in it. We knew that no help was going to come. The boat was filling up, and I could not swim. None of us could swim. They prayed to God. I prayed to God, and I tried to think of Mother and Uncle Said, of how wonderful it would be to live with them in Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey.
The great storm came at night, the waves tossing us, each of them trying harder than the one before to lift the boat up and flip us over. The sea was playing with the boat, playing with us, teasing us before it drowned us and swallowed us up forever. Too weak now, unable to hold on, all of us helpless, we were being thrown one by one out of the boat.
I knew my turn had to come soon. There was crying and screaming all about me. I had no hope left of ever seeing Mother again, no hope of seeing Uncle Said or Fore Street, Mevagissey.
Lying there in the water at the bottom of the boat, I remember reaching out for something, anything to cling on to, so that I would not be tossed out by the next big wave, when my hand found a piece of rope under the water. I grasped it, pulled and pulled at it. It was long, but at last it held firm. I managed to tie it around my waist, and I lay there, praying for Mother, praying for me.
In the end I was too cold and too exhausted to even pray. Darkness was closing around me. I knew I would never see morning. I did not care any more. I gave myself up to the darkness and the cold and thought only of Mother and Father and Hanan. I promised myself I would think of them till my last breath. That way we could all be together at the end.
I must have fallen into sleep, because next thing I knew, I found myself waking up.
The storm had passed. There was the warmth of sunlight on my face, and I could hear a sound of chattering and whispering, like the murmuring of a flock of birds flying about me. But I could see no birds. I realised then that I was no longer lying in the boat at all, that the sea was no longer surging beneath me. I was on land, dry land. I could feel it under me. I tried to move my head, to discover where I was, but I could not move it. My arms would not move either, nor my legs. All I could move were my fingers. I clutched at the ground beneath them. It felt as if I was clawing at sand. I must be on a beach somewhere. But I had no idea where I was. I did not care. I was alive! I had survived.
I discovered I could wriggle my toes. But try as I did, I could not find the strength even to lift my head to see them. I could swivel my eyes, but my neck I could not move however hard I tried. I was overwhelmed by terror, and I was shivering uncontrollably, yet I did not feel cold. I did not feel anything. This was what the beginning of dying was like, I thought.
In my panic, I cried out, calling for help, louder and louder, until my throat ached with it. Hearing myself at least lifted my spirits. If my voice worked and my throat ached, then that must be good. I was still alive. There was hope. But I knew I needed help. I could hear the waves tumbling on to the sand not too far away, they were rushing up towards me, every wave coming closer. I feared the worst. Sooner or later the sea would reach me, and then cover me. I had to find a way to move or I would drown. I shouted for help again, and again. But no one came.
I did hear that strange whispering again, and a chirruping and a chattering like a flock of thousands of birds gathering to roost at sunset. It was a sound that reminded me of evenings at home when we were out playing cricket in the last of the daylight. My hearing worked, and my memory worked. I could see the sun, and the sky. My seeing worked too. And there was more feeling now in my legs and feet. Every new sign of life in me gave me hope.
I felt something tickling my toe, then crawling up my leg. An insect, I thought, a scorpion maybe and it might sting me. But I didn’t mind. I could feel it. I could feel it.
I heard that whispering sound again. It wasn’t bird noise after all, but voices, small voices. I thought at first in my muddled head that these might be scorpions talking. I tried again to lift my head to see, and still could not move it. Then I was drifting away, down into a deep sleep. It was a comfortable sleep, a warm sleep. There was no more shivering. If this was dying then I did not mind a bit, not any more.
I woke to more whispering and murmuring. It was certainly not birds, I decided, nor was it the hush of waves washing back over the sand into the sea. It was not birds. It was not waves. It was people, lots of them, and they were speaking in small voices, voices that were all around me. When I tried to lift my head now, I found to my surprise I could do it, just a little, just enough.
Then I felt something on the forefinger of my right hand. I looked down, expecting to see a scorpion. Instead, there was a little man there, standing on my finger. Minute he was, too small to be real, I thought. He was wearing a three-cornered hat, a long coat, and he had buckles on his shoes. I never saw anyone dressed like this before. I imagined at first I must be dreaming. But then I knew I wasn’t asleep. I could smell the sea, and there were clouds in the sky, and birds, white birds flying above me, crying and cawing. I could feel the breeze on my face. None of this was imagined, none of this was a dream, and nor were the crowds of little people I could now see all over the beach, nor were the horses and carts imagined, nor were the little coloured blankets that I saw covering me like patchwork from my ankles up to my chest. The little man standing now in the palm of my open hand might have been no bigger than my little finger. But he was real. I was not imagining him. This was not a dream.
He was helping a little old lady up on to my hand, and then they were both making their way slowly up my arm and over my shoulder and across my chest, towards the point of my chin. The little old lady was walking with a stick and wore a long blue dress and feathers in her hat. They stood there together side by side, peering down in silence at me for a long while.
And when she spoke it was in a thin tremulous voice, which reminded me at once of how my grandmother’s voice had been. There was hushed silence all around me. Everyone was listening. I had no idea to begin with what she was saying to me. But then I began to recognise a word here, and a word there. The sound of the language was oddly familiar. It was how the aid workers in the camp used to speak. The little old lady was definitely speaking English. Her tone was warm, and hospitable, so I presumed this must be a speech of greeting, like an elder back home in my town might have given to a visitor. I could tell that she was assuming I understood every word she was saying, which I was not.
When the little old woman had finished speaking everyone clapped, and the children amongst them were jumping up and down cheering wildly.
A thousand thoughts were running through my mind and none of them made any sense. Was all this really happening to me? My shivering had stopped entirely. My whole body was tingling now with life, warmth and feeling. The old lady standing before me was breathing hard after the exertions of her speech, leaning heavily on her stick. I did not know what to say, but I felt I had to say something, that it was expected. The silence all around me told me that much. But I was struck dumb, still trying to take it all in, to believe what I was seeing. These people were all living, breathing creatures, but all were impossibly small, and dressed like no one I had ever seen before. They were real, as real as I was. So if they were real, and if they all spoke English, I thought, then maybe I had been washed up in England. But the aid workers that I had got to know near my town in Afghanistan were not small like these people, and neither did they dress like them.
I decided to try