Suddenly, a monster cross wave that could only have been sent by Poseidon himself overran the wave the raft was clinging to and flipped up the side of the craft.
The life raft pitched sideways aggressively with a shaking motion.
Aziz slipped from his kneeling position and was thrown forward. He was airborne, out of control and tumbling toward the churning sea. He brutally crashed into the back of Nigeria-man, sending the other refugee flying off the raft and into the green abyss before landing face-first on top of a brass oarlock.
Survival kicked in and he felt no pain.
Something brushed past him and he grabbed it.
The safety line!
Aziz wrapped his arm through the cord and held on, dragging himself back over the slippery sides and onto the relative safety of the raft. He coughed violently and spat out three teeth through a bloodied mouth.
Nigeria-man had been cast into the roiling, murky depths and was floundering in the rough seas.
“Help me,” gasped the man, trying to attract Aziz’s attention, pleading with him in heavily accented broken English as he sunk below the waves and resurfaced again three meters away.
Desperately thrusting his arm toward Aziz, Nigeria-man managed to form a few words before he disappeared under the next wave that crashed over him.
“I no swim . . . pleeeease help me.”
But when the wave had passed Nigeria-man was gone, swallowed by the angry water, sinking faster than a stone thrown into a pond.
As Aziz regained control of the situation and regrouped, a memory of some overheard words spoken in hushed tones between the people smugglers in Tripoli momentarily flashed through his brain.
“The Africans, man. They sink faster than the others. Once they fall into the water they’re gone, never to be seen again. Just grab their five hundred and thank Allah for his generosity, because they won’t need it where they’re going. They’re the walking dead.”
Their heartless words made Aziz realize even before he stepped on board the overcrowded craft with his brother two weeks later along with the other fifty-four refugees that on the water, death is your constant companion.
Not everyone would make it over to Sicily and a new life.
It had taken less than a minute, but in that short space of time Nigeria-man had fulfilled the people smugglers’ prophecy. He was gone. But Abdul was still out there, fighting the swell!
“Abdul, Abdul, where are you,” Aziz frantically yelled again into the onslaught through his bloodied mouth.
He desperately searched the waves around him and . . .
“Yes, yes, you’re there! I can see you, Abdul . . . I’m coming, I’m coming.” Aziz’s brother bobbed up on the crest of a wave about twenty meters away. He was struggling, desperately waving before he sank again, but he was still alive!
Without a second thought, Aziz half dove, half slipped off the edge of the heaving life raft into the churning water, urgently swimming breaststroke fashion toward his brother.
“I’m coming, my brother. I’m coming. Hold on.” Encouraging words of rescue ran through his brain but failed to breach his lips. Instead, Aziz coughed up the remnants of the last wave that had just broken down his throat. Flailing his arms over and over like a windmill, kicking his aching legs and gasping for breath, Aziz desperately swam toward his brother. But Abdul disappeared again as another wave surged over top both of them.
Then as if Allah himself had intervened, a momentary lull invaded the power of the storm and Aziz heard desperate words calling through the mayhem.
“Aziz, Aziz . . . please help me.” Wafts of indistinct sound whispered through the turmoil, with no direction or bearing as to where they were emanating from. But they were there.
Abdul is still alive!
“My brother, I’m here. Where are you?” yelled Aziz. He was almost spent, struggling to stay afloat, panicking, swallowing huge gulps of green water, going under and surfacing repeatedly, gasping for air.
I have to find my brother, thought Aziz.
“Abdul . . . Abdul,” Aziz screamed, floundering, somehow moving, paddling, pushing against the giant waves in the direction of where he thought his brother had been pushed to.
The next wave crashed over him, a rogue wall of water that was determined to pull him under as he tumbled over and over in the power of the break, drowning him.
But Aziz struggled free and broke the surface again.
He gulped the air, coughing violently before vomiting up more seawater, disgorging himself of the half the Mediterranean that had poured down his throat and entered his lungs.
