by Ben Dosso
The convoy of human tide in which Samba Diallo was, was heading to Morocco. He had never been in this country before. Someone asked him in his dialect. He probably wanted to tell him a secret. But Samba Diallo could not understand him.
“Can you switch your language, man?” said Samba Diallo.
“Never mind,” said the unknown. And the journey had obviously become most venomous. But, despite all this misery, Samba Diallo was hoping to go back to school. Meanwhile, their convoy reached out to the border between Algeria and Morocco. Almost a journey on foot, sometimes in a bus. However, the Algeria-Morocco frontier was ferociously watched by the border guards because of a border conflict between Morocco and Algeria for a long time. To avoid any control at the border, the smugglers were waiting for the nightfall before crossing the border. Apparently, it seemed that the smugglers were international diplomats. They had a strong influence on the state structures and in a society that the travelers could not minimize. The smugglers were always finding a ground of expectation with the border guards. People who were under the protective umbrella of smugglers were never on the deportation list. It seemed that there would be a black market between them. In the dark, Samba Diallo and many other people used to walk on a road that was deviating the barbed wire. The guards and the bad dogs were posted at the border. The smugglers did not care about police, likewise Little Boy. But Samba Diallo would shake whenever he heard the word “police.” The deviation was an old tunnel where a large population of bats and spider roofs were peacefully living. A souvenir bequeathed by the two world wars where these travelers were squeezing each other by the hundreds like Fossae. The border crossing was in a dark to avoid any suspicion. That could push down the flourishing business between the authorities and smugglers. Before leaving these travelers in the count of other smugglers, the first ones were searching them ’til their anus looking for any penny.
Morocco
A new sun was rising at the horizon above the buildings with red facades of Morocco, seaside cities of many wild cats. The generosity was over there. Samba Diallo and Little Boy and other travelers in their journeys couldn’t die from hunger thanks to bread donations. Despite the poverty and the mixture of the hypocrisy, some people could give a hand to others for the respect of their tradition. But some people were making donations because of the pressure of the cultural myths. Others, by contrast, did so by generosity. The population was charitable despite an exaggerated racism. The journey could be finished there. Because the two boys, Samba Diallo and Little Boy, were immediately fascinated by the architectures with red facades and the traditional potteries unique in its kind. The cultural landscape of Berber sounds and dances was some spectacle, rich in poetry colors. The folklore stories across the whole country and its famous riads, traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden or courtyard. The relieving heat of the Turkish bath. The beautiful beaches with fine sands, the beauty of the landscape and the blue color of the Mediterranean Sea. As for the cuisine, it was a Mediterranean cuisine characterized by the variety of dishes, mainly Arab and Berber origin with a Jewish influence. It was also reflecting the history of the country and its people who settle there: orange salad scented with cinnamon, the spicy tajine, and the unforgettable appetizing savor of couscous shared every Friday after the prayer of Jummah (Friday prayer). Furthermore, Samba Diallo was passionate about the kisses on the forehead of old people for the cultural respect of elder people and the kisses on the king’s hand for the majestic respect for all symbols that represent the kingdom, but he was suddenly upset by the young girls left behind after a sexual aggression. This category of young girls marginalized who no longer belonged to the society because they were no longer virgin and these many elderly people left behind because they were no longer useful to the society. And he wanted to settle, hoping to go back to school with Little Boy if his own decisions were his. In his backpack of a beggar, there were some scattered dreams, some melancholy poetic phrases, and rhymes filled with misspellings that he thought to take care of it.
But Samba Diallo’s dirty mouth of a negro and his faded eyes that were making him want to dream were not welcomed. The fresh wind was poisoned of a huge wave of discrimination. Samba Diallo’s color had a meaning. The masculine name given to people of his color was Azi. The feminine of Azi was Azia and the docile synonym of all these names was “mon ami” and “mon amia,” all derogatory terms. In the street, everyone used to hold their noses not to breathe the wind around him, believing he did not know the cost of a water drop from the pump. Yet he wasn’t stinking like the infamous perfume of mongoose. The two boys were ashamed to walk on the street and to approach other children of their ages. Even if other kids wanted to play with Samba Diallo, their parents would impose. They used to scare their children not to play with a sub-Saharan kid. Almost all of these people did not recognize an African. They would forget that Maghreb was not located on another continent nor a Western province. One needn’t necessarily be a psychologist to know the mental traumatism that Samba Diallo and Little Boy were suffering from.
