Only the Heart

by Brian Caswell

  Still, the suddenness of the order did nothing for our feelings of security.

  Early one morning a small convoy of trucks arrived, and the officer in charge began issuing instructions in his broken Vietnamese, which we followed. The trucks were open at the back, with seating along both sides and a double row down the centre, so each one could car between twenty and thirty people. It was crowded, of course, but not so bad.

  Once they were all loaded up, we set out. First we rumbled along the rough road back to the coast, then we turned north. And for once Linh didn’t get sick. I guess it was the open air; not being closed inside a moving vehicle.

  I don’t know how long the journey actually took. We passed through a few small villages and a reasonablesized town, and everywhere the people stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at us. Sometimes the younger kids would wave, but mostly they just stared.

  It was something I would get used to as I grew older, but at the time it was a little frightening, being looked at like you didn’t belong. At one point I remember moving a little closer to my father when I caught the look of … I’m not sure exactly what, not quite hate, but something pretty close — disgust maybe — in the eyes of one solitary man standing beside the road just outside one of the villages. He shouted something in Malaysian, which I didn’t understand, and spat on the ground as we passed.

  There was a small murmur from a couple of the people on the truck, but most were dozing, lulled to sleep by the heat and the movement of the truck. My father reached down and took my hand. He squeezed it lightly and flashed a small smile.

  “Not long now,” he whispered. “We’ll find a place where people are friendly.”

  I guess that was always a part of the dream. The new life, the new beginning. The second chance at happiness.

  I looked back at the man standing in the dust beside the road. He was shouting something to one of the trucks behind us, but the sound of his voice was lost in the roar of the engine, and soon the sight of him was lost in the cloud of dust that billowed into the air behind us.

  *

  LINH’S STORY

  Pulau Bisa. It’s a small island, about ten minutes by boat off the north-eastern coast of Malaysia. But if that makes it sound like Alcatraz or something, that’s probably a bit harsh.

  The main reason the government decided to locate the refugee-camp on an offshore island was to make it harder for their “guests” to make it across to the mainland and freedom. But most people world probably agree that, under the circumstances, that wasn’t such an unreasonable precaution.

  Of course, the water and the distance weren’t the barrier at Pulau Bisa that they were in the middle of San Francisco Bay. But then, Alcatraz was a maximum-security prison. It was designed to hold dangerous criminals — murderers and rapists and bank-robbers — not families of people whose only crime was to have been caught up in events beyond their power to control.

  As the trucks pulled up, and they ordered us off, I looked out across the water at the island. I suppose it wasn’t much more than a couple of kilometres offshore, but to me, at that age, it looked such a long, long way. I almost put my arm around my aunt for comfort, but I resisted the temptation to show that kind of weakness, and settled for standing close enough for her to run her fingers through my hair. Which, of course, she did.

  For once there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sea looked incredibly blue. I hadn’t seen any open water since the morning of our arrival three weeks earlier, and although it looked peaceful and … benign, I couldn’t shake the fear that rose in me at the sight of it.

  And I remembered my grandfather’s old saying: The sea has many moods, but even its calmest face hides an empty stomach.

  Toan was standing a few metres away, staring down at the makeshift wooden jetty that lurched drunkenly out into the water. Tied up along its length were four long open boats — our transportation to the island. Each boat would take fifteen or twenty people.

  I walked over to stand next to him, then I looked back at the others. Apart from a few of the kids, no one had moved. They were just standing there, waiting to be told what to do. The head man was talking to them now through an interpreter who had come across from the island on one of the boats. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but a number of families began to make their way down to the jetty. They waited there until two soldiers joined them and began directing them onto the boats. When they were aboard, the engines started, and we watched them moving off towards the island.

  The round trip took about twenty-five minutes and we were part of the last batch, so we had around . an hour to sit on the beach or the jetty and study the island from a distance.

  It looked exotic, like an illustration from a children’s book, rising out of the sea in a gentle curve as if time had weathered all the hard edges away. There was still plenty of dark green vegetation on the higher slopes above the camp, and from that distance, the squalour and filth that we would grow used to in the following months looked almost beautiful, a formless mosaic of colours and textures spreading out across the island until it disappeared around the far side.

  It was almost noon and the sun was reflecting from the surface of the water, half blinding us as we stood on the end of the jetty.

  At least, I stood. Toan sat on the deck, staring at his own reflection in the sparkling water — and humming a tune to himself. I looked down at him and I envied him. At that moment I was remembering my mother and the look on her face in the moment before she disappeared from the square of the hatch entrance. And from my life.

  I wasn’t sure if there would ever again be a time when I would feel like singing …

  *

  25 March 1977

  Pulau Bisa, Malaysia

  MINH

  In the ten minutes or so since they left the jetty behind, the wind has picked up, and the tiny waves are slapping against the side of the boat as they approach the landing stage at the Pulau Bisa camp.

