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October 31st, 2009
Layla
My Baba’s always telling me the Muslims were the first men of science.
‘The first men? That’s got nothing to do with me, then,’ I say carelessly at breakfast when I can see he’s got the bloodshot eyes, the chicken-wing shoulders, the stiff neck, that mean he’s been up all night watching foreign language news from the Old Country.
‘You think you’re equal to a man, Layla? I don’t think you’re smart enough to be a doctor.’
Ah, reverse psychology. He thinks I was born yesterday. But I wasn’t, I was born seventeen years ago, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t tell your Baba he’s got the parenting skills of a lobotomised ape. Not when he’s had a sleepless night, anyway. Not when I need a costume for the rave tomorrow night that he doesn’t know I’m going to.
‘I’m coming first in Maths and Science at school, Baba.’
‘Only? You should be first in everything.’
‘Where’s your university degree, then, you stupid dole bludger?’ I snap.
Not really. I don’t really say that. You know why? Because his entire self-worth hinges on getting respect. In public, anyway. It’s all about having your family under control. It’s all about having the most money, the most fame, the most education, the most sons, and making sure all ten billion of your relatives know about it.
My Baba’s got no money and no fame. He’s got no education and no sons. All he’s got is what he tells to his lowlife gambling mates at cards every afternoon: My daughter’s going to be a doctor. She’s smart. Smarter than all of you.
Of course, he’d never say that to my face. That’s not how he was raised. Stomp on them and the strong ones will be left standing, that’s how they did it back then, in the dusty villages with their olive trees and kerosene-laden donkeys.
‘Baba, I need some money for school.’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred bucks. For an excursion. Here’s the note.’
I hand him a sheet covered in tiny writing. His eyesight’s so bad he can’t tell it’s the school anti-racism policy. I’ve got it because Marissa Jenkins called me an ‘AIDS bomb’ last week and she didn’t realise I’d get her suspended for racist remarks at the drop of a hat. Or a veil. Or one of those things the Sikh boys have on their heads.
Baba digs grudgingly in his pocket, like it’s a diamond mine. Like the cash came from his sweat and tears instead of his atrocious scrawl on a Centrelink form. Or, in this case, from a win at poker, without which I’d never have asked for so much. He slides it across the chipped, lime green tabletop, but before I can take it he slams his hand down on it, hard.
‘Hussein said you were at the shopping centre on Thursday.’
Damn, and I thought I’d ducked out of sight quick enough. It’s the mosque’s unofficial surveillance network. Nobody escapes.
‘I was buying books, Baba.’
‘Hussein said you were talking to boys.’
Well of course I was talking to boys. Why else go to the shopping centre? I feel powerful when they fight for my attention. The more they hat each other, the hotter I feel. And then I ride them in the backs of their hotted-up cars. Their rigid cocks are like rockets to the stars. There’s no better feeling than being ploughed by a prince that you’ve raised to the throne yourself.
How they grovel just to get near me. How they squirm.
‘Oh, they were bothering me, Baba, but I know how to take care of myself.’
He lifts his hand from the money, grumbling.
‘I can see your hair, Layla. You must be more modest.’
Yeah, because wearing a veil to protect me from lecherous hair-perverts is really relevant in a country where you can go topless on the beach. Besides, half of Sydney is gay. It’s the men who should be lengthening their hems and refraining from shimmying their hips as they walk. Strangely, the Prophet didn’t give any instructions about that.
‘Thank you for teaching me, Baba,’ I say, and take the money for the fancy dress hire from under his cracked, calloused fingers. I’m thinking of going as a naughty nurse, or maybe a French maid.
‘Where’s the excursion to?’
The lie comes all too easy.
‘The hospital, Baba.’
His face lights up. All the pouches and wattley folds flatten out and his crooked teeth show; his eyes are focused on a vision of me tossing a flat-topped cap into the air, a bunch of sandstone gargoyles looking on.
I adjust my veil, sling my schoolbag over my shoulder, and walk away.
Why should I be a doctor? Why would I waste ten years of my life so I can dish out medical certificates to brickies with hangovers until the day I get sued because someone’s kid ate their granny’s medicine and I failed to write ‘DO NOT EAT GRANNIE’S MEDICINE’ on the script in ten different languages?
