The Ghosts & Jamal

by Bridget Blankley

  ‘No, I can’t go.’

  ‘Why, are you fasting?’ The girl sounded surprised.

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just I was meant to go there … to the orphanage, with the nuns. They’ll know and keep me in.’

  ‘Did you run away from the orphanage? That was stupid; they make a good breakfast.’

  ‘No, I didn’t want to go, so I ran away from the hospital.’

  ‘Then why are you worried? They never saw you, so just don’t tell them. Now come on or we won’t get anything.’

  Jamal started to follow her then realised that they were heading off the main road. He hesitated – he was hungry and he wanted breakfast, but he didn’t want to get lost again.

  ‘Come on! I’m not waiting. You’ll be fine. They haven’t got room for all the street kids. They aren’t going to invite you to stay.’

  Jamal made up his mind. He wanted breakfast.

  He was pleased that he was able to get some food. He was almost sorry that he hadn’t gone to the orphanage now, because the nuns seemed quite nice, not the monsters that Afiba had said they would be. But it was too late. Jamal wondered if the soldiers had found his grandfather. He hoped they hadn’t. Jamal wanted to laugh when he thought how cross Grandfather would be if he came all the way to the city just to be sent home again. Yes, he thought, it would have been funny to see his grandfather – very very cross but afraid of the soldiers so having to pretend not to mind.

  By the time Jamal got back to the main road he had finally stopped laughing – well, almost. He was still smiling as he turned away from the city and started to look for the ghosts again.

  Following Your Nose

  As Jamal headed further from the city, the road began to bend more often. At one point he wasn’t sure if he was on the right course: the main road seemed to turn to the right, whereas the route Jamal was taking was unswerving but more like a track. But he remembered that the boy in the football shirt had told him to keep going straight, even if there were better roads, so that’s what he did. Jamal walked along the track hoping he was still heading south. It was more difficult to tell which way he was going because there was so much smoke in the air ahead of him. He started to cough. It was the sort of smoke that came from a generator, but it didn’t smell the same. Jamal couldn’t believe this, but it seemed as if it smelt of fish. What sort of smoke smelt of fish? Not the smoke that the ghosts left behind, Jamal was sure of that.

  As he got closer, his eyes started to sting. He thought that maybe there were huts ahead of him, but he wasn’t sure. The huts seemed to be moving, but it was so hard to see. He kept walking, trying to make sense of the moving houses and the fishy smoke. The boys had been right – this place did smell awful. But it didn’t smell of death; it smelt of fire and fish.

  As he got closer he realised that the huts really were moving. They weren’t huts; they were boats. Were the huts boats? Or were the boats huts? Jamal wasn’t sure which. He hadn’t seen any boats like these before. A few seemed like normal boats but there were others that were like houses, with washing lines strung between them, and smoke seeping through the roofs. It looked as if the huts – or boats – were on fire, but they weren’t. They couldn’t have been because people were going in and out of them, jumping from one boat to another. It was as if the city had grown too big so someone had said, ‘Let’s just build another one on the water.’

  Jamal didn’t think he would ever get used to living in the city. But he didn’t think he could go back to the country either. He would miss the noise and the nights that were like days and the music and the people and the way the houses all leant on each other. He would miss everything.

  The road suddenly bent round to the left, following the coast and heading away from the floating city. There were boats here too, but they were pulled out of the water. The beach was covered in old plastic bags and empty oil cans and fraying fishing-nets and every boat had a gaping hole in the side. What had happened? Jamal couldn’t think of any reason why so many boats were being kept when they couldn’t be used. Why didn’t people break them up for firewood? It wasn’t as if they didn’t have fires: he had seen the smoke and the fires in the floating city.

  He had just started to climb over the wall that kept the land and the sea apart when he smelt something familiar. That nutmeg scent that told him that the spirits were near. He slipped down the wall and away from the road, hoping that he could stay hidden, at least for a while. He was only just in time. The hissing whispering noises got louder and lights filled his eyes and the spirits rolled him on the rubbish-filled beach.

