Aidan Rasmussen

Swimming Outside the Lanes

Selva is taller now, mum. Her long, strong body fills out her striped swimsuit. She smiles and I see a confidence and maturity that makes me proud. She is me and I am her, but everyday she moves further away and towards her own future. One day you’ll be a face and a name without memories, mum, and I don’t know how I feel about that. We walk towards the main pool and Selva tells me we’re going the wrong way. I ignore her and head over to the lifeguard station. At least, I think that’s what it is. A lifeguard tells us we’re at the wrong pool. Selva gives me a face that reminds me of one you pulled in a photo we used for your funeral montage.

“You’re too hard on her,” you used to say. You were right and you knew it in your own quiet way.

We’re getting whiter. Breeding out our brownness. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. How do you represent when you don’t look like what you represent?

“Love is colour blind,” I say out loud.

“What?” says Selva.

“I was thinking about your grandma and grandpa.”

“Are you okay, dad?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart. I just miss your grandma.”

“So do I,” she says as she walks towards her swimming instructor.

I imagine you sitting on the bench watching and I wonder what my nana would’ve thought of her great granddaughter. I can’t believe I lost the interview tapes.

“Did you know one of your ancestors was taken by blackbirders?”

“No, nana.”

“He was on his way to Aitutaki from Mangaia to marry a princess.”

“Really,” I said, unsure if I should believe her.

“He was picked up and taken to Peru.”

“Which part of Peru?”

“I don’t know, son.”

Many Pacific people that were blackbirded to Peru first passed through the port town of Callao before they were put to work, as poorly paid labourers but mostly as slaves.

“He became a blacksmith’s apprentice. Everyday he yearned to go home.”

There are few, if any, archives in Peru that record what happened to those Pacific people that were blackbirded. But indigenous oral histories tell of people being taken from all across the Pacific. Whole populations decimated. Most didn’t make it home. Many succumbed to disease or depression.

“The blacksmith took a liking to him…”

“What was his name nana?”

“I don’t know, son.”

“...and one day he decided to help him go home because he felt sorry for him. So, he told him to run into the jungle late at night and find the tallest tree and climb it. They might come for him, but if he stays still and doesn’t make a sound he wouldn’t be found and the blacksmith would come for him.”

“What happened?”

“He did what the blacksmith said. Found the tallest tree, climbed to the top and waited. That evening the plantation owners came with their dogs and their guns and their machetes and their horrible smells and ugly faces. And the dogs barked and barked but they went right past him.”

“And then what?”

“The next day the blacksmith came like he said he would, dressed your ancestor like a colonist to disguise him, then took him down to the port where he paid for a trip on a ship back across the Pacific.”

Even those that did manage to escape or somehow leave Peru didn’t make it back to their islands of origin. They found themselves in places and cultures they had no connection to.

“When the ship pulled into Tahiti they didn’t let him off like they said they would. But he jumped overboard and started swimming west. They laughed and pulled him back aboard. But he jumped off again. And again and again. Until the captain finally decided to put him in a row boat and set him on his way.”

“Did he make it back to his Aitutaki princess?”

“Yes, son, he did.”

I’m disappointed to say I was doubtful of any of it being true. It doesn’t make sense that people would be so kind after being so inhumane. But I didn’t question my nana because it was a good story, and maybe it did happen and maybe it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t written down. A story is still a story, no matter if it’s bound or spoken.

Selva is keeping between the lanes and I am impressed by her form. The last time we’d taken her to swimming lessons, she was all over the place and unteachable. She is taking instruction. She is improving. She will be something one day. She is something now. She was always something. She swims within the limitations set for her and I feel the constraint, the narrowness of that partitioned water, and I wonder if she feels it too. Even though her trajectory is straight and true and beautiful today, I know it won’t always be that way. But that’s okay, even if that’s not okay, because there is beauty in this mess that is life. And I’ll try, mum. I’ll try and be there. Right by Selva’s side, mum, helping her swim outside the lanes.

The Ocean is Sand

There was no warning. First it was the lights. They simply went out, disappeared from in front of us. Then the jeep rolled to a stop in the middle of the long, straight, unlit road. No spluttering. No smoke. No jerky movements. No hissing radiators. Bilal turned the key. Once, twice, three times. And the scent of a song came to me, then disappeared before I could grasp, savour or enjoy its full flavour. But the engine didn’t ignite. We got out. Bilal opened the bonnet, tentatively touched the engine with his fingers.

