Comfort Zone

by Lindsay Tanner

  ‘Hey, catch you soon, Matt.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. I’ll call if I need a cab.’

  Jack caught sight of an airport parking officer in a fluoro vest heading his way, so he pulled out and sped off. Stupid fucking airport Nazis, he grumbled to himself. The airport had made a number of changes that seemed deliberately designed to irritate taxidrivers. Jack was always getting into arguments with minor airport workers about where he could prop, and things like that.

  He checked the time and made a quick calculation. He still had plenty of time to get to the police station before one o’clock. Even if the mythical fare to Warburton turned up, he would still make it.

  Farhia floated around his mind, inciting longing and admiration in equal measure. He did the wide loop needed to enable him to enter the pickup line, and soon had another passenger who looked and sounded just like Matt — another well-groomed, well-dressed young man with no distinguishing marks and the early signs of a double chin. They must clone these guys, he said under his breath as his passenger settled into the back seat.

  His latest fare was preoccupied with the contents of his briefcase, so the return journey was silent and peaceful, and Jack was able to keep daydreaming about Farhia. He revelled in the unimaginable joy of a romantic relationship, built on the heroic role he had already carved out for himself.

  One more short fare, and it was almost time to venture back to Carlton. He thought about trawling for another one, but decided to play it safe. There was no point chasing a few extra dollars if it meant getting caught in traffic and missing his chance to see Farhia again.

  The Carlton police station was an unsightly red-brick building tucked away in Drummond Street, just back from Elgin Street. Other than a very small sign and numerous police cars parked outside, it could have been almost anything — maybe a down-at-heel printing business or even a small distribution warehouse. Its ugliness gave it a forbidding air: a stern, unforgiving presence suited to its purpose.

  Jack parked further up Drummond Street in a one-hour zone, and thought about his next move. The idea of another encounter with Farhia was already making his skin tingle. It was twenty to one. A mottled grey sky hung heavily over the handful of people wandering up and down the street. Aside from a couple of Italian restaurants, a hairdresser, and a Salvation Army citadel, there weren’t that many buildings that dealt with walk-in customers. One block further west was where all the retail action was, in the heart of Lygon Street.

  Jack leaned forward towards his rear-view mirror so that he could see the front of the police station. He was confident he could recognise Farhia even from over fifty metres away. Her preference for colourful outfits would help — although this seemed to be common among Somali women, so he hoped that none were about to come along and confuse things. He assumed that they didn’t visit the local police station readily — Jack had noticed that Somali drivers took great care to stay out of the way of cops.

  For something to do while he waited, he turned on talkback radio.

  ‘It’s Bill from Croydon.’

  ‘What’s on your mind today, Bill?’

  ‘It’s all them foreigners coming in. Why should taxpayers’ money be wasted supporting them to live the life of Riley? Bound to be terrorists, some of them. I was in Springvale last week, and not an Aussie to be seen.’

  ‘True enough, Bill. Now it’s Bob from Avondale Heights. We’re talking about the government’s changes to asylum-seeker rules, Bob …’

  Jack switched it off. Although he often agreed with their complaints, he usually couldn’t stand the morons who rang in on talkback radio. It was like getting a whole day’s worth of loudmouth passengers in fifteen minutes. He didn’t like foreigners much, but he didn’t like whingers either. In fact, he didn’t like most people. To Jack, people were dickheads until proven otherwise.

  He sometimes fantasised about being a shock-jock. He figured the studio would be similar to his taxi, and it would be just like putting up with opinionated passengers all day without throttling anyone. Just like Derryn Hinch and co., he would pretend to agree with stupid opinions, or at least tolerate them.

  He only lingered on this thought for a moment on this occasion. His Farhia obsession was much more powerful.

  It was almost one o’clock, and he was now feeling very nervous. It was a long time since Jack had experienced the thrill of the chase, the tingling apprehension of desire.

