The Ink Bridge (12 page)

They stopped in front of some shops and the Snake said gruffly, ‘Pay him!' He crossed the footpath and disappeared up a crooked flight of steps. Omed paid the fare and gave the driver no extra.

Then he walked up the stairs until they dissolved in gloomy darkness at the first landing. There was a light burning on the flight above. As Omed neared this light, he saw the Snake talking with a turbaned man on a thick pile of rugs. The walls were hung with carpets. Omed recognised tribal designs from Afghanistan and some similar to the ones he had seen in Lahore.

‘This is Omed,' said the Snake.

The Carpet Trader nodded at him, but said nothing. Omed knelt on his rug. The fibres were coarse and they poked through his thin pants. He dared not move.

‘You wish to go to Australia?' asked the Carpet Trader in Dari. It was good to hear the language, so unlike the throttled Indonesian syllables.

He nodded.

‘You are from Bamiyan?'

Omed nodded.

‘Bamiyan is a beautiful town,' said the Carpet Trader, stroking his thin beard. ‘Why did you leave?'

‘The Taliban were trying to kill him,' said the Snake.

‘Can the boy not speak?' spat the Carpet Trader.

‘His tongue is useless. The Taliban.' The Snake shrugged and said no more.

The Carpet Trader flared his nostrils and Omed felt a handful of whipworms working inside him. The man was bad.

The Carpet Trader muttered, ‘Those Talib dogs, they have ruined everything.'

The man picked up a small glass of dark coffee. On one finger he wore a thick gold ring with an emerald as big as a cuckoo's egg. ‘Why do you want to go to Australia?' he asked.

‘He has heard it is a beautiful country,' said the Snake, leaning forward, holding Omed's shoulder, ‘And that the people are fair-minded. There is no war there, no killing.'

The Carpet Trader turned to the Snake and said, ‘The young believe there is a perfect world waiting for them.' He stared at Omed. ‘But it is only money that can buy this perfect world. Money can protect you from your enemies. Money can set you free. It can buy dreams.'

Omed ran his finger over the lining of his coat.

‘He has money. Five thousand American dollars.'

‘Pah! You will buy yourself a cheap dream for that.'

This man disgusted Omed. He pushed himself to his feet, but the Carpet Trader grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down. His uncut nails bit into Omed's skin. He brought his face so close that Omed could see the huge grimy pores on his nose, the hairs that flared out like brushwood from a cave.

He growled through gritted teeth, ‘Humility is favoured by your elders. Remember that and you will do better in this life.' He threw Omed's hand back into his lap. Then he got up and left the room.

Omed hung his head. He had come so far, but then destroyed his chances with a foolish act.

The Snake slapped the back of Omed's head as he left. After a moment's silence, Omed could hear the Snake arguing with the Carpet Trader on the other side of the thin wall.

‘We had a deal!' shouted the Snake.

‘I do not make deals with insolent boys.'

‘You do not understand, I must get to Australia. There are people waiting for me in Afghanistan. People who would kill me.'

‘What makes you different from any other refugee? Do you think I can go home, that I can earn a living back there? Do you think I like it here with strange food and strange people surrounding me? Police who require bribes? My countrymen, who have turned to beggars, pleading with me every day? The dangers from rival agents? Do you think I have a choice?'

‘But you will go home one day,' said the Snake. ‘Once your pockets are full of dollars. Once you have pushed a thousand boats to the ocean, you will go home.'

‘One day, maybe we can all go home.'

‘Me, never. And the boy – his father was killed and he would have been next. He can never go home. I know the one that he shamed, the Talib dog, and that man has a long memory. It is not just a matter of money to us. It is that we wish to live.'

‘We are the same, you and I. For us, money is like air. Do not pretend that it is otherwise.'

For a moment there was silence in the next room. Then the Snake cleared his throat. ‘You are right – we are the same. And a man who is like me should recognise a good deal when he sees one. Think on this: when I am in Australia we can make some good business.'

‘I always know a good deal. Its sweetness is like honey on the tip of my tongue.'

‘Come closer, I will whisper to you.'

Omed could hear only the hum of traffic and the table fan whirring, ruffling papers as it turned its head around the room. The Carpet Trader snorted, laughed loudly. ‘We are fruit from the same tree, you and I,' he said.

When they walked back into the room, the Carpet Trader bent down to Omed and said, ‘You are lucky to have such a friend as this.' And then he chuckled.

The Snake smiled, his smaller eye disappearing beneath his brow, the large one a bitter moon cloaked in fog.

‘The boat sails tomorrow. I need the money now,' said the Carpet Trader.

Omed slipped off his jacket. It was really too warm for Jakarta, but he had sweated and kept his chance at freedom. He moved quickly to grab the Snake's knife.

Both men drew back, waiting for Omed to lunge at them. But instead, he carefully slipped the blade under the stitching in his coat and removed the remaining presidents. He placed them one by one, facedown on the floor.

