The Infernal Optimist (15 page)

‘Zek,’ April goes, ‘have you heard the news? About the lipsewing?’

‘Yeah. How are you, anyway?’

‘Terrible. I can’t think of anything but asylum seekers.’

‘And me, of course.’

‘Ha. Of course. But seriously, it’s like…I’m not even living my life any more? I don’t enjoy anything I used to. I’ve only played tennis twice in the last month. I can’t focus on my work. I haven’t…haven’t even had a single Me Day. I go to dinner parties and all I can talk about is refugees? Even when I see people rolling their eyes? I’m having trouble sleeping, too. When I do sleep, I have this recurring dream. It starts out normally. Then suddenly something forces my mouth open and all this razor wire comes coiling out. I can’t stop it. I can’t breathe. It hurts. It’s horrible. I wake up sweating, knowing it was a nightmare but convinced I’m in Villawood.’

‘Me too. Then I look around and I really is.’

‘I shouldn’t…you know, I walked to the post office today to buy a stamp for a letter? I had forty-five cents exactly in my pocket. They told me that stamps had gone up to fifty cents. I burst out in tears. I was so embarrassed.’

A silence came up and sat between us, like Marlena’s mum when we was younger and sitting on the sofa at them house.

‘My problems must seem stupid and small to you,’ she said.

They did, sometimes, I had to admit, specially when they was about crying over the price a stamps, or being boring at dinner parties or not having no Me Days, but I knew it wasn’t really fair to say so. ‘No, no, not at all. Everyone’s problems are as big as them heads.’ What is the truth.

‘I’m sorry. Really, I called to ask about Azad…and Hamid and Thomas of course. They’re not on the hunger strike, are they?’

‘Nah. They’re okay. When are you coming to visit?’

‘Soon. I want to have some better news for Thomas first. I don’t know when that’ll be. I called Josh and apologised. He’s coming over tomorrow. But I’ve got to go softly, softly. He said the whole issue of refugees gives him a headache.’

‘He’s a doctor,’ I said. ‘If he gets a headache, he can give himself a pill.’ I searched in me stash for jelly snakes, what could be eaten on the phone without making any noise, unlike chips and biscuits, what get in people’s ears.

‘Ha. He also went on about how his relationship with the Minister was a professional one, and why it would be inappropriate for him to try to intervene in a case. I pointed out they were also friends who played golf and had philately
in common too. They even go to Philately Society meetings together.’

I nearly choked on me jelly snake. I was horrorfied. ‘You mean what does boys?’

‘Sorry?’

Maybe she didn’t know. ‘Them meetings.’

‘Yeah, philatelists, how boring would that be? A bunch of grown men getting together to talk about their stamp collections. Honestly.’

If that’s what he told her, I spose it wasn’t my place to say nuffin, but I reckoned she was definitely better off without a husband like that. I met too many a that sort in prison. Maybe if people knew that about the Minister they really would lock him up.

I flicked me tongue at the head a the jelly snake. ‘How’s Marley?’

‘She’s down in Tasmania saving the forests? She said…she said she was in touch with Azad…I don’t know. She’s got a different cause every week? Last year she was going to devote her life to organic farming. A few months ago she was going to become a deejay and rave organiser. It’s easy to go on a protest, to demonstrate. But getting involved with asylum seekers requires real commitment. Azad is good-looking. He really is. But that’s not the point.’

I was picking up on some subtextuals here.

‘April, can I ask you something?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘Do you reckon you’d be pushing harder on Josh if it was Azad you was trying to help and not Thomas?’

‘What…oh, gee, Zeki. What are you saying?’

‘I wasn’t saying nuffin. I just be asking.’

There was a pausation. ‘Of course not…no…not at all.’

After we hung up, I took the rest a me jelly snakes to find Azad and Hamid. When I got to the door of Hamid’s room, I could heard Azad arguing with Hamid. ‘Do you understand?’ he said in a voice what was fully stressated. ‘This country doesn’t care if you live or die.’ The door was open a crack. I peeked in.

Hamid was sitting on the bed with his skinny arms crossed over his chest. He was staring at a poster a the Great Barrier Reef what visitors gave him and what was on his wall. Azad was pacing up and down. ‘It is not worth dying for something that doesn’t care!’

‘Yo,’ I said, pushing the door open and coming in. ‘What’s going down?’

Hamid’s green eyes kept staring at the wall. A fish what had yellow stripes and polka dots on stared back.

‘Hamid is going on a hunger strike,’ Azad said.

‘Josh has agreed to think about it.’ April gave Thomas a little smile, what he took his time giving back. ‘I’ll be speaking with him again tonight.’