  The digital clock on his dashboard ticked over to 12:59, and he glanced in the mirror again. Then he froze. Two women in traditional Somali dress were standing outside the entrance to the police station. The bright, flowing robes and headscarves were unmistakable. One wore bright yellow with a black pattern, the other a rich shade of purple with crimson highlights. One of the women was slightly taller, but he couldn’t be sure which one was Farhia from this distance. He guessed she was the one in purple.

  He hadn’t counted on her bringing a friend. That complicated matters. It did make sense, though, a bit like women going to nightclub toilets in pairs. I wouldn’t trust cops either if I was her, Jack said to himself.

  After a brief moment of hesitation, he got out of the cab, did his best to suck in his stomach, and walked steadily — and, he hoped, manfully — down the hill towards them.

  He could feel the tension rising inside him. He couldn’t escape the awful feeling that, to these women, he was mildly ridiculous. In spite of his casual contempt for people of other races, Jack was intimidated by Farhia’s calm dignity. After all, he was just a no-hoper living alone in a suicide flat. He could hardly look down on a single mum.

  ‘Thought I might see you here. How’s Yusuf?’ Affecting a casual indifference, he tried to behave as if this encounter was entirely unremarkable.

  ‘Yusuf is going well. This is my friend Aicha. She has come to help me.’ Farhia then turned to Aicha and spoke rapidly in Somali.

  ‘I inform Aicha you are the one who helped me. Her English it is not very good.’

  Jack did his best to radiate nobility and modesty.

  ‘Matt helped a bit, too. Picked him up in the cab this morning, actually.’ In Farhia’s presence, a different personality took over Jack’s body. He was no longer the cynical, bitter loser who regarded life as an unfair struggle in which you always had to look after number one. He was now Don Juan in a taxidriver’s uniform, ready to risk his life for a damsel in distress.

  Aicha was taller than Farhia, with a pleasant face that was dominated by a large mouth and protruding teeth. After a brief, instinctive glance of appraisal, Jack turned back to Farhia.

  ‘Maybe we should go in …’

  ‘Yes. Are you here to speak to the police?’

  ‘Yeah, thought I might as well get it over with.’ Jack hoped the tiny tremor in his voice didn’t betray the fact that his arrival wasn’t a coincidence.

  ‘I hope this will be the end of the whole thing,’ Farhia said. If she suspected that Jack had an ulterior motive, she didn’t show it. Her smooth, calm features and deep-brown eyes were just as entrancing as they’d been the previous day.

  Aicha flicked a loose part of her bright-yellow robe over her left arm, and turned towards the entrance, signalling that they might as well get on with it. They walked along a narrow gap between the side of the building and a high fence, and stepped through a small doorway into the reception area.

  Inner-suburban cop shops are all the same, Jack thought, observing the small windows, worn lino, wanted posters, and plastic chairs. Maybe it’s about deterring criminals: they’d try to avoid the place because it’s so ugly and uncomfortable.

  He waited for Farhia and Aicha to sit down. There were only two chairs, both looking like they could do with a wash, which the women sat down on after an exchange of gestures and mumbles established that Jack was doing his gentlemanly duty.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and finally a unif
ormed policeman appeared at the counter.

  After a brief explanation from Jack, the policeman left; a couple of minutes later, Senior Constable Davies appeared through a side door.

  ‘Mrs Mohammed? Can you come this way, please?’

  ‘I have my friend with me …’

  ‘And I thought I’d come to do my statement, too …’

  The police officer flashed an exasperated look at Jack, stepped back as he ushered them towards the door, and conceded.

  ‘Suppose it won’t hurt. Come on, let’s get you in and see what this is all about.’

  He ushered them along a small corridor.

  ‘Second room on the left, thanks.’

  They entered a cramped interview room containing more plastic chairs, a small laminated table that was chipped around the edges, and a poster on the wall promoting Crime Stoppers. A tiny frosted window was the only connection to the outside world, but the sliver of light it allowed in did little to help the single 40-watt globe dispel the gloom.

