The Lines We Cross

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  “See that juxtaposition!” Andrew cries. “That’s what you call good TV.” He looks at us all, triumphant. “Just that shot alone on the back of Michael’s excellent point”—he looks over at me and nods proudly—“gives me confidence the producers aren’t bleeding hearts.”

  It’s perfect reality TV. Dramatic, shocking, raw, intense. My phone is filled with text messages from friends: You looked good! Good point you made, mate! Your dad’s awesome! My Facebook wall has more mixed responses. Some of the more random people I’ve added over the years aren’t impressed. What about Australia’s international legal obligations? Bet your dad would change his mind if he actually had to stay back with those refugees in Iraq, hey? I’m unfriending you, you dickhead.

  I watch with bated breath as Dad and the rest of the group are quickly bundled into an armored personnel carrier and driven away from one of the camps after they’ve been alerted to a possible ambush. It feels surreal, watching Dad on screen. Watching him try to contain his emotions, deal with exhaustion and fear. One of the other people in the group, Gary, is opposed to Dad’s politics, and they get into fierce arguments on camera, the others in the group either joining in, or holding back to watch on. No matter how hard Gary comes at him, Dad responds calmly and coolly, even while he’s sitting in a leaky boat, or huddled on a desert floor eating scraps of bread with a bunch of Iraqi refugees. A part of me is proud of the way he handles himself, even if I’m not proud of his politics.

  I can’t point to where Iraq or Indonesia or Afghanistan are on the world map. Politics here bore me, let alone keeping up with other countries. But something’s shifted in me. This must be what living in gray feels like.

  As I watch the images unfold on the TV screen and listen to the arguments among the participants, I realize that I know so little.

  And that knowledge gives me hope.

  Don’t Jump the Queue.

  It sounds so quaint, like a queue at a shopping center or a bus stop.

  Michael and his family appear on the screen. They seem like a happy family, warm and generous to one another. When the camera focuses on Michael, he offers an almost halfhearted we’ll-be-flooded opinion, and his eyes instantly dart to his father, Alan, as though he’s seeking his approval. But I don’t get a sense that Michael’s father is an overbearing patriarch. There’s genuine admiration in the way Michael looks at his dad.

  Alan is pleasant, funny, and exudes charm. He’s calm and measured and manages to smile his way through an argument about “economic refugees” and “cultural incompatibility.” He’s not an angry ranter, an unsophisticated, easy-to-mock redneck. That role is filled by Jeff from Adelaide. Alan plays it smart. He’s quick to build an alliance with Jeff, while still distinguishing himself as the reasonable, rational conservative. His main combatants are Julianne, who works in radio, and Gary, a teacher from Melbourne.

  There are moments when, to my surprise, I find myself liking Alan, and I realize why Michael is so quick to defend his father. It’s hard to accept that nice people can be racist too.

  The episode ends with the participants arriving in a camp in Indonesia. The final episode will air on Monday. I close the screen on my laptop.

  I’m numb.

  I ignore all the messages that have flooded my phone and Facebook wall. I curl up in the armchair that reminds me of my father and remember being a kid, curled up on his lap as he sat in his chair.

  I close my eyes and see Hasan’s tiny blank face … the open sea … people vomiting over the side of the boat … the dazed look on Mum’s face as she cradled me … Each memory is a nail inside my head. It sits there, suspended, and I don’t notice it until suddenly something or somebody acts as a trigger and a hammer starts to hit each nail until my whole head is pounding.

  Mina walks straight past my desk in English. I keep my head down, focusing on my laptop screen, but I can hear her laughing with Paula. I ache inside, wanting desperately to fix things, to wipe the slate clean, to be a different person, somebody she’d choose to laugh with too.

  Ms. Parkinson hasn’t arrived yet and people hang around talking. Somebody mentions Don’t Jump the Queue. I’m mortified.

  “No offense or anything, Michael,” says Adrian, “but I can’t believe your dad wasn’t affected by what he went through.”

