Touch the Sun Read online

  To Hani, and all the poets who have crossed the seas

  Supported by

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Copyright © Text, Emily Conolan 2018

  Copyright © Cover illustration, Sher Rill Ng 2018

  Copyright © Poem ‘I Have a Dream’ on page 122–123, Hani Abdile 2016

  Copyright © Poem ‘I Will Rise’ (shortened) on page 265–266, Hani Abdile 2016

  Copyright © Poem ‘To the Ones I Left Behind’ on pages 285–286, Hani Abdile 2016

  Copyright © Poem ‘Freedom for Education’ on pages 292–293, Hani Abdile 2016

  Copyright © Poem ‘I Write’ (excerpt) on page 302, Hani Abdile 2016

  Copyright © Interview replies on pages 324–327, Hani Abdile 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76029 492 2

  eISBN 978 1 76063 593 0

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover design by Karen Scott and Sandra Nobes

  Text design by Sandra Nobes and Karen Scott

  Photo of Hani Abdile on page 324 © Dominic Lorrimer

  Vintage map on pages 330–331 © Lukasz Szwaj / Shutterstock

  Photo of author on page 334 © Nick Tompson

  www.emilyconolan.com.au

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Fact File: Somalia

  Fact File: Journalists at Risk

  Fact File: Religious Extremism

  Fact File: Crossing Borders ‘Illegally’

  Fact File: Refugees and Asylum Seekers

  Fact File: Bottle-lights and Other Great Inventions

  Fact File: People Smugglers

  Fact File: Life in Limbo

  Fact File: Australia’s Immigration Policy

  Fact File: Interview with Hani Abdile

  Stories About Somali Refugees, by Somali Refugees

  Take Action

  World Map

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  WARNING: YOU MAY DIE

  WHILE READING THIS BOOK.

  When you read this book, you are the main character, and you make the choices that direct the story.

  At the end of many chapters, you will face life-and-death decisions. Turn to the page directed by your choice, and keep reading.

  Some of these decisions may not work out well for you. But there is a happy ending. . . somewhere.

  In the Freedom Finder series, it is your quest to find freedom through the choices you make. If you reach a dead end, turn back to the last choice you made, and find a way through.

  NEVER GIVE UP. GOOD LUCK.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  DEAR READER,

  I grew up reading ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books by Edward Packard, RA Montgomery and others. I loved making the choices as I read the story, and backtracking through the maze of plots until I found the most satisfying ending. Sometimes I’d end up being eaten by a giant squid; other times, I’d get to save the universe from aliens.

  Those books were pure fantasy. The Freedom Finders books are different, because the choices here are based on real events. Although this story is made up, it contains some scenes of violence and difficult choices that shouldn’t – but unfortunately do – sometimes happen to real kids like you. If you find anything in this book upsetting to read, make sure you find a trusted adult to talk to about it.

  I work as a teacher and refugee advocate. Through this work, I’ve made many friends who have lived through a refugee’s journey: taking enormous risks to escape danger, and eventually making it to safety in Australia. During these journeys, sometimes there was no choice about what would happen next. At other times, these friends faced life-and-death decisions.

  Each Freedom Finders book tells the story of a different child from a different generation and place coming to Australia as a migrant or refugee. In my eyes, people who undertake this journey are heroes, and are just as deserving of being the star of a book as any alien-busting dude with superpowers. As you read the series, I hope you will see that the journeys in each book have similar themes running through them: courage, sacrifice and love.

  I have never experienced danger like this. My life in Australia has been privileged and comfortable, and I’m thankful for that. I am not a refugee, a Somali person, a Muslim, or a young boy – and you, reader, might not be either – but the character you will become while you read this book is.

  So, how did I write this story, when it is not my story? Well, in part I combined the experiences of lots of real people, my imagination, and some memories of grief, triumph and terror from my own life … but it wasn’t that simple.

  I also worked really closely with my Somali friend Hani Abdile, who came to Australia by boat. Although it’s not a retelling of her life story, Hani’s journey and her choices had a huge influence on this book, and I worked hard to try to understand them.

  That’s why I’ve included an interview with Hani in the back (see pages 324–327), plus Hani’s poems on pages 122–123, 265–266, 285–286, 292–293 and 302. Hani is an amazing writer, and I’m certain she has much success ahead of her. Hani, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  I also needed to check I’d got the details in the story right, and that I hadn’t accidentally included any culturally sensitive or offensive information, including religious details.

  My sincere thanks go, again, to Hani, as well as to another excellent Somali friend, Abdi Aden, and to Nadia Niaz, for checking the story for accuracy before it went to print.

  There may still be some places where I got things wrong. In these instances, I can only ask for forgiveness, take criticism on board, and hope that the book still has a positive impact overall.

  For details of Hani and Abdi’s own books, and ways you can get involved, see page 329.

