Dear Pakistan Page 13

  Kate came over to say ‘hi’. I could see Debra sitting at the table next to us. Both girls had on dresses so tight they must have had trouble breathing, and they had brought boyfriends. I saw an image of Mrs Rasheed’s face if she were there. A giggle rose right out of my throat but I changed it to a choke just in time. Kate kindly banged me on the back. I told her it was nerves.

  ‘Because of the speech,’ I added when she looked blank. Kate always acted as if she never knew what nerves were.

  Then I saw Blake. I couldn’t get over how interesting he looked in a suit. All I’d ever seen him in were his school uniforms and PE tracksuits. Nor had I realised how much like Suneel he’d become. Or did I put that around the wrong way? To tell the truth, I couldn’t remember the real Suneel by then.

  Finally, the dreaded moment arrived. There was a break in the music as the band took a break. Apparently, we’d finished dessert. Elly would never understand that I couldn’t remember what I’d eaten at the Abbey. Blake started off the evening’s entertainment, as he put it. Then Billy and a group of the Year 11 boys did a skit, in the style of Shakespeare, taking off teachers and students without partiality.

  I wasn’t paying much attention until Billy suddenly came out with ‘Oh, good grief! Where are my sunglasses? The grass in Pakistan is too, too green.’ Everybody laughed. No one got missed out, so why should I? Then I saw the funny side of it. Had I really sounded like that? No one was being nasty, just joining in the fun. Suddenly I felt like one of them; I didn’t need to be treated with kid gloves anymore. I could take what everyone else got and enjoy it for what it was: just ordinary Aussie humour.

  Too soon it was my turn. Everyone clapped as I made my way to the microphone. No one looked at me as if I had purple toads on my head; no one stared at my harem pants. Mr Bolden was watching me as if he’d discovered me in a jungle and I was about to utter my first word ever. Danny gave me a grin to spur me on. That helped.

  I was not far into my speech, talking about how hard it was entering a new scene, when it suddenly hit me that I didn’t want them to feel like I did when I first came. I don’t know how it all got linked up in my brain, but it all seemed similar: the shock of entering a new country, going interstate, moving from country to city, from school to work or uni—wasn’t it all the same? The new is always an alien environment and none of us takes easily to change.

  I could see them all watching me. Danny, with his hand in Vasa’s: would he end up taking on his father’s market garden? He didn’t want to. Blake: would he get into flying school this time? And Sal, one of Danny’s friends who had only recently declared she was a Torres Strait Islander: would she become a social worker and help the Indigenous street kids as she wanted?

  Some had apprenticeships promised, others hoped their marks would be high enough to get into that course in uni they were after. Whatever they did, it would be strange, difficult. What if they didn’t make it? I put my notes down. I didn’t care if this didn’t turn out to be a proper speech. I focused on the scariness of starting a new venture—a topic I knew heaps about.

  ‘When I came at the beginning of the year, it was like journeying into a new world. Everything was strange, nothing turned out as I’d expected. It felt like I was out in the dark and I’d lost my life on the ground and I couldn’t see to pick it up.’ I hadn’t meant to get so personal but it all kept tumbling out. ‘And I don’t want you to feel like that.

  ‘If I can get through this year and stand here, saying this to you, you can get through all the changes that are coming.’

  I told them what I had learnt about coping: the people who’d helped and the opportunities Australia had offered. I even spoke of the racial attack. ‘I think if that had happened earlier in the year, I would have given up, but fortunately I’d been here long enough to know not everyone stalks around waiting for migrants or refugees to beat up. I’ve learnt that there’s good and bad in every country. We need to make the most of the good parts and change the bad.’

  I paused and suddenly Blake was standing, clapping in that slow way Ukrainians do in their dances. Then Danny stood, and Vasa, and Sara, then everybody. Ten months ago, they hardly knew me and no one except Danny would have supported me like that.

  Blake came up to the microphone then. ‘I reckon we’ve found another rep for next year’s student council.’