I can just go on the dole forever, like him. That way I can get on with what I really want to do: dancing, dressing up and fucking. Life is too precious to waste. Too precious to be born a control freak’s daughter.
I wish I was somebody else.
October 31st, 2009
Avi
My mother’s always telling me the Jews are the Chosen People.
‘Chosen for what?’ I say.
‘Obedience,’ she replies significantly. Her eyebrows, that she’s removed and then pencilled back in, dive down like a non-kosher, fish-eating bird over the polished pebbles of her penetrating lawyer’s eyes.
What she means is that I should listen to her and plead ‘not guilty’ to multiple driving offences. What she doesn’t know is that I did it on purpose. Because if I get a criminal record, I can’t ever be a lawyer.
What she just doesn’t get is that obedient is just another word for brain-dead lemming and the last thing the world needs is more lawyers making more laws. There are too many already. Federal laws. State laws. Six hundred and thirteen mitzvot. Talmudic law. Rabbinic law. All the customs and traditions we’ve been carting around for thousands of years. You can’t be obedient even if you want to, because arson in the eyes of one law is simply burning down a city that has turned to idol worship in another.
I close my eyes and permit myself a small smile.
Damn, it felt good to put my foot down on the accelerator. Lights streaking along both sides of the Eastern Distributor, blurring in the edges of my vision. Adrenalin lifting me above the penthouses and corner offices on the hundredth floor. The cop cars behind me felt like a king’s escort. I saw the truck stopped ahead of me, in my lane, and I crashed through the barriers into oncoming traffic without blinking.
I couldn’t stop. It felt too good. I was free at last.
The motorcycle cop came straight towards me. They wanted obedience? I’d take my own advice, for once. And I was no coward.
He swerved out of my way, and not at the last second, either. Seriously, there’s no way a plea of ‘innocent’ is ever gonna go down. I don’t care what technicalities she’s got her hands on—or what magistrates’ joysticks, either. You don’t play chicken with the boys in blue. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that rule on the list, somewhere in between permitting a man to marry a slave after he’s raped her and breaking the neck of a calf by the river valley following an unsolved murder.
She gave me the guilt trip, of course. About how I could have gotten someone killed. But the thing about that is, unless you actually do get someone killed it doesn’t cross your mind—and if he had taken his bike head-on into Mum’s Audi he would have deserved it in a direct, Darwinist way.
I open my eyes. There’s a fly on the ceiling.
‘My son,’ she says sternly, seeing that I am unmoved, ‘a legal system carries with it the obligation to be obedient. We may not agree with certain legislation or judicial interpretations, but we must be obedient. The alternative is anarchy or compliance by the use of force.’
‘I thought we were talking about being Jewish,’ I say flippantly.
‘We are talking about being human.’
Yeah, right. Most humans can eat a pepperoni pizza without having to repent for it later.
‘I feel like going for a walk,’ I say. If I’m going to jail then I might as well live it up a little first. There’s a pirate-themed harbour cruise on tonight. Samantha said she would go with me, but that was before she found out I’m not going to be a lawyer, the gold-digger. She’d already ordered matching outfits for us from a costume hire place in the city.
‘You can walk down to the Council Chambers and pick up that folder of character references for your court appearance,’ Mum says icily.
The character references are bullshit. I’ve never met any of those people. Suddenly they’re writing reams about what an upstanding young man I am; what a bright future I have ahead of me. What the fuck would they know about my future?
My future’s not in law, that’s for sure. Why should I waste half my life studying so I can be the world’s biggest hypocrite, like her, and waste the other half of my life influencing the creation of more stupid legal precedents when we’d be better off with no laws at all?
No way. When all this court business is over I’m getting delivery work at a pizza place so I can get on with what I really want to do: fixing up my father’s FJ Holden and getting smashed with mates on a Friday night. Life is much too precious to waste. Too precious to be born into the strictest family on Earth.
I wish I was somebody else.
October 31st, 2009
Layla
I nearly jump out of my skin when I see him.
It’s Hussein again, the stinking spy. Does he think he’s protecting me, or is he just a boot-licking weasel with nothing else to do? Whichever it is, he’s right outside my costume hire shop with a bunch of sycophants, all admiring their manly monobrows in the window.