And there was Abdul, not more than five meters away! Highlighted by the moon, the shadow of a hand looking like a periscope was bobbing up and down, desperately waving as it rose and then sank below the surface.
“Abdul!” yelled Aziz.
Aziz drew on his last reserves of strength, and exhausted as he was, desperately swam the few remaining meters toward his brother.
“Hold on, Abdul,” Aziz wanted to shout, but he was so focused on making it to his struggling brother that the words remained silent, heard only by the crashing seas.
Aziz rose up to the crest of the next wave and confirmed his brother’s location.
Three meters. Four more strokes and I’ll be there.
Hold on, Abdul. Allah, be merciful, let me reach my brother.
Abdul was floundering but still alive. Gasping for air, his strength waning, Aziz forced himself onward.
Two meters.
With a desperate last push, Aziz clutched his brother, grasping desperately at anything that he could reach. A shirt. Or was it his pants? It didn’t matter; Aziz just grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on.
“Abdul . . . I’m here . . .”
“My brother,” Abdul gasped, with a look of sheer terror in his pitch-black eyes. “I knew . . . you would save me . . .”
“Yes . . . Allah is merciful, Abdul . . . I’m here,” Aziz managed to mutter.
A rogue beast of a wave that was out of pattern with the rest of the swell and two meters taller than all the others crashed through with the power of a tsunami and broke over Aziz and Abdul, tumbling them over and over, separating them, forcing them deeper and deeper. Aziz felt himself being sucked down to such a depth that his ears screamed in pain with the pressure of the water pounding against his tympanic membranes.
I’m going to die, thought Aziz, his lungs screaming for air as he spun around and around as if he was in a front-load washing machine.
He was spent and had no power to fight back. Tumbling nine meters below the boiling surface, Aziz started to enter a trancelike state as his body began to shut down. Drifting in a void of velvet blackness, the death zone was almost pleasant as his subconscious played tricks on him, granting him the pleasure of reviewing his short twenty years as it flashed in front of his eyes like a movie: the proud smile on his father’s face when he graduated from his final year at school at the top of his class; the sadness they all felt when his mother was buried in a makeshift desert grave after she was accidently killed by an ISIS car bomb; the smile on Abdul’s face when Aziz managed to piece a bicycle together for him out of blown-up bits and pieces.
Aziz ceased to struggle and a warmth seemingly took over his body, wrapping him up in a cocoon . . .
Then as if ejected from a fighter pilot’s seat, the tail end of the same rogue wave suddenly threw Aziz back up to the surface and he exploded out of the water on the back of the next wave. Instinctively gasping for breath, his arms flailing, legs kicking to keep his head above water, Aziz violently coughed and gasped, drinking in gulps of the wet air that his brain craved to replenish its life-giving power.
Then reality hit. “Abdul. Abdul, where are you?” Aziz yelled through his exhaustion, but the sea around him was devoid of human life. His brother was nowhere to be seen.
Aziz searched and searched the churning water, desperately trying to find his brother, but he had joined Nige
ria-man.
Allah had taken his brother.
Amid a crushing sadness, Aziz said a silent prayer to speed his brother on to the afterlife:
Mae alsalamat ya 'akhi. Jaeal Allah makanak alumubarak.
(Goodbye, my brother. May Allah make your resting place blessed.)
Aziz peered nervously over the foaming crests of the waves, searching for the life raft.
Where is it? his confused brain screamed to him. The raft’s got to be around here somewhere.
But his searching was really only a reflex survival reaction. Aziz didn’t care anymore; he was finally spent, alone in a threatening environment, sinking more than he was floating, his only companion the breaking waves.
“I failed you, Abdul,” Aziz sobbed, a feeling of total despondency and hopelessness overcoming him, his face distorted with the agony of his loss, tears streaming down his already wet face. “It’s time to join you in eternity, my brother.”
As if finally saying goodbye, Aziz peered into the gloom one last time before slipping below the waves, never to surface again. But Allah must have been watching over him to the end, causing Aziz to focus his bloodshot eyes at a point in the distance. And there was the life raft, just thirty meters away.