‘Thank you.’

On a count a Hamid hunger striking, he and Azad, what was looking after him, didn’t come to Visits. ‘I miss them,’ April said, looking hard at the gate like she could vigilise them out. ‘It feels really wrong to me, being here and not seeing them?’

Thomas frowned. ‘It’s not about you,’ he said.

A big tear welled in her eye. I felt sorry for her then. She meaned well. And I knew it wasn’t that easy for her neither.

She brung us some crystals that day what was sposed to crease our luck and help us chill. She gave Thomas one what was clear and me one what was pink. I asked her if I could have a blue one instead cuz I didn’t want no one thinking I be a poofter, but she said it didn’t work like that.
The good thing is that you’re sposed to keep them in your pocket, so no one has to see them. She gave me ones for Azad and Hamid and Angel, and for Farshid and Reza too.

After April left, I went back into the compound to deliver the others’ crystals. She’d said to send them kisses and hugs and love too. I reckoned I could get away with just handing over the rocks.

Farshid and Reza were on the path in front of their building, arguing with their mum. Nassrin was holding onto Reza’s arm like it was a cricket bat.

‘You can’t stop us,’ Reza said in English, jerking his arm free.

She was speaking them language, but you could tell she be pleading with them about something.

‘Vy’d you bring us to this shit country?’ Farshid shouted.

‘Yeah,’ Reza accused, his voice breaking into high bits and low bits. ‘Ve’re your kids. You let them treat us like animals.’

‘Can’t go to school.’

‘Can’t do anything.’

Nadia hurried over on her little feet. ‘Hellooo. Anything you’d like to talk about, boys?’

‘Fuck off,’ Reza said.

‘Reza! Apologise to Nadia.’ Nassrin’s cheeks was flushed.

Reza didn’t say nuffin. Nassrin turned to Nadia. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s okaaaay,’ Nadia said. ‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Reza snapped like a rubber band. ‘You can’t understand, you stupid old bag. You go home every night to your own home. You have days off. You can’t possibly understand vat we feel locked up in this shit place all day, all night for our whole lives.’

‘Now, now, that’s not fair, Reza.’

‘Fair?’ he screeched, his voice cracking. ‘You talk about fair?’

Farshid kicked the ground. ‘C’mon,’ he said to Reza. The two of them stormed over to Hamid and Azad’s flat.

Nassrin sat down hard on the ground, holding her big stomach. Nadia pursed her lips. ‘How are
you
feeling, Nassrin?’

Nassrin gave her a look what said if she didn’t know by then, she’d never know.

Nadia tried to smile but you could see she was feeling the stressation. ‘I’m here if you want to talk,’ she said. Nassrin stared at the ground and nodded.

After Nadia left, Nassrin pressed her palms into her eyes. ‘You okay, Nassrin?’ I asked. It was like she didn’t even hear me.

Hamid was lying on his bed and Azad was slumped up against it. Hamid’s lips was chapped and his eyes dull. His hair looked like it be painted matte instead of gloss, what it usually be. He was skinny again. He looked like one a them models for Bennelong clothes, what are from all different races and what are sometimes fucked up from war and shit too. I seen the ads in Marlena’s fashion magazines and I reckon it be one sick muvvafucker what thought them up, pardon me French.

When they worked out what Farshid and Reza was there
for, Hamid sat up and put his face in his hands and Azad shook his head.

‘It’s not for kids,’ Azad said.

‘Ve aren’t kids any more,’ Farshid replied. ‘Ve haven’t been kids for a long time.’

‘Yeah,’ said Reza. ‘Ve’re prisoners.’

No one said nuffin for a long while.

‘I got some crystals for you,’ I go, opening me hands to show them. ‘From April.’

They all looked at me like I’d just stepped outta me flying saucer.

I was fully stressed by the time I got back to me room. Sitting down on me bed, I scrounged in me pockets for a lolly. I sucked on that crystal for ages before I realised what it was and spat it out.

‘She still not taking your calls?’

‘Oh, mate. Me dad always told me that in the Old Country they say, where there’s beauty, there’s strife. But it’s been three weeks. If I could only just see her…It’s fuh…torture being locked up. I can’t just go round to her house with flowers or chocolates like in the past when I stuffed up.’

Anna’s eyebrows, what were pale, lifted up like they be wings. ‘So. This isn’t the first time.’

‘I’m a man. We got our needs what sometimes aren’t our wants, what are to be good. But I seen the arrow of me ways, and it be sticking in me heart. And I haven’t been unfaithful since Ching neither.’

