Refuge Read online

  Dedication

  To the Sisters of St Joseph, who in the 1960s made an Indigenous girl captain of the school debating team, when many schools found a pretext to exclude Indigenous children, most wouldn’t even let girls debate at all, and even fewer would make a girl captain. (That team managed to win their first debate. After that they were unstoppable. They won the championship.) Those indomitable women gave hope and education to so many barefoot kids. This book is dedicated to them, with admiration and enormous gratitude for their strength and inspiration.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Jackie French

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  Northwest of Australia

  The sky was grey. The sea was grey too. It shivered. The sea filled the world. Its fingers slapped at the tiny boat with its grey timbers and grey metal framework at one end.

  Australia was somewhere behind that line where sea met sky. It was hard to believe in the golden beaches of Australia, here in this universe of grey.

  Even the other passengers were grey: weary faces, faded clothes. Faris had counted thirty-four on the deck, apart from himself and Jadda: men in trousers and kurtas; women in scarves or hijabs. Three children, younger than him, sat by their mothers as though they were used to waiting — as though waiting had been their entire lives.

  Only Jadda was bareheaded, her grey hair held back with two clips. Jadda had flung away her hijab as the boat cast off from the ramshackle jetty in Indonesia.

  For a while she and Faris had used the fabric as a thin cushion between them and the splintered deck of the boat. But as the wind rose, and the foam and spray spat in their faces, the hijab had grown sodden. Now it lay in a small wet clump, next to the one plastic bag the two men who crewed the boat had allowed them to bring. Everything else Faris owned was wrapped in more plastic bags hidden around his waist — his birth certificate and other papers that Jadda said were the most important things he owned.

  There hadn’t been much to leave behind. There had already been so many leavings in the past year, since the phone call that ripped the night, ripped his life. The ‘friend’ saying urgently that the police were coming to their flat, just as they had come for his father five years earlier. The sharp voice on the phone had said that Jadda must take him now, at once, to safety.

  He’d had time to thrust two shirts, a pair of trousers, his mobile phone, two books and even his laptop into his schoolbag. He had clutched the bag to him as they huddled in the back of the truck driving them across the border.

  They had sold his laptop in the first week at the refugee camp, for there was no electricity, at least not in the long rows of tents in which they lived.

  But he kept the phone, tied around his waist in one of Jadda’s old stockings, where the camp toughs wouldn’t notice it, turning it on only once a week to save the battery, at the time his father called from Australia, his voice a stranger’s now after five years away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ his father had said on that first phone call to the camp. ‘I am sorry that I have led you to this.’

  Faris said nothing. He wanted to yell: ‘What have you done? Why did you do this to us?’

  He couldn’t.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Jadda had told him, on that night five years back when his father had staggered home, blood on his jacket, his face like someone had smudged his eyes with black polish. His father had shaken his head when Faris tried to hug him, and vanished to talk to Jadda in the kitchen. Faris could hear their muttered voices.

  Jadda had come out. ‘Go to the pictures,’ she said, pressing money into his hand. ‘Now!’

  Faris had never gone to the pictures at night. He had never gone to the pictures alone. He peered into the kitchen, where his father sat, with that white blank face.

  When Faris got back, his father had gone. Blood stained the kitchen table.

  Jadda’s face was cold marble. ‘Pack,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘Where? Why?’

  What had happened? His father was an important man, a doctor at the hospital. Jadda had given him a gold-plated stethoscope to wear around his neck. His office had his framed certificates on the walls. Trouble came to other families. Not to men like his father!

  ‘The police have taken your father. Don’t ask more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked at him steadily. ‘You can’t tell what you do not know. Trust me. It is safer if you can say truthfully, “No one told me anything.” Now pack. Fast!’

  Faris packed. Jadda made phone call after phone call. At last friends arrived to help them move what they could to a small flat over a carpet shop. Faris wondered if it would be harder for the police to find them there, to question them or torture them, to see if a rebel’s family knew where other rebels might be.

  How could his father be a rebel? Rebels shouted and drew slogans on the walls. Rebels plotted. They didn’t live in houses with fine gardens, with rich carpets on the floor. Their sons didn’t go to good schools.

  He had not gone back to his good school. Jadda had not gone back to the academy where she had taught English literature and language. Had the schools asked them not to come, the son and mother of a rebel?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t ask.

  Jadda sold her jewellery, piece by piece, so they could live. She taught him his lessons at their tiny kitchen table. Friends avoided them, or perhaps they avoided friends.

  They lived for three years, waiting for the police to drag them off for questioning, or even, like a miracle, for his father to come grinning through the door, in his good jacket, with the bloodstains gone. It had all been a mistake, he wasn’t a rebel at all.

  Neither happened.

  And then the call from his father two years earlier. His father had been freed, perhaps to see if he would lead the police to real rebels. But he hadn’t come to see his son and mother. He had hidden in a truck that took him over the border to a refugee camp.