However, there was something wrong!
Aziz stared at the white sides of the once-overcrowded craft and realized it was now upside down and wallowing, devoid of people. Thrashing bodies were scattered in the water like black polka dots on a white frothy sea, the lucky ones clinging to the sides of the upturned raft, holding on to the ropes that were strung around it like a rosary, while the others who weren’t so lucky struggled to stay afloat.
Where are you all? thought Aziz, realizing that he could only see about twenty survivors.
More than half his fellow refugees were missing; desperate men, women and children whom Aziz once shared a common bond with—the bond of hope and a new life in a promised land. The frightened face of nineteen-year-old Fatima came to haunt him: seven months pregnant and with an eleven-month-old daughter, Uba, in her arms, she had traveled nearly seven thousand kilometers to escape the ethnic cleansing in war-torn western Ethiopia in search of a chance to enter Europe by the back door—Sicily. Aziz had helped her onto the life raft when they left Sabratha last night—or was it last week?—forcing some of the fellow travelers to make space for her in the middle of the life raft. At least there, surrounded by the other fraught travelers, Aziz hoped she would be safe and protected from the elements.
But no doubt Fatima had been taken as well. She’d never seen the sea before and couldn’t swim. “Such a tragic loss,” Aziz muttered to the ears of the storm. “Allah, why so much death? Fatima was a good girl. And her young child . . .”
When will this torment ever end? thought Aziz. Tears of sadness, tears of frustration, tears of pain and suffering poured down his cheeks and mingled with the cold, unforgiving Mediterranean Sea.
Survival instinct kicked in again, and overcoming his desire to join Abdul in the hereafter, Aziz pushed through the pain to swim once more, arm over wearing arm, toward the stricken life raft. Through his misery and woe, as Aziz desperately struggled to narrow the distance between himself and the relative safety of the floundering craft, his mind drifted.
How many of those unlucky souls on board tonight will join Abdul and Nigeria-man before the storm is spent?
He said another silent prayer.
For all who die here, Rahim Allah ruhik.
(May Allah have mercy on your soul.)
TWO MONTHS LATER
“Happy birthday, sis,” said Dec. He was sitting outside with G and Jools under a large café umbrella at Garraffo Ristorante Wine bar, a small, friendly trattoria on Piazza Marina, two blocks up from the waterfront.
“Wonder what the poor people are doing, eh?”
It was a stinking hot morning, and the four of them just been exploring the Capo food market for the past hour and half. They had been wandering down the narrow, winding cobbled street, lined cheek by jowl with market stalls of every description, enthralled by the noisy hustle and bustle of the traders selling their wares, touting for business, yelling out unintelligible gibberish; the fishy smell of today’s catch wafting through the humid air, suddenly replaced by the sweet aroma of fresh apricots and peaches, only to be taken over in the next step by the heady pungency of exotic spices. Locals shopping for the day’s food, women in hijabs, men sitting in cafés smoking, drinking espressos, tourists pointing, making faces, turning up their noses at some unfamiliar smell, taking pictures.
This was Palermo at eleven thirty in the morning.
And it was now beer o’clock.
Time for a drink and a long lunch. And people watching, as the piazza was now a hive of activity, with locals and tourists alike strolling the well-worn gray cobblestones in search of somewhere to enjoy a lazy and casual Sunday.
Or maybe just a pleasant stroll on their way down to the waterfront.
The enticing smell of garlic and fried seafood dominated the air, providing an addictive background to the pleasant hubbub of families laughing, drinking, catching up, sitting on the small patch of grass in the shade of Europe’s reputably largest fig tree, of young children chasing each other, sometimes shrieking, playing hide-and-seek around the baroque seventeenth-century marble fountain in the middle of the square, people standing in doorways, chatting. It was time to chill and take it all in.
This was Sunday in Palermo, Sicily, at its relaxed best.
Dec raised his Birra Messina and clinked his sister’s vini bianchi.
