Luck in the Greater West (9 page)

It was his sister's birthday. It was a date he always remembered, so he turned up at the house. It was as if they were expecting him. They didn't act surprised at all. Just said
hi
, let him in. They were having a barbecue, some of his sister's school friends were there, and Whitey offered to cook. Towards the end of the last batch of snags his sister came up to him.

—Happy birthday, he said.

—Thanks.

—I didn't bring you a present. Sorry.

—Thought not.

Whitey hadn't even thought of a present, until he'd seen that there was a table with several gift-wrapped CDs and books.

—I think I've got some money if you want.

He had a single ten in his pocket, which she took.

And when he was leaving — he would have to walk, as he now had no bus fare — his mother grabbed his forearm.

—We knew you weren't dead. We're just waitin' for the call though.

Whitey didn't know what to feel after that. They were his family, but he treated them, and they treated him, like a former neighbour or less. That was the last time he'd seen them. He'd wondered, while in jail, if they knew he was there. But he hadn't even thought of them until now. Until Sonja had asked him.

 

He held Sonja, and hoped that she'd never leave him the way he'd left his family.

Dad's a fuckin' loser, Abdullah thought. Lives by all those rules; rules that don't apply to life. Like the religion. All that devotion. Devotion to things outside your life. Putting things first, things you can't see or grab hold of. And all those rules at work. Keeping your mouth shut. Dealing with cunts all day. And Aussie bosses telling you about policies and that shit. Dad loves all that shit. And expects me to too. Disappointed in me, his own fuckin' son. He's the one who told us how, when he first came to Australia, the Aussies would spit on him at the bus stop, and the factory bosses would tell him they don't employ bloody Arabs. Well, he can have the fuckin' railways. And Allah. My cousins are the fuckin' lucky ones in my family. Their parents realise how wrong all these big-headed arseholes and sluts are. Mum and Dad say we're all lucky to be here, things are good here. Dad puts up with it. The Aussies looking down on him, sweeping their crap up off the station. Not Abdullah. I'm going to be like my cousins and uncle, he thought, as he drove to their house to have a smoke with his cousin Yift. No Aussies are going to look down their stubby noses at me, no sluts are going to laugh at me, tell me there's no way they'd touch a Leb.

Abdullah was born in Australia. As was his sister three years later. His parents had emigrated as refugees, with Yift's parents, in the 1970s after their whole town collapsed from Israeli shelling. Abdullah's father had told him how he and his brothers had helped the Hezbollah — clearing the roads for them, feeding them and giving them water. And how he'd seen corpses left like animal pelts to evaporate in the sun. How he'd seen a friend of his from the town, dragging his severed leg by a still-attached rope of flesh. Abdullah loved to hear the stories. But his father was sparse with them. So was his uncle. But where his father had left war behind for good, Abdullah's uncle had identified the war going on here, in this shithole country. Not a blatant war with ordnance and jet-bombers, but one where the Aussies, like the Jews, had all the backing, and the Lebs were the freedom-fighters. The Aussies had the pigs and the politicians on their side, but the Lebs had the courage, and the history of war. The Aussies tried to keep you down with their rules and laws suited to their backward Christian ways; made you talk all English with a stupid skip accent, made you stay in school and learn their stupid Abo history, and the blondie, tarted-up girls avoided or just laughed at you. Abdullah's uncle and cousin had both done time. Attempted murder and possession with intent to sell. They never talked about it. Abdullah didn't know the whole story. But it impressed him, and it impressed his mates even more.

Back when he was a little kid, Abdullah and his sister had attended a primary school in the western suburbs because his mother was a cleaner there. His cousins and all his friends had gone to school in the area they lived in, in the Arabic precinct of Punchbowl in south-western Sydney. Abdullah and his sister were the only Lebanese kids in their school. There were some Turks, but they were Christians, and snobs. There were a couple of boys that Abdullah made friends with,
David and Thomas, but, although they were friendly, they were also bookish, and would talk about things Abdullah would get lost in, like some stupid novel they were reading, or that dragons and dragons game or whatever it was, and they'd laugh when he'd try to chip in on a conversation. Eventually they became enemies, like everyone else there, after he jobbed David for teasing him about his bum-fluff moustache that was starting to grow.