  “Oh, get stuffed, Adrian,” I lash out. “How the hell would you know what he went through?”

  “What do you mean?” Adrian yells back. “He went on a boat and stayed in the camps and he still thinks they’ve got no right to ask us for help.”

  Leica joins in. “And you were talking about floodgates and stuff too. Do you actually agree with your dad and that organization he started?”

  “I’m my own person,” I snap.

  “It’s a free country,” somebody calls out.

  Out of the corner of my eye I notice Mina looking at me.

  “Yeah, well, we have the right to say it’s bullshit,” somebody else says.

  “Where’s your humanity?” Adrian says. “They’ve got no choice.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t fit in,” Fred says. “They don’t learn English, and they treat women like they’re second-class citizens.”

  “Fred the feminist,” Paula says with a snort. “I think I’ve heard everything now.”

  “The point is, they come here and try to change things,” Terrence says. “Like Michael’s dad said. There’s a big culture clash.”

  I want to disappear. Just evaporate into thin air.

  “Fred, you’re forgetting that they want to turn Australia into an Islamic state.” Mina’s eyes flash at Fred. Her voice drips with sarcasm. “We all know that’s exactly what’s on the minds of asylum seekers and the Muslim two point five percent of the Australian population.”

  I look up sharply. She has a look of pure defiance on her face. A fierceness and courage that takes my breath away.

  “Speaking of political parties, there’s a sex organization, you know?” Terrence says. “I’ll join that.”

  That gets people laughing.

  “Anyway, listen to Fred,” Terrence continues, a big grin on his face. “He’s Asian. Even he thinks it’s all bullshit. You can’t call him racist.”

  Terrence slaps Fred on the back, like he’s scored a point. Fred tells him to shut up, but he’s laughing too.

  “Another intelligent contribution from Terrence,” Paula moans.

  “Anyway, Michael,” Adrian says, “all I’m saying is it’s weird your dad wouldn’t—”

  “He can think what he wants,” I snap, cutting him off. “It’s got nothing to do with me.” I continue to focus my eyes on my laptop, signaling that the topic is closed as far as I’m concerned.

  “Oh, stop giving Michael and his dad a hard time everybody, will you?” Terrence cries. It’s only drawing more attention to me but he thinks he’s sticking up for me. “It’s a free country, remember?”

  “Why is it that whenever somebody uses the ‘it’s a free country’ defense they’re basically defending the right to act like a bigot?” Mina says to nobody in particular.

  I almost laugh. Because strange as it may seem, I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.

  I’m like one of those stupid birds that keeps on launching itself at the same window. I walk over to the library hoping to catch Mina during our free period, bracing myself for the impact.

  She’s alone, bent over her work, deep in concentration. I want her to know that I’m not my father. That I only said those things on the program because I hadn’t thought much about my parents’ arguments before, had always just gone along without questioning them.

  I want so bad to be able to talk to Mina. But she’s made it clear that she wants nothing to do with me. I have to accept that. I need to man up. I’m being a complete idiot.

  Changing my mind, I turn around, but the librarian is walking past at that moment and calls out, “Hi, Michael! How’s it going?”

  Shit.

  Mina turns around
sharply and sees me standing there. Oh God, it’s awkward. I must look like a creepy stalker.

  I mumble something back to the librarian about looking for a book and she smiles and walks off. Meanwhile, I’m frozen in position, like a kangaroo caught in the headlights. Mina’s looking at me.

  “I’m just looking for a book,” I say quickly.

  “I watched Don’t Jump the Queue,” she says in an icy tone.

  “Mmm.” I meet her gaze.

  “Did you really mean what you said?” Her eyes search mine.

  I sigh. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know if you meant what you said?” She raises her eyebrows.

  “Just don’t know,” I say, and walk away.

  I’m getting better at my job, but still not reaching my targets, although I have a nagging suspicion they are designed to be impossible to reach. Anh is constantly on my back, monitoring my call times and timing my toilet breaks. It makes me think that call centers would make good training grounds for anybody interested in a career as a fascist dictator.

