She nods, and you start kicking in the direction of the rocks, somehow all managing to maintain a grip on the slippery plastic drum, the woman also grasping her baby and you grasping Jamilah to ensure neither slips off into the water. Your legs pump as if you’re running down the roads of Mogadishu.
The waves try to toss you backwards, but you plough forward. Every so often you glimpse the rocks, but you don’t seem to be getting any closer. You turn back towards the wreck and realise you are now a long way from either. You fight down panic.
Your muscles begin to cramp and burn, but you force them to fight on. Jamilah is breathing heavily, and her face is screwed up against the waves. You realise that she is kicking now too – never giving up.
The woman with the baby is having a hard time holding up her child and fighting the weight of her heavy clothes. With a small cry, she loses her grip and slips from the drum.
Instantly, you and Jamilah both let go of the drum and plunge towards her. You manage to get a handful of the woman’s clothes and lift her face and her baby’s up out of the water. The baby is spluttering and wailing, and you are relieved that he’s still alive and strong enough to cry.
‘The drum!’ shouts Jamilah. The sea has sucked it away from you – you see the moon-white blob of plastic disappear behind a black wave.
‘You keep holding her up!’ gasps Jamilah. ‘I’ll get it!’ She strikes out for the drum, her arms windmilling, her body rising and falling with the waves.
You kick for all you’re worth to keep the woman afloat. She passes you the baby for a moment so that she can rip away her clothes and kick more freely. You pass back the baby, and look out into the water. There’s the plastic drum, even further away now – but where is Jamilah?
You wait for only a split second, but it feels like an eternity, waiting for her head to reappear. When it doesn’t, you launch away from the woman and her baby, into the waves after your sister.
It’s so hard to swim without anything to grab onto. Your limbs are churning through the water, grasping helplessly. You begin to sink.
Jamilah. With an almighty kick, you manage to break the surface, grab some air, and then flail onwards. The waves push you up, then crush you down. You’ve lost all sense of direction. Is that white shape the moon, or the drum?
You think you see a pair of shadowy legs kick past you – Jamilah’s? – and you make a grasp for them, but they’re gone.
You fight, fight, fight. Your chances to snatch a breath get rarer; your limbs seize up in spasms. Water forces its way into your nose, making you choke, and when you gasp involuntarily, a cold flood of water comes rushing in. Your fingers grasp desperately. You look up to see that the waves have closed over your head, and that the star-speckled, choppy surface is drifting further away. Your lungs are burning.
A dream you used to have as a small child flashes in your mind: You dive deep into the ocean at Lido Beach, away from the shore, and sink to the sandy bottom. You think you won’t be able to breathe, but you grow gills like a fish and liquid oxygen pours through you. It’s as if you’ve always had the ability to breathe underwater – a dormant connection to a fish-ancestor, which your body has only just remembered. You hear your mum’s voice, singing a watery lullaby. The white orb of the moon hangs overhead, with your sister clinging to it.
The ocean pours into your lungs, and your eyes no longer see the moon. As your body drowns, in your mind you simply turn into a fish and swim away. The golden pen in your pocket is now just another shipwreck’s treasure.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 35.
You can’t go against Aadan’s wishes. The boat journey is just too risky – and what might the Australian government do in their attempt to appear tougher?
Imagine if you made it to Australia only to be sent back to Indonesia – or Somalia. Imagine if the Australians just decided to send the navy out to torpedo your boats and drown you all.
Aadan says that will never happen, but you grew up in a war zone, so you know it can and it might. You accepted long ago that your life is worthless to anyone who has any power.
You decide to wait, and have faith that you will get a visa this way eventually.
A FEW WEEKS later, you and Jamilah are sitting in the kitchen playing cards. A boat left last night, no new people have arrived yet, and Maryam and Majid have gone out shopping, so the only sounds are the slap, slap of cards and the whine of mosquitoes.
Suddenly the door bangs open and Maryam staggers into the room. She’s clutching her chest, and her face is streaked with tears. You leap to your feet. Jamilah runs to her and holds her hand.
‘What is it?’ you exclaim. ‘Where’s Majid?’
At first, Maryam can’t even get her words out between shuddering gasps. ‘Gone!’ she cries eventually. ‘Jail!’
You feel a wave of cold horror drench you. The Indonesian police must have arrested Majid for being here without a visa. Maryam is lucky not to have been caught too. Jamilah looks at you in despair.
‘Majid,’ Maryam wails, and her voice swells like a song. ‘Majid, Majid, Majid…’
‘He’ll be okay, won’t he?’ Jamilah asks you quietly in Somali.
‘I don’t know,’ you reply.
You’ve heard stories of the Indonesian jails – they’re crowded, violent and filthy. If Majid
