Baghlan Boy

by Michael Crowley

  The son advanced and thrust his rifle barrel into his chest. ‘Don’t speak to me.’

  The Bengali understood.

  The passengers were bunched like prisoners as the agent began his address, whether it was understood by all or not. ‘I should be rid of you by now. I should be moving other illegals. Now I have to do the journey all over again. Double my time. So, you have to pay more. All of you. Hand over your money.’

  The Bengalis were confused, disturbed. They knew something about their situation had worsened. They shouted at the others in Bengali to no avail.

  ‘We have already paid,’ Hassan’s mother protested.

  ‘Money!’

  The agent’s son whipped a plastic bag open. The agent withdrew a hunting knife from his boot and stared at the woman. Hassan gripped her arm with both fists. His grandfather stepped forward. ‘I have the money.’

  He delved into his midriff for a small roll of notes. They seemed satisfied with this, but then insisted Farood and the other men undress. The agent explored the piles of clothes, shaking every sleeve and trouser leg. He found nothing worth keeping. Misha made to collect his clothes.

  ‘Stay there!’

  The agent’s son gathered some accessories: Jamal’s watch, even the younger Bengali’s glasses. Then he pointed to Farood’s feet. ‘He has new boots.’

  Farood protested, ‘They’re too small, not worth anything.’

  The agent’s son slapped him about the head hard and laughed when he fell with his feet in the air. He grabbed a leg and pulled off the boy’s boots. The roll of two hundred American dollars fell to the ground. They laughed even louder. The agent threw Farood a pair of canvas slippers. The next morning the agent insisted that Padman stayed behind with his son, because he needed to rest his leg.

  Thirteen

  Shiraz, Iran

  Farood came to with a jolt, startling Jamal. Jamal watched as the boy’s light frame raised itself, headily, to a sitting position. Misha felt his brow. They waited for him to say something, Lazarus-like. Instead he jerked then vomited on his pillow – Jamal’s jacket.

  Farood had spent over six hours in the boot of a car between the Makran and Shiraz, lodged next to Hassan. What air there was had been infiltrated by fuel and it was Farood’s head that faced tank side. People generally survived these journeys. It took them a while to recover and some heavy breathers did die, often somewhere further on in their journey; the seed of a brain haemorrhage germinating, or a seizure finally taking them by surprise in some smuggler’s cellar in Turkey. Before that there would be difficulties with coordination, depression or just an anxiety about the taste that wouldn’t leave their lips. But small boys inhale less. Farood supposed his dizziness to be the result of his head bouncing off the wall of the boot as the driver swung the car violently round bends. He had been unconscious when the boot finally opened. Hassan offered up his arms, shocked and squinting like an earthquake survivor, towards his tormented mother. She had screamed at the driver to stop hours before. Eventually he did, but only to put a gun to her head so she would stop screaming.

  The next time the driver spoke was when they passed two airport towers and a sign that said ‘Shiraz’. Within minutes they passed through two high wooden gates and stopped in a courtyard.

  ‘This is where you will stay.’

  They saw a three-storey pale-yellow house, once a mid-sized hotel. Jamal and Misha carried unconscious Farood in with them. Hassan peered at him from over his grandfather’s shoulder. Jumping down beside his mother, the family made their way upstairs to see if there were other Hazaras. The Bengali found some other Bengalis. There were between forty and fifty men in the building; in every room along the balcony, on every passageway people were camped on thin blue mattresses gathered in small groups. People came out of rooms, leaning on the balcony rail to stare. The driver went to meet a tall, wiry Iranian with an Alsatian by his side. He pointed out the new arrivals and they retreated to an office to do some accounting.

  Jamal wiped his jacket. ‘Go and find some water,’ he said.

  Who was he to give him orders? A Pashtun. A Turkmen was an outsider in Baghlan, even more so elsewhere. A bond would form between the three as they made their way together, but Misha knew it would be broken any time they chose.

  Climbing the stairs, Jamal shouted after him, ‘And see what you can find out about the food. Who’s in charge and when we can get out of here.’

