Luna and her mother have slept in some weird places these past months. Economy train cabins. A room facing a flooded courtyard in Andalusia. Her rich cousin’s farmhouse in Gozo. But never a five-star hotel.
‘Eleven.’ Helen nudges Luna, after pressing the button. ‘Same as you.’
Luna sucks on her lips, not wanting the man in the lift with them to know she’s only eleven.
The lift dings at level six. The man says ‘Goodnight’ with an accent. His yellow polo has a little alligator sewn on the chest.
‘Where was he from?’
Helen rolls her eyes. ‘Another German, probably.’
At eleven, the man in the white uniform who took their luggage up without asking shows them to their room, then waits around until Helen gives him some money. Luna whooshes open the door to the balcony.
‘Mum, do you think I’d die if I jumped in the pool from here?’
‘I’d say so.’ Helen rummages in her cross-body bag. ‘If you want a swim, hurry up.’
Sometimes Luna can get dressed without looking in the mirror. But this mirror is so bright and pretty, she assumes she must be too. Helen’s ashtray is crammed with butts, wriggly and white as maggots, when Luna emerges from the bathroom.
‘Good idea.’ Helen notes the cargoes and shirt covering up Luna’s tankini. ‘I didn’t bring any mozzie spray.’
Luna doesn’t swim: just walks around the pool fully clothed, wondering what drowning feels like. Helen gets out her brass tin and rolls more ciggies. Nods at the sign that says PRIVATE BEACH→
‘Wanna check it out?’
Later, walking down the gloomy path scattered with palm leaves, Luna scowls. ‘How can a beach be private?’
‘The hotel owns it.’
‘Do they own the ocean, too?’
‘Part of it, probably.’
‘How much?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you jump in and find out?’
‘Gross. Seaweed.’
They sit under one of the bristly grey umbrellas while Helen smokes. Under the nearest umbrella is a lady about Helen’s age in a big straw hat, wrapping a little girl in a towel and saying sing-songy things in another language.
‘Are they German, too?’ Luna asks, but Helen’s eyes have that glazed look, like her brain has been surgically removed. Luna stares at the water and wonders how it’d feel to have no brain.
A head bobs in the water. Luna can’t tell if it’s a man or lady, even after it grows shoulders. Then there’s a pink bikini covering barely-there boobs and a flat, white tummy with curves at the side like a bitten apple. A girl. A teenage girl.
Helen puts out her ciggie in the sand and buries it.
*
Luna wears her favourite Groovy Chick T-shirt to the markets the next day. To get her attention, men yell ‘Hello, groovy chick!’
At Helen, they yell, ‘Hello, beautiful lady!’ It works: she goes into a shop and buys them each a Hand of Fatima necklace.
‘I can’t believe you wasted money on this.’ Luna glares at the delicate hamsa in its bed of tissue paper. ‘It’s so ugly.’
‘Fine.’ Helen snatches it back. ‘You never have to see it again.’
Helen shoves the necklace inside her bag, scratches at her lighter until a flame appears, and sucks at the cigarette like a bloodthirsty mosquito. Luna finishes her Coke, then peels off the label, which is the usual red and white, though the writing is in Arabic. She eyes off Helen’s Coke; bubbles dissolving in the sun, liquid fiery.
‘Can I see my necklace again?’
Helen rummages in her bag and passes her the wrapped package. Uncrumpling it, Luna tries to summon the feeling she gets looking at stray kittens. But as soon as Helen stubs out her ciggie and stands, Luna balls up the package and sticks it inside the ashtray. Helen doesn’t realise until they’re in a taxi.
‘Oh, Luna.’ Tears slip past the corners of her wire-rimmed oval sunglasses. ‘Why are you like this?’
*
In their hotel room, Helen lies down and says, ‘Siesta time.’
‘You’re not Spanish.’ Luna rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t say that.’
The last time they ate was at the breakfast buffet. Wearing her tankini, Luna does some turns in the mirror, then gets her magazine and prances out without a word to Helen, who has her eyes closed and her Discman on her tummy.
At the pool, Luna lies on a white sun chair and flicks to Teen Confessions, re-reads the story of Nikki
*
, a fifteen-year-old who almost dies at a rave. By the pool house, a boy in a white uniform folds towels. He’s maybe Nikki’s
*
age, maybe cute. A sunburned man with rolls of prosciutto-coloured fat clicks his fingers at the boy, who rushes over. The man jabs his finger at the sun. The boy rushes away; returns with a striped umbrella.