  With a good deal of scraping of chairs on the lino floor, they sat down on the far side of the table. Farhia and Aicha looked like obedient schoolgirls, while Jack did his best to sit up straight. Davies leant back on his chair, boredom oozing through every pore in his rough, reddish face.

  He looked down at a couple of pages of notes, and then looked back up at Farhia.

  ‘So, Mrs Mohammed, the two big kids just came by and attacked your sons?’

  ‘Yes, that is right.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Your boys didn’t do anything to them? Throw stones at them? Call them names?’

  ‘Of course not. They are good boys.’

  He scribbled a few additional words at the bottom of one of his pages of notes.

  ‘They both said that Yusuf — that’s the right name, I think — kicked the older one in the genitals …’

  ‘They are telling a lie.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  The interview continued in this vein, becoming ever more circular. After writing some more notes, he turned to Jack. He wasn’t able to cast any light on the origins of the affray. He didn’t mention the man with the knife, and the cop made no attempt to question him about it.

  ‘Didn’t really see how it started. Matt was hopping into the cab, and we heard all this yelling and screaming. We hopped over the bushes and broke it up. Didn’t see the little kids doing anything. Just looked like big kids having some fun, roughing them up, that sort of thing, you know.’

  Jack felt embarrassed at how inarticulate he sounded. He noticed the police officer had a habit of sucking his knuckles while he was listening — first the right hand, then the left, then back to the right again. It might have been an unconscious device for covering his face, which was odd, considering he was reasonably good-looking in a craggy, cop-like kind of way.

  ‘So you’ve never met Mrs Mohammed before? That day the only time you’ve ever seen her?’ The fine distinction between these two questions eluded Jack, and he answered the second.

  ‘Yeah. Er … apart from yesterday, that is. Had to take her book back to her.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘Just a little diary or something. Picked it up in the playground right after the fight. Had a few pages of funny writing, so I thought it might be hers. So I took it back to her.’

  Senior Constable Davies turned to face Farhia.

  ‘That correct?’

  Farhia threw a disapproving look at Jack, fleeting and subtle, but clear enough for the cop to notice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s in the book?’

  ‘Just family things.’

  ‘What kind of family things?’

  ‘You understand … family matters. Personal things.’

  The interview became very circular again, with Davies probing for details, and Farhia exchanging words in Somali with Aicha.

  ‘We’ll speak in English, if you don’t mind, Mrs Mohammed,’ he reprimanded her.

  ‘My friend does not speak well. She is worried.’

  Eventually, Davies became exasperated with Farhia’s evasions, threw his arms up in a gesture of surrender, and stood up with a clatter as his chair hit the wall behind him.

  ‘I give up. That’ll do for today. The two kids might be charged with assault, the big one with assault occasioning actual bodily harm maybe. If it goes to court, it’ll be on in a couple of months and you’ll get a summons. Thanks for coming in.’

  Maybe he hasn’t had lunch yet, Jack thought, as he marvelled at the cop’s loss of patience. Davies’ body language betrayed a sudden loss of interest, as if he had already moved on to the next minor annoying matter, and they were irritating him by remaining in his presence. Jack didn’t know much about police procedure, but he thought it strange that he was interviewing two witnesses together. He suspected that Davies was just going through the motions, and that no charges would be laid. He couldn’t help himself: ‘Won’t it be in the Children’s Court or something?’ he asked as he tucked in his shirt and started to walk towards the door.

  ‘One’s eighteen, the other’s nineteen. Melbourne Magistrates’.’ Davies’ economy with words in reply sent a clear message.

  ‘Okay.’ Jack knew when a conversation like this one was finished.

  They departed in some confusion, with Jack twice treading on the hem of Aicha’s dress. The narrow corridors of Carlton police station had clearly been built in an era when people were smaller, and women wore sensible clothes.

  Out in the open air again, he decided to seize the opportunity.