  Looking back at the spectators, Jamal searched for any signs of seniority. A man with the build of a wrestler saluted from the balcony in his direction, but Jamal presented a stony face. Crowded though it was, it was not like Quetta. The converted hotel had high windows and white walls, men circulating, negotiating; a boy was selling cigarettes from a tray. There was weariness, fear and bustle. It was captivity, certainly, but at this moment it looked like sanctuary. They laid the slender, strong-boned boy down into the shadows beneath the stairs. Shiraz was cool and sunny in early November. Shafts of sunlight toyed with airborne dust. Misha returned with a bucket of water and a flannel. Jamal cupped his hands and poured it into Farood’s insensate mouth, then again onto his face. Semi-conscious and coughing, the world still sounded like it was locked in the boot of a car.

  ‘We thought you were dead, little man. But you’re not. If you can survive that, you can survive anything.’

  Farood lifted an arm towards Jamal where it swayed like a branch in the wind.

  ‘I need water,’ whispered Farood, his words drifting away.

  He formed them perfectly again in his mind, but between his lips and Jamal’s ears they got strangled and slowed. ‘Waball… wabott…’

  ‘You’ve just had some water,’ said Jamal, ‘and I’m not washing your feet for you. Who do you think you are – a holy man?’

  Farood managed a fist around his collar. Jamal tipped a sip-full onto his lips. The patient swilled and spat. He looked at his feet – they were alarming; they looked like someone else’s feet, like something you might want to put in a clay oven. He remembered standing in the blood of a slaughtered lamb at a wedding and then walking blood-stained for days, imagining he was an ancient warrior after a battle. He slumped back.

  ‘What’s wrong with the water?’ asked Jamal.

  It tasted of diesel. Everything smelled of diesel. Farood’s head was a vessel of pain. It felt enormous and the pain went to its frontiers and beyond.

  Misha’s eyes traced a gash across the arch of his right foot. ‘Do your feet hurt?’

  Farood shook his head and it continued to spin on the inside. ‘I can’t feel them.’

  Misha pulled the sleeve of his tracksuit over his hand and pushed the sole of Farood’s foot. Blood seeped onto the cuff, but the boy didn’t stir. ‘Can you smell them, Farood?’

  The patient closed his eyes, tilting his head side to side.

  The second hike through the Makran had been shorter, but halfway through the canvas slippers were torn to pieces by the volcanic rock. Then there was nothing left to tear but his flesh. During the final descent he had crawled over the rocks on all fours like a crab. He could still feel the reddish rocks on his palms, but his feet were numb. A vein in his calf burned blue. Examining Farood’s feet, Jamal hesitated with the dampened flannel in his hand. He couldn’t decide where or how to start.

  ‘Did you find out how this place works?’ he asked Misha.

  ‘This place is like a bazaar. You’re thirsty, someone will sell you water. Sell you food if you’re hungry. You want to wash? Some Punjabi will charge you to use his sink. The agent has four or five people working for him and they all look more vicious than that dog from Taftan.’

  ‘Is there a doctor?’

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘You should have. People look like they’re living here. Maybe there’s something to be said for not having any money and maybe when they realise we have none t
hey’ll move us on.’

  Misha wondered who Jamal meant by ‘us’. ‘Then we need to get him some new shoes,’ he said.

  ‘How? We can’t buy them,’ snapped Jamal. ‘They’ll need to provide.’

  ‘Then you go and ask,’ replied Misha.

  But Jamal was the eldest by five years; he presumed seniority.

  Evening settled in. Prayers were over; everyone was awake, coming and going from rooms on the balcony, with towels, with handshakes. A queue was forming outside a door on the ground floor, presumably for food.

  A boy selling cigarettes from a tray plodded down the stairs and approached them. ‘Cigarettes, please, cigarettes. The best.’ He was a penguin-shaped early-teens boy who ought to have been taller for his age. ‘Cigarettes will take the pain away.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Jamal.

  The cigarette boy swung himself away.

