I am a two foot tall Afghani disabled person. Today I am on a boat with nine other Afghani immigrants, somewhere in America. My twin sister is beside me, also disabled; when I try to speak her name it comes out like I’m quietly attempting to say the letter “M” while trying to swallow my tongue at the same time, like this – “Muuuuggggh.” The older people with me may or may not be my parents. The captain and I think this for two reasons: For one, they keep me alive, and that is nice; On the other hand they do not pay attention to me when I am upset or have fallen off the seat and onto the wet floor of the boat. When they handed my sister through the window of the boat they smashed her head into the overhead and now she has a welt on her forehead the size of a poppy opium bud; she has been crying for 30 minutes and no one seems to notice. I try to comfort her by looking at her and speaking her name. I should also mention that another reason I am not sure my parents are the people with me is that I may indeed be older than them – people think, maybe like the captain of our boat, I am about 2 years of age, but those same people also wouldn’t be surprised if I was 50 years old. This is due to my disability which makes me look like an older person pancaked like an accordion, though with baby skin. My sister and I both have facial hair, sparse and very long and all over the face. My eye sockets take up most of my face and my eyes are mostly solid black, with a little rim of white around them. I can never close my mouth and there is always drool, some of which gets blown over the other people when a gust of wind attacks our boat. The largest reason some people think I am 2 is because I wear toddler clothes just like my sister. My clothes are blue and my sister’s clothes are pink. The older men in the group wear American Casual though the older ladies in the group, who the captain thinks are about 25 years old, dress in Afghani Mandatory. The children in the group, 6,7, 10 years old, all dress as Americans, though there seems to be a bit more of a mandatory style about the 10 year old – she is a girl and is very vocal, all the children are vocal in English. It is unclear if any of the adults speak English. When the captain asks them to move, or pleads with them, to keep the boat from taking on more water, to disperse the weight around the boat, they ignore him. At one point the captain begged the children to relay the message to the adults and they said “no,” that they did not want to tell the adults that. At one point in the boat I could see a grand orange bridge in the distance. The wind was blowing very strong and the waves were almost 5 feet. I know this because the captain shouted over the sound of the winds “these winds are really strong and the boat shouldn’t be in these 5 foot seas; we have to find a gap to turn around!” When the captain said that one of the adults tried to speak in English “I paid for bridge. For bridge!” The children all screamed so loud each time the boat rose up a wave and back down every side. Every 20 seconds the boat went almost straight up and the sound of the engine was very heavy. Then the boat would shift instantaneously and aim down, the sound of the boat would become high pitched and everything would speed up. The adult women would giggle and laugh. The adult men seemed to not care and they were talking amongst themselves. The children would yell and pretend to be surfing and jumping and touching the glass with their nasty tourist’s hands and no one would reprimand them and the captain looked worried. During this time water was spraying heavily into the boat. My sister was crying still due to her head injury. She was above me on the seat. I had fallen onto the floor. With each wave it felt like a water hose sprayed me in the face. On many occasions I saw the captain staring at me, his face covered in dread. I could tell he was wondering about my mustache and my age and if I was going to drown on the deck of his boat while the other adults ignored my muffled sounds. I could also tell the captain wanted to help me, but he was distracted by having to hold the helm tight and jostle the throttle so our boat would not tip and drown us all. The children in the front found that they could jump just before our boat shifted to go down the wave and then they would almost float inside the air of the boat. The women found that they would get more wet and have a more dangerous ride by sitting out past the yellow line on the aft deck. The captain found that, despite his best efforts, he could not speak in a way to get his passengers to act in a safe manner or with proper respect for others or with any sort of etiquette at all. One wave was so big that it made the boat shudder and water spewed through the bottom of the windows and the children laughed harder and the captain looked like he was frozen. After this wave my clothes were completely saturated and my facial hair looked like it was covered in hair gel and slicked back, kind of like Dali, and the captain saw this and thought that I was a little baby demon because of the look on my face – he stared at me for way too long, it was kind of weird for everyone. And then there were more waves like the first and I saw the captain grab the radio but he could not hold it because he was busy with the helm and the throttle and the waves kept coming and the women on the back of the boat began to howl with laughter and the children at the front of the boat were trying to get each other wet with water from the floor and the men on the boat were engaged in a very deep and serious conversation and could not be bothered to help and my sister had managed to cling to her seat cushion, still crying, so I tried to comfort her by saying her name again and then the captain looked down at me and he looked like Horror had spawned a child with Terror and vomited it on his face. Then the captain shouted “everyone hold something, I’m coming about.” And the men kept talking and the children all joked that we were all going to die. And the women stayed on the other side of the yellow line and their hijabs were all drenched and you could make out the outline of their faces. And my sister looked ill and was still crying. And the wind howled. And the boat rocked from side to side and from bow to stern. My body was becoming numb. I could not find my hands. The last thing I remember was a surreal calm engulfing the boat. The captain looked around to each person on the boat who still did not notice the change in the sea states, wind and spray. The captain’s expression went from panic to annoyance. My sister was still crying somewhere. The water I was laying in was so cold. An older man, who may be my father, bent down a grabbed me, and that is all I remember.