  When he woke up his mouth was full of blood and sand. He wasn’t sure which was worse. He knew that the spirits often bit his tongue, but he’d forgotten how much it hurt. All the time he was in the hospital the spirits had stayed away, but now they were back and Jamal was unhappy. He wondered if there was a way to tell them that they weren’t welcome any more. When his family was alive it had been OK. He didn’t mind if he was keeping the people he loved safe. But not now. There was no one left, only Jamal, so it was time they left him alone.

  He spat the blood out of his mouth and climbed back over the wall. He’d been lucky; no one had noticed him. He would be able to continue his trek without anyone calling him names or throwing stones at him. All in all, not bad – definitely worth a mouthful of sand. He could hardly smell the smoke now; there was another smell on the air – not very strong but not very pleasant either. In fact, it almost made him want to smell the fish smoke again. The further he walked, the stronger the smell became. Jamal knew what the smell was: it was the smell that came when something was dead. Judging by how strong the smell was, something very big had been dead for a long time. He leant over the wall again, and threw up. He wanted to turn around, to go back to the smoke. But he remembered what the boys had told him. ‘Follow your nose,’ they had said: ‘the road smells of death’. This must be the right road.

  He spat the bad taste out of his mouth and started walking again. The road began to turn away from the sea.

  Somewhere to Live

  The air was full of flies as Jamal walked on. Not the normal summer flies; these were larger and angrier. Six months ago he would have run away. Gone somewhere that smelt sweeter, somewhere where there was less smoke, where the wind blew from the sea. But now it was OK. Jamal had become used to air that wasn’t fresh – and as for the flies, at least they were alive. So he kept walking along the road, batting the flies away from his face as he went.

  He walked long into the afternoon, and although he was passed by lots of lorries and quite a few pick-ups, there were no people walking with him. Maybe the road went nowhere, or maybe it was a bad road to follow. The road was too dry for Jamal to see many tracks, though he knew there would be wild dogs looking for food and men who would steal from anyone passing. But he wasn’t bothered. He had no food so the dogs would leave him alone. He had nothing left to steal so the robbers wouldn’t bother with him either. He only had his book and he didn’t think anyone would want that.

  The book was filled with beautiful patterns but he knew this would not interest the thieves – thieves only wanted things they could sell. He opened the book and ran his hands across the pages.

  ‘Like butterflies,’ he said. ‘A book of handkerchief butterflies that never die.’

  Jamal felt sad as he thought of all the dead butterflies he’d seen when he left the mountain. He didn’t feel sad about leaving his grandfather – he was quite pleased to have left him behind. Jamal had wanted his grandfather to be wise and kind. Like the grandfathers in the stories he had heard when he hid behind the thorn hedge. The stories that his uncles wove from the evening smoke. He would have been sad to leave a grandfather like that, but he didn’t mind leaving the old man on the mountain.

  He turned the pages of his book which fluttered and fell. They felt magical and were full of complicated patterns, meaningless but special because they reminded him of home. Maybe the old man hadn’t been h
is grandfather after all. Maybe he was just waiting in his grandfather’s cave, taking care of his things. Or maybe he was a thief, stealing Grandfather’s food while he was out. Jamal decided that that was probably what had happened. If the old man was a thief, then he would have wanted Jamal to leave. That was why he was such a bad man. Jamal wished he’d realised this before. He could have waited for his grandfather to return and help him chase the thief away. But he had let his grandfather down. The thief had chased Jamal away instead; chased him down the mountain. And now his grandfather would never find him and the thief would have taken all the food from the cave. Yes, thought Jamal, I really am unlucky after all. That’s why I’ll never be welcome anywhere.

  He looked at his book again, at the patterns curling across the page. They reminded him of the marks on the side of the red canister that the ghosts had left. They weren’t the same, but they felt the same – as if they shared the same sort of magic. He traced his finger along a line of the black pictures. These, he thought, could be pictures of fish leaping out of the water. Sometimes there were dots and flicks above the fish. Those are the flies that the fish want to catch. This is a good book; it is full of stories. And if I try to understand them they will be like the pictures on the ghost canister and they will tell me what to do next.

