It was the silence that she noticed first. As they drove, Canberra unfolded in a series of stunning panoramas—still blue lakes, distant mountains wreathed in clouds, fields of dry, golden grass, vivid green branches that rose towards a low-hanging sky, pierced by the sharp tip of the Black Mountain tower. The road was a ribbon that wound its way through the city, cars speeding along its length in silent, synchronised lines.
The streets were empty, rows of brick houses flanked by trees in the bright summer sunlight. The only signs of life were the flutter of clothes on a line, a child’s toys in one of the yards.
It was beautiful, and devastatingly quiet.
All of Zia’s life she had lived against a backdrop of noise that she never noticed—rumbling traffic and beeping horns, barking dogs and screeching roosters, the peal of temple and church bells, calls to prayer from the mosque, the television downstairs, the radio next door. She was used to a litany of voices: peddlers calling out their wares, the laughter and chatter of people in the street, babies cry-ing, the warmth in her mother’s voice as she called out Zia’s name. Now, in the unfamiliar landscape of silence, the soundtrack of the life she knew looped in her head.
She was tired after the full day of travelling, the hours of waiting between the connecting flights from Colombo to Singapore and then Melbourne to Canberra. Farah, irritable from a lack of sleep, had cried for most of the last few hours of the journey, sobbing that she just wanted to go home.
‘We are going home,’ Zia had said, trying to comfort her. ‘Home in Australia with Daddy.’
But how could she expect Farah to understand when she herself was still struggling with the idea of what ‘home’ meant, now that they had left behind everything and everyone they had known and loved all their lives to begin a new life in a different country?
Farah didn’t stir as Zia gently unbuckled her and carried her into the house. She laid her on the sofa in the living room as Rashid carried in their luggage, the brand-new Samsonite suitcases bought especially for this momentous journey.
Leave a Reply