Misha could see dried blood around one of his ankles. ‘You can’t stand there all night.’
Only after Farood was sure all around him were asleep and silent did he lie down.
When the guard unlocked in the morning, Misha stood in front of Farood until the guard moved on. They headed out across the compound to what was now a building site. The outline of the barracks was defined now, with posts lined up in a long L shape. A wind had toughened the surface of the ground. If it took nearly a month to accomplish this, thought Misha, then how long will it take to build the floor, the walls and a roof?
‘Farood, just stand by the cement mixer. Just pour in some water, now and again.’
But then he emptied the whole bucket, reducing the mixture to a slop that would never set. Misha delivered some to Jamal’s trench, shrugging at his disbelief.
The guard emerged from the guardroom accompanied by an obvious superior, a colonel, in a long, grey coat, carrying a cane. His cap was pushed down over his eyes, his back was straight and his shoulders rigid. The guard walked him around the foundations while a soldier pretended to supervise the work party.
Misha filled up his wheelbarrow, launched it in motion, trundling towards the guard and the colonel. He was within a few yards of the colonel when the man raised his head to display a patch over one eye. Misha pulled up short, spilling the watery cement on the side of the trench when it would’ve been easier to pour it in. The guard tried to draw the colonel’s attention elsewhere.
Misha refilled his wheelbarrow; his cellmate sensed the coming calamity. ‘You want to get all three of us killed? Your friend said he liked the guard.’
But Misha set off and, from behind, casually dumped the cement about the boots of the guard and the colonel. They looked at their feet and then at Misha, who was waiting for a reaction, a resolution. The guard and the colonel walked on, shaking their boots; the colonel raising his voice at the guard.
For the rest of the day Misha was even less productive. Other workers protested and then gave up, throwing their shovels down.
No one in Misha’s cell was unlocked for three days and nobody ate either. Jamal looked in as he walked past but said nothing. Misha banged the cell bars for the first two days, but the guard never came. On the third night – when Farood was muttering and snivelling and the cellmate lay with his limp arm draped across his chest – the gate was opened.
Before he could fully wake, Misha’s legs were dragged on to the balcony. He tried clinging to some straw, then a cell bar, but the guard pulled too hard. His palms cushioned his descent down the stairs before he was swallowed into the guard’s office.
Farood thought he would hear Misha cry out, but he didn’t. He heard furniture being moved, something thrown at the door, the guard’s raised voice and then Misha making his way up the stairs. He had blood pouring from his mouth and nose and one of his ears. The cell had been left open and it remained that way all night. By mid-afternoon the next day, Misha and Farood were in the back of a police van. The following day they were delivered to Herat, back across the border in Afghanistan.
Sixteen
Istanbul, September 2003
Farood leaned heavily to one side as he walked through the deserted dance floor collecting glasses and looking for scraps of food. He hadn’t eaten much in the last few days – some pitta crusts, an orange and a peach he shared with Misha. This morning there was little left out on the tables – a few nuts and an olive or two. Farood carried the glasses over to Misha at the sink, wincing as he lifted the basket onto the draining board.
‘Other side. This is where the clean ones go,’ instructed Misha.
Farood shook his head and held his side.
Misha emptied the basket for him and dispensed some more advice. ‘You see your ribs. They’ll get worse before they get better. The best thing is to keep moving, even though it hurts like hell.’
Misha had a working knowledge about ribcage injuries. It had been over two months since they had arrived in Istanbul, and on day one they had both taken a beating from the club owner, Berzan. Particular attention had been given to the younger, smaller Farood, using a wooden rounders bat in short bursts. Before this they had spent more than six months making their way back through Afghanistan from Herat, through Quetta, over the Makran again, across Iran and into Turkey, where they spent two days in the luggage hold of a bus to the Anatolian side of Istanbul. They had to try again. Their families had paid for them to get to Greece and the agent in Baghlan would keep his word. If they went home his reputation would be smeared.
The second attempt might have taken less time had they not insisted on travelling together. Every day for a week they had argued which of them had been the last to speak to Jamal, and whether he would ever make it to the West, or even out of the camp. It wasn’t easy to find a bus driver in Lake Van who would take two in the luggage hold. They were told there might not be enough air for them both, but they insisted all the same.
This time they had no trouble crossing from Iran into Turkey. They were sent north, handed over to agents in the Kurdish Workers’ Party. There was no hiding, secrecy or rush. They stayed with a family on a smallholding close to the border. The husband taught them how to prune a cherry tree. When they crossed into Turkey it was on horseback; whenever they asked if they were in Turkey yet, the agent would always say, ‘We’re still in Kurdistan.’ The bus from Lake Van stopped every four hours or so; during the stopover they were allowed to sleep inside on the backseats. They were dropped off at Berzan’s club in the Scutari district of Istanbul.
