It’s like no other place you’ve ever been. The only thing that reminds you of home is one stray, spotty dog you see walking beside the highway. He is bony and grinning, and he looks like a survivor. His face is the only one here so far that has said to you: You can do this.
The people smuggler, who you decide you’ll secretly call Piggy, parks on a crowded street. Then he takes you and Jamilah inside a crumbling stone building that might once have been a grand old home, but now seems to have been converted into some sort of boarding-house.
The space is crowded with bunks, cardboard boxes and plastic plants, but you don’t see anyone else there. Piggy leads you down a flight of stairs into a basement room, which holds a double bed with a maroon cover, a TV and an ashtray loaded with butts, some with lipstick on them.
Piggy thrusts a plastic bag at you, containing bottled water and colourful plastic packets of chips and biscuits. Then he leaves, and locks the door behind you – still without having said a word.
You don’t know how long you’ll be here – Abshir only said that Grey Tooth had lined up all the transfers. You are now effectively Piggy’s prisoners. You want to call Abshir, but you didn’t get to ask Piggy for a Malaysian simcard.
You and Jamilah watch Malaysian TV and eat chips with a strange cheesy-fishy flavour. Jamilah’s cough seems to be getting worse. You touch her forehead.
‘You’re burning up!’ you gasp.
You give her your share of the bottled water and encourage her to keep drinking.
You both try to get to sleep, but Jamilah wakes in the night moaning. Her body shivers all over, and she is doubled up with pain.
‘What is it?’ you ask her. ‘What hurts?’
‘My joints ache,’ she whimpers. ‘My head is pounding.’
You sit up and put your arm around her. Then you watch the BBC news channel while you pray for her fever to get better. The world news shows that the famine in Somalia is getting worse, fighting has broken out in Mali, and protestors are choking the streets of Egypt.
You want a glimpse of home, but all you see are ravaged lands in the countryside and black faces of despair. This isn’t your Africa. Is this what the rest of the world sees when they look at your home?
You nod off, but Jamilah’s gasp wakes you. She’s pointing at the TV.
‘Aunty Rahama!’ she cries.
‘Jamilah, whaaa—’
‘It was her! I saw her! It was Aunty Rahama on the TV!’
You touch her forehead. Still hot. She might be hallucinating. But you look at the TV, still on the BBC news channel, and it’s showing a segment about refugees arriving in Italy – desperate people, drenched in salt water, wearing orange lifejackets, being hauled aboard a coastguard’s boat. You search the faces. No Rahama.
‘Jamilah, you must have seen someone who looks like her, that’s all.’
‘It was her!’ Jamilah cries with all her strength, then doubles over coughing.
You’re about to say, ‘Let’s switch it off,’ when you see an image that makes you just about jump out of your skin.
‘Zayd!’ you gasp. You leap off the bed and run to the TV, as if you can cross through the glass screen and jump aboard that boat.
Now your heart is hammering like a rattling engine. You only got a glimpse, but you know that you saw the face of Zayd. You remember again his shout as al-Shabaab dragged him away to be killed: Cross the river on the banner of the eagle!
What if he wasn’t killed? What if he escaped? What if he’s now in Europe, with … Rahama?
But how could that be? You saw the bomb that destroyed the broadcast building, and her scarf at the window … and, no, she would never leave you and Jamilah alone like that, not without even telling you where she’d gone. You watch the news segment to the end regardless, but there is no more sign of Zayd or Rahama.
‘It can’t have been her,’ you say to Jamilah. ‘It can’t have been him, and it certainly can’t have been her …’
You just can’t get your head around what it would mean if it really was her.
‘It was!’ Jamilah sobs. ‘I promise, it was!’
She coughs again, her skinny body heaving, like a blanket when you shake the dirt off it. Then she stops. She’s looking at her hand, where she coughed. She looks worried.
You look at her hand too, and with horror see that she’s coughed up blood.
You run to the door. It’s locked. You hammer on it. ‘Help!’ you shout in English.
After a couple of minutes of shouting, Piggy comes to the door. He looks sleepy and cross.
‘No shout,’ he tells you in English. ‘You shout and police hear, they come and take you jail. Understand?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ you say. ‘But my sister … she’s very sick.’
Piggy comes into the room. He touches Jamilah’s burning head, sees the spots of blood on her hand and the sheets. Then he shrugs and shakes his head.
‘No doctor, no hospital in Malaysia for refugees,’ he tells you. ‘Only for Malaysians.’
‘I know,’ you say, boiling with frustration. Couldn’t he be more helpful?
You’re just about to offer him some of your stash of money to buy medicine when Jamilah shouts in English: ‘Take me and my brother to Europe! Please! We want to go to Italy!’
‘What?’ says Piggy. ‘You go Australia.’
‘No,’ insists Jamilah, sitting on the bed fighting for breath, tears running down her face. ‘We saw our aunty in Italy, on TV. You send us to Italy!’
Piggy’s eyes narrow. ‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Maybe is possible. Many people here go to Europe. But is expensive. Five hundred more.’
Jamilah looks