  On shore, a crowd stands waiting, watching the new arrivals. There is a sense of expectation. Eyes scanning the boats for some sign of a friend or a loved one. A cautious, murmuring welcome for fellow-survivors.

  Minh stares down at his hands and realises that they are dirty. It seems so long since he was really clean. Since he slept properly in a real bed, with privacy and quiet. Since he left Rach Gia …

  He forces the thought away. No room for regrets. The past is dead. As dead as poor, greedy Tan, floating face-down in the ocean, carrying in his shattered skull the final, brutal payment for all his enterprise.

  Sitting next to him on the smooth wood of the seat, the interpreter stares back towards the mainland. A small man in a soiled white shirt, his bearing suggests a quiet intelligence, but he says nothing, and Minh can think of no question for which he really wants an answer.

  He sneaks a look at the man. There is something about him that seems familiar, though they have never met — of this he is certain. A resemblance, perhaps. Or …

  Thanh …

  It is nothing in the man’s features, but something about his quiet manner, the way he holds himself, recalls his friend. And the memory adds a strange poignancy to their impending arrival. The camp, the wire fences. This is the freedom they have come so far, risked so much, to attain?

  Perhaps not. But it is not Long Xuyen either.

  And at least, this time, he can comfort himself with the knowledge that he is not alone. That he will share the island and the fences-with the family he loves. Just as he shares with them the hope of better times to come.

  And only the prisoner knows

  The dream of freedom on his tongue …

  The words from one of his friend’s poems.

  Funny. Once he could have recited the whole thing, but a few months and a few thousand kilometres separate him from Thanh and the camp and the country of his birth.

  And here at Pulau Bisa the freedom he once only dreamed that his friend foretold in the images of his poetry —
lies almost within their reach.

  He follows the small interpreter’s gaze back towards the mainland …

  *

  TOAN’S STORY

  Pulau Bisa was an island. Not a city; not a place that had ever been populated. An uninhabited rock a little way off the coast. That was why it had been chosen for the role it was playing. But that was also its major drawback. No people, no facilities.

  Like sewage systems or rung water, for example.

  The boat-people were a problem — the island was the solution. And from a bureaucratic point of view, that was fine. Look at the map, find a place to isolate them, far enough away from the major centres of population to cause no political fallout, ship them there with enough armed guards to ensure they stay put, and … problem solved.

  Except, what looks perfect on paper — or on a map of Malaysia — has a habit of being slightly less than perfect in reality.

  It wasn’t like no one cared. There were plenty of people on both sides trying to make the best of what couldn’t be avoided. It’s just that the problems were so much bigger than anyone could have predicted. When we arrived in March 1977, there were already three thousand people living on the island. That’s the population of a good-sized town. But the only available water was from pumps and wells scattered thinly around the settlement, and toilets were holes in the ground, situated as far as practical from where the people actually ate and slept, and kept “hygienic”with barrels of foul-smelling disinfectant liquid, shipped in from the mainland every week. The combination of the heat, the liquid and …well, everything it was designed to disinfect, stank so badly that I would walk around for hours “holding” rather than go, and it was only when the pain grew stronger that the smell that I would finally give in and endure my “visit”.

  Add to that the fact that the garbage removal arrangements were both irregular and totally inadequate, and you can understand why my first impressions of Pulau Bisa had very little to do with the magnificent greenery of the rainforest covering the slopes beyond the camp.

  The side of the boat scraped along the wooden pier and the man at the front threw out a line.

  Once we were safely tied up, we stepped ashore. There was a welcoming committee of sorts. In the camp it was basically “sink orswim”, but they liked the new arrivals to know the ground rules before they set them loose to fend for themselves. My father went off with the men and some of the women to listen to the welcome speech, while we stayed near the pier with my mother.

  I watched the faces, as the faces watched us.

  There was a vague sort of recognition — or recollection — in them. No one returned my shy smile, but you could sense them remembering how it had been for them, arriving. Perhaps only weeks earlier. Perhaps alot longer.

  The sun beat down, and we stood in the shade of the official buildings. These buildings always seemed a little out of place, standing there in the middle of a ramshackle town of corrugated lean-tos, patchwork wooden huts, and just about any other construction that could keep out the weather — and be built for about the price of a rich man’s evening meal.

  The men returned and we were led away into the living area of the camp proper.

  Looking back, I suppose there was order of sorts. The huts were built on a rough grid pattern, with a wide main alley rung roughly west-east, and smaller lanes running off it north and south. Mostly, the frontages formed a line, and the space between the opposing houses was fairly consistent — except where one of the dwellings had fallen and been rebuilt, or was threatening to fall and was being propped up by long poles or planks.

  We stuck close together, feeling out of place and a bit scared, even though these were our own people.

  Then, passing one of the smaller alleys, I saw for the first time a sight that would become all too familiar during the long months we would spend at Pulau Bisa.

