Untethered

AYESHA INOON is a Sri Lankan–Australian writer with a unique cultural perspective, which she brings to her writing. Born in Colombo, she travelled widely and worked as a journalist in Sri Lanka before immigrating to Australia in 2013. Winner of the ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize 2022, her debut novel, Untethered, is partly based on her experiences as an immigrant Muslim woman. Ayesha was a recipient of the inaugural 2019 Penguin Random House Australia Write It Fellowship for an early draft of this novel. In 2020 she was selected for the Rosie Scott Writing Residency in NSW, and in September 2022 she was awarded a KSP fellowship by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in WA to work on her second novel. Her feature articles have been published by SBS Australia, The Sunday Times Sri Lanka, Serendib and Explore Sri Lanka. Ayesha lives in Canberra with her two children. You can follow Ayesha on Twitter and Instagram at @ayeshainoon. www.harpercollins.com.au/hq For everyone who has made the brave journey of leaving their home in search of another The angels say, ‘Was not the earth of Allah spacious enough for you to emigrate therein?’ Surah An-Nisaa, Quran CONTENTS Arrival Part 1: Leaving Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Part 2: Settling Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Part 3: Winter Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Part 4: Spring Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Acknowledgements Book Club Questions Arrival 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 crying, 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. The midnight-blue bags were heavy with the weight of her decisions, the things they brought with them, the things they left behind. How do you choose the most precious objects of a lifetime when moving to another country? How do you weigh the emotional worth of childhood diaries, favourite books, your framed wedding bouquet, your child’s first teddy bear and countless other mementos that reflected the story of your life, of your daughter’s first four years, against the cost of carrying them across the Indian Ocean? Once, she’d called Rashid in tears after Farah’s cot had been sold. ‘Don’t worry about all that,’ he’d said. ‘We can buy everything we need here. There’s a website called Gumtree, and people just give away things for free on there or sell them very cheap. You don’t need to bring anything.’ He told her he was collecting furniture and knick-knacks for their new home, and each time he bought something, he would send her a photograph. There was the old-fashioned sofa with the pattern of English roses that he knew she would love, the timber coffee table that wobbled slightly when she placed her handbag on it, the small bookshelf with a few picture books for Farah, the pink tricycle from a garage sale. The TV and the pale blue curtains, he said, were new. She had seen a photo of almost every piece of furniture in this house, Rashid had even given her a tour of the place on his webcam, and yet everything felt new, strange and unfamiliar, like the country itself. Rashid brought in the last bag, shut the door, and sat down with a sigh. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard, as though he too had just got off the plane with them. She’d never stopped wondering what it must have been like for him, alone in Australia, waiting for them to join him. He’d never said very much although he’d called her almost every day, and their conversations had grown briefer and increasingly impersonal, focusing on practical,