  But he was not in the camp now. He was in a place called Australia. He could call them each week. He was trying to save money, was trying to find a way for them to come to Australia too. He would call again.

  Jadda cried that night, deep gulping sobs, when she thought Faris was asleep. But instead he sat with his laptop on his bed, looking at Australia.

  It was beautiful. A rich country. Bright fish swam on its Great Barrier Reef. Tourists wandered on golden beaches. Its Opera House gleamed under the blue sky. Faris was glad his father was near an opera house, where he could hear the music that he loved.

  His father phoned at the same time each week after that, talking mostly to Jadda, for a few minutes only. Phone calls were expensive. There was little jewellery left.

  Every night Faris looked at the tourist sites for
Australia. Big breakfasts of pineapple and melon. Infinity pools that rippled towards the sea. Beaches, beaches, beaches, where golden sand met blue sky and turquoise sea or forest.

  And then the urgent call, not from his father: the one that sent him and Jadda into hiding. The police were coming for them, to force his father to return, to give them information. He and Jadda scurried through shadowed streets to a waiting car, hid under blankets in the back, trying not to look at those who helped them.

  You could not tell what you didn’t know.

  The car took them to a warehouse. In the warehouse was a crate. They stepped into the crate. Faris heard the lid go down, heard a truck’s engine, felt the bump as the crate was loaded on it.

  The drive seemed short. It also seemed to take longer than his whole life so far.

  The truck stopped. The back opened. The lid was lifted off the box. They struggled, stiff, around other boxes, filled with things, not people. Faris helped Jadda down.

  The road stretched to nothing on either side.

  The driver pointed. ‘The refugee camp is that way. I do not know you,’ he added. ‘If you see me, do not nod or smile. Go with God.’

  He drove away.

  They walked. They found tents, barbed wire, dust. Food was given out from trucks each day. They lined up to fill a bottle at the camp’s only tap.

  People waited.

  Jadda didn’t wait.

  Jadda sold a gold bracelet in the refugee camp to a guard, to get them in the Jeep to the small airport. Her mother’s ruby earrings bought tickets on a plane to a larger airport, and the flight to Indonesia, and the tiny room there in which they lived, where the air tasted of bad soup. Strange bugs crawled over him while he slept and others buzzed around his head when it was light.

  They did not go to the International Organisation for Refugees Camp. ‘You wait four years, or five there, before you can go to Australia,’ said Jadda. ‘You must go to school, to university, not spend your life here waiting.’ She wouldn’t let him learn Bahasa, to go to the local school. He must speak English, for Australia.

  Jadda’s ruby ring paid for their passage on the boat. There was no more jewellery now. The man at the jetty had even taken his precious mobile phone.

  Now there was just the boat, the passengers, the sky, the sea.

  ‘Jadda?’

  Jadda sat with her arms around her knees, her hair the colour of the rain. ‘What is it?’ She spoke in English. They had spoken English together ever since his father reached Australia, ever since they had begun to dream they might join him there.

  He wanted to say, ‘I’m scared.’ Not just of the ocean, but what was ahead of them. There was nowhere to run to, after Australia. Somehow that was more frightening than the dangers of the sea. But a boy of thirteen couldn’t say that to his grandmother. It would be cowardly to say he was scared at all.

  Somehow Jadda understood. She smiled. The grey figure beside him turned back into the Jadda he had known. ‘Look,’ she said softly. She pointed to the shiver where grey sea met the great sky. ‘Australia is over there. Shut your eyes, Faris.’

  When he was small and scared of night monsters, Jadda had told him to shut his eyes, to dream of a gold light about his bed.

  ‘What should I dream of, Jadda?’

  ‘Australia. A wonderful Australia. A home,’ she said softly.

  ‘It … it doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘You must believe that everything is possible.’

  ‘But some things aren’t possible! It’s not possible to fly like a bird, or … or to jump across an ocean.’ If only he could jump across this grey sea, onto Australia.

  ‘Impossible is a word for people who don’t want to try,’ said Jadda fiercely. ‘If the people who invented aeroplanes thought “impossible”, then we’d never have soared to the clouds. If enough people say “impossible”, then no one will try to fight evil, to make the world good. How can you reach your dreams if you don’t imagine them?’

  Faris shut his eyes. The grey world vanished. The sky was blue, the beach was gold, the rocks were red, the fish swam in bright colours through the coral of the reef.

  In Australia he would go to a school like the ones he had seen on the internet. He could picture it: a big green lawn and a red-brick building with green plants growing on the walls; and laughing children sitting on the grass with their laptops and friends.

  He felt himself begin to smile.

  ‘What can you see?’ whispered Jadda.

  ‘Our house.’ A house for him, and Jadda and his father, a big house just as the family of a doctor should have. A wardrobe filled with new jeans and T-shirts, instead of a spare shirt and a change of underwear in a plastic bag.

  ‘What is it like?’

