The Invisible Hero (7 page)

Mum is clever. She has a University degree, but since Dad left she has two part-time jobs (as a medical receptionist and with Old Age Care) so that she can be home with me and my younger sister when we're there. Naturally, I asked about all those big words she used.
Unethical
means someone behaves dishonestly and without morals. And the other big words are Latin for when you're cheating with your argument and bagging the person and not really staying with the issue. It's like a distraction thing to get your enemy wobbly. Dad used to do that to Mum which is probably why those Latin words came to her so easily.

‘How come the politicians can get away with saying and doing that sort of stuff to each other?' I asked next.

‘Yeah,' said Hannah. ‘And you can't even trust your own side. They're like a bunch of cannibals. Like, isn't it them who come up with all these rules about school and workplace bullying?'

‘It doesn't add up,' agreed Mum. ‘On the slightly brighter side, I read somewhere that Scotland has had its own Parliament for about ten years and they've designed the inside of the debating chamber to minimise abusive talk.'

‘How on earth?' I asked.

‘By creating it in a semicircle. When someone speaks, it's not the opposition you're facing, but a neutral chairperson called the Presiding Officer.'

‘No yelling and bad-mouthing the other side,' I said.

‘And the aim in the Scottish Parliament is to reach a consensus – a general agreement.'

‘Cool.'

When you think about it, the opposite of that cruel-tongued Australian politician is Phil. There's a whole heap of kind things I've seen Phil do. Not just for me, for anyone who needs help. He's a gentleman. That's a pretty special thing nowadays. And he gets it in the neck for being that. Like when Phil waited to help me into my bear suit the other day and Macca bagged him for ruining the World Vision fundraiser performance.

But I can't write about Phil as a hero. Firstly, I'd get hell. Secondly, it's got to be some sort of accepted hero. I'm stuck.

I've liked Ruth since primary. In fact, I think we were engaged once in Grade 1, but then she broke it off. It didn't have anything to do with her Mum being Jewish and my parents being Muslim.
I got jilted because when I proposed to Ruth I gave her the metal ring off a coke can as an engagement ring; a couple of days later Oliver Johnston gave her a tin ring with a sparkly bit of glass that he'd bought at the toy shop. Fair enough. I remember being impressed with how real the ring looked. Anyhow, after a week or so, Ruth forgot she was engaged and the three of us went back to building cubbies and playing in the sandpit.

I've always respected Ruth and now I know why. Inside that pint-sized body is one big, brave heart. Yesterday, when Ruth accused Quayle of being unethical, I felt like shouting out, ‘Go girl!' But did I shout? No. I can take a thumping in soccer, but it's little Ruth with the soft, grey eyes who has the guts in the really scary situations.

I have seriously underestimated that girl. I mean, I tease her a lot – take the Mickey out of her. She can be incredibly naïve. When our group – Johnston, Imogen, Ruth and me – were sitting around at lunch the other day, I told them this joke that I picked up from my boss at my weekend job in the video shop.

It's about a Scotsman who takes this dumb, but beautiful girl out on a date. Come the end of the evening and they're sitting next to each other in his car looking at some view of city lights.

‘Like a drink of Scotch?' he asks pulling out a big bottle of whisky. She nods and has a drink.

‘Like to sit in the back?' the Scotsman asks.

‘No,' says the girl.

‘Like another drink of Scotch?'

‘Okay.'

‘Like to sit in the back?'

‘No.'

This goes on and on. The guy keeps filling the girl up with his expensive whisky, but she still isn't interested in getting in the back of his car. Eventually he says in this frustrated voice, ‘Why on earth don't you want to get in the back?'

‘Because I like sitting next to you,' the girl explains.

Well all our group just wet themselves with laughter. All, that is, except Ruth who didn't get the joke. ‘I wouldn't get in the back, either,' she said. Of course, once I'd explained the joke to her, she laughed and blushed. ‘And I wouldn't offer a girl alcohol,' I said. I'll never be into drinking. It's the truth, but I actually wanted to lighten her embarrassment. It doesn't matter if Ruth's slow on the uptake because she's sure proved she's not slow to stand up to creeps.

My kind of hero has to stand up to something bigger than himself. For that reason I have been thinking about doing Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It's not just about making my grandfather happy. It's because Ataturk was a bit of a superman. He was an incredibly brave army officer at Gallipoli, commanding his soldiers to defend Turkey. Eighty-six thousand Turkish soldiers died – a far higher death toll than with the allied soldiers. Dede's grandfather was one of those who died, a photo of his wife and young son in his pocket.

Dede was showing me a book about Ataturk this afternoon. Ataturk was more than a soldier. He became Turkey's first President in 1923. Ataturk is the name he was given when he became president. It means ‘father of the Turks'. And he seems to have been just like that. He brought all sorts of reforms to Turkey,
including introducing education for women. He said, “Everything you see in the world is the creative work of women.” And he said other wise things – like you expect a true leader should. Here's another quotation of Ataturk's that I really like:

And then there's something Ataturk wrote in 1934, nineteen years after Gallipoli, as a tribute to the ANZAC soldiers:

This letter is inscribed on a memorial at Gallipoli.

I turned to my grandfather and said, ‘How forgiving can you get?'

‘It's gracious, indeed,' said Dede.

Tonight I keep thinking about that letter. Like, who would be happy about a similar sort of letter written to the Japanese on a
memorial – maybe up on the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea or in Darwin?