  ‘Hey, want to get a coffee? Got a big tip this morning, so I can shout.’ He hadn’t received any tips at all so far that day, but he felt it wise to cover his offer with a plausible excuse.

  The two women exchanged glances.

  ‘I don’t have to pick up Yusuf yet,’ Farhia said in reply.

  ‘I am going in soon,’ Aicha said.

  Better and better, Jack thought.

  ‘Great, let’s go round to Tiamo’s.’ Displaying an authority that he hoped masked his nervousness, Jack made it difficult for them to refuse his hospitality.

  A few minutes later, they were sitting on wobbly wooden chairs in Tiamo, a longstanding Lygon Street institution that had somehow defied the relentless gentrification of the precinct and retained the bohemian atmosphere that had long since disappeared from most of Carlton.

  It was unnaturally gloomy inside. The walls were covered with colourful posters advertising long-forgotten bands and political causes. It was very noisy, even with only a modest number of customers. Most of the lunch crowd had already drifted away, though it was just after one-thirty.

  ‘So what do you make of that, hey?’ Jack asked cheerily as he ordered coffees from a bored waitress who was so thin she might have been anorexic.

  ‘I do not want to go to court,’ Farhia said.

  ‘Why not? Teach them to leave little kids alone.’

  ‘They have nasty friends. I am upset about Yusuf, but I do not want more trouble. You can run away in your taxi. We have nowhere to run.’ She demonstrated by raising her right arm with her hand cocked and moving it quickly from left to right.

  Aicha fidgeted awkwardly as she tried to get comfortable on her wobbly chair. ‘Other people nasty, too,’ she said. They sure are, Jack thought. They wave knives at innocent cabbies.

  ‘Yeah, I know some nasty people, too,’ Jack added. Most of the people he knew were more pathetic than nasty, but one or two were rather fearsome.

  Their coffees arrived, and they sipped quietly for a few moments. Then Aicha said something to Farhia in Somali, and Farhia replied with a word that sounded to Jack like ‘magician’.

  ‘Sorry …
’ he interrupted, hoping to forestall a conversation in Somali.

  Farhia looked back at him, and returned to English.

  ‘These boys are Majeerten. Their people do not like us. We are Darod like them, but not Majeerten.’

  ‘They hate Hawiye,’ Aicha chipped in.

  Jack was now out of his depth. He had worked out that they weren’t talking about magicians or musicians, but that didn’t help much.

  Farhia noticed the bemused look on his face, and smiled.

  ‘These are tribes. You think we are all Somalis. On the outside, yes, but underneath we are from different tribes.’

  Aicha interrupted again in Somali, and then reverted to English. ‘Sorry, I must going. Thank you for my coffee.’ She stood up in a swift, fluid movement, her robes swirling around her, and walked towards the door. Jack acknowledged her departure with a nod and a smile, and then turned back to Farhia.

  God, you’re beautiful, he mused as she rummaged around in the small bag she had with her. She glanced back up at Jack, and he felt like he’d been sprung.

  ‘Tell me about the tribes.’

  ‘This is the reason there is much war in Somalia. Tribes and clans. We look the same, we speak the same language, and we hate each other.’

  ‘Which tribe are you from?’

  ‘Somalia is three different countries. Separate parts were owned by the British, the Italians … I am Darod from Puntland.’ She pronounced the ‘u’ like the ‘oo’ in book, and spelt out the name for Jack. ‘Then there are clans and sub-clans. Majeerten is a sub-clan of Darod. Puntland is right on the Horn of Africa. We have always been the traders of Somalia.’

  ‘What about the pirates?’

  Farhia ignored this diversion, and continued with her explanation.

  ‘In the south are Hawiye — also Digile and Mirifle, away from the sea.’

  Next time I yell out ‘stupid Somalis’, I’ll need to be more specific, Jack noted.

  ‘The war, it is in the south. Puntland is peaceful. We have a government in the capital, Garowe, led by Australian Somalis. The president is from Heidelberg. He went to La Trobe University.’ There was some pride evident in this statement.