- Do we have word? Bashir asked.
His father stood on the landing outside the front door, his leathery mouth sucking greedily on cigarettes. The creases on his face were ran deep into a skin burnished by manual labour. He was a taxi driver now, with no more need to use his hands, but the calluses were still there, pressing into the thin rolls of tobacco. He paused on an inhale, staring at the cigarette in his hand, but with a slight shake of his head, breathed out only smoke.
For lack of anything else to do, Bashir took a cigarette from the packet on the porch rail, and lit it. He wasn't really a smoker and only puffed at it, but this was new -- smoking without his father yelling at him. It felt like a sign that his father was accepting him as an equal. The two men of the house, standing on guard at its entrance. They stared out onto the main road, unable to find words for each other.
News had come three days ago from Iraq, via a telephone call that woke everyone up in the middle of the night. His uncle had had a heart attack. He was at home, resting. Things didn't look good. They said -- hospital, go to the hospital. But he was too afraid to go to the hospital. There were too many ambushes lately, too much gunfire. And once they got to the hospital, what would be there? Not enough medicine, not enough electricity.
Who knew if there would even be a doctor for him? Maybe only a nurse, maybe only a donkey with a stethoscope. No, better to stay home and be safe. Better to die in your own bed grasping the hand of your son, rather than in the backseat of a car, taking him with you in the crossfire.
Since then, Bashir had woken early in the morning with the sun's fierce glare on his face, the wails of his mother floating through the house. Her cries were throaty now, the voice cracked with a grief that couldn't be exhausted. And still she wailed, as though she could give her sadness to the air.
Instead, the grief infected her children through their ears. It settled its heavy weight into their hearts and stomachs, and it churned its miserable way through their bodies, dragging down the corners of their mouths and tugging at their heels so that everything felt slower and out of joint.
There was nothing to be done. Iraq, so far away and unimaginable, was the pit of worry that this household couldn't escape. Bashir stubbed the cigarette on the wooden railings of the porch, scarring them permanently with a black mark. His father didn't even notice.
He should have gone to work, but the idea of spending yet another day inside Woolies didn't have much appeal. Especially when, for once, he wouldn't even have to make his excuse up.
- I need to stay at home, you understand? My uncle is dying today, you understand?
His supervisor understood. They needed him in Woolies to lift and carry boxes, to restock shelves and mop up puddles from the floor. But his supervisor understood. Spotty James was a good bloke, not much older than Bashir himself. They were boys that might have been friends back in primary school, before they had been given the chance to recognise their differences. As it was, Bashir felt sorry for him, very serious and polite Spotty James, who was dedicated to customer service and would spend his entire life working in Woolies.
He clung to his English manners in a way that irked Bashir. Sometimes he felt so sorry for Spotty James that he would have liked to mess up his kewpie haircut and crack a couple of his teeth, just to give him some personality.
Because he still felt uneasy, he picked up his camera and headed out to Parramatta, a favourite haunt. Having a camera in his hands calmed him. He'd discovered photography only a couple of years ago, when he'd picked up his father's fully manual camera and felt how easily its weight settled into his hands. It was a thing of beauty -- a big chunk of metal and glass which needed love, care and experience to coax sharp photographs from it.
But it was also a wonderful machine of metamorphosis, an instrument that could reduce the world around him into tangible, understandable components. Bashir alone in the world was lost, confused. Bashir with a camera in his hands was suddenly a photographer, and through the camera's lens all the random shit of the world suddenly had meaning and made sense.
When he was a little boy, they used to go on an annual visit to Taronga Park Zoo. His mother and sisters would cluster around the koalas, the kangaroos, the echidnas, the kookaburras. Their inexhaustible love for native animals was irritating. It was all hypocritical enthusiasm, as though by lingering over the platypus, doting on the possums, they could prove their dedication to this country and the barrage of questions would stop. It didn't work, of course. It just made them look even more like tourists.
Bashir wasn't concerned with the native animals. Big red, wallaby, mouse, he couldn't give about the giant rats. He wanted to see the lions, the snow leopards, the ridiculously tall giraffes and the ponderous elephants. Give him big game! Give him Africa!
Taronga Park was a haven, far removed from the real world. It was always a day of calm, when the stodgy heat of their small house was replaced by the sea breeze, where the sight of blue water sated the itch in everyone's toes. For once, they needed no excuse for lingering.
Bashir was always struck by how peaceful the animals in the zoo were. Contained in their neat enclosures, the animals always looked happy, plodding around sleepily behind their fences. The monkeys didn't try to pick the locks on their gates. The elephants were happy to munch their hay without charging at their trainers.
This was a place where everything was known. Unlike school, where it was difficult to remember the distinction between the wogs and the gooks, the nips and the chinks, the fobs and the slopes. Unlike school where he could never tell the yobbos from the westies from the bogans from the shazzas from the skips. And what made him most uncomfortable was that he seemed to be all of them, and he seemed to be none.
Sometime later, these family excursions ceased. Maybe it was after someone at work called his father a lazy limp-wristed wog and his father was fired for threatening to show him just how firm his fist could be. Maybe it was after a man tried to rip the headscarf from his mother as she did her grocery shopping, who'd yelled "This is a country where women are liberated and free," while she cowered behind her trolley.