  ‘They might hide the smell,’ Misha offered.

  Jamal and Misha joined the queue across the hall. The house was busy. Moving through Iran wasn’t straightforward: even if you had money the Iranian police could not be bribed. If you were caught you would be deported, but not before you had been taught a lesson in a police station, then in a prison or a labour camp. As far north as Baghlan there were stories about illegals being thrown down wells or hanged in barns.

  Hassan called down from the balcony wearing the smile of the recovered child. ‘Farood! Farood! How are your feet? Are they okay? Are they still bleeding?’

  ‘A little.’

  Farood turned the sole of a foot. It was still wet, but the wound had stopped bleeding.

  ‘Can I get you a towel?’

  Farood accepted, sensing the comfort of his own age.

  A few minutes later, the younger boy ran down the stairs. ‘Paper towels is all I could find.’

  Hassan must have emptied a dispenser. He placed them in a pile at the bottom of Farood’s dusty blue mattress and sat down.

  ‘Thanks. I need to wash these feet. Where are you sleeping?’

  ‘Mother has found a room. A man has given us his bed. She’s sleeping.’

  ‘How is the old man?’

  ‘My grandfather? He is having some tea. He says he doesn’t want to go any further. He is talking about going back now.’

  ‘Going back?’

  ‘He’s tired. And he wants to bury my father.’

  Hassan looked at Farood’s feet.

  ‘How was your father killed?’ asked the younger boy.

  ‘A bomb landed on our house. Will you go back with your grandfather?’

  ‘He won’t go back. My mother won’t allow it. We’re going to a farm in Turkey. What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to Greece. If they catch you in Greece, they don’t send you back. They let you stay. But I’m going back to Baghlan, after I’ve made a lot of money.’

  ‘How will you do that?’ asked Hassan.

  ‘I don’t know. I have to find out.’

  Hassan’s mother leaned over the balcony, summoning her son. Farood watched him scale the stairs, his arm stretched up above him on the bannister. I would be racing ahead of him now, he thought. Instead he had to sit like a cripple while groups of men stared.

  Jamal had now left the queue; he knocked on the office door in the corner. A wiry man swung open the door as his panting Alsatian got to its feet.

  ‘A boy that came in with me, he needs new shoes,’ said Jamal.

  ‘You give me some dollars – I’ll get you some.’

  ‘His feet are a mess. Is there a doctor here?’

  The dog barked; the wiry man laughed and patted the dog’s head. ‘He just needs to rest,’ he said.

  ‘When do we move on?’ asked Jamal.

  ‘There’s a waiting list. I can move you up for some dollars. But your boy can’t even walk, so how can you leave?’

  Later the three ate flatbread with oil and string beans. Farood finally tasted something beyond diesel.

  Then Jamal fetched a bucket of water and commanded Farood. ‘Stand in it.’

  Farood crawled out from under the stairs, put all his weight on Misha’s arms and pushed until he was upright. He took a moment to adjust; he swayed like a man on stilts, shutting his eyes to the pain. Jamal reached under the boy’s arms and lifted him into the bucket. Farood smiled at the sensation. He couldn’t quite tell if the water was hot or cold. People watched, leaning over the balcony rail. In the days to come, the metallic taste in his mouth would turn to ash and the feeling in his lower legs would completely return and he would be sorry that it had. He turned his head down to the bucket; he saw the water had become brownish, like ditch water. He looked to Jamal for reassurance.

  ‘Misha, go see if you can get some disinfectant to put in the water,’ ordered Jamal.

  ‘They don’t have a doctor.’

  ‘They’ll have first aid. That office over there.’

  ‘Stop giving me orders.’

  Misha hurried off all the same. Jamal lifted Farood out and stood him on a mat of paper towels. They changed colour like wet sand. Behind him the man built for wrestling came down the stairs. He handed Jamal a dog-eared towel.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Jamal.

  ‘Of course.’ He gave Farood the towel; they shook hands. ‘Afghans?’

  ‘Pashtuns,’ interrupted Farood.

