The Passport

The sun was peeping over the dunes behind us, its low glow making dazzling halos on the sea grass dotted on the horizon.

There was laughter from somewhere up the beach and I watched as a trail of pixels caught up with the direction of my stare. The acid had settled in nicely; much like our cavorting posse of partygoers.

Thanks to the Fender Passport system the sand was bumping. Bass vibration shimmied up my legs and raised the hairs on my arms. It felt like every pore opened a little wider to take the music in - straight to the nerve endings. The perfect outdoor audio kit, the Passport comprised two speakers and an amp that clip together into one solid 20 kilo suitcase. All you need is your music source and a generator and you’ve got yourself a party. We had the speakers on tripod stands facing in towards the barasti hut. The psychedelic fabric fastened to two sides of the bamboo frame gave us walls of fractals within which to dance, while Ganesha made a dexterous salute to the sea from behind the DJ desk.

The boys were just wrapping up a two hour back to back set, mixing and mashing minidisc, DAT and vinyl into a journey through the darker corridors of psy-trance. Most of the tunes were fresh from India and Germany, heavy with layers of complicated beats and vocal samples over the traditional pounding four-four bassline. It was stomping music. It was twirling and contorting make-your-body-elastic music. It was not for the faint hearted music.

Evidently, because only the hard core remained. The rest of the party goers had come and gone in the night. Half the excitement is actually finding the party, negotiating sand dunes in the wilderness of a 10km stretch of beach. If you don’t have a four wheel drive, you better have a pre-arranged pick up plan. Quite often there was no phone signal, and even if there was, no one at the party is going to hear your call. There was lots of driving through the dunes with the windows down and constantly cutting the engine to listen out for the thud thud thud thud of the bass. >>>>

The laughter that had stirred me came from Aslam and Emil. A moment ago you could only see their outlines on the horizon, then it lifted its veil and illuminated their faces. They were speaking in Hindi, the sing-song timbre exaggerated by the twilight.

I don’t think I’d actually spoken a word for the last couple of hours.

Chained to my dreams

Dear Catherine,

I keep having this dream. The dream is always different, but the outcome is freakishly the same. I’m back there and I’m clean. Squeaky. No way I’m going to screw up this time. Derek is close by, but still out of reach. We’re in the same country at least. I’m going to a party. I’m not going to take drugs. But other people are. It’s absolutely not ok for me to have anything in my system. We all know that. One more strike and I’m out...

I never remember the detail of exactly how it happens, just the earth shattering moment when I’m stopped by the police and realise that they’ve got me again. As they’re taking me back to the station for a urine test I’m ready to tear my own heart out. My free life disappears before my eyes. How could I have slipped? I can’t tell my family. Better they think I’m dead. There are no more get out of jail cards left. The worse part is, I don’t even know whether I’m guilty or not. I feel guilty. I know they’re going to get a positive test out of me. But I don’t think I actually took anything. Or was it just one teeny tiny taste? That’s enough of course.

The next part of the dream could be anywhere. But I’m inside. Locked up. Sometimes some of the faces are the same. Sometimes I’m in a completely foreign prison, drawing only, I can imagine, on pictures in my mind from Sasha’s stories of Delhi prison, or the numerous books written by people like us. The despair is indescribable. Yet I never, ever see my parents in these dreams. Maybe it’s my mind’s way of protecting itself? Do you think my sub-conscious knows that’s territory too painful for even a dream?

I’m too ashamed to even call my lawyers.

The dreamscape chaos is mixed with a sense of déjà vu. It’s like that scene from Midnight Express when they’re walking circles chained to the wheel, sinking deeper into the maddening rut walked by their own feet. I know I’ve been here before. It’s all the same but different. I know it’s hopeless. I keep dreaming. I go to court. I stand clutching the bars watching bus loads of women released to carry on with their lives, knowing that will never be me, on that bus. I can actually feel the despondency gnawing away at my soul. It’s a sad, sad place I’m in and I’m slipping off the edge. Giving up...

Then there’s a sharp turn. It’s like a knife slices through the middle of the dream and changes its course from a point back in some premonitory corner of my mind. It’s as sudden and shocking as finding out I didn’t actually do it. Of course I didn’t do it. Who could be so crazy? And I’m walking out of the jail, heart beating faster as it settles back into my conscious body.

I know I’m awake and I cry.

