For too many seasons now she had thought about the picture of Jesus on the water. She would like to try to walk on water. Her Sunday-School teacher told her Jesus did it so she knew it was possible. Now that she was a big enough to hoe the field, she still wanted to cross the sea in a boat. She didn’t care where she went she just wanted to cross in a boat. Also, she hoped the sea would be stormy, so that she could really live, because really living meant doing something you had never done before and were probably afraid of. The fact that she lived in a dry dusty place was also an important point. What she wanted was a different picture to the one she looked out on day in, day out.
The only time she really saw water was when she and her three sisters walked to the well outside the village, and even then, it was only when the water came up in the bucket that she actually saw it; there was another world in those depths. These days, she was sometimes afraid of going to the well because there were rumours that the militia had come to the neighbouring village as the women were going to draw water and they were taken away and never came back.
Her journey to the sea did come, but not in a way that she expected. Lately she had discovered that being a Christian was not the good thing she thought it was. In fact, her mother had been telling her that she and her sisters could no longer go to school because some of the veiled girls had been ‘informing on them.’ Informing on them, how? Her mother had hushed her and asked her to ‘stir the pot and not stir the pot.’ What she meant by that was that she should just help with tasks such as cooking instead of ‘looking,’ because she was always ‘looking, looking, looking, for something.’ It was true. She was looking for answers and she was bored, and when she was bored she thought of the sea. Was it blue or green or both? If she dived in would she be able to open her eyes or would the salt sting? If she could open her eyes, would she see fish of many colours?
One morning she woke up and the sun was shining in her eyes through the square block of window; her sisters were still asleep next to her, this was not unusual. They were lazier than her and she let them know it. What was unusual was that as she inhabited the twilight zone between sleeping and waking, she thought she had heard her mother shouting from far away. When she woke up, she could not find her mother. Having prepared breakfast, she woke her sisters and asked them to watch the porridge on the cooking fire while she went to look for her mother.
She went around the houses in the village and to the store asking for her mother. At each house people shook their heads but their eyes told her that they knew something that she did not. She went back to the house and sat on the mat with her sisters. When she told them that she had not found their mother, her sisters began to cry and the porridge began to burn. As she pulled the porridge off the fire and put it on the space under the window to cool, she knew where she must go to get an answer.
They walked for a long time under the hot sun, so long that her sisters began to cry and she had to shout at them like their mother would. They had no water because she had not gone to the well that morning because she felt more afraid of it than before. While she walked she imagined she was sitting on the beach watching the dhows. She had not seen a dhow but she could still see them in her head because her father had been so good at describing them when he had still been here telling her stories. She did not like to think of her father because she was angry with him because he was not with her.
The hot landscape did not change for a long time. It was just red dust and thorn bushes. For her, it was a kind of hell. Eventually, she saw the cross and then the blinding white of the building. Her sisters perked up. They liked Father Francisco and they liked the nuns who gave them biscuits. The three girls sat on the pew dangling their legs. They were eating Marie biscuits and drinking water from tin cups and waiting for Father Francisco who was taking a long time but they did not mind because it was cool in here and they liked the colourful paintings on the wall that were of saints with yellow lights like suns around their heads and they were even bigger than men and women.
And then Father Francisco came. He smiled. He did not take their hand one by one in the playful way that he usually did, so she knew that something was wrong. Father Francisco smiled and told them that they would be staying at the mission that night. She watched his pointed beard and his pale face. When she asked where her mother was, he said: “I cannot tell,” not “I do not know.”
That night she watched the moon from the bed that was comfortable but not comfortable. It was comfortable because it was soft and warm, but it was uncomfortable because it was not on the floor at home. Her sisters had giggled and run around for a long time. The nun had come in and hushed them but they giggled for a long time under the covers. Every time she woke up in the night, she kept watching the moon through the window and that was many times. The moon was round and flat like a gold coin and she imagined it shining on the sea. She fell asleep.