  It’s bone marrow research today. I figure out that I could be asking for donations to save children from a burning building and people would still think telemarketer and want to reach through the phone and throttle me. Today’s call is a first though.

  “You could go to university, educate yourself, and get a proper job. You don’t have to waste your life in a call center.”

  “So I can’t persuade you to make a donation toward bone marrow medical research?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  And he scores!

  “Two dollars is as high as I can go though.”

  I lean back in my chair and raise my eyes to the ceiling.

  If I stared at a plant for days I would never notice it growing. I’ve seen Michael almost every weekday since the start of school, and it’s not until today, in the library, that I notice a change in his eyes. When I first met him in class he struck me as the kind of guy who, despite being only vaguely committed to his opinion, wasn’t embarrassed to share it. It’s only now in the library that I see he’s changed. There’s a vulnerability in his eyes that I never noticed before. A conflict that tells me he’s going through a private battle. And I don’t know what’s happened, or what caused it, but something in my gut tells me I have something to do with it.

  And call me crazy, but it makes me a little less angry.

  Mum’s got all her friends coming over for lunch tomorrow and is making me help her clean the apartment. I’m a sucker for pain so I turn the TV on to watch the final episode of Don’t Jump the Queue as I dust the furniture.

  “Mariam’s bringing her sister-in-law, Fariha,” Mum tells me as she works away in the kitchen. “I can’t stand her.”

  “Why?” I ask distractedly. The credits have started and Michael’s face briefly appears on the TV screen. Incomprehensibly, my stomach kind of goes all funny.

  “She’s a backstabbing, arrogant, judgmental witch, that’s why.”

  “So I take it you don’t like her then.” I slow down with the dusting as the episode starts. I balance on the armrest of the couch, watching the TV.

  “She told Irfan’s wife that I’ve become stuck-up since we moved here because I rarely visit. Can you imagine? We’ve only been here a few months. Can’t I settle in first? Did she even pick up the phone once?”

  I block out the sound of my mum’s voice as she rants on about Fariha.

  Michael’s dad is hugging a child, his face a mixture of horror and sadness as he surveys the squalor in a room where a bunch of kids live. I can’t reconcile the image with what he preaches.

  “But of course I’ll have to act all polite tomorrow when she’s in my home—come on, Mina, hurry up, there’s still the bathroom to clean—and of course she’ll be looking every corner up and down …”

  Michael’s dad is arguing with some of the other participants. I can’t finish the show.

  “Jerk,” I yell at the TV, switching it off and throwing the remote on the couch.

  “What’s the problem?” Mum asks, looking at me in surprise.

  “That man!”

  “Okay. No need to get all worked up. He’s on TV. Nobody to us. Don’t forget the cup marks on the TV cabinet.”

  I refuse to watch the rest. I don’t need to see a bunch of people crying over refugee camps and struggling in a leaky boat so I can get some perspective. I’ve lived through it. They’ll all return home after the show and eventually life will go back to normal. Even if the ones affected put up a fight, they’ll be ignored and the government will do what it wants. And the kids in the camp will keep on starving and the mothers will give up crying and the fathers will wither away with helplessness and life will go on, even for me, because I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m grateful that I made it to a country that offers peace, but what upsets me is that it offers peace to some and not others. That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? A lottery of winners and losers.

  I call Maha. It’s been a while. She can always make me laugh. I tell her about Michael and, in her typically understated style, she suggests I find a photo of him online, Photoshop a burka over it, and then wreak social media havoc.

  As tempting as it is, I tell her I’ll have to think about it.

  She promises to watch Don’t Jump the Queue as soon as the episode is uploaded online.

  “At least then I can see if he’s a good-looking douchebag,” she says. “Never, ever trust the accuracy of a person’s Facebook profile.”

  “What difference does it make anyway?”

  “Oh, Mina. Isn’t it obvious? It’ll make stalking him online so much more tolerable if he’s at least hot.”

