The Marsh Birds (24 page)

Iraq. Feeling nasty, he had deliberately offended Carrie and her friend Samantha. He hadn't liked Samantha. She looked young and pretty. She giggled. She breathed ‘Ya gotta be joking!' when he said he was Iraqi.

‘What was your name again?' he asked, although he had heard it clearly.

‘Samantha. Do you like it?' and she raised her happy face to him, waiting for the sure affirmative.

He was silent, itching with an obscure anger.

‘I would,' he said, ‘but that is what we call lowclass women in my country.'

Carrie glared at him and dropped her jaw stagily in a gesture of disgust and disbelief. She also looked young and carefree, free to be revolted by him. He felt vaguely pleased in a twisted, miserable way. She had given him a withering look and had taken the shocked Samantha off. She said something over her shoulder at him that he didn't hear. He heard the last bit—‘no wonder they're going to bomb it to shit.'

He stood alone in the mall, suddenly tired. He knew nothing, really, of Iraq. It was a dream. He couldn't say, haughtily,
Well, where I come from
… as the definitive measure for all things right and proper. He found he couldn't remember much of what was about to be bombed. Just a night sky, a nightmare, a street, a video of himself and the scent of his room. Populated by his mother, his sister, his father. Ammu. No, Ammu was Australia, lost in a hospital. He couldn't stand on his roots, mobilise his own country against anyone, because it was so long gone, and he was a man now, not a boy. Somehow he hadn't brought it with him.

It took him a while to make up with Carrie. He knocked on her door, knowing she was in; then, when there was no answer, he pushed it open. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, looking like a jinniya from a storybook. The pressure of her glower kept him near the door.

‘Well?' she said, after the silence had gone on so long that she knew he wasn't going to break it. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and glared back. ‘Samantha was disgusted. And
freaked out
. And she'll tell everyone.'

He shrugged and stayed leaning against the wall. Carrie narrowed her eyes at him, then hopped sideways, smiled, and gestured for him to sit next to her. He sauntered over, secretly charmed and relieved.

Carrie's room always intrigued him. They were sitting on her single bed with its fresh white sheets and patchwork quilt. An array of cute objects were set on the sill and dresser and stuck to the walls. The walls had posters pinned on them at crooked angles. One was of a guitarist caught screaming in dark smoke with sparks coming from his fingers; another of a girl with long black hair swirling over almost naked breasts and thighs. She had pearlescent skin, a tiny mouth, v-shaped chin, floppy fringe and impossibly huge liquid eyes. Another picture was of a near-naked airbrushed youth with a hairless chest. His giant brown eyes smouldered above his elfin chin. His underpants showed above his jeans. A herd of gazelles leapt in a purple middle-distance behind him.

The pictures made Dhurgham uncomfortable but Carrie having them in her room fascinated him.

Carrie's smell was in everything. He buried his nose suddenly in her pillow, rubbing his head over her quilt, and she laughed. He came up grinning. He felt much better.

‘You girls have everything,' he said, not meaning it as a criticism.

Carrie flared. ‘I worked for that, you know.' She pointed to her stereo. ‘I paid for it after working all summer. Not like the girls in Iraq—probably not even allowed to get jobs.'

He thought about it. His thoughts were all happy and inchoate. He couldn't explain what he meant.

On sudden impulse he slid off the bed and lifted the valance.

Carrie screamed, ‘What are you doing?'

He started hauling stuff out from under her bed as she tried to push it back. Then she began to help, until they had a relatively tidy pile of bears, dolls, makeup, pictures, broken electrical soft toys, books and a box full of tiny clothes. Carrie was fingering things lovingly, familiarly.

‘Why do you put these things here?' He was holding up a grimy blue-eyed doll with about twenty tiny iridescent hairclips in its hair.

‘They are little-girl stuff,' she said.

He pulled the clothes out of the box. Carrie giggled.

‘They are some of my favourite baby clothes. Mum gave them to me. My girl clothes are all here.'And she patted the patchwork quilt. Carrie had been a stylish baby. Yellow butterfly buttons, ladybug suits, a cute green space alien on a tiny black T-shirt. He folded them reverently and packed them back in the box. He tidied her toys carefully and laid them back under her bed. He sat down next to her.

‘Sorry for pissing off your friends.'

‘Well, Sam will never come on to you, at least.'

