Sometimes I wondered: what was it all for? Would it actually change anything? When we marched outside parliament, would it be no more than a mild disturbance to the traffic? All these weeks of planning, what would they amount to?
I wished I could know for sure that the hours spent gathering research, interviewing lawyers, social workers, counsellors and teachers who’d been to Bluff Island, listening to the recordings and interpreting from Arabic to English, and the weeks and weeks of planning the logistics of the march, would bring us the result we hoped and prayed for.
But in truth, I did wonder if it would all be for nothing. That although we would be loud and passionate and do our best, the children would still live stranded on a remote island indefinitely with no real hope for a future, and for the orphans, no real hope of a family.
I spent some time talking with Mama just now. I had told Nick how I hoped she would be awake when I returned from his house and she was! It was rare that Mama was alert this late at night. With the increase in her medication that came about last month after yet another one of her terrifying episodes, she slept more than she was awake and when she was awake, such was her drowsiness that she may as well have been asleep.
But this week she was different, becoming more and more like the old Mama from Egypt. And for the first time, I was sure that it wasn’t because she was not taking her medicine, which was usually the reason for her being her old self again. I knew this wasn’t the case because I had been giving the tablets to her myself and watching her swallow them every day. Maybe our prayers had been answered and she was beginning to show some signs of healing!
She sat in the corner chair near the lamp, which shone on her skin and gave her a beautiful glow as she sipped her tea. She didn’t hear me come in, she must have been far away in her thoughts. Her legs were tucked beneath her and her long dark lashes cast a shadow over her high cheekbones – ‘Those cheekbones could only belong to the descendant of a pharaoh. They are proof that I married a queen,’ Baba used to say. And for that briefest of moments she even looked like the old Mama, the one who would sit like that with her legs curled up and read until the early hours. She used to finish a book every few nights. She couldn’t sleep unless she escaped into a story first. She never read anymore.
She must have sensed my presence because she looked up. And although she may have seemed like the old Mama for that short moment, her eyes were not the eyes that belonged to the old Mama. When she looked at me tonight, her face had no light in it. The reality hit me that she was a still a long way from truly healing.
‘Ahlan, ya habibti,’ Mama yawned as she spoke. ‘Would you like a tea? The pot is still warm.’
‘Oh yes, please, ya Mama! It makes me so happy to see you like this, still awake and making tea. I think you might be starting to become healthier. Do you feel any different this week? Because I see a real difference in you.’
Mama gave me a long look, a look that frightened me terribly because I had absolutely no clue what she was thinking. Then she blinked and stood up to make the tea.
While Mama fixed my tea, I tiptoed into Ahmo Fariz’s room to check on Ricky.
‘Goodnight, my love,’ I whispered as I bent to kiss the top of his warm head. He finally had a full head of hair, our dear little one. His slow breathing pattern did not change, he was dreaming deeply.
Ahmo Fariz stirred but stayed asleep.
When I returned to our room, Mama had made my tea and brought me a piece of baklava to eat with it. I wished more than anything that Nick could have seen Mama like this.
‘I thought it was your mum who was supposed to be his primary carer,’ Nick said last Tuesday night when I had gone to see him after a parent information evening at Ricky’s school. ‘I thought that was the whole point – he needed a mother, she was grieving a child. But it’s you who makes his school lunches, who helps with his homework, who goes out to buy all his clothes, who organises his play days, who takes him everywhere.’ He stroked my hair. ‘It’s too much for you. Your mum does nothing, she barely looks at him.’
‘Nick, she is unwell. Do you not think if she could she would be doing everything for Ricky? What she needs is our understanding, not our judgement.’
‘Well, what’s going to happen next month when you start university as well? How will you manage? I’ll keep helping as much as I can, but now that I’m back playing, my commitments to the club will be more full on. With both of us working, and you studying too, she’ll have to step up. She’ll have no choice, Anna, she’ll just have to.’ His tone was gentle but he had a steely look in his eyes when he spoke about Mama.
‘How, Nick? How can someone who is this ill just step up? It is up to me to be the one to step up. It is me who has no choice, not her.’
If only he could have seen Mama making me tea and bringing me baklava to eat. Perhaps then he would judge her less harshly.
‘I’m worried the march will achieve nothing, Mama,’ I confided over our mugs of tea.
‘The march? What march, habibti?’
The sadness pushed down on my shoulders and made them heavy. ‘The same march we discussed for a long time last night, Mama. The one for Asylum Assist.’
‘Ah, of course, yes.’ Mama stared at her tea. ‘That march, yes, yes, I knew that. I thought you said something else.’