“And thanks, Dad . . .” Dec paused momentarily to gather his words, as he was about to make a toast.
“And Mum. Can’t forget her,” Cait lightheartedly added to her brother’s words. After all, she turned twenty-five today, so she could say whatever she liked.
“Yeah, thanks Dad . . . and Mum . . . for this. What a cool way to celebrate your big sister’s birthday. Sicily. Like, wow!” Dec continued. “You guys are the best.”
“Well, don’t you both get too carried away. This is a one-off special treat for the family,” said Jools, ever the pragmatic one, as she raised her glass in unison with Dec and Cait.
“Well, I don’t care.” Cait said with a tongue-in-cheek inflection. She removed her hat and extracted a scrunchie from her hair, flicking her head to drape her long, sunbleached golden locks evenly across her shoulders, then continued, “But what Dec and I can say is, thank you both for bringing us along. What a birthday present.”
Cait and Dec were genuinely amazed when G and Jools asked them a few months ago if they would like to join them in Italy for a three-week holiday.
Their answer was a long time coming—about thirty seconds, after it had sunk in that their parents were serious—so the deal was done then and there. No “I’ll have to check my diary,” or “I’ll tell you tomorrow” response.
“You’re welcome. And guys, we asked you along with us for a few reasons,” said G. “The last twenty-four months have been such a really difficult time for us all, with losing our business, then Rishi’s death and Cait’s kidnapping, to mention just a few hiccups along the way.”
“Yeah, and don’t forget about Cait saving my life in Laos that time when she had one of her visions and refused to get on that bus going to Siem Reap,” Dec added enthusiastically.
“Yes, that too Dec. So Jools and I both felt the family needed some quality time together. Time to recharge and find ourselves again, away from all the crap back home. It’s our way of saying thanks to you two for banding together and pulling through this. You’ve both grown into the adults that we always hoped you would be, and we’re so glad to have you with us.”
G looked at his two children and thought how they really were two peas in a pod. You certainly couldn’t mistake them for anything but brother and sister: both tall, lithe and fit, tanned to a rich honey brown, good-looking, pleasant everyday faces. As parents, they were blessed.
“Gee, thanks
Dad, but you didn’t have to do this,” said Cait.
“Sis, let him go on. G’s on a roll!” Dec quipped.
“No, no, it’s our pleasure. Seriously. We’re just so glad that you still want to go on a holiday with your parents,” interjected Jools with an upbeat, almost sarcastic lilt to her voice.
Cait and Dec glanced at each other and chuckled. Jools looked across the table at her husband and smiled impishly, her liquid brown eyes sparkling as they reflected the brightness of the day, and silently thought to herself how lucky she was to have such a close-knit family. And G, well, he was such a nice man—not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but life would be just so boring if he really was faultless.
Not like me! Jools laughed inwardly at herself. LOL.
“And besides, what better way to celebrate a birthday,” said G. “So let’s go forth and have a Lennox family holiday to remember.”
“What, like the Griswolds?” said Dec, laughing. “You might find out you’re the next Chevy Chase.”
“Hope not, but you never know,” replied G. “I’ll keep an eye out for the talent scouts, just in case Hollywood calls.”
“Yeah, as if, Dad,” Cait added, helping herself to some arancini from the serving platter on the table, spooning more than her share of the rich tomato sauce over the top of the large round rice balls.
“This food really is delicious,” she said, speaking through a half-full mouth. “That calamari fritti was just melt in the mouth stuff. And this arancini is to die for.”
“Can’t disagree with that, sis,” said Dec as he topped up his vino rosso from the bottle of Nicosia Etna Rosso sitting in front of him. “I thought those cannoli we had with our espresso granita near the Capo market were good. Totally different from the ones we get in Melbourne. But this? Like, wow!”
“You can thank Paul for the recommendation. Apparently he always eats here when he’s in Palermo,” said G.
“Pass the red, would you, Dec?” said G.
“Paul flies in the day after tomorrow. Remember?”
G topped up his wine before continuing.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 53