“It’s warm,” he said as if surprised. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew enough to know there was no reason for the radiator to not be warm. I didn’t say this, though. I knew what was coming.

Bilal walked back to the front passenger side of the jeep and took a rag out of the glovebox. He unscrewed the radiator cap. We peered inside. It was full. He unscrewed the battery cells. He touched, pulled, and pushed all the pipes and leads. Put his head as close as he could to the engine without burning his ears off.

“I can’t figure it out,” he said.

Amina brushed him aside, “Let me have a look.”

I backed away.

Bilal looked over her shoulder. “I told you nothing worked.”

“Aha,” said Amina.

It was starting to get cold and Bilal folded his arms across his chest because of the temperature or because he was defensive or because he was preparing a counterattack.

“You don’t trust me?”

She smiled at him. “Of course I do, Bilal.”

There were so many stars in the sky it was easy to forget, when you lived your life in polluted cities, there were things bigger than yourself. Bilal spoke to the side of Amina’s face.

“Then what are you doing?”

She didn’t look up, but kept poking around the clean engine.

“Just having a look for myself.”

“Because you don’t trust me, eh?” said Bilal.

She turned ever so slowly and winked at me.

“You did take the jeep to be checked out by the mechanic in Siwa, right?”

Bilal rolled his eyes.

“You know I did, Amina. Are you blaming me for this?”

“You were the last person to have anything to do with the jeep Bilal,” she said.

Bilal twisted his body so he was millimetres away from his sister’s face. Their voices were the only sounds that could be heard across the desert. I was in the biggest, most expansive space in the world, scooped up by the star-blazed sky.

“Come on Amina. You checked the jeep after the tune up. You know there was nothing wrong. The engine was in the best condition it’s been since we bought it in Tunis.”

I strained my ears. Closed my eyes to see if I could hear anything. Bilal was looking at me.

“What are you doing?”

I kept my eyes closed.

“Shush,” I said, “I’m listening.”

Bilal looked up from the jeep’s engine and his sister’s face. “There’s nothing to listen to, bro.”

“Except you two arguing who’s got the biggest dick,” I said.

“That would be me,” said Amina, so fast you just knew she’d been saving that one up.

“Haha,” said Bilal who didn’t find his sister’s comment funny at all.

“I mean, if I had a dick, it’d totally be swinging between my legs. Like, you would notice it if I was wearing skinny jeans. It would stick out like a…”

“Okay. Okay. We get it,” said Bilal.

Amina and I laughed at him.

“So, if there’s nothing wrong with the engine then what’s wrong with the engine,” I said, staring up at the stars.

I remember the first time I looked up at a night sky in the Northern Hemisphere and how disorientating it was to not see the Southern Cross. I am always forced to remember I’m not from here.

“So, what are we going to do?” I asked.

Amina brought the bonnet down. She rubbed her hands on her green cargo pants, even though they weren’t dirty. She looked up at the sky as if she’d only just realised it was there.

“I’ll never get used to how beautiful it is,” she said.

Bilal put the jeep in neutral and the three of us maneuvered it to the side of the road.

“It’s going to get cold soon,” said Bilal.

“We’ll be alright,” I said. “We can always cuddle up in the back.”

“It’s only big enough for two,” said Amina.

I was already rolling out my mat.

“Why don’t you two spend some quality time together.”

“You’ll be too cold,” said Amina.

“My body is too big for that thing. I’ll be fine.”

I put on my warmest clothes then shimmied into my sleeping bag. A mixture of muffled French, Arabic, and English floated out of and away from the jeep. It’s easy to see how insignificant you are when the universe so clearly stares down on you. You see light, incandescent, unassailable, unavailable light. The darkest dark. But what’s in between those spaces? You try and guess at what’s up there, but you don’t really know. From stardust to stardust. We’re all made of the same stuff. I heard a door slam and then another. Bilal and Amina lay down next to me.

“What were you thinking about?”

“How different it all looks up here,” I said.

“Different to what?” she answered.

“DIfferent to home,” I said.

Amina followed my gaze. Her sleeping bag was pulled right up to her neck and all I could see was the triangle of her face, framed by black curls. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but it didn’t seem right. Hadn’t seemed right for a long time.