Maybe he and his sisters simply grew older and were expected to put the indulgences of childhood aside. The excursions stopped, and the neatness of the zoo, the certainty of its safe enclosures, disappeared.
As he wandered around Parramatta, he thought it was odd that his uncle, an uncle he had never met, was at this very moment dying all the way over in Iraq. When he was a child his mother would stroke his hair say -- you make me so happy. It's as though I have taken your Uncle Radwan here to Australia with us. He is there, so clearly, on your face.
His uncle was thirty years older than him. He wondered what that face would have told him about his future. Would its lines have given him a sign of where he would end up?
Even though it was the second city of Sydney, Parramatta still had a lazy, small-town feel. There were people lazing on the grass with their shoes off. Bashir tried to take a few photographs but their languorous half-smiles started to annoy him. His uncle was dying and these people were just idling away the time, unaware of how lucky they were. Their faces were plump and soft, their wrinkles shallow, their bodies melting into the grass.
The sun was now high above them, blanketing everything out in a white glare. Bashir planned to take refuge in the Westfield, hoping that the cool blast of air-conditioning would jolt him out of his tired daze. But he couldn't stop thinking about his uncle, this man who shared his face. What else did they share? Would his uncle have enjoyed playing cricket? Did he also take photographs? And Iraq. What was Iraq like?
If his parents hadn't escaped he would probably be over there now, carrying a rifle instead of a camera. The cold air chilled him, and he stopped at the entrance, unable to go inside.
He'd come across a recruiting booth a few weeks ago. The men looked like good enough blokes with cheerful smiles and shiny brochures. They were younger than he'd expected, not much older than him. One of them had handed him a pamphlet and said -- the Army pays for your university education, it's a good deal for a guy like you. Think about it.
He tried to imagine himself in the pale sand dunes of Iraq, but when he closed his eyes he saw red earth instead. He felt the barren desolation of Australia, not the tense silence of people hiding in the Iraqi desert. He couldn't imagine handling a gun, killing someone. He wouldn't be able to do it. His fingers would go dead. But what if he was in a war? What then? If it was a question of getting his uncle safely to a hospital, what then?
He closed his eyes and tried to picture it -- the yellow sand he'd seen in photographs, the pale desert of Iraq. He could hear the soldier whispering in his ear -- it's a good deal for a guy like you. Set you up for life. All we're asking for is a little bit of your time.
And so he was a soldier, and it was impossible to tell how long he'd been awake. The days and nights were mashed up into a twilight of heat, sweat, bad dreams and heavy eyelids. His skin felt grainy and salty, his eyes dry. The dust and sand were everywhere -- in the air, in the folds of his skin, in socks in the spaces between his toes. He could feel the tiny granules between his teeth every time he sighed. He'd lost track of time now, the ashes of past wars billowing around him. He'd almost forgotten what he was lying in wait for.
But a small movement in the distance jolted him awake. He blinked his eyes frantically, pinched his cheeks to bring forth some tears. The twin images of his blurry vision came together. A figure came over the sand dune. A figure who also carried a rifle.
He was sweating, everywhere, his clothes suddenly drenched. He was shaking, the metal was hot underneath his fingertips and the strap around his neck felt rough and heavy. The figure had seen him. It moved towards him and he blinked frantically, trying to keep it in focus. He still couldn't make out who it was.
The sand beneath him shifted. He could hear the individual grains rustling together and dropping away. And then it came. The first shot from the advancing figure. It ricocheted around for longer than he expected, louder than he expected. His guts felt like jelly and it took him half a second to realise that there was no blush of pain. He hadn't been hit. But the anger now flooded through him and his fingers, so numb before, were nimble and alive.
Basher pressed ahead and the crack of bullets came faster now, all around him. His fingers were at ease with the rifle now, shooting as quickly as they could. But the connection between his eye and the rifle could not be forged so easily. The bullets were missing their mark. The figure continued to advance. He could see it at last-- it was a soldier.
Ten paces now, and the gun jammed in Bashir's hands. His finger tugged useless at the trigger, frozen in place.
Five paces now, and the soldier was taking his time, lining up his sightlines.
Two paces and Bashir was staring down the barrel of a gun.
He stood there facing the soldier, looking him square in the face. He could see the small pits of the soldier's pores, dotted in a web across his nose. He could see the individual lashes which framed the soldier's eyes. They were dark eyes, like his own. Then he blinked and they were blue eyes, the blue eyes of a Spotty James.
Bang.
And the soldier was falling, falling away. The dark soldier of the Insurgency, his rifle clunky and useless, falling into the dust.
Bang.
And it was an Australian soldier falling, falling away. His light eyes round and uncomprehending as he lay there in the dust.
Bang.
And Bashir stood there, waiting to locate the signal of pain. But nothing. He was still here. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was still here.
He opened his eyes.
The soldier had disappeared. The dry and slippery sand dune had flowed away into hot and compact concrete. The hot metal under his fingers was his camera. And before him was a woman, blonde-hair escaping from a high French knot, glaring at him as she waved him away with her shopping bags.