When she woke up it was dark and someone was pulling her from her bed. A hand was on her mouth to stop her from screaming. When she could see properly she realized it was Sister Almeida. She nodded her recognition and Sister Almeida took her hand away. Then Sister Almeida took her outside to a car. Father Francisco was in the car. Sister Constantia was in the car too, but she had to get into the boot of the car. Her sisters were already in the car and they were crying. Sister Almeida said that she had to lie down on the blanket and that she would put another blanket on top. She had to stop my sisters crying at all costs or they would be in grave danger. She lay down next to her sisters and told them to stop crying. She felt for their hands in the dark.
They drove for a long time. Sometimes she could see out of the cracks in the boot and the little round hole and sometimes not. She wondered why they were there, and how strange her life had now become, but not about the sea, her fear made her world shrink to the boot of the car only. Sometimes it was bumpy and then it was not. For a while it was dark and then it was light. The girls were silent. Then they heard a lot of sounds of cars, and of people. The boot opened and they were scared. She could not see because it was so light. Father Francisco told her not to be frightened which meant that she should. He and Sister Almeida held her hand and one of her sister’s hands. He carried her youngest sister. There were cars and people and camels and noise.
And then they saw the boats that her father had told her about at night when he spoke his stories to her and her sisters. And then she saw the sea but she was not happy to see it. Father Francisco talked to a man on the boat for a long time and then they were put on the boat with some other people. She saw a lady from our village. She was sitting on the floor of her boat and she smiled and nodded. Sister Almeida told them to sit with her and to keep their heads down. Father Francisco did not get on the boat. The boat made a noise and it moved away from the wood platform where Father Francisco was standing. He waved at us and I tried to lift my arm to wave but I could not. Father Francisco and all the people who were shouting and waving became very small.
Two men put a green tarpaulin over them and they were afraid again. They held hands in the dark. Her sisters started crying and she did not stop them. When she peeked out from under the tarpaulin, the sea became very big. She was afraid to look at it because she thought that it would swallow them all up. It was hot and she fell asleep. She dreamt that Jesus was walking on the water and holding his hand out to her. When she woke up she felt better, but her sister was vomiting on the floor; the woman from the village was rubbing her back. Later, the woman from our village shared some of her bread with us, but my sister could not eat it, she just cried without making a noise. And then it was like the night in her mind.
She did not remember anything else until the sea put them in a new place in a new land. They had to walk for a long time off the boat to the building. In the building a woman with a blue hat and clothes like a man with a white face spoke to them. She asked her if her mother was safe but she did not understand her words. Later a woman came who spoke their language and told us that we would be alright and that she would find my father and that we were safe. She did not know where my mother was or if she was safe, but she smiled at us. Then they went in a car to a house with a white lady and a white man and some more children. Sometimes the lady who spoke their words came. The white people were their carers, but they wanted to go home even though they said they were safe. We wanted to go back over the sea to our father. We wanted our mother.
We slept in soft beds. There were three beds in the room, one on top of the other. I slept above my sisters but I wanted to sleep with them. I was close to the roof and thought it might fall on me and then our white carers who slept in the room on top of ours would fall on me. There was another girl who was in the other bed. She had a white face and black hair and she did not speak our words either. I no longer dreamt of the sea.
A long time passed and we began to shape the strange words in our mouths and we began to like the food especially the fish fingers and chips and the peas that could roll on the table like small balls that made us laugh. A day came when our white carers took us out into the garden for a surprise. The surprise was my father standing in the garden. My sisters climbed my father like a tree but I looked at him and he looked at me. We sat with our carers having tea and then my father cried. When he cried, I cried until I thought I could cry as much as the sea. Our carers cried and afterwards I felt better. My father went away to find a house for us to live in. He said he could not tell me what happened to my mother. When I asked him again he said he did not know, but that she could not come back. I am glad to have my father and my sisters but I want my mother too. Sometimes when I am falling asleep I can hear her shouting for me from across the sea.