In the city, the police reprisals were horrible. People were running to escape the humiliations and the suicidal deportations. Meanwhile, the smugglers were selling the European dream to refugees where everything was wonderful like a garden of flower. This imaginary fruit was influencing many people to escape the police violence, hoping to find the eventual peace in Europe. This influence of smugglers pushed a big pressure on Samba Diallo’s dream to find a public school. On the other hand, Little Boy could not read nor write. He had difficulty writing his name, saying with an embarrassed shrug that he had never touched a pen in his lifetime. He was content to the little that Samba Diallo had learned at school. It was so hard for him to spell the letters. He had had a funny mouth when he was trying to spell words. The two boys, Samba Diallo and Little Boy, had the same goal to go back to school. But, at that time, the system of public schools couldn’t allow refugees children to go back to school because of the administrative issues. And under the dominative pressure of smugglers, the two boys re-packed their bags to confront a new perilous journey to Nador, a city located in northeast in Morocco. However, Samba Diallo’s journey had already lasted more than three years between the hammer and the anvil. More than thirty-six months of suffering. More than one hundred and forty-four weeks of begging. More than a thousand days of insomnia, of mental depression in the different colors of urban violence. At the same time, Samba Diallo was crazily in love, having so much affection for this Cherifian Kingdom despite people were confiscated and ripped off all their precious things with machetes. And the authorities used to trample his complaints under his eyes, the identity perverts who used to tell him that this host country was not his. Samba Diallo could give everything to settle there. He did what he could do to be accepted in this community. But all his effort flew into nothingness.
“Even if I should leave here, I would leave without ever being able to leave because I would never be gone, my heart would be with these old ladies who had already carved their generosity on my heart,” said Samba Diallo, lamenting.
They finally got Nador. There were thousands of travelers who had come from sub-Saharan countries and Middle East. They were from many different countries where the war arsenals were blowing up everything. Before reaching Nador, it was useless to go to the bus station. The tickets were not sold to the travelers like Samba Diallo and Little Boy. Then, they were waiting for the departure of the train in their different hiding places and hung on the wagon like bats. The train was transporting the charcoals for the factory located at the seaside. The train was arriving at its destination between the first call of the morning prayer and the sunrise. However, Samba Diallo, Little Boy, and others were getting ready, jumping down from the train before it slowed down to escape the punches from the railway guards. And the unfortunate ones who were awkwardly jumping on wrong feet were rapidly getting crushed by the train in speed. Nevertheless, they left the wounded ones at the
end of the main road so that the Red Cross could take care of them. And the survivors of this journey used to track on the way of their safety and economy issues. All these travelers were generally heading to Gurugu Mountain, a rocky hill, culminating at nine hundred meters near to the lagoon of Nador, Beni Ansar, and Melilla. Gurugu Mountain was also a refuge for hundreds of refugees and economic migrants waiting desperately to cross into Europe. But the frontier was muscly watched by the policemen placed in any corner. And the arrests used to multiply. It was the economic migrants’ hunting. But to reach it, the travelers risked death and injury by climbing on a heavily fortified fence which encircles the territory, or out at sea as they tried to swim through the dark waters to reach the Spanish beach. And the unfortunate ones as human shields were living at the feet of the misery trees and forgotten among crawling reptiles in forest where the body lice were making some button belts around our pelvis and the ticks were housing under their armpits, and they were becoming exoskeletons of arthropods in which these insects used to sojourn, fleeing their stalker predators. It was the same, winter as summer. In addition, to get water, these journeymen walked a long distance on the rocks to reach out the cave at a dozen miles, likewise getting the wood to fight against the cold. It was a necessity because they couldn’t go to the downtown in fear of getting deported to the desert. While they were devoured by the monster cold of the winter and the rain mixed with the wind were worsening their living conditions. Regarding the food, these travelers were doing their food shopping at nightfall in the urban dumps by imposing the jungle law to the hundreds of fat cats that were the owners of public dumps to getting food. It was a solidary group sharing the same misfortunes and sufferings under the shelters. The fellow travelers who only knew each other by their nicknames, despite their cultural and ethnic diversities, were a family in a miserly atmosphere. A jungle where different bitter stories were making collisions. Each shelter housed a bitter story, it was hard to listen to the whole story to the end without tearing up a little. A long refugees’ journey, fleeing the heavy pressure from the police, throwing some vulgar words in the wind to relieve their hearts. Sometimes, the different communities were fighting each other because of treason and the youngest like Samba Diallo, Little Boy, and a dozen others were painfully suffering from it. But, a bit far from this misery coffin, there was Melilla, a tiny autonomous Spanish enclave on the north coast of Morocco, one of the few lands into the European Union and the gateway to Europe coming from Africa. This border was also the line that was dividing the world of the intelligent people and the world of the savage people, separated by an iron curtain of barbed wire, iridescent razor blade, noise motion detectors, the night vision cameras, watchtowers, and a tireless patrol of