More people come. The lady from the beach and her little girl, who join the sunburned man under the umbrella. Then the teenage girl, wearing a towel over her pink bikini and carrying a fat book. She looks older than Luna originally thought; maybe as old as eighteen. Seeing her, the little girl squeals ‘Katie!’, runs up and hugs her knees. The parents laugh, say something in their language (German?), and beckon the little girl back under the umbrella. Katie sits on a sun chair near her family, but not too near.
The reason Nikki
*
almost died is because she took ecstasy. The ecstasy made her dance a lot, and thirsty. Luna’s favourite part of the story is where Nikki
*
says: My thirst was that of a wanderer in a desert who craves an oasis. Luna looks at the date palms around the pool, the gold-tinged sky, and her soul flies out of her body, ecstatic.
Katie stands up, dips a toe in the water. Shivers.
‘Komm schon, Katie!’ the dad encourages.
She walks around to Luna’s side. There’s a gap between her thighs. She jumps into the water.
Across the pool, the dad whoops. The little sister squeals. The mother watches on, her smile like a dying lightbulb.
*
Excuse me, may I have one cigarette?’
Katie looks different close-up, in the early morning sunlight, with clothes on. Less pretty: hair frazzled, knee-length shorts unfashionable.
‘Are rollies okay?’ Helen offers her brass tin.
Katie’s face flickers with confusion as she plucks a cigarette from the tin.
‘It’s just tobacco,’ Helen apologises.
Katie laughs, leans in to catch Helen’s flame. She notices the sun, moon and stars tattooed on Helen’s wrist. ‘This is very nice! Where did you get this?’
‘Oh, back home.’ In case it’s not clear from her accent, which she always hams up around foreigners, Helen adds, ‘Austraya.’
‘I wish very much to visit Australia!’ Katie’s hand flies to her heart. ‘My parents think that it is too far.’
A jeep pulls up and a stocky man with a gritty beard gets out, his short-sleeve button-up already circled with sweat. His name is sewn onto his chest pocket: Basim.
‘Deutsche?’ he guesses, looking at Katie.
‘Ja,’ she replies, and a rapid-fire exchange begins in German, after which he takes her bag and loads it into the jeep. He comes for Helen and Luna’s next.
‘Español?’
‘Australian.’
‘Australia! Long way.’ His bottomless eyes take in Luna. ‘Your child?’
‘Yes, that’s Luna.’
‘Big girl!’
‘Tall,’ Helen corrects. ‘She takes after her father.’
‘Father is where?’ Basim looks around.
Before Helen can answer, the sunburned dad puffs through the glass doors, a large bag on each arm, trailed by his wife and little girl. He’s wearing the alligator polo.
‘Ach!’ Thrusting a pink hand at Basim, the dad doesn’t notice his teen daughter stubbing out her cigarette. ‘You must think we are bad Germans, to be so late.’
The wife sighs. ‘It is difficult to be punctual with a four-year-old!’
‘Kein problem, madame.’ Bowing, Basim tries to take the bags, but the dad holds fast. ‘My apologies, sir.’
After loading his bags into the jeep, the dad drums his fingers on the roof. ‘So, this is our ride to the Sahara! I hope you have enough fuel, my friend?’
‘We will stop for fuel and refreshments in Kairouan.’
‘Very good, very good.’ The dad grins at Helen and Luna. ‘Hallo! I am Klaus.’ Then he points to his wife and little girl. ‘Johanna. Mia. And I see you have already met Katie.’
‘Helen. Luna.’
Klaus claps Basim on the back. ‘We are outnumbered, my friend!’ Then he opens the door of the jeep. ‘Women and children first. I insist.’
*
Their first stop is a mosque. ‘It’s like a church, for Muslims,’ Helen tells Luna.
‘Duh. Indah was a Muslim before she met Dad.’
Helen goes quiet, takes a bazillion photos of tiles.
Katie drifts away from her family. Luna follows her at a distance. In the courtyard, Katie turns abruptly.
‘I can photo?’ she offers. ‘You and your mutter?’
‘Um…’
Katie catches Helen’s eye across the courtyard, mimes and beckons.
‘Well, all right.’ Helen passes Katie her camera and slings an arm around Luna. ‘We don’t have many pictures together, do we?’
Luna’s mouth aches, forcing a smile.
‘Goot!’ Katie enthuses. ‘Beautiful!’
Helen laughs as Katie hands back her camera.
