Free The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis

security of Mawirrigun. He felt an irrepressible happiness and his step had a spring to it. No doubt about it, this was a new opportunity for life. And the guards were mostly nice, especially once you got to know them.
    He even prayed, feeling like a little kid. He had not prayed formally since leaving the mosque. Lots of people prayed, usually desperately, but Dhurgham prayed, smelling his clean palms, delighted. He felt special, chosen, saved even, and that was good cause to pray.
    Mr Hosni would have a great deal of trouble finding him. Out in this red desert where he had a number, not a name! But he tried not to think about Mr Hosni. He liked the feel of the heat sizzling around him. He liked his thin warm brown arms and the red sand running between his fingers.
    He was wary of men but befriended women and children in the centre easily. Many of the men here glowered with rage and shame, hopelessness and humiliation. They were strange and frightening to be around.
    He quickly established that Nura, his mother and father were not there, and not known to have been there in the past. Mawirrigun was an old camp of some kind with new fencing and new demountables. Issam Dawsary and Julia Aquino, the oldest known inmates, had been there for eighteen months, and Julia said that they were with the first boatload to be imprisoned there. Dhurgham was jolted by the word prison; Julia was the first person he heard use it.
    Dhurgham could not get to all compounds but nonetheless found out something of each of the seven hundred and fifty-four inmates who were not in initial processing in Vanuatu Compound. The centre was divided into seven compounds with the names of exotic holiday destinations. Some he had heard of: Hawaii, Fiji. Others, such as Vanuatu, Bali, were new to him. The main compound, Florida, had on the far side another small isolation compound named Paradise, reserved for wrongdoers. He found out that Australia had eleven such centres but his hopes barely flickered. The country was not real to him. His family quickly faded again, present to him as a dreamy ache that he suppressed. Occasionally, when he felt bored and trapped, he put it down to the ache, not the wire, and he almost wished he were some precocious street child of Damascus—cheeky, nameless, stateless— survivor born free.
    On his second day in the communal dongas after his interview, Dhurgham noticed a girl about his age with breasts. They were small, very pointed, round. They lifted her abaya, making it swirl around her belly, long legs and fine, dusty ankles. It had to be the breasts, for no other girl walked like that. He stared at her feet to avoid watching her breasts. He wandered back to his donga, thinking. That movement, that sway! He lay down on his bunk and recalled the image of her breasts again and again until he wore it out. ‘Ma sha’ Allah!’ he said aloud, feeling the delight of a small transgression in even commenting on such beauty. Breasts! He felt as though he was the first person ever to notice them, ever to find such wonder and appreciation. They wobbled, firmly, softly. So round! He fingered his own nipple. Hers must be three times the size, at least, to be able to make the faint point in her abaya. And then his cock thickened and he stroked his hands down his bare belly, feeling himself rush through his skin and hands out to the tip of his taut penis. He touched it in delight. It was a sign. Here, all was right with the world. His body sang. His body was right.
    Of course he would marry her. It would be difficult, as he had no parents to speak for him; but then, everything was different here.
    He couldn’t stand it any more. He leapt up to find her again.
    He discovered that Thurayya Zahr lived with her mother and three other family groups in a donga four down from his. Thurayya! The name thrilled him. So fine sounding with his own. Dhurgham As-Samarra’ i and Thurayya Zahr. She had a walk that made him