  So Jamal looked at the patterns of fish swimming through his book and decided that they were swimming towards the sunset. Then, before he could put the book away, thump! A mango hit him on the shoulder. He caught it before it fell on the ground. He closed the book and ate the mango.

  He noticed that under the leaves there were lots of mangoes – small hard mangoes that were bruised and pecked. Jamal picked up as many as he could, dusting off the mud and the bugs before putting them in his bag. He didn’t know how far he would have to walk so he tried to fill his bag. Mangoes were good to eat at any time – even if they were not quite ripe. When he’d gathered all the fruit, he tucked his book under his arm and started walking west, towards the sun. I’m definitely going the right way, he thought – the smell was getting stronger. He felt happy at last; he was sure that he would soon know what to do.

  By the time Jamal got to the end of the road it was night. Ahead of him were fires, so many fires that he couldn’t count them. More fires than he had fingers, probably more fires than mangoes. They rose in lines, marching up the hill like the army-worms that trooped up the trees before the big rains. The smell of rubbish was very strong here. So strong that he felt his stomach rising into his mouth. This was not a good place to be. Jamal couldn’t hear any ghosts, or see them dancing in the fires, but somehow he was sure they were here. He couldn’t see anyone around, but he knew he was being watched. He was just trying to decide if he should go closer to the fires or leave and come back in the morning when a heavy hand stung his ear.

  ‘Hey you, boy. What do you want here?’

  He still couldn’t see anyone – it was too dark, the air too full of shapes and shadows – but he could smell the man, unwashed and drunk.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I’m following the ghosts, sir. I’m going to the fires, sir, till it’s morning.’

  The heavy hand stung his ear again.

  ‘And have you got a dash for Uncle, boy? So he can buy a little coffee and maybe look the other way while you sneak in where you’re not meant to be?’ The man separated himself from the shadows and leant over Jamal. He didn’t smell of coffee. In fact, Jamal couldn’t smell coffee at all, just the man and the sweet smell of nutmeg. Gradually all the other smells faded as the nutmeg breath of the spirits floated towards him. Jamal tried to ignore it.

  ‘I’ve got nothing, sir. No coffee, no money for coffee. I’ve come for the spirits. I can keep them from you, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, boy.’ Jamal felt his face sting as the man hit him again. ‘None of your ignorant bush nonsense here. There are no spirits, no ghosts, no juju. This is a good Christian place. Just find a little dash for your uncle and you can go by the fire.’

  Jamal didn’t answer the man. The spirits were whispering buzzy little secrets and he could feel their smoky blackness flowing over him.

  Although he didn’t know it, Jamal fell to the ground, shaking at the watchman’s feet.

  The watchman – who did believe in spirits and ghosts after all – dropped his cigarette and ran back into the shadows. He forgot about his bribe, and about keeping people away from the rubbish – he just wanted to be away from Jamal and whatever was tormenting him.

  When the spirits finally left Jamal, a boy was standing over him. He was a bit smaller than Jamal but looked much stronger.

  ‘You feeling better?’ He peered into Jamal’s face. ‘I’m Mham. I think it’s short for something but I don’t know what, ’cause it’s so long since my mum was around to call my name. What are you called?’

  ‘Jamal. That’s my whole name, not short for anything.’ Jamal sat up, checking the spirits hadn’t bitten him or rolled him into a fire. He felt fine so he looked for his book and his bag. The bag was gone.

  ‘I’ve got your mangoes. Didn’t want you to spoil them. I ate a couple, though. Hope that’s OK. You did well to keep them from Johnson. He was so scared of you – it made me laugh. Here.’ Mham held out his hand and pulled Jamal to his feet. ‘Come on, this way.’

