Ten Journeys Read online

  Ripe to be hewn from that tree, our village. Ripe to be cut off at the roots and left to choke. I was to be chewed up and spat out like a bad seed. I was to become like the countless other victims of the cruel world. And Lanh left me to that fate. He should have been there for me.

  An was sleeping peacefully, as he was named. His head rested on my leg. I had been staring at the spider’s ornate tapestry in the top corner of the lorry for so long that time seemed to have lost all meaning. I found myself amazed by the intricate patterns of the web; the interlinked road map of strands, which formed not quite concentric circles; the way the moisture in the air glistened off it. Yet again I thanked my mother for this ability to get so lost in idle contemplation. Westerners would have called her lazy; in the good old days, she tended to lie in her hammock in the garden leaving the house to fall into disrepair as she watched a single blade of grass dancing in the wind. Lanh and I knew better. Lanh and I knew that being able to just sit and think, without being bothered by the busy world, was truly An.

  I must have been staring at the spider-web for hours and hours. I was staring so hard that it took some time before I realised that the big ship had docked. Finally our journey had reached its end. For a moment, I didn’t wake An. I simply sat and reflected on what had come to pass. How a dead man had come back to life, how I’d once been wet but now was dry, how time, as we knew it had ceased to exist.

  Before I could wake him, I heard a clattering at the back of the lorry. The roller-shutter doors began to roll up. An opened his eyes, already frantic.

  “Remember the script,” he whispered. “Remember what we practised.”

  I nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. Perhaps he still thought me mad. Couldn’t blame him.

  “Our own Orientation 101,” I said. “Or rather our re- Orientation 101.”

  “That’s right,” he said, and then, putting on a silly accent, he asked: “Where are your papers?”

  “I don’t have any papers. I am my own identity. I am me. I am dung. I am shit. I am beautiful,” I answered, playing the game.

  “What makes you think you should be allowed into our country?” he asked, exaggerating the cruelty of the accent even more.

  “Because I have two legs with which I can walk,” I said. “Because I am a human being.”

  The light of a torch flashed through a gap in the crates. I gasped in fright. An continued with his questioning, probably to quell his own terror as much as mine:

  “What are you then; an economic migrant, an asylum seeker, human traffic?”

  Heavy feet started climbing through the open roller-shutter and then clomping across the lorry floor. It was a man wearing a luminous yellow jacket and heavy workboots. Shit-kicker boots.

  “We are all human traffic,” I answered, in spite of the man whose shadow was now towering above us. He tried to interrupt, but neither of us could understand the man’s strange accent. It had been so long since we’d heard the sound of another human voice. And besides, the man seemed to have so much saliva in his mouth that it was as though he was talking through a reservoir. And that moustache? Urgh.

  The man grunted again. Made a grab at An, and yet An continued with his questions: “Why are you here?”

  A slight smile played on my lips. This was my favourite question of all. “Nobody knows why they are here. That’s the point of life. It is a journey; only when you reach the tail of the snake can you truly know the answer to that one.”

  The man leaned over us. So close that I could smell the fishy breakfast on his breath. He wrinkled his own nose. Seemed to smell nothing. We’d been at sea for so long and yet he smelled nothing. He grunted once again. His voice sounded harsh. Dog-like. I half-suspected that Cockerel would be behind him, just waiting to get his hands on us. Just waiting to dig his womanish claws into my flesh again. But there was no Cockerel. Not here. Somehow, I already knew it.

  The man made another grab for An, and this time, An submitted. He allowed himself to be pulled to his feet as though he were a rag doll, and then he looked down at me – a long, lingering look – and nodded to indicate that I should also let myself be led.

  I was half on my feet, half-collapsing as the man started to drag us out. Out past the crates, which had been our life for so many months, over plastic bags which it seemed were full of food and bottles of water. I took one last look back at the metal wall, but could no longer see the name ‘Jenni’ carved upon it. The opening tones of ‘The Scientist’ played in my head and suddenly I remembered the name of the band. Coldplay.

  We were dragged over the fat lip of the back of the lorry and out, blinking into the harsh sunlight. Everything was so bright it was as though it was on fire. I waited for the smash of a truncheon on the back of my head. Waited for the inevitable torture to begin. The questions, the tests…

  “It’ll be all right,” whispered An, peacefully.

  And then the man spoke once more. And this time, he spoke with the voices of Lanh and of my mother. I suppose An must have heard the voices of his own friends and relatives too. The man said just one word, but it was the most precious word in the world. He said ‘welcome’. And the non-judgemental smile on his face showed he meant it. We were home.

  The Short Story Reinvented Series

  Enjoyed Ten Journeys? Then treat yourself to the other four books in the collection

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