‘I know another place,’ Gina urges. ‘In the city. Come on, I’ll drive you. We won’t even be late.’
But it’s already too late. Hussein sees my reflection in the window. I jerk my hand out of Gina’s grip, take a step to the left, bump into an old man and then push past him into the bookshop.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Hussein detach from his cronies. They wouldn’t like it in here. Too bright. Too clean. Bookshops make them feel stupid.
I scan the section headings but it’s not done in Dewey Decimal, it’s arranged according to what idiots buy, starting with puppy calendars and ending in ego-pampering politician biographies. Somehow there’s an A to Z of common ailments in my hand and I’m opening it up just in time to be intercepted by Hussein.
‘S’up, cuz?’ he says, but it’s an accusation hidden inside a friendly question and it makes me want to slap his bumfluff-coated face.
His monobrow contracts like a traumatised caterpillar.
‘You gonna buy that book?’
‘Maybe. Baba gave me the money. I’m just looking today.’
He retreats and I grip the book until he’s gone. Only then do I close it gingerly and place it back in the Pet Health section. I calmly walk out of the bookshop and through the shopping centre, down the stairs and into the car park. Gina’s waiting, fixing her make-up in the rear view mirror. As soon as I get into the car, the silk headscarf comes off. It’s only a show; a farce to keep my father happy. If God’s got nothing better to do than give fashion tips, he’s not really paying attention to the state of the world. I ruffle my short, dark hair to let the breeze through it.
‘I’m going as a French maid,’ Gina declares.
‘Bitch, you are not!’
We argue all the way to the other costume shop, the one that Gina knows in the city. Ironically, the French maid outfits are already gone. There’s a dozen costume parties on tonight and we’re the morons who forgot to make a reservation.
‘Wait a moment,’ the fetish-quality fatty behind the counter says. ‘I’ll see what we have left over. Have a look at what’s on the shelves while you’re waiting, if you like.’
The stuff on the shelves is for desperate whores and nerds. Gina and I prod at opposite sides of a rack hung with wookie suits and transparent genie bikinis.
‘Don’t look now,’ a sly voice says on Gina’s side of the rack, ‘but it’s a full moon.’
When I glance back at the counter, I see the enormous backside of the shop attendant. It’s attempting to strain free of its denim shorts, waving in the air as she rummages through a pile of princess dresses.
‘Leave her alone,’ Gina scolds her invisible companion. ‘It’s hot. She can wear what she likes.’
‘I’m going blind. My eyes, my eyes.’
‘Can’t you show a little understanding of what it must be like to be her?’
‘How can I?’ the voice ripostes, turning bitter, ‘when I’ve only ever been me?’
The crowd in the shop thins. There are empty shelves, empty hangers, and a tired emptiness in the Gorgonzola-grey eyes of the sweaty shop attendant.
‘What are you here for, again?’ she asks.
‘A costume,’ I say, irritated that she doesn’t remember me from just ten minutes ago. ‘What’s everyone here for?’
‘You’re not like everyone else,’ she says. ‘Not you. And not him.’
There’s a boy. Tallish, good-looking in a haughty, private school way. Our eyes meet over the sweaty mountain. The boy smirks.
‘No?’ I say. ‘What’s it with us, then?’
‘You want to be someone else.’
I’m a little rattled by this statement but my wits don’t desert me.
‘Sure I do. A French maid. Only, you’re all out.’
‘No,’ she says quietly. A red streak runs through the iris of her right eye and disappears. ‘You want to be someone else. Who?’
I stare at her, feeling slightly breathless, not sure whether I imagined that red streak or not. It’s a trick, isn’t it? This is a costume shop. Then her whole iris turns blood red and a coldness closes around my throat. I have to tell her the truth.
‘Anyone,’ I whisper. ‘Anyone else.’
‘Me?’ she suggests, and the coldness is gone. The funny eye trick is over and I’m angry at the weird bitch. I just want a costume. And as if I’d want to be her. As if anyone would want to be her.
‘A man,’ I tell her. ‘Men have it easy.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ the boy says placidly. I recognise the voice that spoke to Gina behind the rack.
‘You can go where you want,’ I accuse him. ‘Do whatever you want.’
