Refuge

by Jackie French

  She looked at Faris, her eyes suddenly hard. ‘The soldier was your age. A boy, but smaller than you. His gun was almost as tall as him. He could have been a boy from school, grinning when he got a good mark in maths. But he grinned because he had found me.

  ‘I thought of my mother, my sister. I kicked him and bit his arm. He yelled and then I ran. I ran out of the hut, out of the village. I ran and ran. I felt the pain before I heard the shot. The shot knocked me down. I tried to stand. I tried to call. The footsteps came closer, and closer still. My leg bled onto the sand. I had to keep going, but my eyes began to close. I thought, let me wake up ten thousand years ago. A hundred thousand!’

  ‘You wanted to go that far to be safe?’

  ‘I wanted to go back to the beginning! Before hatred, before people killed each other for their religion or the colour of their skin. The modern world is cruel! At school the girls laughed at me for being from the south. “No brains,” they said, “they all fall out down south.” My teachers did not like a girl from south Sudan being top of the class. Even my friends were not true friends.’

  She stopped speaking. Faris could hear the gentle shush of waves, a triumphant yell as David grabbed the ball before Billy.

  ‘I woke up in another hut,’ said Juhi at last. ‘A hut made of mud, soft furs for a bed. The walls glowed just a little, to keep away the dark. Outside, every tree is hung with fruit, with vines and melons. I pull at a stalk and up come sweet potatoes. Beside my hut is a fire that never goes out, even if I put no wood on it. There is an oven on it. When I open the oven door, there is fresh bread or pots of stew.’

  ‘It sounds …’ Faris hunted for a word. ‘Lovely.’ No computers, he thought. Not even books or TV.

  ‘Too lovely! It’s a stupid world! A little girl’s world, where food appears in an oven. But I don’t know enough to make it real.’ She looked down at Mudurra with a mixture of love and ferocity. ‘And then I met Mudurra. His time must be close to the beginning. I learned that here on the beach we can go back to different times. I thought, I can go back with him. Go back to a time before soldiers and guns.’

  ‘I thought we only went back to our own time.’

  ‘No one has ever tried to go with someone else!’ cried Juhi. ‘Don’t you see?! We can go into each other’s dream worlds. Why can’t we share each other’s pasts too?’

  ‘You’d give up everything?’ Faris tried to think of what made modern life good. ‘Computers and cars and medicines, just to be safe in the past?’

  ‘No! I am not a fool! I was top of my class! I know there has never been a time when women were truly safe. I know Mudurra’s world has danger too. But maybe back there we can change the past. If we change the past enough, we can change the future too. There are too many people in the modern world, too many nations, religions, languages. No one person can make a real difference now. But back in the past there are only a few humans.’ She gazed at him with fire in her eyes. ‘I can make them change! Do you know the saying “God will not change a people, until they change themselves”?’

  Faris nodded.

  ‘Well, I will change them. I would change all of us.’

  ‘With Mudurra?’

  Juhi’s face softened. ‘He is good. Kind to all of us, even Billy. I don’t know what Mudurra was like when he first came here. But he has lived for so long with people from different times and worlds. He says that some of the people who came here laughed at him at first because his skin was black. Others wouldn’t play the game because girls played too, or children who had a different religion. Mudurra says that if you are kind, if you wait till the hatred wears out, all play together here. He and I could change the world together.’

  Faris had never met anyone who thought they could change all of humanity, not just small bits. ‘You like him,’ he said at last. He wanted to say ‘love’. But that would be embarrassing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Juhi softly. ‘Sometimes I think he likes me too. He’s taught me how to find shellfish and tend a fire. He gave me the furs.’ She touched her clothes. ‘They are the softest furs I have ever felt. I threw away my dress. Threw it into the sea and watched it float away.’ She shook her head. ‘For days I was scared it would wash up again. But it’s truly gone.

  ‘I don’t want to be the person who wore those clothes. I want to go back to the bright beginning of the world. Mudurra’s world.’ She wrapped her thin arms around herself. ‘But Mudurra never even touches me.’