‘Mama, what if nothing changes even though we protest? There’s a big chance that the government will ignore us. I desperately want things to change.’
‘Habibti, change happens if you strike a chord in the heart of even just one person. Think of yourself like the whisper of wind in a meadow of dandelions – even if you blow only one dandelion away then you have created a permanent change in that meadow and the seeds from that one dandelion may end up creating many more in a new meadow away from all of the old dandelions. You must not give up hope, just keep being the whisper of gentle wind, forever blowing and changing one dandelion at a time.’ She shut her eyes and rested her head back against the armchair.
‘That is a wonderful way to look at it, Mama. Thank you.’ I stood up and kissed the top of her head.
She kept her eyes closed for a minute then looked up at me and squinted. ‘Noor, habibti. Go and check on Anwar and make sure she’s stopped reading. She needs to be up for training before five, and you know your sister. She will read all night if we don’t stop her, that girl.’
I turned my head so that Mama could not see my cry. ‘Yes, Mama. I’ll check on her. Come, ya Mama, yalla. It’s time for you to go to sleep. Let me help you to bed.’
Sometime after one in the morning, Mama fell asleep. After she had cried many tears for Noor and for Baba, who she remembered were dead when she laid down. And then, just like she did unexpectedly a few nights ago, she began to laugh hysterically and was unable to stop. Over what, I didn’t know, but her laughing chilled me. I had deluded myself that she was healing. This was the opposite of healing. After the march I would need to call the doctor and ask her to come to the house and review Mama’s medication again.
It was now three-thirty in the morning and I could not have been more awake. I couldn’t read, I was far too anxious for that. And these days I never wanted to check my phone or computer because I knew I would only be reminded of the terrible things that had been said about me – that I was responsible for the deaths of my family, or that I was a slut who had disgraced the name of Islam, or that I was a frigid religious freak who was ruining Nick Harding’s career, that I was obsessed with fame, that I was part of an organisation that wanted no screening for asylum seekers so that Australia’s sovereignty would be put at risk by allowing all the terrorists in.
When I first began my relationship with Nick, I knew I was giving up my privacy for him, but I didn’t expect so much hate. The very worst thing was how it had affected my family. Tante Rosa may have been full of theatrics, but she was also genuinely distressed by my relationship with Nick. She had lost too much weight and when I begged her to eat something she told me she was too scared for my soul and the punishment that awaited me after death to be able to eat.
And of course she worried about the restaurant.
In the end, it was she who was right and Ahmo Fariz who was wrong. Our community did turn against us, just as she predicted. Many of Ahmo Fariz’s long-term patrons stopped coming to Masri’s. They saw pictures of me on TV or in magazines and it was enough to keep them away. When Ahmo Fariz asked his friends why they had stopped coming, they told him that they could not be with a family who had no morals.
When I apologised to Ahmo Fariz, he replied, ‘But we have our new patrons, habibti. Nick has brought with him to Masri’s a new crowd, and unlike our old friends and their friends, and the friends of their friends, the new crowd are happy to pay us instead of expecting food for nothing. You may see the restaurant is emptier, but in fact it is making us more money now than it ever did and it is for less work!’
I sighed, remembering this conversation, and took out my journal in the hope that my writing would put me to sleep.
My darling Noor,
I feel tonight that I deserve nothing.
I don’t deserve Ahmo Fariz to stand by me and pretend he doesn’t care about the patrons who have deserted him. He tells me fibs about new customers paying him well, to protect me. Even at full price, how could twelve tables bring in the same amount of money as forty?
I see Mama, a broken, confused shell because my swimming career ruined her life; I see Tante Rosa gaunt and nervous because she believes my behaviour reflects poorly on our family.
I don’t deserve to be happy – in fact it is an injustice that I am happy. And Allah promises that injustice will not go unpunished.
I’m scared as I wait for the punishment that is sure to come. I’m scared, Noor.
And something else – I am not well. I vomited again half an hour ago, just as I did as soon as I woke up in the morning and then again after lunch. The nausea eased while I was at Nick’s this evening, but it’s back again – it’s a deep sick feeling in my stomach. I wonder if it’s a reaction from my body to the knowledge that something terrible is about to happen. Punishment feels close.
Come and visit me in my dreams, dear one. Please come to me and tell me that I’m wrong. Tell me that no injustice has been done through my happiness and that no punishment awaits me. I have been punished enough. Tell me and I’ll believe you.
All my love forever,
A x
That night, for the first time, Noor didn’t come to me in my dreams.