Abdullah could handle the boys — they were all scared of him by Year 4 — but the girls baffled him. They'd giggle and flitter around David and Thomas and the other boys, but avoid even eye contact with Abdullah. Some days they'd be hysterically laughing and falling about each other at recess, but then crying their eyes out at lunch. Abdullah's sister, his cousins, none of the girls from his area were like that. They were quiet and gentle, and he never saw them display their emotions as though they were actors on a soap opera; and never engaged in the games with boys that these girls did. There were two he really liked though: Jillian and Liz. Jillian had thick, dark hair, and her dark eyes were even darker because of her milky skin. Liz was blonde, and all the boys liked her. The girls never talked to him, and often moved when he sat next to them. One lunchtime though, when he was in Year 6, Abdullah's sister came to him and told him that Alison, the little sister of one of the girls in Abdullah's class, had told her that Liz had a crush on him, and if he asked her out, she'd go with him. Abdullah thought about nothing else for the rest of the week. And over the weekend convinced himself to ask her out. On Monday at recess, he went up to Liz where she was sitting on the benches outside the girls' toilets with her friends.

—Can I talk to ya? he asked her.

—Um, why? she said.

—Just wanna aks ya something.

She laughed, but said —Well, go, I'm not stopping you.

—Um, would you like to go out with me?

—Go out? With you?

—Yeah.

—Yuck! She burst into laughter, and her friends followed. Other kids heard and scuffed over to see what was so funny.

—But my sister told me you liked me, he whined, anger and nausea boiling up in him.

—Your sister's a woggy freak like you. As if. Keep away. Please, Liz said, and the swelling group laughed, and Abdullah just wanted to cut sick and thrash out with arms and legs and make pies out of their stupid skip heads. But he went up to the back of the sports oval and sat with his back against the football posts. He found out later that week that it had been a set-up. And he'd gone for it like the dog they thought he was.

He hated Liz then. He just wanted to bash her. She was ugly. And fake. And a slut for all her Aussie boys. Jillian he fell more in love with. But he would never talk to her. He would never talk to any of the bitches here. But he would fantasise. He'd dream of getting Jillian alone. Just the two of them. Lifting her skirt. Seeing her undies. Pushing her down. Lying on top of her. Pinning her down. Making her love him for his strength. And then leaving her half-naked, or fully naked, and letting everyone see her how she was. Weak and small, and defenceless without her confidence he'd so easily overcome. And she would want him. Because no one else would like her. But back in the reality of Plumpton Primary, everyone loved Jillian and hated Abdullah — whispering and snickering and carrying on in that language and manner that had always eluded him.

But then thankfully Year 6 was over and he was at high school. Punchbowl Boys' High. Back with his boys. He felt tough. He'd started to fill out a bit. And his uncle was in prison. He was one of the main boys at the school. Kids wanted to hang out with him. They wanted to know what it was like at the skip school, out there with all the sluts in miniskirts. They wanted to hear it so he told them. How many fucks he got. How they all fucked out there. Their parents let them do anything, he told them, they fuck in the dunnies, in the drains behind the school, anywhere you wanted. And they deserved it. Flashing everything. Legs, tits. No shame, no pride, nothing like Muslim girls. And it became legend. It became truth. Those miserable, isolating years out there had paid off. He was able to construct an experience that reversed, he thought, their impact on him. It became so true that even one of the dumb skip teachers at Punchbowl Boys took him aside and asked him why he boasted about that sort of thing. Abdullah laughed.

—Where's your daughter go to school, sir? he taunted the teacher. If it wasn't for the principal being a Leb, he thought, he would have gotten suspended.

High school was good. There were no girls, but that was an advantage. You could be yourself. No bitches around to laugh at you, make you feel stupid. And Abdullah was respected. Amongst boys, Arabic boys, what he said was funny when he meant it to be, tough when he meant it to be, and his ideas were valued. There were a couple of groups who didn't like him and his boys — the dickheads who got into studying, were full-on into the religion, who played skip-ball, or were too wimpy to stand up for themselves and were happy to become Aussies. But Abdullah's gang, although small in number, were undisputed as the toughest.

Where it was just talk in the early years of high school, Abdullah and his boys all shared the intensity of their frustration by the last two years. At home, there was no talking about sex. But at school, and hanging out after school at the pinnie joint, or at Bankstown Mall, it was the whole world. Abdullah was the core, and all talk would gravitate to him — because he'd had so many bitches, knew what it was like to hold a girl, and put his cock right up in her. He could easily imagine what it would be like, he thought, so the stories came easily to him.

