ISLANDS
Peter Lyssiotis
M A S T ER T H I E F
I heard them as I was crossing the harbour on the Sirius. They were whispering.
The waves carried their footfalls. They were dancing. Or was it shadows that I was seeing? Ghost steps that I was hearing? No! They were dancing over the dark water and whispering about the coming of a new day. There was an unfamiliar sound; something I didn’t understand. But the sound became clearer the further the ferry sailed from the island and by the time it had docked the sound had become a song. And the song stays with me. They’re singing-the children, the boys and the girls-men and women: the detainees, the refugees, the habitual offenders, the illegals, the asylum seekers. They are singing and it was all one song. One truth. And they are dancing-dancing over the dark waters. And their chests swell and rise with the wind and like a sacred compass their hearts show the way forward.
I think I’ve heard their song before. Somewhere else and in a different language. But the dance is a solemn dance and it leads beyond the dark water. I want my voice to join with theirs. But no sound comes from my mouth. My lips are dry. But I know the steps to their dance. I’ve seen them before-on Epirus-another island, where to avoid an occupying army, the women from the village of Souli danced to their deaths, the final steps to the dance led them over the cliffs and beyond, to the abyss. I know the dance and I know the song. Does this mean that I am one of them? I want to call out a name. I need a response. I know there’s someone there who is of my blood. But no sound comes from my lips. My mouth is dry. I’m losing myself…I don’t have the strength. I feel them around me, yet they are far away. But I still hear their song, feel the rhythm of their dance. They remain. The dance is courage itself and the song is generosity itself. I cry out to the passing century “What have we learnt?” But the century goes on its way, perhaps still believing that walls, detention centres and coils of razor wire can fence in the new day.
It’s getting late and the cicadas are loudly making their prophecies. I start walking back to the jetty where I’ll catch the Sirius at 7.44pm back to Circular Quay. In the grass I see the broken corner of a mirror. I pick it up and hold it face up in my left hand. In the mirror I see the flashing lights of a plane. It has got its destination and I’ve got mine. I find my ticket in my back pocket. I’d like to join in with the cicadas. Be one of the hundreds prophesying. But really the best I can do is ask myself the questions. What about those whose only destination is far away? What about those other islands which we use as a noose-Nauru, Christmas Island, Manus and Timor? When will the time come for generosity; where’s that time when compassion will span the dark waters like an indestructible bridge uniting us? What is it that forbids us to bring what’s best in us to the world? How can our journey end if hope doesn’t bloom from our exit wounds? Regardless, ruthlessly, the cicadas go on making their prophecies
Cockatoo Island 1873
Rose (one of the interned children) speaks.
Tonight there’s a full moon and that dog barking. I watch the moon from the window. Sometimes it’s all there and sometimes it all goes away. If I was standing at the point now, I’d see both the moon and the dog. The dog’s a mongrel. One of her legs is bloody and she’s got a piece of rope hanging from around her neck. If I was there I’d see that dog raise her mangy head each time the moon went away, proud to have scared the moon off with her barking. Fancy that-a mongrel bitch with a wounded leg making something so close to heaven disappear!
Cockatoo Island 1859
A supervisor speaks.
I can’t see the wall but I know it’s all around me, impenetrable; made from the sandstone blocks we get them to cut up. It’s massive and hard (yet I’ve noticed that in places it oozes). In places I can see cracks and in the cracks is moss. Walls are an old idea, but this is a new wall; I can’t see it but it does what walls have always done-it divides. It keeps me here and it keeps them there. So it protects. It’s part of the solution. Damn! Everyone knows what a wall does-it upholds principles!
Cockatoo Island 1890
Charlie (another of the interned children) speaks
A long time ago someone read me the story of the Greek; the one with the wings. And I reckon he was right. He didn’t want to fly to the sun or the stars he just wanted to fly-be a bird! I want to fly too, who doesn’t? I understand the Greek now. What I don’t understand are these stupid cockatoos. They fly over us and never land. So why name a place after a bird that doens’t live here? We live here with just their name. I’ve forgotten the name of the Greek in the same way those stupid white birds and I suppose, everyone else, has forgotten this island.
Rose speaks again.
But what frightens me most is when I think of all the things there is for us still to lose.
Can we ever sail away from the places we have dreamed of?
There’s always a tiny shadow isn’t there, waiting, off to the side? It stares past the bell tower, right past the boathouse and at full moon floating on the water, it waits patiently for all the lights to go off in each of the surrounding coves, so in the darkness, it can start to recount this ancient story, one more time.