  I stopped and so did Phuong, but I don’t know if the others noticed anything; all around us there was so much that was new to capture our attention, and I was too fascinated by the scene in the alley to check on what my family was doing.

  Maybe twenty metres away down the narrow space between the dwellings, a group of youths and a few girls stood around a man about the same age as my father. He was arguing with them about something. The odds were about fifteen to one.

  We hesitated, watching as one of the young men pushed him against the thin wall of one of the huts. The corrugated metal bowed but remained upright and the man regained his balance, but the fight had gone out of him. He reached into the pocket of his coat and handed something to one of the group. I couldn’t see who — there were too many people in the way.

  I was about to move on when something stopped me. Just at that moment, a couple of the teenagers moved around to stand behind the man, and for the first time I saw their leader.

  How did I know he was the leader?

  You’d have to have been blind not to know.

  He was good-looking and quite tall, but that wasn’t it.

  I guess, if I had to put it in words, this long after the event, I’d have to say it was his confidence. That, and the way the group formed around him, like pilgrims around the Buddha. Of course, I didn’t think about it in those terms at the time. I just knew.

  He was putting whatever the man had just handed to him into one of his pockets, and as if she had made a noise, or called him, he suddenly looked across at Phuong. It wasn’t the caged look of someone who was scared of being discovered, or a threatening glance to warn us off. He just looked up.

  And smiled.

  Then my mum called and I moved on. But Phuong’s attention was still back in the alley …

  *

  25 March 1977

  Pulau Bisa, Malaysia

  HOA

  Phuong stands staring at something in the alley a few metres behind them. It is the first time since they left Janganoon that Hoa has allowed more than an arm’s-length to separate them.

  Hoa pauses and watches the girl for a moment, before calling out, “Phuong, come. We don’t want to get split up.”

  The girl hesitates, staring at whatever it is that has caught her attention. Then she moves on. But it is a few seconds before she looks up to find where they are.

  “What were you looking at?”

  The girl says nothing. She looks preoccupied.

  So much is strange, the smells, the faces, the sounds of inactivity. Hoa watches her husband’s back. He walks with his head erect, steeling himself for the weeks and months ahead.

  Does he regret their decision? His decision. Has the loss of his sister torn the dream beyond repair, or reinforced his determination?

  He is so loving; the most caring man … She remembers her mother’s unreasoning opposition, and smiles sadly. She lived and died without ever understanding how a daughter could choose love over duty. The sacrifices that a woman makes for a man. The risks he will bear in the name of love.

  For her sake … for the children’s … he has brought them this far, chasing the dream.

  For his sake … and for the children’s … she has remained strong, forcing down the panic which threatens at times to overwhelm her. Like now, when she looks around her uncertainly, at the price that so many seem willing to pay for a chance to grasp at the mythical prize.

  Regret?

  The memory slips in uninvited. ‘Tuyet, Minh’s mother, sitting with her in the small kitchen behind the shop, drinking ginseng tea and staring at the picture of Minh that lies on the table between them. Minh who has sent no word in the six endless weeks since they took him away to Long Xuyen.

  “Regret?” she says. “Regret is a coin without value. The past is bought and paid for; no refund, no exchange … Spend your hope instead. Try to buy a better future. He is safe. I know it.”

  “But how do you know?” The words are whispered with the force of a shout, but her husband’s mother just smiles and sips her tea.

  “I know it …” she says, and looks at the picture on t
he table between them …

  The memory fades.

  Inside one of the shanties a baby cries and there is a rustling sound from just below the surface of a nearby pile of rubbish which waits beside the alley to be taken and buried. An old man sits in his tiny doorway smoking a pipe. The smoke is white and sickly-sweet. His eyes stare through her as she passes.

  Overhead, the sun beats down, but there is no comfort in the warmth. She watches her husband’s back for a moment, then moves on.

  10

  CANG

  LINH’S STORY

  You hear a lot about the gangs. I guess it makes good copy for the papers on a slow-news day, or for Sixty Minutes when they get tired of chasing child-molesters and escaped business tycoons. But the stories are always so damned simplified.

  And there’s nothing simple about a gang. It’s at least as complex as your average dysfunctional family, and every gang-member has a difnt reason for joining, just as every gang has a different reason for existing in the first place. But the stories always focus on the results — the drugs, the violence, the stand-over tactics. It’s such an easy target for a story; a steady stream of victim-interviews, a hidden-camera’s-eye-view of a teenage drug-deal, panshots of a street full of Asian faces.

  More ammunition for the bigots.

  But nothing at all about what the gang is. Why it exists. How something so potentially damaging can draw in the innocent, as well as the street-hardened troublemakers. Nothing about what it can appear to be offering them.

  After everything that’s happened, I certainly have no reason to defend the gangs. Or anyone in them. And I wouldn’t dream of doing it. But they exist, and somewhere at the back of my mind, even when I think of Miro and what happened to him — and to me — I can’t help wondering if hating them is really the answer.