Kevin Dyer
Falco Eleanorae
As Zahid got in the boat, the stink of diesel filled the air.
The smuggler man who’d taken a thousand euros made him leave his bag—one, so that he could sell everything in it, two, because fewer bags meant more people. There were 37 of them clambering into a rubber dingy made for 18.
A small girl needed to pee. It was pressing hard and she was worried she couldn’t last the journey.
“Get in, shut up and don’t move,” said the smuggler man.
The girl scrambled in with the woman who was pretending to be her mother.
Obediently, they all sat or crouched or half-stood, pressed together, crammed in, like seeds in a pomegranate.
Zahid had that sick-at-the-back-of-your-jaw feeling. A tightening, a bitter taste that tells your brain this is a bad time and a bad place. He didn’t believe in anything anymore, but there was a murmuring of prayers running round the tiny boat and he added his.
The woman with the girl pinned between her knees was making soothing noises to the girl, but her face was tight and pulled down and her mouth dry as dead skin.
The smuggler man pulled the cord, the engine jumped into life… then sputtered to silence. The atmosphere, already tense after months of waiting, was now thick with fear. A woman started to say-
“Shut up!” said the man.
He pulled the start-rope again and the engine ran. He lowered the propeller into the water, and the boat set course for Greece, the gray blur on the horizon. No one spoke. The engine chugged and throbbed, straining with the mass of too many people. The boat bulged.
It was 4 am. Light was beginning to fill the sky. The breeze was razor cold, cutting anyone in its way. Zahid pulled up his collar and pulled his head down, like a tortoise retreating from the world.
Chug chug, throb, chug, strain. The engine did its job. Just about.
The girl had been crying for days—hunger, fear, bad dreams, fear of the past, fear of the future. But something caught her eye and she looked up, gave a tiny in-breath, went silent.
Zahid looked where she looked. He saw her focus on the perfect sickle shapes of three birds circling and sweeping the sky. Zahid had no idea what they were, birds of prey of some sort. The girl’s eyes were wide open, locked on to their curved shapes.
They weren’t hunting. Just flying, just being. No, more than that, they were playing, delighting in the new day, glad to be alive. They were the fastest creatures in the sky—invincible, untouchable.
“Can they see us?” said the girl.
“Give them a wave,” said Zahid.
She did. The birds carried on, flicking their wings, stooping low over the Aegean—not fishing, not hunting, maybe looking at their reflections in the beautiful blue, then up again, straight like a rocket at a hundred miles an hour.
Then one hovered. Right above.
The girl tipped back her head and breathed out a slow “Wow!”
She was no longer thinking of the discomfort in her belly, or her past that gave her nightmares, or the future that made her head burn. She was caught, lifted with the suspended beauty of the bird, free of it all.
“How’s it do that?” said the girl, not wanting an answer, just hooked by the perfection, the bird’s ability to hang above the world.
Zahid laughed, the first time since forever. And the bird looked down on them, its tail feathers spread out like a fan holding the air, its wings perfectly balancing on invisible nothingness.
Then it dipped one wing and all three were arcing and rolling again.
“Here they come,” she said.
In a squadron shape, they swept over the boat, so close everyone heard their wings cutting the sky like paperknives. And then, faster than she could turn her head to see them, they were gone, across the blue, dipping over the curve of the horizon to Greece.
“See you there!” shouted the girl. “We’re coming!”
The people in the boat looked at her, felt her childish joy, which carried within it an egg of something better. No one said anything, but eyes met and these strangers from half a dozen countries united only by the smuggler’s fee and the single-use rubber boat, were now a nearly community, connected by a single thing. Zahid gave a little nod to the woman holding the girl’s hand. She blinked back. It was enough to link two desperate singular souls scared to death the rubber would rip and they’d all go down.
Chug, chug.
The sun rose, the air warmed. Zahid tried to picture the faces of those he’d left behind, those he’d lost on the way. But he couldn’t see them clearly anymore. He had fifty euros tucked in his left sock and was reassured as the notes scratched at the skin just under his ankle.
The girl looked for the birds to come back, stretching her neck to the west and the east.
Chug, chug, it continued.
Then the boat scraped hard against the beach, the rubber was sliced open by a piece of metal scrap left in the sand and stale air ran out of it like a desperate sigh.
The woman leaped into the sea, pulled out the girl, and held out a hand for anyone else who needed it.
The girl ran off for a wee, reaching, just in time, the thick shade behind an ancient olive tree. She gave out a childish groan of relief. Zahid smiled, then sat on the sand and closed his eyes; he could still see the birds on the back of his eyelids, tracing patterns, leaving scratches of hope where there had been none.
Kevin Dyer is a writer who lives in North Wales. He is a professional playwright with over 50 commissioned plays, who also writes poetry and short-form prose. He was recently awarded the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Play Award for The Syrian Baker. He has also won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s Best Play for Children and Young People Award, and was given the International Inspirational Playwright Award by ASSITEJ (the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) at their World Congress in Capetown. He is the Associate Writer for ATT (Action Transport Theatre), Associate Artist at Farnham Maltings, and Lead Artist for Storm in the North. http://www.kevindyer.co.uk/