The plover speaks in accents of moss, the herons speak of chances lost, starlings speak of long migrations and their cost; while cockatoos-white as a prayer, flutter through the fetid air: unfinished letters tossed out from a nightmare.
Cockatoo Island 1892
Judith (one of the interned children) speaks
They make themselves look so big, that we can’t help feeling small- how do you get over being made to feel this small?
Cockatoo Island 1849
Bob Luce (overseer, talks to himself)
Once again the turning of a page begins another story. Everyone drags his own damnation with him from the start and I’m no different. I came here to serve. I came here with the Good Book. But look at it now. Rust clings to its hinges. Last Sunday when I opened it, the rust flaked off and fell on my boots. That’s a sign isn’t it?
Can we ever sail away from the places that have dreamt us?
Cockatoo Island 1860
Adam (another of the interned children) speaks
Mister Gates keeps Gabriel, a mouse, in the pocket of his uniform. Sometimes he undoes the button on his pocket and fetches the mouse out-and puts it on the table in the mess hall and the mouse runs its nose on the wooden table, maybe looking for a crumb that none of us would never leave behind. Then Mister Gates would get his deep voice and say slowly, “Die, Gabriel.” And deliberate like, the mouse would just drop. All life would leave its legs and body and head even its whiskers. It’d just lay there, as if it had no guts and no breath. Mister Gates would then look around at us, slowly, as if he had just taught us a lesson. We would all clap. And someone would always ask, “Are you magic, Mister Gates?” or “Is Gabriel special, Mister Gates?” or “ Is he really dead this time, Sir?” It was then that Mister Gates would bang the table with his fist and say very loud, “Live, Gabriel” and the mouse would wake up and Mister Gates would swoop on him and put him back in his pocket and do up the button real quick. Everyone thought this was a magic trick. But not me. If Gabriel suddenly grew wings and flew off the island after playing possum, now that would be magic. Or if he just…disappeared. Vanished. That would be pretty good too, because things wouldn’t be the same. Something would have changed and we’d all remember that. But no. Nothing changed this way. So I never clapped out loud. Why would I clap for something that went nowhere. Why clap for nothing?
Cockatoo Island 1852
A supervisor speaks again
I know I’m in control when I see them feeling really small. It’s not that I want them on bended knees, or anything, but respect does everyone good.
Cockatoo Island 1863
Rose speaks
Judith told me it yesterday, she said, “Rose I know what dying is; it’s something that doesn’t wag its finger at us like the Pastor, it’s something that doesn’t make us the victim and them the High and Mighty judge. I know now. Dying can be sort of ordinary-and peaceful and quiet- it’s like people can be-it’s blind, deaf and dumb-like some animal. I know that now. And it’s clean. “Anyway, that’s what she told me.”
It’s the voice of the supervisors, the accumulated longing of the detainees; the profits made by the rip-off merchants; it’s the stories told to the children and the drawings they make in the dust, that give time its shape.
Judith speaks again
Words. I’ve listened to magistrates, police, gaolers, supervisors, parsons and prisoners. There are too many words, don’t you think? What good do they do? One word drags another word behind it, which drags another which becomes a sentence and that sentence drags another sentence behind it. Where do the words end up? Don’t they ever dry up? Maybe the only sentence I’ve understood properly has been the one that got me imprisoned here-for being homeless. I’m not saying it was fair but I did understand it. Waves are never homeless, are they? Maybe that’s why I like listening to them as break against the jetty. If I can believe in the waves and If I can trust the sea, then I can hope for land- a place far away from here. But mostly I dream without hoping. I keep to myself, because here, it’s as if everyone was born against themselves; and even when we’re all assembled together there’s a lonesomeness that sucks the breath out of the air. And when you do find somewhere quiet it feels poisonous-like a snake- because in the silence it’s like there’s another silence watching and listening for something darker. There’s a boil on my left arm. I’ve been scratching it all day.
Each breath they took is imprinted on the sandstone blocks in the way traceries of shells and flowers are drawn on stones. And when they’re forgotten and their dust has been scattered by the winds, it’s this script which will stitch them and their journey together.
An earlier version of Islands appeared in Dancing On Dark Water by Gwen Harrison & Sue Anderson (2013.) The text is a response to both this country’s policy towards those it sees as threats and throughout its history, its reflex action of isolating undesirables in camps and on islands.
Islands was published in 2021 and is in an edition of 50. The pre-press work is by Frixos Ioannides and the printing by Redwood Prints.