In fact, he shared his mates' frustration and confusion. The only girl he really knew was his sister. And she was into mosque and the Koran and gave him absolutely no clue into the psyche of what girls thought about when it came to sex. And he could never ask. That would be one thing his parents would go to war about. One time his father had severely beaten him when he found a copy of
Barely Legal
behind the bed-head. So the stories stayed stories. But turned to plans. How were they going to get laid? Sure, you meet a Muslim girl, and if you're lucky she'll let you get a taste before the wedding, but what do you do now? There's so much horny pussy out there, and a man needs to be a man.

Abdullah left Punchbowl Boys at the end of Year 11. He wasn't doing well at school, and his dad had gotten him an interview at the railways. The interview was piss-easy, Abdullah thought, walking out of the office — three Lebs whom his father had had 'round for dinner a few times. He started a month later at Macdonaldtown Station, collecting tickets and sweeping up the platform. The job was a bludge, and there were plenty of hot chicks from the performing arts high school in the morning and afternoons. He was also able to get a car loan, and bought the 2001 WRX, fully worked and detailed. The freedom fight was fully under way. Man, the
chicks really paid attention when they heard the turbo! And he'd begun to look better in the mirror. Working out. Shaving his head. Buying cool clothes. Tight white T-shirts and Hugo Boss jeans. But then the cops. Twice in one week pulled him up for speeding. Hassled the fuck out of him, searched his car, searched him, and made him wait while they checked for non-existent warrants. Asked him at least three times if he was Lebanese. Fuckin' arsehole skips. And then, just a week later: he'd started to notice a group of girls from the performing arts school smile at him. One was hot. Really hot. Long, curly black hair. And her skirt sitting nice and high on her thighs. She never had her student ticket with her, so one morning late that week after the cops had hassled him, he waited. When she was coming through the turnstile he locked it.

—Ticket please.

—Um, I left it at home, she said.

—That's too bad, miss, you'll have to go home and get it, he winked at her.

—You're kidding, right. I've got to get to school. I have a composition exam this morning.

—We'll, maybe we can work something out then, he said, and unlocked the turnstile for a second, and then re-locked it, smiling at her.

—Look, mister, are you going to let me through or not?

—Depends, honey. What's your name?

—Princesse de bloody Lascabanes.

—Princess, hey?

—Are you going to let me through?

—For a kiss.

Abdullah leant down to her. But she jumped the barrier, so he grabbed her hard on the arse. She screamed and ran off with her
friends who'd been waiting for her. There'd also been, Abdullah suddenly noticed, quite a few other passengers waiting to get through the turnstile.

The railways suspended him, without pay, until they completed their investigation. What a load of fuckin' shit, he thought. Well, fuck them.

 

—Abdullah, you muthafucka, his cousin Yift said, coming into the lounge room. Let's get fuckin' goin', huh?

—What took ya so long? Puttin' on ya fuckin' make-up? Abdullah taunted, and winked at Sakine, Yift's little sister.

They put ciggies in their mouths and lit them as they crossed the threshold of the screen-door. They smoked them in silence before getting in the car. Abdullah liked this: it showed that his cousin had respect for him — not smoking in the car — and as Yift was the person he probably respected most in the world, apart from his uncle, Yift's father; this was a big thing.

—Did I tell ya I'm fuckin' a cop's daughter? Abdullah said.

—Nuh. What are ya doin' that for? Cops are fuckwits, mate.

—She's not a fuckin' cop. Her father, mate.

—You're a fuckin' idiot, mate. You can fuck yaself up. Fuckin' cop; don't get involved with those cunts. Me and me dad have fuckin' done time, and you're fuckin' cops. Disrespectful, ya dickhead.

This wasn't the reaction Abdullah had hoped for. He was hurt. But wouldn't show it. He loved his cousin and his uncle. He'd adopted them as brother and father. And he thought that he'd been adopted too, as a brother and a son. But this reaction made him feel he was back at Plumpton Primary — on his own, unable to understand why, what was fully formed and perfect in his mind
was so wrong to others. Couldn't Yift see? This girl was an advantage; fucking with the enemy. He thought Yift would love it. It's like taking a prisoner, or something.

—Let's get whacked, Yift said.

 

Yift smoked the gear until the bowl was clean and then said he wanted to go home. He didn't talk at all for the duration of the session. Just packed the cones. Smoked one, offered one, smoked one, offered one. But Abdullah only had three. He wasn't in the mood. He'd wanted to tell Yift about the sluts he and his boys had been getting. Get him in on the next one. Show him that he'd started out on his own with his gang. Started something mad. Yift didn't want to talk though. Just packed and smoked. And looked out the window on the way back to his place.