The trip from Malaysia to Indonesia would usually take five hours by boat, but the fisherman doesn’t go directly there – that would look too suspicious to any helicopters overhead.
Instead, he motors out into the water and then does what fishermen actually do: throws nets and waits.
Sometimes fish bodies land on the deck of the boat and a slimy mix of salt water and fish blood drips onto your face. A couple of times, you hear helicopters whirring overhead.
You try to lie as still as a body in a coffin. Sometimes a restless rage fills your limbs and you want to scream, Get me out of here! I can’t stand it! but you know there’s no alternative.
The sun climbs to its full height. The sea breeze can’t reach you down in the hull, and the stench of fish guts and petrol is overpowering. You help Jamilah to sip from the plastic bottle of warm water you have in your hidey-hole. Then you close your eyes and whisper prayers to Allah.
The heat fades out of the day, the engine roars to life again, and the waves bounce beneath your back as the boat skips towards the Indonesian coast. You left before dawn, and now it is getting dark – you’ve spent around fourteen hours on the water, you guess.
When the nails are removed and you try to stand up, you are so dizzy and stiff that your legs threaten to give way under you.
The Indonesian people smuggler has come to meet you. He yanks you and Jamilah roughly into the thick jungle and leaves you sitting under a tree with broad, yellow-ish leaves a short way from the boat as he goes back and pays the fisherman, then offers him a smoke.
Their cigarette tips glow red as the ruby on the end of your pen. The smell of clove tobacco snakes its way through the jungle in the gathering dark.
You sit under the tree, your limbs shaking, your belly growling. Jamilah slumps beside you and moans quietly. Suddenly, you hear the sound of sirens, wailing like ghosts in the yellow-grey jungle.
The fisherman shouts what can only be a swear word in his language, and he hastily shoves the boat back into the sea, while the other guy runs in the opposite direction. They’re leaving you behind.
You yank Jamilah to her feet. You are smuggled goods – children in a country where no one can help you and you don’t speak the language. If the police catch you, you’re dead meat.
Your feet pound across the leaf-littered jungle floor, away from the sound of the sirens and the smell of the cigarettes. Your breath comes in and out in hot shoves. Jamilah is choking down her coughs, and you are pulling her forward, over buttress roots and ditches, deep into the jungle, where the vines are thickest.
Dropping to your knees, you burrow under a bush and pull Jamilah in too, finding a small space to hide at the heart of the bush, pulling the branches and vines back over you like a curtain.
Leaves crackle beneath you. Distant voices shout. It is almost totally dark inside the bush, and it smells of boggy earth, spicy leaves and stinky squashed insects. Things prickle and tickle your skin. You wait and listen, alert as a rabbit.
Darkness falls on the jungle, and you begin to wonder how much longer you should stay hidden when you see a beam of light rake the ground between the trees.
‘Hey,’ calls a heavily accented voice in English, ‘where are you? Come out, kids. The police are gone. I’ll take you to Australia.’
Jamilah’s wide, scared eyes reflect a little of the torchlight’s shine. She has both hands plastered over her mouth to muffle her coughs. Her body is shaking like a car on a rough road. Her eyes ask an unspoken question: Is it safe to go out?
If it’s the people smuggler and you stay hidden, he might leave without you. But if it’s the police and you reveal yourselves, you’ll be thrown into jail.
Your ears and eyes are pricked for clues, but it’s too dark to see if the man is wearing a uniform, and the accented voice could belong to either.
What should you do?
To stay hidden, go to scene 33.
To climb out of the bush, go to scene 32.
‘I believe you,’ you whisper to Jamilah. You pick up your shoe from the ground by the door, and take out the money.
‘We want to go to Italy where our aunty is,’ you tell Piggy. ‘But you have to use this money to buy medicine for my sister as well, and a Malaysian simcard.’
Piggy takes the money and leaves the room, muttering grumpily, probably disgruntled to be woken at three a.m. to be told to change the plans and buy this and that.
Jamilah’s shoulders heave with more coughs. You sit back on the bed and wrap your arms around her, then you drift off into an edgy, fractured sleep. Piggy comes back at ten that morning. He throws a tattered box in your direction.
‘Medicine,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow you will go to Turkey, then Greece. You take boat, Greece to Italy.’
He throws another bag at you.
‘Food. No money for simcard.’
The box of medicine has been well used. ‘Panadol’ is written on the front. Two white tablets remain in the packet; the rest have been popped out of their foil and are gone. It’s not enough, but there’s nothing you can do about it.
DURING THE FLIGHT to Turkey, every muscle in your body feels like it’s at snapping point. You chew on the inside of your cheek; pick at a sliver of loose skin next to your thumbnail; shift from side to side