  ‘What happened to the boy?’

  ‘They took his shoes at Taftan.’

  ‘I have something for him.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘Something that will take away the pain.’

  Jamal was about to spread the towel on the floor, but he hesitated at such a loose medical term from a man with a match in his mouth.

  ‘And what about me?’ he asked. ‘Will it take away my pain too?’

  ‘If you want. What pain do you have?’

  ‘I’m an Afghan, aren’t I?’

  The big Punjabi man recognised the sentiment – the more he endures, the greater the reward.

  ‘We’ll live with our pain, thank you,’ said Jamal. ‘Here’s your towel.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  The big man moved on to another group. Smiles, handshakes, a sympathetic tilt of the head.

  Farood didn’t want Jamal to feel he was under obligation to explain. ‘I’m not in much pain,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, it will come.’

  Misha returned with a bottle of tea-coloured liquid. They put some in the bucket, refilling it twice more, finally with hot water. Few words were spoken between the three of them. Farood had little experience of expressing gratitude, and although the warm water made his feet bleed, he didn’t panic or complain. He remembered bleeding like this once before. He had been building a wall with his brother and dipped his arm into a belly of mud, gashing his palm on the rusty remnants of a magazine case. His father washed it, cut part of his turban for a bandage and told him to hold his arm above his head. Farood smiled – he couldn’t very well keep his feet in the air.

  ‘They won’t heal until you start walking on them again,’ was Jamal’s considered medical advice.

  The light which had been captured in the centre of the foyer had almost gone, replaced by an electric glow leaking from the balcony rooms. The cigarette boy started his rounds again; somebody was already reading with a torch. Farood slept.

  Misha whispered to Jamal, ‘If they won’t ship us out of here until they’ve had some money out of us, and we don’t have any, then, we need to tell them that.’

  ‘You really think they’ll believe you?’

  ‘It can’t hurt. I reckon we need to get out of here as soon as we can.’

  Jamal pulled some green bean stuck between his teeth then flicked it away. ‘We can’t, though, can we?’

  ‘Why?’

 
; Jamal lowered his voice. ‘He can’t walk.’

  ‘Are we walking to Turkey?’ Misha stood and walked towards the entrance door but met the driver blocking his exit.

  ‘I want to go outside.’

  ‘You can’t. Not at this time. Against the rules.’

  Misha wandered back to their place under the staircase. He looked around the foyer and up at the balcony opposite. Everyone was part of a group. He knew he had to be as well. He lay on his mattress. ‘Then we need to get him some medication, some bandages, and shoes for him.’ Misha made it sound straightforward.

  Farood opened his eyes and whispered, ‘Jamal, I think the water helped.’

  *

  Misha was out in the yard smoking a scrounged cigarette. Only one or two people at a time were allowed out during daylight hours. Some pink rose petals still clung to a crumbling bud against the high yellow perimeter wall. The stone ground was waiting to be swept. Towards the corner on the right was an unwanted fountain. Thousands of mynah birds were roosting somewhere close, their mass clicking sounds like a voice tutting from the heavens. Misha weighed up the perimeter. The wall above the gates was clad with steel spikes and the wall either side was so high that only the very top of the building opposite could be seen. He went over to the empty fountain and sat on its brim. Above the door was a veranda, a table and chair, a used ashtray. They had a view of the street. The spikes on the wall, he realised, were not about keeping people out – the drop down to the other was surely too great to scale – they were about keeping people in.

  They had been there for ten days, less than the hellhole in Quetta, but somehow this place felt more ominous. There were far more people here, and they were always being watched. Misha realised that he hadn’t seen anyone leave the building yet. The Afghan agent had told him that agents along the route were only paid once they moved people to the next agent and it was costing these people to keep them here, so what was the hold-up? Surely they were losing money?

  He was standing on the fountain brim facing the wall when he felt something tug at his jeans. It was a black Alsatian. His owner, the man from the office, waved the dog back and ordered Misha. ‘You. Inside. Now,’ he ordered in English.