Free Here Come the Dogs by Omar Musa Page B

doesn’t think it sounds like a very educational experiment, but wonders whether he ought to get her an iPad to help her study. He pulls up at her ballet school and, before she jumps out, he smoothes her hair back and kisses her on the forehead, then arranges her collar, which has flicked up.
    â€˜I love you, sweetheart.’
    â€˜Have you thought any more about the holiday,
tat?
’
    â€˜Of course. We’ll go soon, don’t worry.’
    â€˜Promise.’ Those eyes again. She adds in an almost professional voice, ‘Could help mum get better.’
    This time, he doesn’t point out that she has dropped into English, but stares straight back into her eyes and gives her hand a squeeze. ‘I promise, baby. Go on. Mrs. Hua will drop you home, all right?’
    When he arrives at his parents’ flat, his father, Petar, is watching the Macedonian news. There are flags waving and a man at a podium speaking hoarsely into a microphone. Petar is a dark, lugubrious man, wearing a white singlet at a table covered in paints. A half-finished icon of St Clement is on an easel by his side, eyes staring out gravely, gold background glowing. Petar is pinching at a faded tattoo above his elbow. It reads
Sloboda ily Smrt
– Freedom or Death. He stands up to shake his son’s hand. His mother, Biljana, appears from the kitchen, smiling. Aleks hands her some flowers before clearing a space on the table and dividing his father’s medicine into a pillbox.
    Petar Janeski had grown up in Communist Yugoslavia with a photo of Marshall Tito on his wall, like every other family. His home life in the village had been one of crushing poverty, his father a poor farmer and secret Macedonian patriot who sold vegetables in the market. One day, as they tilled the fields, his father was telling Petar folk stories and reminding him that Macedonians were descended from Philip of Macedon, and a great line of warriors and kings. Cultural and church expression were repressed; spies were everywhere. A passerby, who happened to be listening in, reported him. The family was blacklisted by the Communist Party and, as life got harder, Petar’s father became more and more harsh towards him. Petar didn’t consider his father a bad man, but he grew up knowing thediscipline of knuckles and fist. The blacklisting clung to his family name like a curse, meaning he could never get a proper job, just menial labour from time to time. He dreamed of a life that would offer him more.
    One day, digging up a garden for his neighbours, Petar overheard the couple talking about emigration. The Party had eased travel restrictions in the 1960s and many people were heading to Australia, where it was said you could earn great wealth. There was already a community there, and the church had sent priests to educate the Macedonians abroad, so the transition to a new country would not be so difficult. As he dug, the field in front of him changed from dark soil to sunlit sand in his mind.
    Weeks later, he met a young woman, Biljana, at a dance. She too had heard of the opportunities in Australia and after several years of marriage sent Petar off to
Matica,
the agency for emigration in Skopje, and then to the Australian Embassy in Belgrade. After countless interviews, letters and months of waiting, he, Biljana and their boy Aleks, were winging their way from the crumbling body of Europe.
    Once Aleks has divided up the pills, his father leans back, satisfied. His hands are covered in paint. How fearsome those hands had once been. Petar lights a cigarette. ‘You should quit those things,’ says Aleks, reaching for a cigarette himself. ‘Bad for your health.’
    His father raises his eyebrows and says, ‘I will when you do.’ He speaks in Macedonian. Before relocating to the Town, they had lived in Wollongong. When they first moved there, Petar would have liked to learn English, but almost straight off the plane he had started