“And where is that now, Richard?” she said, her eyes focussed up and very far away.

I turned to face her.

“I don’t really know. Maybe it’s right here with you and Bilal. Maybe it’s nowhere.”

She laughed.

“And how’s that working out for you, Richard? Because we’re no white picket fence.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. Tried to imagine the blue of the Pacific Ocean, a home I missed that I knew I’d never return to. My mind gave me sand.

“You think we’re going to be okay?” I asked.

“We have been so far,” said Bilal.

He was sitting up in his sleeping bag, throwing stones at the desert.

“It’s come at a cost,” I said.

“I know,” said Bilal, juggling the stones.

I grabbed at them, but he rotated his shoulder away from me and I came away only with air.

“How long will our luck last?”

Amina was sitting up now.

“As long as God allows it,” she said.

“Not sure he cares,” said Bilal.

Amina snuggled into my right shoulder.

“I think our luck is going to go the way of that jeep soon,” I said, enjoying the sensation of her body close to mine.

Amina took my hand.

“I know. I can feel it, too,” she said.

Bilal took my other hand.

“But not tonight.”

---

The day’s breaking. We’re stirring. The light is so bright my eyes hurt. I raise my forearm, but there’s no getting away from the fierce sun. Its rays drill through my skin, my blood, my muscle, my organs, my fascia, my bone, and into my soul. We’re getting out of our sleeping bags. Not speaking. We’re cold, rushing to decamp, but I don’t know why. And for some reason I can hear In the Neighbourhood by Sisters Underground. I start humming along and so do Bilal and Amina, and I’m sure they’ve never heard the song. I can’t remember falling asleep. We could be family. We were lovers. Friends forever. No hard feelings. I love them.

By the time we finish packing the sun has heat. It’s early. I don’t want to be out here midday or in the afternoon. We’ll die. No, we won’t die. Or, maybe we will die. I’ve never been stranded in a desert before. Are we stranded? What are we going to do? No cars last night. I listened. Not a single sound. Just songs in my head. I have my phone, but it’s dead. Only the tiniest signs of life. Funny scraggly bushes. The palm trees continued for quite a while when we left the oasis, but then eventually gave way to desert.

I stretch. Sweat is already beginning to appear on my forehead. I take a bottle of water from the jeep. Drink greedily. We have enough water for the trip to Alexandria. I’d heard there was once a beautiful library there that contained hundreds of thousands of books, but it was deliberately burned to the ground. I don’t know how I know. I pass the bottle over to Bilal who takes a sip who then passes it to Amina. Bilal sees them first. Points.

I squint.

There are people right on the horizon’s seam. Loads of them. Moving so slowly. So far away you can’t tell if they’re real, and if they are, how long it’ll take them to reach the road, if that’s even their intention. Amina says it’s our imaginations.

“Can’t you see them?” I ask.

“No,” she lies.

“How can Richard and I be imagining the same thing at the same time?” says Bilal.

Amina returns to the jeep and turns the ignition, but nothing happens. She lifts the bonnet. Bilal and I can’t take our eyes off the horizon.

“I’ve seen this before,” I say.

“I know,” says Bilal.

“Somewhere,” said Amina, who was standing with us now.

“I thought you said you couldn’t see them,” says Bilal.

“I know,” she says.

“But I don’t know where,” I say.

We watch them move, a little further to our left, a little closer to the road. We pass the bottle around again. Amina goes back to the jeep. Returns with two more bottles and gives us one each. We put them into our packs and our packs on our backs.

Start walking.

I feel light as I go. And the landscape becomes less and less solid. I feel optimistic. Another song: Punching in a Dream by The Naked and Famous. And I think how silly it is to be defined by your musical tastes when we’re young. Ha. I’m still young. And then my mind skips tracks to Young Blood and I find myself walking in time to the beat. I look either side of me and Bilal and Amina are lost in their own moments. It feels like we’re skimming across the sand, and I can’t feel the ground, but I can see my feet landing on the sand in front of me. And how did the sand get here in the first place? Where is the sea? Does anyone ever ask that of deserts? We just accept them as a feature. They’re not a feature, though. They’re a degradation.

