Hasina has never heard anything like this strange sound coming from the sky. Tocata tocata tocata. It reminds her of her mother’s old sewing machine. But instead of coming from another room, it is coming from above.
She stands in the middle of her family’s vegetable garden, blinking her dark eyes against the November sun, looking for the source of that sound.
Tocata tocata tocata.
The sound has distracted her from a particularly juicy geometry problem. She was pulled to the window of her home schoolroom and then out of the door and into the garden, the length of the right-angled triangle’s hypotenuse left unsolved on the desk behind her.
Hasina isn’t the only one drawn by the sound. Araf, her six-year-old brother, was the first outside, racing ahead of everyone. In fact, all the pupils at her Aunt Rukiah’s makeshift homeschool – Tara from the end of her road, Aman and Rosie from the next street over – are staring upwards, while the ducks and geese that roam the garden rush about their legs. All of them have left the madrassa, the schoolroom with its shady thatch roof and woven bamboo walls that catch every breeze, to stand out here in the blistering sun. Even Aunt Rukiah has been lured outside.
‘What is it, Hina?’ Araf demands. ‘Is it nagars?’
Hasina smiles.
‘No, Araf,’ scoffs their cousin Ghadiya as she limps towards them, the last one out of the madrassa. ‘It is not dragons. Dragons are not real.’
‘Are too,’ Araf mutters under his breath.
‘Maybe it is a plane?’ guesses wide-eyed Tara, fourteen years old like Hasina.
Hasina has heard the planes flying over her town of Teknadaung twice a week, from Sittwe, the capital. No plane has ever sounded like this.
‘No,’ Ghadiya corrects Tara. Ghadiya is just thirteen, but her tone is superior. ‘Not a plane either.’
Tocata tocata tocata. Like a needle going in and out of the cloth. A sewing machine in the sky. Except Hasina hasn’t heard a sewing machine for nearly four years, not since the electricity was cut. Now her mother only sews by hand.
Hasina holds up her hand to shade her eyes against the late morning sun. That is when she sees them pop into view from the north. Eight bird-like creatures.
‘There!’ Hasina cries, pointing towards the eight dots. ‘I see them.’
‘Where?’ shouts Araf. ‘Where?’
Hasina pulls him around in front of her and, bending low, rests her arm on her little brother’s shoulder. She makes a square shape with both her hands, framing the eight birds. ‘Look along my arm.’
Araf does, pointing his own fingers too. ‘I see them,’ he squeals. ‘I see the – the birds?’
‘No, not birds either.’ Ghadiya’s voice is wary now.
‘What are they then?’ Araf demands.
‘Helicopters,’ Ghadiya says. It sounds like a warning.
Hasina shoots her cousin a surprised glance. Even though Ghadiya and Aunt Rukiah have lived with Hasina’s family for years now, there are still things about Ghadiya that Hasina doesn’t know. How does she recognise these dots as helicopters?
‘Mama …’ Ghadiya’s voice is a little wobbly, and Hasina sees that her face is pale. ‘Helicopters.’ She limps over to stand close by Aunt Rukiah, who puts an arm around her shoulders.
Hasina swings her gaze back to the eight dots, which are growing larger and larger. They are coming from over the Arakan mountains that wall off Rakhine from the rest of Myanmar. They seem to be headed south towards the ocean, the big turquoise Bay of Bengal. Why would they head out over the water? Is there a cyclone coming? When Hasina was little, Cyclone Nargis flattened parts of Teknadaung. She remembers how the terrifying winds howled and the sky went dark. But this morning the sky is clear.
‘Toca toca toca,’ Araf shouts, imitating the sound.
‘Time to go back inside, everyone.’ Aunt Rukiah’s voice has an edge of fear to it.
But none of them move. Hasina doesn’t think she can move. The birds are too mesmerising. It’s the sound they make, the rhythm of it. Their metallic gleam. Araf is right. They are like the nagar, the mythological dragons from her grandmother’s stories.
A nagar comes whenever the world is about to change. Is the world about to change?
And just as this thought rises in Hasina’s brain, the eight birds do another strange thing. Something Hasina has never seen birds do before, except one: the hawk.
The birds turn sharply and suddenly. They do this as one, keeping their formation the whole time. Sunlight flashes from their rotors as they change direction. They are not heading for the ocean anymore. Instead, they are heading directly for Teknadaung. In fact, it feels like they are coming straight for Eight Quarters, her neighbourhood. For Third Mile Street. Her street.
And instead of flying high, they are dropping low. All eight birds move in perfect unison. All of them swoop like the hawk does when it takes a mouse.
Are they coming for her?
Closer and closer. Louder and louder. They don’t sound like sewing machines anymore. They sound like a cyclone roaring onto land. The rhythmic toca toca toca becomes a wop wop wop so loud, so strong, that Hasina can feel it like she can feel her heart pounding inside her body.
Suddenly, Ghadiya screams, ‘Mama, they’re green. They’re Sit Tat.’
Sit Tat. The name for the Myanmar Army. A word to send chills down the spine.
‘Inside!’ Aunt Rukiah roars, her voice jagged with panic. ‘Now!’
Tara, Aman and Rosie turn and race for the madrassa. Aunt Rukiah sweeps Ghadiya under one arm and Araf under the other and drags them inside. The ducks and geese scatter.
But Hasina cannot move.
Hasina wants to run too. She wants to take shelter before the helicopters reach her house. But the sound pins her to the ground, the wop wop wop pressing down on her. She is paralysed like the mouse when it feels the shadow of the hawk’s wing.
‘Hasina, run. Run!’
Closer and closer, lower and lower the helicopters come. Her head feels like it will burst with the din. Each sweep of the rotors surges in her chest. She clamps her hands over her ears. Around her, the air begins to swirl.
From inside the madrassa, Araf and Ghadiya are still calling to her. She sees their mouths opening and closing. Run, they are shouting, run!
But she can’t.
And just as she is sure she will be crushed by those massive rotors, the image of an empty soccer net pops into her head. And into the net flies a soccer ball. Right into the back corner.
A perfect shot.
Hasina has made exactly such shots herself … lined them up almost without looking. Imagined the ball into the net so that all she had to do was be part of the movement, swing her foot to the ball and the ball into space.
Doors are rectangular, just like a soccer net.
And now she knows what she must do. Aim, shoot and hope.
The first of the birds nose low over the garden as Hasina finds her legs again. Dust stings her eyes as she half-runs, half-scrambles, then launches herself towards the madrassa door, helicopters thundering overhead.