Read Lina at the Games for Free Online

Julia Goldbloom. She’s Polish ? I wonder how many other girls’ families are immigrants like mine? And she decided at that moment to find out.

‘T HE Mother Superior wants an article on an Australian Olympic athlete for the front cover,’ Lina told her father one evening. They were sitting together before he went to work, reading Stella Davis’s column in the newspaper and chatting about the school magazine. ‘I’m almost finished writing my story on Dawn Fraser but I’m worried Sarah might write about her, too.’
    â€˜Sarah? Who’s Sarah?’ asked Papa.
    Sometimes it amazed Lina how little her family knew about her life. ‘You know, the girl I’m working on the magazine with. We used to be enemies but we’re almost friends now. Sort of. Still, sometimes I feel like she wants to take over the magazine when it was really my idea. That’s why it has to be my story on the cover.’
    â€˜Well, you’ll just have to work hard to write the best article then,’ her father said, smiling. ‘Look at Stella Davis. She didn’t get to have her own column by just sitting around, did she?’
    â€˜I guess not,’ said Lina, catching her father’s smile. She paused as a thought came to her that she had never dared find words to express. ‘Do you think . . . Do you think I could ever become a journalist like Stella Davis?’ Once her dream was out in words, it hung between them like a fragile bubble. Lina didn’t breathe for fear it might burst.
    Her father pulled her in tight to his chest. ‘Lina, if you work hard, you can be whatever you want to be,’ he said into her hair, then kissed the top of her head. ‘That’s why we are here. That’s why we work so hard. So you kids can have everything we weren’t able to.’
    Lina hugged her father back. ‘Thank you, Papa,’ she said.
    Lina’s father turned another page of the newspaper and took a sip of his strong black coffee. The Olympic stories filled the first half of the paper, the second half contained anything else that might be going on in the world. ‘What else can you translate for me?’
    Lina pointed to a photo of a tank rolling through a narrow street. She read the caption: Soviet tanks crush Hungarian hopes for revolution. ‘Why are they still fighting? Didn’t the war end years ago?’
    â€˜Yes, Lina,’ her father said. He took another sip of coffee and the aroma filled Lina’s nostrils. ‘For us it is. But the Russians took control of Hungary after the war. You remember how we read that article together a few weeks ago about the university students protesting in the streets of Budapest?’
    Lina nodded, vaguely remembering.
    â€˜Well, the Hungarians don’t want to be controlled by the Russians anymore. Imagine another country taking over Australia and making us do everything they say. Making up rules that mean we can’t do what we want.  You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
    Lina shook her head. ‘No, of course not!’
    â€˜Well, at first it looked like the Russian government might listen, but then – just days ago – the Russian army sent tanks into Hungary to attack the students. Those poor Hungarians are fighting to get their country back from the Russians, but how can a bunch of students with handmade explosives possibly win against an army of tanks?’
    â€˜That’s awful!’ Lina said. ‘The Russians should just leave the Hungarians alone. It’s not their country.’
    â€˜People do cruel things to feel powerful, Lina,’ her father sighed. ‘Especially if they know they can’t lose. Remember that boy in your primary school who used to hit little children to make himself feel big and strong? He would never fight someone as big as him, would he?’
    Lina nodded. ‘That was Peter. I remember him. And when Bruno