And then. We’re almost there. There are people. Not just people. Makeshift boats. Made from all kinds of materials: wood, corrugated iron, barely carved wood, the shells of cars, bathtubs. But they’re being pulled across the sand with ropes of all sizes. The trails quickly disappear under the feet and craft that follow them until you can’t tell where one ends and another begins. It looks like it’s hard, but necessary work. People sing songs in familiar yet foreign languages. I hear myself call out to them.

“Where are you going?”

A man around my age with a young girl on his shoulders stops and answers.

“That way,” he says, pointing to the northwest.

I look to where he’s pointing and all I see is sand.

“There’s nothing there.”

“There’s always something,” he says.

I look again: sand.

“Nah, nothing,” I say.

It’s dry and still and hot and I don’t belong here.

“Look harder,” he says.

I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I look again but there’s still nothing to report back, because there’s nothing out there but golden, lifeless sand. I focus on where he’s come from, but that’s only a direction not a nation or an island or an origin. Fed up, I ask him what I’m supposed to be looking at.

“The future,” he says.

I point behind him.

“What’s that?” I say.

“The past,” he says.

“They look the same,” I say.

The girl leans her chin on the top of the man’s head.

“Where are you going Richard?”

For some reason, it doesn’t seem odd that she knows my name. The heat is going out of the sun even though it’s at its peak. I don’t know how to answer her question. I turn to Amina and then to Bilal, but they’re no longer beside me.

“Over here,” shouts Amina.

She’s pulling a bathtub full of children. Bilal is pulling a stripped out Ford Cortina with two men and two women. Six kids are sitting ‘inside’ – there’s no roof. The boats skim across the sand like it’s water and it doesn’t look like it requires much effort at all. But it must. How is it even possible? The caravan of people goes on and on and on and on. There is a melancholic purpose to the procession. But it’s not a procession, or even a pilgrimage. It’s a… it’s a…

What’s the word I’m looking for?

“Exodus,” says the girl.

“From where to where?” I ask.

“From there to there,” she replies.

I am barefoot and I can feel the grains of sand between my toes. It feels like home. But where I’m from, sand equates to ocean, coastline, climate change, islands disappearing, cultures evaporating. The Pacific is in my mind and in my DNA. It’s currents, tides, waves, touching, wrapping around our islands, our continents, bodies, our hearts, our minds, our souls. If we’re 60% water then the water in me is of the sea and sourced from the South Pacific. But there’s no water, just sand and false hope, or the only hope, or no hope. The only blue is the sky. Maybe it’s my ocean.

“It’s coming,” says the girl.

“What?” I ask.

The cryptic nature of this conversation is exhausting.

“A new flood,” she says.

“There ain’t enough water in the world to flood this dry as fuck place,” I say.

There is no end to the caravan and the different ways people are being transported. Some have sails. But there is no wind. Some vehicles slide across the sand on skis like snowmobiles. But they’re all pulled by the people in front of them. Nothing has an engine.

“What does that even mean?” I ask.

“A new beginning,” she says, rubbing her chin on the crown of the man’s head.

She pulls at a tanned ear, the ends of her lank hair resting on her shoulders like a pianist’s fingers poised for the mother of all concertos.

“New beginnings always become the same old ends,” I reply.

“Are you coming?” says the man.

People are moving. Slowly. With purpose. And there is a part of me that wants to go with them. The man opens his eyes, and they are that milky, marbled colour that indicates blindness, but a blindness he wasn’t born with.

“Wouldn’t you rather be the master of your own destiny?”

I try to fix on a point in his eyes, but it feels rude and I let my gaze fall to his bare feet.

“I’m not sure anyone is,” I reply.

The man laughs, tells me it’s okay. I don’t have to make a decision right now.

“But you’ll have to make one soon, or it will be made for you.”

He turns around and walks back to the caravan. Just before they enter the long sea of people, the girl looks over her shoulder and waves. I wave back. She smiles. I smile, too. I look for Bilal and Amina amongst the walkers, the pullers and the sandships and sandboats and sandskiffs and sandmobiles but can’t find them. And I feel sad. I know I’ve made the wrong decision. But I can’t move and it’s too late. The man and girl are lost to me too. People continue to pass me by and I watch them go. And I watch and I watch and I watch this diasporic group skim northwest across the sand. There is no end to them, but I search for it anyway and my eyes go as far as they can go and what they see when they get there is a peculiar thing. Where the sky meets the sand, or where the sand should be, blue is touching blue.