‘No I can’t. Not in this time and place, anyway.’
‘Another time and place would better suit you?’ the shop attendant asks.
‘I’m going to miss my boat, lady,’ the boy says darkly.
She looks at him. No tricks this time; she looks utterly normal now except for how fat she is. Still, the boy flinches back. Then she bends over behind the counter again.
‘Here’s your costume, mister. Don’t worry, you won’t miss your boat. And here’s one for you, young lady.’ She hands me a pirate costume with an authentic reek. ‘Try this on. I ordered in a bunch of extra pirate costumes.’
‘This is a man’s costume,’ I say.
‘You wanted to be a man, didn’t you?’
I retreat, scowling, to the change room. I can be a man for the night, why not? Not like I’m looking to score at a rave, anyway, not surrounded by junkies with quivering eyeballs and grinding teeth. You never know what you might catch off one of them. I’m just going for the music. I’m just there to dance. Not for a dose of hepatitis.
I pull on the leather trousers, which are tight across the bum and loose in the crotch. Then, for a laugh, I knot my veil around my waist. It makes a great pirate sash. My practically nonexistent bust, squashed under a sports bra and then layered in frilly man-blouse, is not an issue.
Frowning at my brown face in the mirror, I wonder how to make it more manly. Memories of Hussein yield inspiration. Pulling out my eyeliner, I sketch in a monobrow and a hint of bumfluff.
It’s perfect. No-one will recognise me. I slap on the ratty tricorne.
There’s an explosion. I shriek at the top of my lungs, but I can’t hear myself. The walls flash blue and orange. They’ve turned to water streaked with fire. There’s brine in my nose and my eyes.
Bubbles rise past me. Heavy timbers press against my chest. A second explosion splinters the timbers. They fly away from me in all directions. Freed from them, I bob to the surface.
I splutter and choke. I’m in the ocean and it’s a starless night. There’s a wooden ship right by me and another one lashed tightly to it with ropes and things like enormous clusters of fishhooks. People are screaming. I don’t see the city lights. Where the hell am I?
A man surfaces beside me. He’s buffeted by waves, clutching at floating ropes that aren’t attached to anything. He looks at me with terror.
‘Doctor Reihs,’ he gurgles.
Suddenly I’m mirroring his terror. Because I am Doctor Reihs. I have been certified by two French surgeons, the first Barbary Corsair to be given a writ from the French King. I recall sailing halfway across the world in as much detail as I recall stepping into the bookshop to get away from Hussein.
I remember being taken captive by the man in the water beside me. When he appeared over the edge of a grappling hook, the fuses in his beard were lit. The knives and pistols strapped to his body shone. He hung our captain by the genitals before roasting him to death, as a lesson to others not to resist.
Edward Teach. The flailing man is Edward Teach.
I’m freaked out and incredulous. Not possible. But here I am. And who am I?
That’s the most horrifying thing of all. Not just being in some place or some time but some body.
I had wanted to be somebody else and somehow it’s happened.
Teach’s weight falls desperately on my shoulders and I go under the water. Down we sink, his toenails cutting my face; he’s trying to climb the ladder of my body to safety, but we’re too far down. It’s a stupid way to die, I have time to think, before something strikes Teach and he goes limp.
Freed from death’s embrace, I burst above water and suck oxygen into my lungs. It tastes like nothing I’ve tasted before; like unadulterated life. Was I really this close to drowning, I wonder, or is the relief an echo of something else?
I was a doctor. I am a doctor, and the doctor remembers his lungs filling with water. The doctor’s waning consciousness clinically recorded the influx of icy brine, of the heart’s last hypoxic flutters.
I was dead and now I’m alive, a stolen soul from a different world, but there seems to be another mind sharing the body with me and I really don’t want to go mad.
The body of Edward Teach—Blackbeard the Pirate—surfaces beside me, bleeding, and I want to laugh. I’ve been sent back three centuries. The clash between my two sets of memories makes me want to throw up. All the safety I took for granted is gone. Yet there’s no benefit in leaving Edward Teach to die. It’s his cunning and reputation that feeds me and without him the quartermaster will hang me from the yardarm. He doesn’t hold with Ottomans and I can’t change my colour.