  And that was it. Jamal moved into Mham’s hut and learnt to pick and sort the rubbish. The watchman stayed away from them, so they didn’t have to pay him a bribe, but he wasn’t the only one who expected a share of their money. They paid one man for the right to stay in the hut, another for the right to sell plastic, another so that they could use the water tap by the gate, and someone else so their stuff didn’t get stolen when they were working on the dump.

  They might have starved, but they didn’t. When they found plastic bottles, they tied them together and sold them to the men in trucks. When they found wood, they collected it and dragged it back to their hut to burn. When they found clothes, they would either wear them or sell them to the rag man. When they found food, they would take it into the hut and eat it. But they had other ways to survive too. Jamal would sometimes walk back to the bush and collect fruit while Mham stayed behind on the dump. It was always Jamal who went for the fruit because the watchman was afraid of him and let him through the gate without paying.

  When the rains came there were more accidents. The water made the piles of rubbish unstable. There were landslides and mudslides. The fires wouldn’t light and the huts leaked. But no one left the dump – there was nowhere else to go. They made hats from carrier bags and capes from fertilizer sacks so they could keep working. There were no more mangoes because all the fruit rotted. Jamal tried using a bucket of water to catch termites like his aunties used to do. But it didn’t work. They caught flies and once they found a fat mouse drowned in the bucket, but nothing they could eat. It was a difficult time. Somehow, the boys managed to make enough money to survive, although Mham developed a cough and the cuts on Jamal’s hands and feet became infected. The boys were pleased when the clouds rolled away and took the rains with them – everyone was. The rubbish on the dump began to dry out and life got a little easier.

  In the evening the boys would sometimes go from the dump and walk to the sea. Not often because it was risky to leave the hut. There was always someone who wanted a new roof or some tin sheet, and an unattended hut could be raided for materials – particularly if it only belonged to small boys. But it was cooler by the sea and there were people and music. And when people were enjoying themselves there was often food to be stolen.

  ‘So what happened to your mum?’ Jamal asked, passing Mham the bag of crisps that he’d ‘found’ by someone’s icebox.

  ‘She got buried.’

  ‘Eh?’ Well, everyone gets buried, Jamal thought, after they’re dead.

  ‘It was a big slide – on the old part of the dump. It was in the morning. We were all picking together – me, my brothers, and mum with my baby sister. Our bag blew away and I went after it. Th
e rubbish just shifted. I thought we wouldn’t find them – wish we hadn’t in some ways. Should have left them. You don’t want to see them after. Remember that, Jamal: if I go under, leave me there.’

  They sat in silence for awhile – Mham remembering his family and Jamal thinking that he wouldn’t leave his friend under a landslide, no matter what he said.

  ‘So,’ said Mham. ‘What about your mum? What happened to her?’

  ‘She turned yellow and died,’ Jamal said. ‘Not straight away. She was sick first and got a fever. But she just got worse, then her eyes and her hands went all yellow and she died. It was OK till she died. I wasn’t alone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mham said. ‘It’s being alone, isn’t it?’ Then he said, ‘But we’re OK now, aren’t we? You and me.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re OK,’ Jamal said, not really meaning it. He dropped the empty crisp packet – it wasn’t worth anything – and started to climb over the sea wall. ‘You coming?’ he asked Mham.

  They walked home in silence.

  A Way of Life

  The dump was like a small town – everything that happened in a town happened in the dump. People died and babies were born. Young people fell in love and teenagers argued with their parents. It was just that all these things happened surrounded by rubbish. None of the children went to school, but that didn’t bother Jamal – he had never been to school anyway. He was just happy to fit in. He and Mham made a good team. Mham watched out for Jamal when the spirits came and Jamal earned extra money that they could use to buy food in the market.

  Once every month, more or less, people came from the government. From the sanitation department. They always said the same thing. They said they were going to close the dump. That they were going to build a new recycling centre on the other side of town. They told the rubbish pickers that they would have to leave. They said they would tear down their huts and – if they didn’t move on – they would put them in jail. They didn’t mean it. But Jamal didn’t know this.