The treatment Phil Dugan has copped at school has taken the fun out of everything. Like this hero and villains assignment is supposed to inspire us and make us think – at least, that's what Mrs Canmore said. When she said this, I wondered if she'd heard about Mr Quayle's public humiliation of Phil. When she was speaking to the class, Mr Quayle leaned back on his chair with a smirk on his face, like he has to go along with everything but doesn't believe in it. If you want to know what a
cynic
is, just take a look at Quayle.

It's the only time I've seen Mrs Canmore react to Mr Quayle. She looked him straight in the eyes and said something like, ‘I'm sure you agree, Mr Quayle. We need to know how to identify evil – name it for what it is.' That was a bit of straight shooting, for sure. Then she added, ‘And we need idealists to show us the way.'

Well Mr Quayle leant further back in his chair, stretched, yawned and then sort of drawled, ‘Don't know if I believe in evil, Mrs Canmore. But people do go for the dreamers. Can't get away from them if we wanted to.'

Macca and Co. laughed and Sam de Grekh called out, ‘Tell her she's dreamin!'

Mr Quayle joined in with the laughter and not even Mrs Canmore could tell them to shut it. Sam's quote from ‘The Castle'
was clever and it would look kind of sour to get all cut about it. After all, we studied the film last term in English.

But in her polite way, Mrs Canmore had a comeback. She told Mr Quayle that if dreaming meant the way we become time travellers by reading history and good literature, then she agreed with him. She said that through imagination we get to step into other people's shoes just like Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
teaches his daughter Scout. Mrs Canmore said this develops ‘emotional intelligence'. Then she quoted this guy called Daycart (not sure how you spell that, but it sounds French) who said that a proper study of history lets us have ‘conversation with the finest men of the past centuries'. I liked that line so much that I wrote it down straight away.

It was getting to be like a tennis match. Mr Quayle folded his arms across his chest. ‘Finest, eh?' Which person decides who the
‘finest'
is? Then he went on and on about ‘objectivity', ‘historiography' (he made us learn that word in term one), ‘moral relativity' and ‘different interpretations of history according to personal values'.

With all these big words, I thought Mr Quayle was winning, but then Mrs Canmore said with real passion,‘So Mr Quayle, you'd stand at the gates of Auschwitz, watching the families file through, knowing they were heading for nightmarish deaths in gas ovens, and you'd refuse to judge Hitler? As limping old people and fathers holding their children's hands and mothers carrying babies walked under that iron archway with its cruel, cynical motto, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei' – work brings freedom – you'd shrug your shoulders and tell people that, from the Nazi perspective, it was witty and absolutely
honest? You'd tell the person next to you who was murmuring about how wrong all this was that they were being subjective?'

Mr Quayle was looking anywhere but at Mrs Canmore. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was still low and controlled. ‘I quote,
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
And yes, I say it again, we have to name evil for what it is.'

The class was completely silent for a moment and then the bell went for recess. Everyone was heading for the door. As he dived past me, Mustafa said, ‘Hey Ruthy, you and Mrs Canmore make a good pair. I like that cool word of yours you used last Monday –
ethical.
If I have to waste my life on this assignment, I may as well go for some ethical type.'

Well that sure gave me a lift. Quite often my friends and me hang out with Mustafa and his mates at lunchtime, but he hardly ever says anything sensible or serious to me, just teases me. Not in a mean way, mind you. Just a clowning around sort of way – which is how he's almost always like. He's really smart with schoolwork (especially Maths sort of stuff), but he's been one of those sports-mad boys since I knew him at the start of primary. So saying he respected what I'd said to Mr Quayle sure was some compliment coming from him.

And another good thing. Mum was going through her mail after dinner. She opens this long envelope that has a symbol on the front left corner of a lit candle all wrapped up in barbed wire. ‘Must remember the Amnesty AGM next week,' Mum said as she walked to the calendar that hangs over the kitchen bench and scrawled a reminder on it.

Ever since I can remember, Mum has belonged to Amnesty
International. It's about supporting and trying to free people who are tortured or unjustly imprisoned and issues like that. Amnesty members write letters to a victim's government and ask for justice and fair treatment.

‘Is all that letter writing worth it?' I asked Mum.

‘We get results,' said Mum.

‘But you might protect one person when there's heaps more who need help. It's so slow.'

‘Peace starts with the individual, Ruth. Individual to individual,' said Mum. ‘Like a healthy, beautiful tree, it has to be allowed to grow freely and naturally with deep roots and...'

‘You don't get what I'm saying,' I butted in. ‘While you're waiting for your tree to grow, there are people still getting killed, imprisoned for no good reason and tortured. Probably right now while we speak.'

‘I do get you,' said Mum, ‘but our motto is,
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
'

‘I like that,' I said. ‘I like it a lot.'

And I do. It really is much better to do something about the world's problems than do nothing but complain. So now I'm going to look for a hero who has lit a candle.

When we're together, Macca and I don't waste too much time talking about school things. But last week when we were in our usual spot in one of the maintenance sheds down the back of the
school, I couldn't shut him up about how much he didn't like Raph and how she thinks she's so good looking and how she beat him in a science test. And then he went on about his new interest, this MacIveli guy. So I let him talk and my own ideas started to flow.

At home tonight Mum got into one of her ‘must be a parent' routines. Some idiot teacher has sent her an email complaining that I'm not doing my homework. Mum wouldn't tell me which teacher it is. I said it was my right to know who is going behind my back. Mum said it's her right to see that I get educated. Then she told me to go get my school homework diary.