  ‘He said you were beautiful,’ said Faris.

  Juhi’s eyes were painfully eager. ‘Did he?’

  ‘He … he said he couldn’t marry until he is a warrior, but that he needs other men to make him one. I think that’s what he meant.’

  ‘He’s a warrior now,’ said Juhi flatly.

  ‘Not to himself,’ said Faris softly.

  Juhi stood. ‘One day he’ll take my hand, and we’ll go back.’ She strode up the sand hill on bare feet that looked as though they had never seen shoes, especially not neat school ones.

  For a moment the sand seemed to blow around her. Then she was gone.

  The sun hovered just above the sand hill. Soon everyone would leave the beach. Faris looked down at the fish. He picked it up and walked further up the slope to where Susannah had watched it all.

  ‘Good night, Faris,’ she said quietly.

  She can guess what we were talking about, he thought. Susannah knows everything. He smiled. Susannah might not know how to write very well, but she knew love and care and friendship.

  ‘Good night,’ he replied.

  Susannah smiled. ‘May angels watch your rest.’

  Faris nodded uncomfortably. Susannah’s angels wouldn’t be his. He carried the fish down the hill, then put on his shoes.

  Once he would have felt embarrassed, carrying a big fish through the streets like a pedlar. But no one would laugh at him here.

  For a moment he almost wished someone would come out of a house and laugh, someone new, someone he hadn’t imagined or remembered. But there were only the kangaroos, peacefully tearing at the grass, and a koala snoozing in an orange tree.

  He walked up the path to his front door. Jadda opened it before he could reach for the handle. She looked at his sandy hands, at the giant sandy fish, and laughed.

  ‘King Faris of the computers has decided to be a cook, has he? Or do the marketing?’ She put her book down, the one about Jane Austen in Australia, and took the fish from him. ‘Good afternoon, Sir Fish,’ she added. ‘You are handsome, but you will look better with almonds and pomegranate sauce.’

  Faris nodded. He followed her in and closed the door.

  CHAPTER 10

  Faris paused on top of the sand hill the next morning, just as he had on his first morning there. They had all been strangers then. Then they had become friends, the people he spent his days with. Even Billy was almost a friend. Everyone was here already today, except for little Nikko.

  Suddenly Faris wanted to know Jamila’s story too, and little Nikko’s. The things they had seen might be terrifying, but they were fascinating too: other places, other times.

  He walked down the sand hill onto the beach just as Nikko came running down behind him. ‘Billy! Susannah! It is a feast today! The Feast of St Kangarou! You must all come!’

  For once Susannah looked startled. ‘Who is St Kangarou?’

  Nikko bounced impatiently. ‘St Kangarou is the patron saint of Australia! It is his feast day!’ He grabbed Jamila’s hand and began to drag her, laughing, up the sand hill. David followed them.

  Faris looked at Susannah and Billy. ‘Can we go to Nikko’s world, just like we went to David’s?’

  ‘If we want,’ said Susannah slowly. ‘If we follow him, or if we know what it looks like.’

  ‘That’s why you sit on the sand hill? So you can know all our worlds?’

  She didn’t answer his question. ‘Come on. This is important to Nikko.’

  Faris and Susannah and Billy began to walk after the other
s. ‘How did Nikko get here?’

  ‘His father came to Australia to work on something called the Snowy Mountains, though maybe that isn’t right. There can’t be snow in Australia. It’s too hot.’ Susannah shrugged. ‘Nikko is young. There is a lot he doesn’t understand. He and his mam took a ferry to a place called Piraeus. Have you heard of it maybe?’

  Faris shook his head.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Billy.

  ‘Nikko and his mother would get a ship there,’ Susannah continued. ‘They’d join Nikko’s father in Australia. Nikko says they had everything they owned in sacks, their clothes, his mother’s candlesticks, dried bread and dried figs to eat on the voyage, even a rooster in a bag.

