Free The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis Page B

wondering touches. He was shaking and dizzy. She closed her eyes and leant for a moment into his stroke. Her hair glittered with reflections of the red sand. Her hair made her cheeky face exquisite. This hot, shining hair was such a wonder! He felt as though the sand was rising under him like the waves of an ocean. He thought he might kiss her hair, kiss her.
    Then fear overtook them both, fear of their own excitement and fear of discovery. Marwa, gasping, brushed his hands away, slipped on her hijab with trembling fingers and, with one laughing slap, ran out of their shady zone into the glaring white light. Then she was gone.
    Dhurgham stared up at the burning blue. How would they manage to marry, here? They just had to. No matter what.

    Marwa’s family got their visas. Marwa found out at two-thirty on Thursday afternoon and had ten minutes to pack and get on the bus. They weren’t allowed to say goodbye to anyone properly. Marwa ran to the fence, in front of her mother and father and brothers, and touched Dhurgham’s fingers through the wire.‘I’ll write!’ she whispered. She looked utterly happy and Dhurgham was bewildered. For a month with Marwa, he had thought that Mawirrigun was the best place in the world.
    He wandered back to his donga. All Marwa’s words seemed more real and meaningful now she was gone. Of course—how would she study to be a doctor like her father if she lived forever in prison? How would she raise children with him if she couldn’t even teach them how to cook? He wondered for the first time what it was like in Marwa’s donga. She had once said how embarrassing it was to have unrelated unmarried men sleeping in the same room as her and her mother, but she had never said anything about her parents except how stressed they were. They would have been stressed, waiting for their smart daughter to get on with her education. He had forgotten all about his own visa but of course Marwa hadn’t forgotten hers. He knew that. He had just never thought about it. He tried to be happy for her and tried to imagine the Australian house they would have, its kitchen, bedrooms, living room. Verandah. He knew all the parts of a house from Australian culture classes, but he still couldn’t imagine it and gave up. He felt lonely. He wondered for the first time what his chances of getting a visa really were. He had been here for four months. He certainly hadn’t had a story like Marwa’s to tell. All blood and gore and arson and attacks in the night. Lots of dead relatives. He had made his story up, for that matter.
    He had a vivid picture of her running towards the shocked faces of her parents with her hand up both to reassure them and to farewell him, her abaya billowing and fluttering around her body, her hair bouncing under her hijab. Then Marwa running up the darkened steps of the open bus and its door hissing shut.
    Dhurgham never received a letter from Marwa. There seemed to be a profound gulf between those who were released and those left behind. He felt as though he was in limbo in her past—she could no more have sent a letter than she could have travelled through time.
    But Marwa did write. An AID officer wrote Return to loser on the envelope and posted it back.
    Dhurgham’s days after Marwa left were blank and boring. He took a while to get back to watching girls and women with any fervour, as it was such a small stimulation compared with Marwa. And he missed her—her face, her voice and her conversation. Her pinches and slaps. He was bored and cranky.
    He picked his first real fight with a guard. He did it on purpose.
    It felt really good.
    He wasn’t sure what he would do. He walked up to one of the new guards, a burly blond young man with spiked hair and black eyebrows who had been strutting back and forth in an annoyingly over alert manner; and then it came to him.
    â€˜Eh, Ustrali,’ he said. ‘When I get out I fuck your