They laughed.

Dhurgham stood at the doorway of the softly lit room. The white linen curtains were drawn, giving Mr and Mrs Johns' room a golden glow in the midmorning light. The bed was tousled; mountains of tumbled lace and cream doona, soft and rubbed, maybe still warm. Pictures and tapestries of shepherds and European trees hung on the pale pink walls but Dhurgham paid them no attention. He was breathing deeply, drawing in the stale fug of the room. The sweat, easy farts and overused bed. The fug of parents. He was sweating suddenly, in his yearning, in the memory of a cloudy scent that was not here but might have been. He had a sense of his own limbs as small and smooth, tucked into big, warm, smelly arms. He reeled with it for a moment. He suddenly imagined Mr and Mrs Johns having sex, tossing and creaking on that same bed in front of him. Their bellies loose and straining, their hands practised, their smells so familiar to them they were unnoticeable, known to the point of being unknown. Dhurgham stood there watching, breathing deeply, savouring their sex, imagining its ordinariness, its ease. And slowly, as his cock rose, he became miserable with a confusion mixed with something twisting his heart in a vice.

He was envious. He could never creep back into the right path to a real life. He turned away from the fog that hung in their empty room, hating now its stale stink of other, faraway lives. He shut his eyes as he leant back against the wall, rubbing himself hard to drown out his misery in his own rhythm.

Dhurgham, Carrie, Tim and Julie were in McDonalds. Tim had a black eye. Carrie touched it with a fingertip and winced elaborately in sympathy.

‘I got jumped out the back of the Te Aro service station. It was really scary. They had a van, and they were speaking Allah this and Allah that, AllaAkba when they punched me.'

Tim leant in, glancing at Dhurgham, ‘It was al Qaeda, in
Wellington
. Darren already told me that they had a cell here.'

Dhurgham leant back, shaking his head, pursing his lips thoughtfully until he had their attention.

‘Nope,' he said. ‘Wasn't us.'

Carrie stared at the shocked faces and shrieked with laughter, pointing at Tim and Julie, hooting in glee. She mimed shooting both of them. Julie and Tim smiled slowly, uncertainly. Dhurgham glowed.

Dhurgham didn't like Carrie's friends. He noticed their easygoing banter and their light cruelty with each other and couldn't smile. They used their opinions on music to compete and humiliate. He imagined them surfing the net late into the night, giggling over porn sites. He imagined them in a chatroom with Mr Hosni, who was, after all, only a URL away. His guts twisted painfully. What if Mr Hosni had broken that promise and there were images of
him
? Would they recognise him? He sat with them, awash with rage and shame.

Carrie's friends hated the Prime Minister. The woman in power in Enzed, the woman who would uphold human rights, the woman who would save him, was at their mercy—they were all voting for the first time in their lives soon.

‘She looks like a horse,' Julie said.

‘She hates hip-hop,' Tim said witheringly. ‘She hasn't got the guts to say it outright.'

Tim and Darren began arguing about the achievements of Elemenopop and Scribe.

Dhurgham's confidence faltered.

Personal details
, he thought.
Full Name: Dhurgham Mohammad Amer Hassan as-Samarra'i. Nickname: Terrorist. (Angel. Birdie.)

Married: to educated New Zealand national. No children.

Education: Primary, seven years in Madrasat al Maamoun, Karrada, Baghdad, Iraq. 42 months in Mawirrigun Aliens Processing Centre, Mawirrigun, Central Gumuny Australia. Graduated and went on a yacht cruise to New Zealand.

Skills: Art. Insulting people. Languages. Rebuilding myself in new countries with less and less rather than more and more.

Interests: Love. Truth. Beauty. Wisdom. Survival. Flame. Rose. Dagger. Heart. The Past. Also I like birds.

Hopes …

Hopes.

Mr Johns gave Dhurgham a page from the
Dominion Post
.

‘That yacht you were on. It sank! Lucky you got off in time, aye.'

Dhurgham took the paper, his hands shaking. The
Morning Star
was there in a colour photo, with Skipper Joe smiling through his beard at the camera. Underneath there were small square photos of Joe, Jim, Stan and Gino. He could barely recognise them. He couldn't read it. He didn't need to.
He had always known
. A wave of numbness crashed into him and stayed. He felt the turn then. His life jibed, keel biting, and caught a different wind.