  ‘Nikko let the rooster out. It perched on the ferry railing and he tried to grab it. But the sea was rough. As he climbed up onto the rail, the ferry lurched. He fell into the waves.’ She looked up at the small boy, leaping over the sand hill. ‘He woke up here.’

  Faris looked back. Mudurra still strode among the waves with his fishing spear. Juhi glanced up at them from the sand.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled.

  Juhi shook her head. She turned back to watch Mudurra.

  ‘Juhi won’t come,’ said Susannah softly. ‘She doesn’t want to see a modern world, even Nikko’s. She’ll only come if Mudurra comes too.’

  ‘And he never leaves the beach,’ said Billy.

  They had reached the top of the sand hill now. Faris looked down at Nikko’s world, then up.

  Because somehow the land behind the sand hill rose into a mountain now. Small white houses clung to its slopes, while up above cliffs shone silver, topped with green trees. A few white shapes moved, maybe sheep, or goats.

  He shook his head, in amazement and delight. A few steps and here was a new world.

  A bell began to call. Dong! Dong! Dong! Men’s voices sang above them, with the stamp of dancing feet and the strum of music. Faris sniffed. Roast lamb!

  The cobbled street in front of them was empty, except for Nikko.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled again.

  Faris and Billy and Susannah followed, up the road towards the singing.

  The road opened onto a big square edged by the white houses. A vast green tree shaded a well and a stone trough and tables. Whole sheep turned on spits over smouldering fires. Fat snapped and dripped onto the flames. Faris smelled rosemary and fresh bread.

  All at once he heard the stamp of feet again. He gazed across the square. Men danced in a vast circle on the cobbles, hand in hand; giant men, taller than any Faris had ever seen, twice as tall as even Mudurra. Each one had black hair and olive skin, and strong white teeth that flashed as they laughed.

  Nikko skipped towards the dancers, clapping his hands, then ran back to Susannah and Billy and Faris. ‘These are my uncles!’ he cried. ‘One day I will be as tall as them! I will dance too! My mother says so!’

  ‘Where is your mother now?’ asked Susannah.

  ‘She is bringing the bread and cakes from the baker. My mother does not have to work here in Australia!’ said Nikko proudly. ‘Not even grind the grain! There is water in every house here. The cisterns never run dry! Meat every day! And today the feast!’

  He scampered off as David and Jamila walked back to join them.

  ‘Who is St Kangarou?’ asked David softly. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘I think we are about to find out,’ said Susannah.

  The music stopped. The dancing men moved to stand reverently on each side of the square.

  A small procession wandered up the hill between the watching crowd. At its front two men in embroidered black-and-silver robes carried a tall gold statue standing in a long narrow box of shining wood. Behind them walked women in black dresses and black scarves and shawls. The women were normal-sized, not massive like the dancing men.

  Faris stared at the statue. It looked like a man, but there was something strange about it too.

  He looked again and saw the tail and paws. He stifled a giggle, saw the others were trying not to laugh too.

  ‘St Kangarou!’ whispered Susannah. ‘Oh, the poor dear lad. It’s all he remembers, maybe, that there are saints and saint’s day feasts. So he made up St Kangarou.’

  It’s blasphemy, thought Faris. Blasphemy for all of them, in each of their religions. For there was no St Kangarou. There is no God but God.

  But no one here prays to St Kangarou, he thought. This is a feast. Nikko doesn’t even know what the word ‘saint’ means. It is just a feast in honour of a kangaroo. Or kangarou.

  He looked at the faces of the others. Billy was enjoying it all. Faris doubted that the convict boy even knew what religion was, though he might have picked the pockets of churchgoers. Susannah, Jamila and David had expressions that were probably like his own: grins at the silly almost-human kangaroo, and doubt at what they should feel about it.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Faris, as the procession passed by, up through the square, then vanished into the streets above, towards the chanting bell.

  ‘Eat,’ said Billy. He nodded at the roasting sheep. Nikko was already over there, munching at a hunk of meat-filled bread. ‘Smells good. Cakes and bread on the tables over there,’ he added. ‘What’s in them baskets?’