Potbellied Berzan smiled from the door when they arrived at his club. The bus driver regularly brought him luggage-hold passengers. Farood and Misha were taken to the cellar where there were others, mainly from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Nine weeks later they were still there. There was no possibility of them going anywhere. Everyone who came through Berzan’s club had to pay extra. It was the last stop before Schengen Europe, so no one was going to turn back. After the next border, they would eventually be free to roam and work throughout most of Europe with little or no border checks, so Berzan kept people until they, or someone they could phone, had transferred money into his account. On top of that, he took his cut from the agent of origin. If you didn’t pay, he didn’t feed you. He stood over people as they made calls to family members explaining what would happen if money wasn’t transferred to his account. The amount of money he asked for depended entirely on his impressions, on where people had come from. Iranians he believed always had access to money.
On their second day Farood and Misha were led out of the cellar to his office and asked for a hundred dollars each.
Farood spoke to Berzan as he spoke to an imam. ‘My mother gave everything she had to the agent in Baghlan.’
A reply very familiar to Berzan. ‘Then I want to speak to this agent in Baghlan. I want a bigger cut, I’ve too many to feed here.’
Farood called out the numbers as they were pressed into the phone.
‘This is Berzan. I’ve got two of yours here. A Turkmen called Misha and a kid from Baghlan. If I’m going to move them over to Greece, I need some money up front. The boatmen are putting up prices every day.’ Berzan performed an ‘Are you joking?’ double take to the reply before pocketing his phone. ‘He says he’s never heard of you.’
Taking his bat from a desk drawer as if fetching a set of keys, he led them back to the cellar. Berzan always carried out punishment in front of others. Since their first day a lot of people had come and gone in groups of three or four, moved up the coast towards Greece.
Once a cultured-looking man had advanced across the cellar, his finger pointed at Berzan. ‘I’ve already paid for my trip. Paid plenty. You get a share of that, I know. You’ll get no money out of me.’
Berzan was methodical about violence; it was a routine task. He carried a silver flick knife in his boot but on this occasion,
he went to the kitchen and returned with a carving knife. Farood counted fifteen incisions in the man’s torso. Berzan was still stabbing the man after he was still and silent, the only sound the blade squelching through his flesh. The man was rolled up in a carpet and taken away; the two boys had to mop out the cellar. Sometimes, to save him the trouble, Berzan would show people a short film on his laptop. It began with a close-up of a man’s face in a chair, the sound of Berzan’s voice, slow and clear. ‘You come to my club, expecting me to look after you. And you refuse to pay anything. Everything for nothing. For how long?’ The camera jerked down to the man’s hand, strapped to the arm of the chair with a belt. Another hand came into view, holding the wrist tightly. Then a third hand, holding a pair of pliers, slowly and clumsily snipped the smallest finger in half at the knuckle. The screaming caused the sound on the film to cut out for a few seconds. Then Berzan’s voice was heard again. ‘If you leave here without paying, you have to leave something behind.’ Berzan had a number of short films, one involving a woman and six men. And if anyone was still in doubt, he had a living model to show people waiting in another subterranean lock up – a boy he would send for, whose age was difficult to tell, a boy with no nose and no ears. The first time Farood saw him, he wept in front of him. His own weeping haunted him.
‘What’s wrong?’ called Misha one night.
‘That’s what will happen to us. We will have our ears cut off. And it might not bother you, but I don’t want it happening to me.’
‘You think I don’t want my ears?’
Farood hesitated under the weight of what he was about to say. ‘You could get your father to pay. He has money. He has a business. And you know his number.’
‘He wouldn’t pay. Berzan could cut off my head and he wouldn’t pay.’
‘You said he wanted you to run a shop.’
‘I lied. He didn’t want me to run anything. He wanted me to leave and never come back.’
Farood sat up on his sleeping mat. There was only Misha to hear, but he whispered all the same. ‘Then we have to escape.’
‘How? He’ll find us and cut us for sure. Go to sleep.’
Farood lay down, reached into a corner for his tin and gently shook it. He would have to wait until it was heavier. The tin held their treasure – coins, a few notes, the odd earring, whatever they found when they cleaned the disco each morning. Most Saturdays there was a wedding, and weddings were good for leftover food and for treasure. There was one tomorrow, and they would clean before and after.
The disco area above the cellar was a long, narrow room with a sunken dance area surrounded by mirrors and seating. Misha struggled to control an electric floor polisher whilst Farood wiped the bar. At the top of the cellar stairs that led to the disco was a side door. Every morning Farood tried the handle, put his ear to the door and looked through the keyhole. That night they listened to the dancing above them, imagining the frantic movements of couples, of men pursuing women across the polished surface.
In the morning Berzan opened the cellar, yawning. He had fed them once in six weeks, but they barely looked any different. He shrugged and trudged upstairs; they followed. At the top he turned down the corridor to his office and they went the other way into the disco. It was a mess. There was wine, beer and broken glass on the floor, and what looked like blood and a broken tooth. But there were also the remains of a meal – rice meatballs, asparagus. There were shreds of flatbread on most tables. They made up two plates and two drinks – their first meal for three days. Then they ran their hands down the back of every seat. They found a handkerchief, a photograph and something that was jammed between the back and a seat cushion. Farood turned and drove his arm down to the elbow and tugged free a silver-grey bracelet watch.
He stood on the seat, holding it aloft. ‘Look!’
