Free Her Father's Daughter by Alice Pung Page B

the West Gate Bridge, he looked out of a car window at the factories below. How wonderful to live in a world where everything was paved over, each tree only there because of human thought, and each leaf of grass grew only because a person allowed it to. Even the sun gave a clean warmth.
    On the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets he had watched a flock of obese grey-white birds that didn’t fly away until you came really close. Then he realised why the seagulls were so complacent. No one ate them. Human beings provided bread without expecting a pound of flesh in return. Once, his family were taken to see the fairy penguins on Phillip Island, and he watched the birds waddle up to the edge of the beach, marvelling at how such small flightless creatures could stray so close to human feet.
    So many things that he could not take for granted then. Electricity. Tap water and a bed that was not a rattan mat. Also, his Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English . It was one of the first books he bought. Some words that the Australians had told him about were not in there, like ‘spork’, a cross between a spoon and a fork.
    He bought an exercise book from Sims Tuckerbag supermarket for twelve cents and started to make lists. He vowed to learn three new words a day.
    Aglow
    Abode
    Amen
    He picked words that he liked the sound of, in no particular order. He wrote down the lists in the evening.
    Spores
    Spoons
    Sparks
    Yet this new country: there were no words in his Longman dictionary to describe the surprises she brought into his life. He learnt that a tender submission was a business document. Manslaughter – made of two wonderful words, man’s laughter – was the act of killing someone. And sweet relish was a jar of mashed pickles.
    Because he could speak English and French, he worked at the Midway Migrant Hostel where his family were staying, as an interpreter for the new arrivals. Some people sat on the edge of their beds most of the day and did not speak, while others pleaded with him to beseech Father Government on their behalf. That’s what they all took to calling the Australian government, like it was their new King Sihanouk, except more epic in its generosity, more mythical in its magnitude. At the camp, he realised, they had existed day to day like children sustained by the story of Father Christmas, and their arrival in Australia was akin to finding out that Santa Claus was real. There was a miracle in all of this, which was why some men and women expected the near impossible and demanded the un-doable. ‘Beg the kind white people to help me bring my family over! Tell Father Government my wife is still back in Cambodia.’ Suddenly they thought that all their wishes could be fulfilled.
    The staff at the Midway Migrant Hostel wanted them to concentrate on more immediate things. ‘Ask him how he is settling in,’ they would instruct, as he sat next to a new arrival.
    At first he didn’t understand what this meant. He translated, and would get a blank look. He suggested in Teochew or Khmer, ‘Tell them you will look for work to support your family and start to pay rent on a house.’
    That was not what the staff meant by settling in, he soon found out. It was not about whether the new refugees would settle down and do useful work. The migrant hostel staff wanted to know how the new refugees were adjusting .
    Some of the men would cry.
    Be quiet, he wanted to say, stop it. Be grateful that you are here. Stop begging and make yourself useful. But it was easy for him to think that. He had not lost his wife to marauding soldiers. His children had never stepped on landmines. The only people he had buried were dead. He had been a young and relatively fit man, and now he could begin a new life.
    He was a lucky, lucky man.
    In his new life, he counted his blessings.
    Do you want to go to sleep here, a Black Bandit had once asked him, sickle to the side of his temple. To sleep meant to be put to death.
    No, no, no, his