‘Do you want a…?’ She makes a box in the air. ‘With your family?’
Shaking her head, Katie hands Helen her camera. ‘Me only!’
Katie skips into frame, beams.
‘She’s very sweet, isn’t she?’ Helen follows Katie with her eyes after she takes back her camera and strides off in her ugly shorts.
‘I thought you didn’t like Germans,’ Luna says.
*
The little girl, Mia, keeps staring at Luna over her seat on the road to the oasis.
‘She likes you!’ Johanna’s too-white teeth splinter her broad, shiny face.
Outside the jeep, they freshen up their sunscreen. ‘You’re almost like women from our country,’ Basim compliments Helen’s skin.
Helen laughs in that squeaky way she always does when strange men talk to them. Luna hates her with the fire of a thousand suns.
Trekking to the oasis, Katie keeps pace with Basim, the two of them conversing in lilting German. Klaus and Johanna level with Helen. Mia slips her hand unexpectedly inside Luna’s, counts their steps. ‘Ein, swine, trine, fear, FOOF!’
‘Six months!’ Klaus marvels. ‘That is a long time without school?’
‘Well…’ Helen adjusts her bag. ‘At Luna’s age, there are better educations than sitting in a classroom.’
‘Are you not worried she will fall behind?’
‘She’s a smart girl.’ Helen glances over her shoulder. ‘Too smart, sometimes.’
‘Ein.’ Luna squeezes Mia’s hand. ‘Swine!’
Johanna looks back at them, her grin way too big for Luna’s liking. ‘Well! You are very brave. I myself will be too afraid to take my little girl to Africa without Klaus.’
‘Trine.’ Luna seethes. ‘Fear!’
‘She’s a pretty little girl,’ Helen says. ‘Your eldest, too. How old is—?’
‘Katie?’ Klaus laughs. ‘No, no. You are mistaken—’
‘We have only one dotter,’ Johanna interrupts. ‘Katie is travelling alone.’
*
At the oasis, Mia cries. Klaus lifts her onto his shoulders.
‘My thirst is that of a wanderer in the desert who craves an oasis,’ Luna announces, holding out her hand for their plastic bottle. Helen grimaces and passes it over.
Back in the jeep, Katie sits up front with Basim. Squeals when she sees a camel sunbathing by the road.
‘We will see many more camels.’ Basim smiles indulgently.
Klaus leans forward. ‘Tomorrow, we will ride.’
Katie claps her hands and grins back at Luna and Helen. ‘Exciting, ja?’
‘Yes.’ Helen laughs and touches her Hand of Fatima necklace. ‘Exciting.’
Basim drives them to a place that looks like a meteor crater but is actually a village, with cave-like houses dug into the crater’s sides. They climb down a set of narrow, dusty steps and enter one of the caves. An old lady sits them on a woven rug and serves them tea that tastes like toothpaste, then tries to sell them pottery. Nobody wants any.
Luna yearns for the ground to swallow them whole.
‘Want a photo, too?’ Helen asks, watching Klaus and his family crouch to pose with the unsmiling old lady.
Luna shakes her head.
Leaving the underground village, Klaus takes the seat beside Basim and speaks with him in low, serious German. Mia nestles in the crook of Johanna’s arm and shuts her eyes. Katie takes her book from her backpack.
‘You’re kidding me!’ Helen exclaims. ‘Oscar and Lucinda?’
‘You have read it?’
‘Years ago. When Luna was still in nappies.’
Sighing, Luna drowns out their conversation and draws her magazine from her bag, turning to the well-thumbed Teen Confessions page. She’s only halfway through the story of Deanna
*
, a sixteen-year-old who has sex with her best friend’s dad, when the jeep stops again.
‘Oh?’ Helen looks dismayed. ‘I thought we were heading to the hotel?’
‘A small zoo,’ Basim says, his eye-bags saggier than they looked that morning.
The zoo has chain-link fences, no vegetation. There are only three enclosures: one for a bedraggled peacock; another for a fat grey snake, which doesn’t move the whole time Luna watches it; the last for a fennec fox, curled up asleep like a cat.
‘Isn’t that cute,’ Helen mumbles, squeezing Luna’s shoulder.
Before they can skulk back to the jeep, the zookeeper leads a camel out of a tin-roofed shed and introduces it in Arabic.
‘This is Jimmy,’ Basim translates. ‘His favourite drink is Coca-Cola.’