  After reading this book, I hope you will take a look around your own community and notice that there are Freedom Finders everywhere: all sorts of people who push beyond limiting expectations, and create something better. Get curious about the ways people around you seek freedom. Get energised about doing what you can to make sure freedom is extended to all. It’s the only way to save the planet from annihilation and be a genuine superh
ero.

  EMILY CONOLAN, 2018

  You’re about to kick the winning goal for Somalia in the World Cup. Your foot is poised above the ball. The crowds in the stands are roaring your name. The only problem is that the guys you are up against are a team of man-sized scorpions carrying AK-47s, and you’re worried that if they lose, they might eat you for revenge.

  One voice seems to be shouting your name more loudly than all the others. ‘Wake up!’ it calls. Aunty Rahama shakes your shoulder. The crowds and the scorpions fade away. You sit up groggily.

  The three of you – Aunty Rahama, you and your little sister, Jamilah – share a narrow bed in the back room of a grocery shop. Light filters in from the gaps around the edges of the tin roof, and the orange cloth curtain shifts in the breeze. You can hear the shopkeeper preparing for business out the front. Rahama fetches clothes from the cardboard box under the bed, and goes out the back into the alleyway to splash herself under the cold tap.

  ‘Up you get,’ she calls, businesslike as ever. ‘You too, Jamilah.’

  Jamilah’s curly black hair is the only part of her poking out from under the sheet. She groans and rolls like a baby warthog in the dust. Aunty Rahama hauls you both out of bed. You wash, then each kneel on your prayer mat to perform morning prayers. Then Rahama wraps her red hijab over her hair, opens up her backpack from work and, with careful pride, clips a small black microphone to the red fabric near her chin.

  ‘Whassat?’ asks Jamilah, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘My new microphone. It’s so much smaller. It records everything on here.’ Rahama lifts up her top a little and points to a black box she has clipped to the waistband of her cotton trousers.

  ‘I want to come with you two today,’ says Jamilah.

  ‘Not yet, chickpea. It’s too risky. When you’re bigger.’

  Soon you and Rahama step outside into the blazing morning light. Overhead, seagulls from Lido Beach wheel through the blue sky. Cars honk, bicycles weave, and an old man herds goats down the street to market.

  A couple of doors down from your place, a young man sits in the doorway with a guitar, strumming some chords and humming. The simple melody gives you goosebumps all over.

  A month ago, when the terrorist group al-Shabaab was everywhere in the city, the man could have been killed for daring to do this. Music, dancing and sport were all forbidden. Even now, with al-Shabaab still in control in some northern outskirts of the city, it’s still a brave, defiant thing to do.

  You look closely. The man’s face looks ordinary, but now you know he’s a secret hero and that his guitar is his weapon.

  Rahama turns back to Mr Jabril, the shopkeeper, who’s standing in the doorway with Jamilah. ‘Thank you for having her,’ she says, and then sternly to Jamilah: ‘Remember to help Mr Jabril all you can.’

  Jamilah sticks out her bottom lip and looks mutinous, but to no avail, because today you and Aunty Rahama have a job to do. You’re going out to do your favourite thing: story-hunting.

  Aunty Rahama has fought with every bit of courage she has to raise you and Jamilah alone since your hooyo and aabe were killed – and to get her job at the radio station as a journalist.

  When you were younger, you hated how she left you to watch Jamilah while she ran off at crazy hours, to follow the sound of shooting, or go to the airport to interview someone important getting off a plane. But now that you’re thirteen and Jamilah is eight, Rahama has started to teach you how she does her job, bringing you along on some of the safer stories to hold her equipment – and you’re hooked.

  ‘What’s the story today?’ you ask her as you walk down the road together. It’s a busy Saturday morning. The air smells like onion curry from the street vendor on the corner. After you’ve walked a few more blocks, you reach the intersection where a mortar bomb went off two months ago. The main target is still a blackened hole, but some of the nearby shops that were damaged look like they’re about to reopen for business already. The owner of the hot bread shop is giving his freshly laid bricks a bright coat of pink paint.

  ‘How do you know whether Mogadishu is a safe place to live again?’ asks Rahama. She likes to tease out a story by challenging your thoughts. You look up and down the bustling street. You think of the man playing his guitar.

  ‘I don’t know,’ you reply, ‘because it’s never been really safe – not since before the civil war started, when Hooyo and Aabe were teenagers and you were just a toddler. Even you don’t remember that.’

  ‘It seems pretty good now, though, right?’ She nods to an AMISOM peacekeeping soldier in a dappled green-and-brown uniform standing on a corner. His hand rests on a long, black gun. ‘Now that Barcelona is here to protect us.’

  You smile. This codename system’s used everywhere in Somalia: people refer to al-Shabaab as the football team ‘Arsenal’, and now AMISOM has been dubbed the rival team ‘Barcelona’. It’s safer to be overheard talking about football than terrorism.