The Carpet Trader licked his lips and began counting. He folded each hundred dollar set as he went, ending up with fifty piles and a small collection of loose notes. Pulling a steel chest from under a nearby table, he unlocked it and put the money inside.

‘You can stay here tonight,' he said. ‘I will charge you only what you have given me. From now you will have no need of money. When you reach Australia you can get a job that pays well and live like an Australian.'

The Carpet Trader's room was hot. He and the Snake puffed on cigarettes until the air was bloated with smoke. Omed rolled himself into a carpet. It was brown and gold, from a village near Shibar, he recognised the strong, square
gul
– the stylised flowers blooming in the pile. Breathing the dust of his homeland deep into his lungs, he wished for the morning.

It arrived like a surprise, bursting through the cracked windows and changing the carpet colours like autumn leaves. Omed lay watching them unfold in the new light and thought of small fingers working handmade looms in villages high in the mountains. Children nearly blind by the age of twelve, tying knots handed down to them by generations of weavers. Each design a carefully guarded secret, with codes to be learnt like songs. Designs as much a part of the landscape as rocks or trees. Had these carpets been smuggled like him, with salt water staining their dry fibres? Was this the end of their journey or just another stop on the long road?

‘Wake up!' yelled the Carpet Trader as he kicked Omed roughly in the back. A trail of smoke followed him out of the room. Omed roused the Snake and dragged him down the steps. The Carpet Trader waved down a taxi and they sped off.

‘Where are we going?' asked the Snake.

‘To freedom!' shouted the Carpet Trader and threw his head back and laughed.

The Snake smiled grimly and Omed remembered when he had used these same words as he pushed him into the truck bound for Pakistan.

After half and hour of threading through traffic and narrow streets, they arrived at a place called Sunda Kelapa. The docks were busy with ships unloading rough-sawn timber. Whole forests sailed into the harbour, the boats sipping water over their low sides. Men reloaded them with mattresses and tins of paint, crates of Coca-Cola and beer.

Gangs of boys and girls ran up to the taxi and thrust model ships through the open windows. ‘
Pinisi
, mister!
Pinisi! Pinisi!
One hundred tousands rupiah, mister.'

The Carpet Trader threw open the door, knocking two of them to the ground. He pushed the others out of the way and strode onto the dock.

Omed and the Snake followed him to a steel boat. Even though it was heavily rusted, it looked strong and for the first time in weeks, Omed had hope in his heart that he would make it to Australia.

They squeezed in beside bags of cement. As they pulled away from the wharf, the Carpet Trader's taxi threaded through the tangle of cars, buses and bodies, back to his carpets and the papery silence of Omed's smuggled presidents.

The boat was smaller than the one that had carried them to Indonesia. The Snake and Omed were the only passengers and there were three crew members and a captain who steered with his feet from a tall chair in the cabin. He dodged small boats and piles of floating rubbish as they sailed from the port.

The boat made it to the rolling sea and hugged the coastline of Java past smouldering mountains and the tiny canoes of fishermen. The sun pushed through starched clouds and blistered the wooden villages lining the beaches.

One of the crew brought bowls of hot noodles and beans. They sat with their backs against cement bags and ate. Omed finished and crawled to the front of the boat. He tried to imagine what Australia was like. In his mind, he saw wide beaches, smiling people, kites, waves reaching for the sky. It had been hard to imagine waves of this size when the Poet of Kandahar had first told him of Australia. Now, he understood them, the way they pushed and rolled under a boat. Their power and their grace. How hard it would be to fight against them.

The Snake slept, the larger of his eyes slightly opened to the sun. Omed wondered what he had spoken of with the Carpet Trader, how he had persuaded him to get them both on this boat.

Omed watched the sun drop and night skulk like a thief round the corners of the sky. It stuck foul fingers into the valleys of the waves, dug itself into the boat. Omed shivered and wished for the sun but finally, exhausted, he fell asleep.

He dreamed again of his kitchen table. As he ran his fingers over the smooth wood, the knots opened like eyes. The eyes bled sap tears and behind them faces, torn with agony, opened hollow mouths. Their screams were silent, but Omed could feel the despair twist into his heart like shrapnel. And then the wood turned to water and waves sprung from open grain, whorls twisted down to the ocean floor where the bones of people rattled. The faces on the table were covered by the waves, stone faces, cracked, masked, eyes lit by fires, mouths sucking like fish as Omed reached his hand into the water, but it burned as if it was fire. He turned to the faces of his mother and father, but they were smudged by darkness and he couldn't make them out and this was the forgetting, this was the heart-killing sadness of distance and time, and his brothers and sister drew behind as if they did not know him. He fell backwards into the table, into the water, and even though he reached his hand out for his mother she turned her back and walked to the door as the waves grabbed his shoulders and he tried to scream, but the water was in his lungs and it was soft like honey. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt! It was over.

He was a spot of light on the sea floor. Fish worshipped him. He no longer had to live like a rootless person, shifting like the clouds across the sky, never resting. Omed had found his new home. He looked across the ocean bed – it was covered with points of light, people like him, small stars.