  ‘Apricots,’ said Jamila.

  ‘Ain’t never eaten apricots before. Seen ’em at the market though.’ He wandered off as the music began to play again.

  Nikko darted back. ‘It is good, isn’t it?’ He took Susannah’s hand. ‘Come with me. My uncles will give you the best cuts of lamb. I have told them you are my friend. You are all my friends, from the beach. Eat as much as you want today! Did you make a wish?’ he added to Susannah. ‘You must always make a wish when St Kangarou passes.’

  ‘What did you wish for, Nikko?’ asked Susannah softly.

  ‘To be tall like my uncles. To dance with the men. Now come and eat!’ He pulled Susannah over to the roasting lamb.

  Suddenly Faris felt like crying for a small boy’s happiness for an imaginary feast.

  But it was real too, he reminded himself. If he ate a slice of lamb, he’d taste it. He could dance to this music too, try the pastries, the grapes and the breads.

  Yet none of it would fatten him, or change the thinness of David’s arms. Nor would Nikko ever grow tall like his uncles. Nikko would never dance with the men if he stayed here.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jamila softly. ‘Come and feast.’

  It was mid-afternoon when they got back to the beach. Nikko had stayed behind, dancing in and out of the crowd of great tall men and black-clad women, his face greasy with lamb fat, his fingers sticky from almond cakes and melon jam.

  Down on the sand Mudurra and Juhi tossed the ball between them. The waves rippled back and forth.

  Faris remembered something from an essay he had written on the tides. Tides were caused by the moon, the world’s water swelling up, pulled by the moon’s gravity. That was why tides came at slightly different times, every day, low tide, high tide …

  Except here. Every morning a high tide had washed their footprints away. But the tide never rose during the game; the waves never retreated, leaving more wet sand bare.

  David lingered as the others walked down to join Juhi and Mudurra. Faris turned back to watch him.

  ‘You’re going to your world now?’

  David nodded. ‘You were in the audience the other day,’ he added.

  Faris nodded. ‘Your playing is beautiful.’

  ‘You like music?’

  ‘I … I think so. I haven’t heard much. Not like yours.’

  ‘Would you like to come to my concert again? Now?’

  ‘Yes.’ Faris hesitated. ‘Will I still be able to find my way back home if I stay out till it gets dark?’

  ‘The streets in my world are lighted,’ said David. ‘You can easily find your way back to the sand hill. Your … home … has streetlights too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on then. We can hav
e Victoria sponge in a café after the concert. It is a very light cake with jam and cream. An Australian cake. We can have hot chocolate too.’

  ‘I don’t have money for a café.’

  ‘You don’t need money.’ He gave a brief smile. ‘Not in my Australia.’

  ‘Could we go to your home instead?’

  ‘No.’

  Faris was shocked by the flatness of the word. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I only go there when it’s late. It is my aunt’s house. She lives in Australia. I have never seen her.’ David shrugged. ‘I never thought of her much, so perhaps I won’t ever see her now, or much of her house either. Only a door, a corridor, my bed and bathroom. I just go to bed. It’s a soft clean bed. The sheets are always crisp. The bathroom smells of peppermint, like no one has ever been there except me. Then I go to a café for my breakfast.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Big cups of hot chocolate and pastry with jam.’

  It sounded like the loneliest life Faris had ever heard of. But David had his friends at the beach, he reminded himself, and the audience for his music.

  ‘What about your family? Your parents?’

  ‘They are dead. My mother, my father, my grandparents, my uncles and my cousins. Twenty-six of us sat at the table before the war. Now the war is over and there is only me, and an aunt I cannot even imagine in Australia.

  ‘Are you coming to my concert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  David turned to go.

  ‘David?’ Faris needed to say this now, here on the sand hill. Somehow he knew that even in the café, eating the Australian Victoria sponge, they would be trapped in the illusion, unable to talk about their past.