  ‘It’s two storeys high.’ He tried to think what Jadda would like too. ‘There are walls with bookcases up to the ceiling. Every book Jane Austen ever wrote.’ He heard Jadda laugh softly at that. Jadda loved the English writer Jane Austen, with her far-off world of women dancing in bonnets. ‘You have a pet koala.’

  ‘What’s its name?’

  Faris found himself grinning. How long had it been since he’d grinned? He opened his eyes. ‘It’s your koala. You have to name him.’

  ‘Nosey,’ said Jadda. ‘Because of his short nose.’

  Something was wrong. He felt his grin slide from his face as he looked around. The two crewmen huddled over the engine, their voices sharp as the wind grew in strength. Faris was good at languages, but theirs was one he didn’t know.

  The sky had grown a darker grey. The ocean was black.

  Faris looked at the people next to him: a man with his arms around a woman and a girl, three perhaps, another in the woman’s arms. He wondered if they spoke English.

  He tried to imagine them in Australian clothes, the sort he had seen on the internet. They would wear jeans, the man a flowered shirt perhaps as he walked along the golden beach, the children playing in the waves.

  The waves smashed at the sides of the boat. Faris shut his eyes and tried to see the beach again. He had never seen a real golden beach, only the rickety jetty that poked out of grey mud.

  Thunder growled, not just above, but all around.

  He and Jadda would live near the beach. All Australians lived near the beach, except those who were Aboriginal and had black skins and lived near a huge red rock called Uluru.

  The boat lurched again. The storm slapped them, sweeping through the grey. Faris looked up as one of the crew thrust an old tin can into his hand. The crewman gestured to the water in the boat. The meaning was clear. Faris began to bail out the water, can by can. Around them others were doing the same, with cans and hands, a bucket.

  The rain hit so hard it stung. Foam flew through the air, dripping like shaving cream. The boat rose up, then crashed back down. Wet wave tops slashed their faces. A child screamed. Faris heard the words of prayers, a woman’s sobs.

  Not Jadda’s. She moved closer, her arms around him now.

  He lifted his voice above the wind. ‘Is the boat going to turn back?’ Indonesia was closer to them than Australia. He wasn’t sure what he was scared of most: the storm or not reaching that land beyond the line of sea and sky.

  Jadda shook her head. She spoke close to his ear, so others wouldn’t hear. ‘The owner of this boat makes too much money from each trip to turn back now.’

  ‘But if … if the boat sinks, he won’t have a boat.’

  ‘I don’t think the boat is worth much,’ said Jadda. She hesitated, then added, ‘I think the boats are chosen so it doesn’t matter if they sink.’

  ‘And the people on it? His crew?’

  ‘I don’t think he values them either. Our money is only released to him when we land in Australia. If we turn back, he gets nothing.’

  Faris glanced at the crew as he scooped out water again. One man was still bent over the engine, the other bailing. Faris had thought this was a fishing boat, that the owner would be on it. Instead the
owner might be a rich man, far away.

  Scoop and throw, scoop and throw …

  A wave slapped his face. He snorted to get the water out of his nose.

  He looked at the other passengers, the children huddled with their mothers, the men and some of the women bailing. Jadda had paid fourteen thousand American dollars so that the two of them could step into this grey boat.

  The boat twisted so sharply he had to clutch the railing. On the other side of the boat a father clutched his child. Scoop and throw, scoop and throw …

  How had the other people in this boat found so much money? Were some of them rich, or did they have rich families? Were all of them desperate, like him and Jadda? Were some of them criminals, trying to sneak into Australia?

  The boat lunged again. A wave rose high above them. For seven long seconds it seemed that it would crash on top of them. Somehow the boat managed to find its way up and along it, plunging down the other side.

  Scoop and throw, scoop and throw. His arms ached. His throat was salty and bitter. A woman sobbed down the other end of the boat.

  Faris tried to multiply seven thousand dollars by the number of people on the boat, to keep his mind away from the lurch and crash. But all his mind could hold were waves and water.

  The boat would sink. The storm would break it into twigs and rust. The passengers would slide down, down, down, into the grey water. Were the depths of the ocean storm-tossed too? Or would the water feel calm as it sucked his life …

  Jadda moved closer. ‘Faris?’

  He nodded, trying not to show his fear. ‘Will the boat break up?’

  She looked at him, her gaze clear. Jadda never lied. That was why you couldn’t ask her questions when the answers were too hard. ‘Perhaps. But if it does …’ He didn’t want to hear the words. This boat was all the safety in his world. But her voice was steady in his ear. ‘Grab hold of anything that floats. A piece of wood. Anything to keep your head above the water. A rescue ship will come,’ she hesitated and added, ‘perhaps.’

  She took a harsh, deep breath. ‘Faris, will you promise me something? Please, will you promise?’

  ‘Promise what?’

  She spoke close to his ear again, so he could hear. ‘Promise that you will try to live. No matter what. Don’t think of me. Think of your new life. Think of Australia. Never forget the Australia of your dreams. To get there you have to live! Please, promise.’