  ‘It does seem good now,’ you agree, ‘but there have been short times of peace in the past, and then the war has started again. How do we know this isn’t one of those times? Arsenal might have been kicked out of almost all of Mogadishu for now, but they still control the countryside.’

  ‘And they’re still hidden here in the rest of the city, too,’ agrees Rahama. ‘Just biding their time, like a snake waiting for a rat to cross its path. But where are they hiding … and when will they strike? That’s what we don’t know. That’s why we’re still not safe. That’s the story.’

  You know this street – your whole neighbourhood – so well that you think you could walk it blindfolded and not step into any of the holes in the broken pavement. But today, something is missing.

  ‘Hang on,’ you say to Rahama. You stop in your tracks. ‘The lime-seller’s not there.’

  Close to the end of the street, a little old lady always sells limes spread out on flattened cardboard boxes. She is blind in one eye and wrinkled like a walnut. She sells the limes there because it’s not far from where the fishers bring their boats in, and everyone knows limes go well with fish. She’s so old that if you stopped to talk to her she could probably tell you the history of the whole of Somalia, since the British and Italians were here. But today, she’s gone. Why?

  ‘Does it matter that the lime lady’s not here?’ Rahama shrugs.

  ‘I think it does,’ you say. ‘It feels weird. She was even selling limes the morning after that mortar strike blew apart half the road, remember? So why isn’t she here today?’

  ‘Is this a hunch?’ Rahama teases you. ‘Are you such a professional journalist that you get hunches now?’

  You ignore her teasing. ‘I think we should try to find her,’ you say. ‘If we’re supposed to be doing a story on how Mogadishu is changing and whether it’s safe, she’d be the perfect person to ask – she’s seen everything on these streets.’

  Rahama agrees to your plan. You ask some of the other street vendors where the lime lady has gone, but they seem reluctant to say anything.

  ‘Don’t go looking for trouble,’ warns a woman selling matches and soap from a cardboard box strung around her neck. ‘Allah knows, that poor old woman has enough to deal with.’

  The baby tied to the woman’s back starts to cry, and the woman looks nervously up and down the street before hurrying away.

  You offer a little boy a biscuit if he’ll show you the way to the lime-seller’s house, and he eagerly leads you and Rahama down streets, through dirt paths lined with weeds, and into the bombed-out ruin of what used to be a theatre overlooking the sea.

  The building looks like a long-ago giant bit the top off it, crunched it up, then spat it back out. The walls are grey and crumbling concrete, laced with bullet marks. Weeds and twisted metal guard the entranceway, but you can see a little foot track leading inside, and someone has dragged a large sheet of corrugated metal over the top of one section of the ruin for a roof.

  Your little guide points inside the ruin. You ha
nd him his biscuit and he scampers away, crumbs around his mouth.

  ‘Hello?’ you call tentatively. ‘Anyone there?’

  Behind you, you hear a slight click as Rahama switches on her microphone.

  Suddenly, a thin, weathered hand shoots out from the shadows, and pulls you and Rahama through the entranceway and into the ruin.

  ‘I know you!’ hisses a voice. Your eyes take a moment to adjust to the dim light. It’s the lime lady, her one blind eye wandering and milky, her good eye beadily sizing you up. ‘You’re the boy who lives out the back of the grocery shop, and his journalist aunty. I’m not selling limes today. Get lost.’

  You hear a groan behind her and squint into the gloom. In the corner of the ruin, lying on a bed made of the same cardboard boxes the lady uses to sell her fruit on, is a man – and the sight of him makes you want to scream and run.

  Rahama gasps – she’s seen him too. The man’s eyes are puffed and purple as plums, and half his mouth is a bloody mess, with teeth cracked like splintered wood. He’s been really badly beaten up.

  He tries to sit up, and his body shakes with the effort. You see that one of his legs has been bandaged with scraps of cloth and newspaper. The lime lady moves to stand protectively in front of him.

  ‘Who are you?’ Rahama asks the man. ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘Get lost,’ repeats the lime lady. ‘Forget you ever saw us.’

  ‘Please,’ insists Rahama, ‘he needs proper medical help!’ She fishes a crumpled note from her pocket and gives it to you. ‘Run to the market,’ she commands, ‘and get bandages, antiseptic and painkillers. Quick.’ You sprint through the streets and buy the items.

  By the time you return, your calf muscles are burning. You duck under the tin roof, and the lime lady rises from her small cooking fire in the corner. Rahama is leaning towards the beaten-up man, her face gripped with concentration as he begins his story.

  You hand the medical supplies to the lime lady, surprised to see tears of gratitude in her eyes. ‘Zayd is my only son,’ she whispers. ‘But he’s in grave danger.’

  You can see that it hurts Zayd to talk – his voice hisses around his broken teeth – but he struggles on.