Anna shot me a funny look and smiled that lopsided grin a hers, like she knew some secret. Maaan. This place be too small for secrets, I knew that, but some things oughta stay private. I wondered who told her. It wasn’t even on her shift. Besides, that was fucken embarrassing—
pardon me French. I’ll explain, but I don’t want it going no further, so don’t tell no one. The whole world don’t need to know everything.

Over a week ago, before the hunger strike began, they brung in this chick from Thailand. A working girl, if you get my meaning. She was a babe. She had curly brown hair and big brown eyes and lips what be made for wrapping round stuff. She wore a short skirt low on her hips. Her legs were kinda muscly, but thin. She wore them platform shoes what She Who never wears cuz she be afraid a falling over in them. All of a sudden, the male detainees be shaving and shampooing and putting on them best clothes and swarming round her like flies, except she wasn’t swatting them away. I reckoned I had Buckley’s. Then for some reason everyone just gave up, and Clarence, what usually be such a muvvafucker, came up to me with a smile on his mug.

‘She likes you, Togan,’ he goes. ‘Don’t ask me why. But she’s asking for you. She says she don’t want no one else.’

‘I knew she be a woman a taste,’ I said.

‘Clearly,’ he goes.

So I spruced meself up real good. I put product in me hair, spritzed me pits, clasped on the gold chains, and put on me cleanest pair a daks. I soiréed over to where she was hanging out with some a the other girls. She winked at me. ‘Hey, big boy,’ she goes in this sexy voice what be all husky and cool like one a them sled dogs. We went for a walk, but everyone was watching us like we was TV, so she goes, without no further to-do, ‘Let’s go to your room.’ Just like that. I thought I was in Lady Luck.

Oh maaan. It was the first time I ever got jiggy with a girl what had a bigger dick than me. I couldn’t fucken believe it—pardon me French. The second I seen it I told the little poofter to get the fuck outta me crib before I decked him. When I came out a few minutes later, trying to look all suavée like nuffin happened, everyone was laughing. Turns out I was the only one what didn’t know. I was so humeliorated. Clarence set me up, the muvvafucker. Just thinking about it makes me ears like whole beetroots what be attached to me head.

If Anna did know, she wasn’t pushing on it, what made me relieved with a capital D. I held out me sandwich cremes. ‘C’mon. Don’t make me eat the whole pack.’

She got up and came over to the doorway. We wasn’t allowed inside the Office on a count a the detainee files and other confidentials what be stored there. She picked the top off a one and scraped the cream with her teeth first, like a kid. ‘At least you’re not on the strike,’ she said.

‘You teasing me?’ I looked down at me stomach and patted it. ‘I’m just trying to keep up with Nassrin,’ I joked. Nassrin was getting so big everyone was saying she was gonna have twins.

‘You’re getting close. Just don’t go mute on us too.’

‘Mate,’ I go, ‘fat chance a me shutting up.’ It wasn’t that funny, but. After Farshid and Reza been on the strike a few days, they sewed them lips shut. Maaan, that was gross. Blood everywhere. Their lips swole right up. Nassrin fainted. Finally, the boys agreed to the doctor cutting the stitches off. Hamid finally went off the strike then. Hamid said he wanted
to be a doctor to save lives. He said that if he couldn’t save himself he at least had a responsibility to them kids. Besides, it was upsetting Angel heaps. Azad, too.

Even though her boys wasn’t on the strike no more, Nassrin hadn’t spoke a word since. She was walking around like a ghost what be spooking the rest of us. She wouldn’t even take calls from her husband over in Port Hedland, what was going spare according to Farshid, what talked to him every day. She and the other women didn’t have nuffin to do neither since they took away the sewing machine on a count a the lip sewing what used needles.

‘Poor Nassrin,’ I go.

‘If I had kids like that, I’d be half-mad too,’ said Anna. She took another biscuit and sat back down at the desk.

‘You can’t blame them kids for being frustrated,’ I said. ‘They been locked up three years already. They just wanna have a normal life.’

‘Then they should have stayed in their own country. Or joined the queue to come out here like real refugees.’

‘They say the government’s lying about that.’

She shrugged. ‘All politicians lie. The point is, those boys are troublemakers. I’m not totally unsympathetic. But they act up and it’s our necks on the block. The papers get hold of it, the government gets pissed off, and Immigration comes down on us like a load of bricks. You know, we’ve got to provide medical care, translation services, education, do this, do that. In the end, all DIMIA really cares about is that we stop stuff from happening that brings them bad publicity, like the hunger strike. And the Shit House management just wants to
keep the shareholders happy. Whatever goes wrong, it’s us, the staff, that get hauled over the coals. We don’t have it easy either, you know.’