The zookeeper pulls a 1.25-litre bottle of Coke from the pocket of his baggy jumpsuit, swishes it in Jimmy’s face and yanks the rope around Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy’s lips rumble like a motorbike’s engine. The zookeeper uncaps the Coke. Jimmy fastens his yellow teeth around it, tilts back his head. His eyes look embarrassed.
Helen sort of laughs, flashes a glance at Katie, whose pale face is frozen in a skull-like smile.
‘He drinks beer too?’ Klaus jokes.
‘No beer,’ Basim replies sombrely. ‘Haram.’
At the exit, the zookeeper shakes a bucket with Arabic script on the side.
‘For the animals,’ Basim translates again.
The adults dig for their wallets.
*
They see more camels on the road to the hotel. A galloping herd of them, the whites of their eyes on show, coats cream-coloured and sand-coloured and teddy bear brown and sooty black. Basim brakes so hard Luna’s forehead claps against the seat in front; her heart beats faster than that time in Italy when a man pulled her into the train station bathroom and tried to kiss her.
‘Cool.’ Luna feels her pounding chest. ‘Could they have killed us?’
As Mia wails, Klaus scowls at Basim. ‘Of course it can kill us! Camels, deer, kangaroo… It is not matter what. They can all cause some kind of accident if the driver is not cautious.’
Basim purses his lips. ‘I apologise.’
*
The pool at the new hotel isn’t as big as the old one. Luna swims anyway. She hopes Katie will swim too, but she disappears into her room. Klaus, Johanna and Mia order schnitzels, burgers and fries. ‘Can I have a burger?’ Luna calls out to Helen.
‘You can have whatever you want.’
Luna has wolfed down most of her burger by the time Katie emerges wearing an ankle-length spaghetti-strap dress and smelling of citronella.
‘Where are you going?’ Klaus booms. ‘Nightclubbing?’
‘Walking only.’ Laughing nervously, Katie’s gaze shifts from Klaus to Helen. ‘Would you like to join?’
‘Oh…’ Helen glances at Luna. ‘Um—’
‘It is no trouble.’ Klaus waves his hand. ‘We will make sure the children go to bed on time.’
Luna knits her brow at Helen. But Helen just smiles hopefully. ‘You’ll be fine for a couple of hours, won’t you?’
‘Duh.’ Luna shoves a fry in her mouth. ‘I’m not a baby.’
Helen fishes some dinar from her wallet. ‘That should cover it.’
‘I want ice cream too.’
Helen places more money on the table. ‘I’ll just be a couple of hours.’
Slinging her bag, Helen sashays out of the hotel complex with Katie, their wrists flickering with the glow of Helen’s lighter. Klaus watches them like he’s watching a cooking show.
‘Well.’ Johanna yawns. ‘I, for one, am very sleepy.’
*
In the time Helen is gone, Luna re-reads the story of Deanna
*
and the best friend’s father so many times she has to put her hand inside her pyjama shorts. After, she goes to the bathroom and tries to force her fingers far enough down her throat to bring up the burger, fries and ice cream. It doesn’t work. She retrieves Helen’s Discman and CD folder from their luggage, flips through the boring, alternative albums until she finds the Britney Spears single they bought from a man selling bootlegs on a tie-dye blanket in Barcelona. Luna’s ears soon hurt from the headphones, her eyes from trying to stay open. She takes off the headphones, switches off her lamp and closes her eyes.
There’s light outside the room when Luna’s eyes reopen; women’s shadows and giggles. Wet smacking sounds like waves hitting the shore.
‘I can’t,’ Helen apologises. ‘My daughter…’
More wet sounds. Then a key in the door. Helen tripping over their luggage.
‘Are you awake?’ Helen whispers, the weight of her denting the bed.
Luna shrinks away from her mother’s sweet, hot breath. Pretends she’s sleeping, until she actually is.
*
They’re up before the sun the next day for the drive to the desert where six camels wait. A man called Habib gives them turbans: blue for Klaus, pink for everyone else. Seeing Katie’s white face in her turban, eyebrows and lashes practically invisible, Luna decides she isn’t pretty and never was.
The camel’s hump feels springy between Luna’s legs. Its body sways, swishing through the sea of sand. For a while, the desert is grey-blue and hazy, like a place where only spirits could dwell. Then the sun hits and the whole world is a deep wound, bleeding orange. The whole world is fire.
‘You’re a very lucky girl.’ Helen smiles over her shoulder at Luna. ‘You know that?’
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