment. Or that they might represent—in embryonic form, at least—an actual alternative national government.

  That awed me a little. As did their expressions, as they studied Aisha and me. Because there was no doubt about the hostility in their eyes.

  Harry indicated seats waiting for us.

  ‘I won’t make any introductions,’ he said. ‘Those you don’t know, it’s better they stay that way.’

  I looked around
at the council. ‘So what have I missed?’

  Harry didn’t smile. ‘I’ve been filling everyone in on our adventures so far. And catching up on other developments.’

  ‘There’s bad news?’

  ‘There’s no good news.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘You two happened,’ said a man from across the room. He was no one I recognised, but he had gaunt gloomy features, and the look of academia about him. ‘Ever since you first came into our hands, the Federal Police have launched an all-out attack on the Underground. Following pretty much in your wake, as it happens. The Patriot cell in Hervey Bay has been arrested. Our sympathisers in the army are under investigation because of that whole debacle with the refugees. Our contacts in Citizenship have disappeared. And our other networks are in trouble right across the board. Raids, arrests, ambushes, cell after cell going down. It’s like we stirred up a hornets’ nest out there. All for the sake of keeping you two alive.’

  ‘They’re hoping,’ said Harry, fixing me with hollow eyes, ‘that whatever it is you know, it was worth it.’

  I swallowed, spoke to the circle. ‘I’ve told Harry all along, I don’t know anything. If I did, I’d help. I’ve got no reason not to. I’m no friend of my brother’s government.’

  ‘We don’t mean you,’ the man across the room replied. ‘We mean her.’

  The whole room was staring at Aisha.

  My heart fell. One young girl. And a lunatic at that. If all their hopes were pinned on her, then I couldn’t see what chance any of us had.

  Aisha herself inflated with the attention. ‘I have nothing to say to this council.’

  ‘You claim to support a Muslim cause?’ the man across the room asked.