‘Everyone’s got them problems, I spose.’ I ate another biscuit and mediterrated on this what have some truth. ‘But still. You gotta feel for ’em, trapped in here. When I was Farshid’s age,’ I told Anna, ‘they couldn’t keep me in me room for one night even. Me dad was always grounding me but I just dove straight out the window. Maaan. Them were the days. Me and me mates, we was always stealing cars and taking ’em for joyrides, using fake IDs to get into the clubs. Later, I got me a fullyworked Val with subwoofers in. We used to race up and down the strip at Bondi, sometimes with the police on our tails. You know, if it weren’t for me missus, what I known since Year Ten, I dunno what mighta happened. I coulda turned out pretty bad.’ I suddenly remembered two crucial details—one, I didn’t turn out too good in factuality, and two, me missus was me missus no longer, even if I had trouble believing it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Her eyes was boring straight into me own like they had drill bits on.

‘Nuffin. Must be something, a piece a biscuit or something…’ I dug at me eye like I was looking for it. ‘You know,’ I said, what changed the subject, ‘Nassrin was a professor in Iran.’

Anna shrugged like it didn’t mean nuffin to her one way or the other.

‘In factuality,’ I go, thinking about it some more, ‘there’s a lotta talent in this place. Azad’s real smart—he should be in uni.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Hamid too, he should be in medical school. And you ever seen Thomas’s drawings? They’re like, like Leonardo de Capria—no, you know, that old Italian dude. And Abeer’s dad, Mohammed, he was a top chef. They ran away cuz first an Israeli soldier killed Abeer’s little cousin what was carrying a kitten inside his shirt what the soldier thought was a bomb, and then the Israeli army flattened their house cuz they lived next door to someone in Hamas.’

‘That’s their story, anyway,’ Anna said.

‘The point is, Mohammed can cook fancy French food just like they do in Paris. And them two Russian chicks? They was croupiers in Vladivostok. And that other Afghani guy what just got his visa, he’s a doctor. The Albanian chick what was here before, she could sing like Britney, I swear. And that Scottish visa overstayer what was here a few days last week? Dude was a real-live London deejay. Khalid—the Bedoon—he used to be the concierge in a fancy hotel in Kuwait. That Samoan overstayer, one with the big tattoo what says “Tuff girl”, she’s like a migration agent. She knows heaps about the law and helps everyone type their affy davids. The tall, skinny Chinese bloke with the taped-up glasses was a defence lawyer in Shanghai what defended someone the government didn’t want defended. And Bhajan—he writes
wicked
songs, though they be heaps depressing, all about death and mountains and stuff. They say even crazy Bilal used to run a big company in Iraq before Saddam killed his wife and son. Mate, sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here among such illustrated company.’

Anna had a funny expression on her dial, like she’d gone somewhere without leaving her seat. ‘Don’t put yourself down, Zeki,’ she goes. ‘You’ve got your talents.’

‘Well, I don’t wanna brag, mate, but I was pretty well known in B ’n’ E circles. They haven’t made the window I can’t get through.’

‘Yeah, well, you know why you’re here.’

‘No, mate,’ I protested. ‘I’ve done the time already. I paid me dues. That’s double jeopardy.’

‘I’m no lawyer,’ she goes, looking at her nails now instead a me. They was short and she didn’t wear no polish, so there wasn’t much to look at, but she took her time. ‘Point is,’ she goes, ‘you all did something wrong or you wouldn’t be here.’

I could feel meself getting hot under the collar, except I wasn’t wearing one. Just me Snoop Dogg T-shirt and me trackies.

Another blue shoved by me to get into the office. He spoke to Anna in a low voice. I heard them say Angel’s name. But I was too busy feeling sorry for meself and kinda righteous too to pay much attention.

‘Yeah, well, I’ll be seeing youse,’ I said and left, what they didn’t even notice.

I thought about calling April. But it was getting that depressing talking to her. Last time we spoke I told her she gotta try and enjoy her life cuz she got one in factuality, and she should leave the nightmares to us what is living them. She busted out in tears. Then she fessed up to her crush on Azad. She said she felt really stupid about it, and hoped he hadn’t noticed—what I insured her he hadn’t, cuz as far as I
could tell he didn’t notice nuffin having to do with chicks. That made her upset too, and she said something about women her age being invisible. I said I never noticed—but then again, I wouldn’t if they was invisible. ‘Oh, you make me laugh, Zeki,’ she said.

Whatever.