  When the clapping had died down, the band started playing again. Then Blake took my hand.

  ‘Let’s dance?’ I could only nod as he led me down onto the wooden dance floor. ‘You did great. I knew you would.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Your outfit’s cool too. It’s like you—sort of Australian but a little mysterious and Eastern all the same.’

  What does a girl say? I preferred stable ground so I moved onto a safer topic.

  ‘I’m going back, you know.’

  He seemed so startled I was sorry I hadn’t explained better.

  ‘Just for a holiday. My parents think it’ll help me get my perspective straight.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

  ‘I’ll be picked up by friends and taken to the mountains where it’s quieter. The media here makes it sound like the Taliban or ISIS is everywhere. Don’t worry, I’ll be back for Year 12.’

  He looked as though he wanted to say something, yet thought better of it. Had he been looking forward to seeing me in the holidays?

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘No, everything’s sweet.’ He smiled at me then and I knew it was just for me. All we needed was a skateboard and we’d be winging through the sky, over the outback Australia that I’d never seen and where he probably spent his holidays.

  The music became slower and he stepped in closer. Suddenly I was too aware of him, like the time he first found me in the library, but this time I had no regrets. I wasn’t scared and I hadn’t worn plaits.

  As his arm came around me for the waltz he bent his head to my ear so I would hear. ‘Don’t forget to come back, Jaime.’

  More from Rosanne Hawke

  Beyond Borders : The War Within

  Australian teenager, Jaime Richards, returns to her dear Pakistan in the second book of the Beyond Borders series. The old world charm is still there—the villages, the bazaars and the mysterious rugs—but Jaime no longer feels safe and confident in this new Pakistan.

  Taken at gunpoint into Afghanistan, Jaime, Jasper and Liana are caught up in a shadowy secret world of intrigue and terrorism. Will they escape the Mujahadeen fighting their holy war? Or will the wars within themselves consume them?

  For Jaime, this trip is to prove painful enough to change her life forever, yet rest the ghosts of her past.

  Beyond Borders : Liana’s Dance

  After her international high school in Northern Pakistan is attacked by terrorists, sixteen-year-old Liana Bedford and the young music and dance teacher, Mr Kimberley must find a way to rescue student hostages who have been imprisoned in an ancient caravanserai. Liana discovers Mr Kimberley has a secret and to save him and her friends she must overcome her fears and dance for her life.

  This is Liana’s story as told by her friend Jaime Richards from Dear Pakistan and The War Within.

  Zenna Dare

  When Jenefer moves to the old family home in country Kapunda, she uncovers a secret from the past. What sort of life did Gweniver, her great-great-great-grandmother, lead? And what connection did she have to the glamorous young singer, Zenna Dare? Could a nineteenth-century mother of nine have led a double life, and if so, why?

  In a story crossing five generations, from Cornwall and the old world to Australia and the new, Zenna Dare brings reconciliation in more ways than Jenefer could ever have imagined.

  This accomplished novel parallels a 19th century and a contemporary love story, and canvases racism, reconciliation and the power of forgiveness. Jenefer resents being relo
cated to her family’s ancestral home at Kapunda, but her imagination is caught by a model cottage that houses all the elements of a family mystery, and her heart by Caleb, a poised, perceptive Aboriginal classmate. This richly textured tale of family relationships and changing morality across two centuries is both enthralling and thought-provoking.

  Katharine England, The Advertiser.

  About the Author

  Rosanne Hawke is a South Australian author of over 25 books, among them, Zenna Dare, Mustara, shortlisted in the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, The Messenger Bird, winner of the 2013 Cornish Holyer an Gof Award for YA literature, and Taj and the Great Camel Trek, winner of the 2012 Adelaide Festival awards. Rosanne was an aid worker in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates for ten years and now teaches creative writing at Tabor Adelaide. In 2015 she was the recipient of the Nance Donkin Award for an Australian woman author who writes for children and YA.