The Voyage

• Mia Pountney, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2021

We had been on the boat for months.
The captain announced we would near the dock in a week, but no one could be sure. Communication was rough, the signal dead. Forty people had been huddled on a tiny boat for months, and the ship reeked of vomit and seasickness. Blankets had been tossed in the corner, the food supply was becoming scarce.
The adults were worried, and when they tried to hide it from us, it only made things worse.

When we left Afghanistan a few months ago, everyone was full of hope. We could live a better life! Escape the war!
But as dawn crept in and the sunrise signaled a new day, everyone felt like an empty balloon - deflated and crushed. The escape came with a variety of people, from tiny babies to ancient grandmothers. Full capacity was twenty people, and we had double the amount. Every sunset came with sorrow, remembering our loved ones back home.

We were scared the boat would break, topple over. None of us knew how to swim - we had never learned. The ship held mainly children, whimpering in their mothers’ arms. I was alone.

Mama and Papa had left me. They were back home, staying to protect Moska. She had been born last year, frail and delicate. Ever since she came, I had been neglected. It was all Moska now. She was the cute baby, the new one. I get that she needed protection, but Mama and Papa had risked their lives to stay with her.
They could have joined us on the boat, but they were paranoid. Paranoid over Moska.
They said she wouldn’t survive the journey, that she was too frail.
Though obviously I would survive going on my own.

We were travelling to Sydney, a city in Australia’s New South Wales. In the rush to escape and board the boat, half the people didn’t even know where we were going. It was hard to ask, and tell where the Captain was in the inky black darkness, too hard to walk below deck. The days pass slowly, uneventful.

Sleep is more forced than optional. The waves crash against the boat some nights, sending us to sleep and jolting us awake at midnight.
It’s hard to sleep and stay awake at the same time. With the added pressure of being refugees, and the dawning thought of asylum camps, people are worried sick.

If we have come all this way . . . just to get locked up all over again - there will be curses . . .

Most nights it takes a while to get to sleep. I lie awake and watch the stars - a sailor’s guidance in the pitch black. Staying awake, eternal.

Tonight is different. The soft slap of the waves against the boat gently rocks me to sleep, and I awake to the vivid rays of sunlight streaming down on my face. Looking over the side of the boat, I see it. The jagged outline of buildings against the sun . . .
We are home.