‘Show me,’ demanded Misha.
‘I found it, it’s mine.’
Misha took a breath before explaining. ‘Something like that, people come back and say to Berzan, “I left my watch here.” When he finds you have it, I wonder what he’ll do?’
Farood jumped from the seat and ran to the cellar. He put it in the peanut tin and found a new hiding place for it on an overhead beam.
When he got back upstairs Misha threw him a bottle of cleaning cream. ‘We’re out. Go tell Berzan we need some more.’
Farood looked behind down the corridor. Neither of them had been to his office since they arrived. Illegals didn’t do that; they waited in the cellar until Berzan told them otherwise.
‘Farood, he’s not going to cut off your ears just because you need more cleaner to do your job.’
Farood stood at the side door at the top of the stairs and called down the corridor. There was no answer. He advanced a few paces. ‘Berzan! Hallo. Mister Berzan.’
Berzan came around the corner, pulling up his trouser zip.
‘We’re out of cleaner.’
Berzan turned back and returned with a key in his hand. He unlocked the side door and went out, closing it behind him. Then his phone rang and he answered it. From inside Farood listened to Berzan’s voice bleed into the traffic. Two beats later he tried the handle. It opened onto a sunlit yard with steps up to a road in one corner. Farood stopped himself from running to the steps and ran to Misha instead, tugging his sleeve. ‘He’s left the door open.’
Misha walked over, no further than the threshold. The yard was in front of him. ‘It could be a trap,’ he warned.
‘We’re living in a trap,’ said Farood urgently. ‘Let’s run.’
‘Go get the treasure.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll need it. The watch will buy us some food.’
Farood jumped down most of the stairs and was back at the door with his tin in a matter of seconds. Misha was gone. The door was wide open. Farood looked into the disco area, calling his name. Then he ran to the steps in the far corner of the yard, mounted the first step and saw Misha standing across the road. He hesitated for a second or two, gazing at the sudden abnormality of the outside world with its onslaught of space and light. Misha called, ‘Hurry,’ from across the road; Farood reached the top step when the flat of Berzan’s boot pushed him down again out of sight. Misha saw Berzan pause, look down to the bottom of his sunken yard. Misha ran.
He ran away from the main road down a narrow street between high houses, under washing lines, crossing alleys, along gutters. A Jack Russell chased him, the echoes of its bark overtaking him. The stone buildings turned wooden as he reached a hill and leaned into the gradient to the summit. It was early in the year and early in the day, but it was humid. He stopped, doubled up, then turned to face the long, downhill slope. There was no sign of Berzan, no one at all behind him. The grey of houses was cut off by the Bosphorus. He spat, straightened up and filled his lungs. As he breathed in, he could smell fish being fried in olive oil.
He continued up the hill and where it began to ease into a level there was a park with pine trees, a bandstand and clay surface football pitches. On one a group of men surrounded a commotion, a noise he had heard before, in Mazar – a camel fight. Two looming animals were heavily saddled under ropes and sacking. A man lashed out with a length of bamboo, and one camel snored, trotted towards the other, and brought its neck down across its opponent. The other camel tried to pull away, but its front legs had buckled. The ring of men cheered, waving money above their heads. Misha spectated silently from beyond the touchline. There would be no point asking anything of these men. His father used to do this every weekend, gamble on camel-wrestling. He even spent a months’ income to part-buy a camel with two other men. Its neck was broken in its first match. They were all selfish men, all in the same shabby, dark grey suits. A younger man in a tracksuit looked over at Misha and smiled.
Misha approached him, placing his palm on his elbow. ‘You speak Kurdish?’
The man nodded, held his han
d.
‘My name is Misha. I’m in a bit of a situation here. I’m lost, and I’ve lost my friend and I’ve lost my phone.’
The young man obliged without saying a word, handing Misha his phone and a lit cigarette.
Misha recited the agent’s number to himself as he pressed the keys. ‘Listen, Mohammed, don’t fucking hang up and don’t fucking say you don’t know me. We paid you in Baghlan. Misha from Mazar and Farood. Yeah, now we’re in Istanbul and I’ve just got away from some butcher Berzan, who’s still got Farood… wait…’
He handed the phone back to the young man, who explained exactly where they were in Istanbul. Misha was told to stay where he was, so he sat down with the young man next to him. They sat there until dusk, when Misha asked him to go. He lit a last cigarette for Misha, stroked his head and walked away.
After dusk there was no street lighting in the park and very little light from the houses nearby. He went to a grass verge, resting his head upon his arms. He remembered his father in his dark grey suit, much younger than when he had left him. His father had a football – red and white – which he bounced too high for him to catch, laughing as he jumped. His mother shouted, ‘Give it to him, what are you doing? Don’t tease my son.’ His father said to him, ‘You want it, you want it? Jump, boy, jump.’
Then his shoulder shook under a hand and another Kurdish voice was speaking. ‘Did you telephone Mohammed in Baghlan? Was that you?’
‘That was me. Who are you?’
‘I’m an agent, I can get you to Greece.’
Baghlan Boy Page 13