  We don’t have much to do with each other for the rest of the term. Things have shifted for me at school in a small way. I’m spending more time in the tech lab, or the art room, trying to get on top of all the assignments the teachers have piled on us. Terrence and Fred notice that we aren’t hanging out as often as we used to, but they just assume it’s because I’ve become a nerd.

  It’s Saturday morning and the premier has called a state election earlier than expected. My parents are ecstatic.

  “Why is it exciting?” Nathan asks.

  “Because it’s game on!” Mum says, grinning, as she takes a bite of her toast.

  “What kind of game?”

  “It’s just a phrase, Nathan,” she says.

  Nathan keeps looking at Mum. “What kind of game?”

  But my parents are distracted, talking about leaflet dropping in Jordan Springs and helping certain sympathetic candidates in their electorate.

  “It’s a game where you hunt down people, line them up against a wall, and then chuck trash at them,” I tell Nathan.

  Mum gives me a look. “Cut it out, Michael. What an awful thing to say.”

  I grin at her. “Selective hearing.”

  “Nathan, darling,” Mum says, “I just meant now that there’s an election, we need to work really hard. It’s kind of like a game. Somebody wins and somebody loses.”

  Nathan leans in closer toward me and whispers: “So nobody’s hunted down?”

  “Er …” Awkward. “Nah, I was just mucking around. Sorry. Bad joke.”

  “Well, I hope Dad wins,” he says.

  It takes me by surprise that now I hope he doesn’t.

  I park my car on a side street, grab my sketchpad from under the passenger seat, and walk to Auburn Road. There are roadworks blocking all traffic. I cross the road and see a group of men hanging out together, using the fluorescent-orange traffic cones as seats.

  I go to a nearby café and order some lunch. The guy who serves me is built like a tank, muscles squeezing out of his too-small T-shirt, a tattoo sleeve on one arm and even a shaved head that looks muscular.

  There’s an outdoor table available, giving me a clear view of the street. My eyes follow the men hanging around the cones. I feel animated all of a sudden and pick up my pencil and start sketching.
r />   Lost in my work I don’t realize that the guy from behind the counter is talking to me. He places my drink on the table and, glancing at my open sketchbook, says, “You’re good.”

  Embarrassed, I instinctively cover the page with my arm. “Nah, not really.”

  “You are. Can I have another look?”

  He peers closely at the page and then nods, impressed. “You study art at university or something?”

  “I’m in eleventh grade. This is for an assignment.”

  He looks at my page again and then looks over at the men. He fixes his eyes on me, his lips curled into a half smile.

  “You live around here?”

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  “I didn’t think so. So why those men?” He jerks his thumb in their direction.

  I shrug. I’m not sure myself.

  “Do you know them?”

  “No.”

  “They’re refugees from Sudan.”

  “Okay.”

  His tone is pleasant enough, but I feel I’m being reprimanded. That in his eyes I’ve done something wrong.

  “Imagine I came to your side of Sydney and started sketching the natives there.”

  “What do you mean?” I say, a little defensively.

  “A group of white women wearing matching Lululemon outfits and sipping soy quinoa protein shakes. In watercolor.”

  I feel my neck burn.

  He smiles. “It’s cool. I’m only mucking around with you. Enjoy your lunch.”

  I slowly pick at my food. I look at the sketch and close the book. When eventually I’ve finished eating I get up to pay the bill.

  “Hey, sorry if I came across a little aggressive,” he says cheerfully as he hands me my change.

  “I didn’t mean to offend anybody,” I say.

  “People usually don’t,” he replies, still smiling.

  When I get home, I hunker down in my room and start my assignment all over again.

  Irfan has returned from Pakistan and is over for Sunday lunch with his wife and their two young daughters, Zahra and Shakira. I’m braiding the girls’ hair as we watch Frozen. They know the entire movie by heart and take the singing scenes seriously. Our apartment is tiny and the men are sitting with us, trying to talk over the sound of Disney. Mum needs some fresh air and is sitting with Aunty on the balcony.