Ramble

I know I want to end the book with the journey home - the beginning of a new, young life - but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. There was something in Fiona's idea - telling the story from multiple perspectives...

There are the Emirates staff at the first class check in watching me approach in handcuffs. There were the fellow prisoners saying goodbye. It would be amazing if you cold focus up close on their faces and hear their internal monologues as each encountered this shell of a girl. Woman. Was I a girl or a woman at twenty six? Wow, there's a question all of its own.

I can see the shotias - Fowzia in particular watching me leave, and Major Sabah 'Will she be back? Third time's a charm.' That's where the nightmares come from, always that third time lurking, waiting to happen.

So this shell of a girl, she's empty, dry of tears, a grey, vaporous shadow of her former self, while all around, every pinpoint along the way, there are faces looming close, watching and passing judgement. What's it like to enter the world with this flag hanging over your head? Forever. There's a passport with an international drug peddling charge attached to it. A profile on interpol, a world wide web where a search of your name returns a digest of your personal history, etched into the screens of the future.

And there are the friends who've been let down. The family who will never look at you the same way, the secrets that exist to protect grandparents, the fear that prospective employers, clients, boyfriends and colleagues will one day ask the question...

What's it like to go back into the world? Where do you start?

Three beginnings - a writing exercise

Beginning One:

The key jerked us out of sleep. Rap rap rap rap rap. Then deeper. Thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack. “Yalla. Goomee. Eat.” Quickly. Get up. Breakfast. The beginning was no different to any other day. But we all knew the end would be.

Peeling my eyes open, my body started to register what day it was. The dread bubbled in my belly and quickly rose, pushing a little "Oh" from my lips as it fizzed and burned around my heart like poison. If it wasn't for the poison I'd be empty inside.

I looked over at Sasha, she was sitting, knees up, arms draped over the front of them with her head hanging between her legs. It’s the position you sit in when you think you’re going to be sick. I know how she feels.

Kate is right next to me, close enough to touch. I glance over my shoulder and she is laying straight as a plank, eyes focused on the fluorescent light above our heads. It looks like a black light – one of those dark UV tubes that make your teeth glow at a trance club in Amsterdam – but it’s actually a standard old white tube. Covered in flies. They’re still, settled, but before long, as we start to move and a little air circulates in the room, they’ll become active. There must be hundreds of them. Enough to completely cover a metre long tube. When they start buzzing around the room for the day, you can see that the tube is covered in fly shit.

Kate isn’t a morning person; she’s still laying here next to me, staring straight up. I’d go beyond saying Anna isn’t a morning person. She’s actually frightening in the morning. I’ve seen her bare her teeth, wolf like, and that’s just because Sasha told her she missed a patch when she was cleaning the floor.



Beginning Two:

The black fabric was the softest thing about today. I just held it for a while. It was cool too. A little sea of cool in the thick humidity of a middle eastern summer morning.

Standing with the abaya held to my body and feeling the slippery waves of rayon move and settle around me has a calming effect. My eyes are open, but by all appearances, nobody is home. On court day, the further you can get away from the truth, the safer you are. It’s like your own personal defence team steps in to fight the system. Suppress the nervous synapses that threaten to derail an already shaky defence built by a very expensive lawyer. We all deal with another day in the Shariah court differently, but there’s one emotion that’s as strong as the handcuffs that link us like a chain gang for the journey – it’s the sheer terror at what new evidence will unfold.



Beginning Three:

The girls at the Emirates first class check in counter had been on duty since midnight. It was 6am and they had two hours left in their shift and would soon start seeing passengers for EK 005 departing at 7:30am. Checking in the east bound Singapore flights was usually a breeze – mostly Western expats going home to Australia, and often, Emirates pilots and their families. They reapplied layers of pink lipstick within the sharp confines of red lipliner, they gossiped in Arabic about a colleague they suspected of moonlighting as a prostitute, they readjusted their shaylas, wrapping the black veils loosely around rich black hair, and they dismissed a lecherous Bahraini wanting to check in. His ticket was for Riyadh and it was economy. All in all, it was just another winter’s day in Dubai and the temperature was a gorgeous 21 degrees Celsius at 6am. The sky was wearing its perennial shade of smoky blue. And the palm trees lining the forecourt just outside the automatic doors were heavy with bunches of ripening caramel coloured dates.

Then two police women escorted a blonde girl in handcuffs through the automatic doors.