police. Police dogs could stop these travelers in a split second in full speed with their enormous power and the deafening noises from the helicopters in the sky were enough to bring them out of their hiding places. The shepherds were snitching on those trying to smuggle out of the area by tipping off the police. They knew most of the hiding places of these travelers. Throughout these patrols of sweep, all shelters were burnt down by auxiliary forces, militaries and national police, bringing the good things useful for them and they used to set up a theatrical scene, accusing the travelers for burning to the ground their own shelters to make up their carnages. The reprisals were daily. All these sufferings were pushing people to climb desperately this triple fencing system of seven meters that were hanging on dozen kilometers. Samba Diallo and Little Boy were only simple dwarfs under this wall with barbed wire of seven meters in length. And under the threat of border guards, some of these travelers had their throat slit by rolls of barbed wire. A human tide in herds like an impressive buffalo herd that could uproot all the carrots of the peasants in their passage. Moreover, almost all of them were literally suffering from the last degree of literacy. On the other hand, in front of the barrier the border guards of Europe were mortally beating them with the blows of batons, cudgeling to death, who were being financed over thirty million Euros to prevent these children asylum seekers to be reeducated. Some of them were corporally beaten at death for touching the barrier. And the police cars were deployed everywhere. The sirens of police were wailing as if these travelers had just committed an attack. The lucky ones of these travelers had broken limbs. Front of the international medias, the Guardia Civil (Spanish) was rejecting all these wrongdoings of the ill-treatments of human, accusing the Moroccan auxiliary forces, and the Moroccan Auxiliary forces were also rejecting all charges. None of these forces wanted to accept accusations of beating people to death. Yet these travelers were beaten on the European soil before being thrown by the small door of iron curtains. And once on the Moroccan soil, police used to achieve the rest of dirty work by driving their vans in the crowd, and the unlucky ones of these travelers were perishing before the beginning of the suicidal deportations of the survivors in the buses. Both camps were accusing each other of disseminating these charges. Yet both camps were implicated in these abuses. Europe did not need economic migrations on its soil. It did not want to welcome all misery of entire world. However, the same Europe was daily advocating education for all children without distinction. Who are they manipulating then with their children’s rights?
Baba (Daddy in Arabic) was working in one of the countries of the defenders of Children Rights, Human Rights, all kinds of human rights and animal rights from Monday to Friday. Even if Baba was not the father of all these travelers, they used to call him Baba due to his kindness and generosity and the respect of his humanitarian vision. Baba was leaving from his work at 3:00 pm, local time. Every Friday afternoon at the same time, he used to think about these travelers under these trees of misery. On his way from his work, he used to load his grey Peugeot car with pieces of bread, jams, tea, and sugar packages, some grams of rice, paracetamols, and some blankets. Baba used to do this great donation every Friday at the same time as he could. Every Friday afternoon, Baba knew that the travelers were waiting for him at the foot of this hill, and the travelers were also hoping that Baba would bring new feed coming from Europe. These little packages of food could not last for the whole week, but they were an oasis for these travelers under these miserly trees because this food was completely different from the rotten food that they picked up from the bins on other side of the town. But Baba’s generosity was viewed by a bad eye by the local police. Police used to reproach him for encouraging immigration without knowing his motivation. Yet Baba used to help people who were starving and children who were dying in cold in the deadly winter weather. Moreover, Baba was receiving summons for helping travelers. He used to tell travelers about these summons. His car was pursued by the police cars when he was coming from work. The police used to chase the travelers who would be waiting for Baba. As Baba could no longer share the food with the travelers, he switched his schedule to continue helping the travelers in their long journey. As usual, he was loading a small wheelbarrow with food and was silently pushing it to the new place to share with the travelers the little he had. Meanwhile, the economic migrant hunts and these deportations in the desert the travelers were suffering from were orchestrated by countries of Human Rights. All heads were for sale. But the wealthy asylum seekers who were under the protective umbrella of smugglers could cross the frontier of Spain-Morocco in all tranquility for four thousand Euros with falsified passports. They were crossing the border as if they were going to their bedrooms. They did not worry about anything that was happening to other travelers. They could melt themselves among those who were going to work behind the European fence. But the refugees who couldn’t get this huge sum of four thousand Euros to cross the frontier by walking or in the dashboards and trunks of a car, and were considered as “economic migrants,” who they stopped imperatively. And every halted head was subject for collective expulsion and the police was earning one hundred Euros by each head arrested. These captives, called “economic migrants,” were fathers who the war had dispersed in the nature and nobod
y wanted to welcome them, because their physical quality and mental health were destroyed by the tons of bombs dropped on their countries. And some hundred thousand children dispatched throughout the world who only live by begging and become the princes in the kingdom of violence which the world does not want to talk about. Meanwhile, Samba Diallo, Little Boy, and many other kids were on Gurugu mountaintop, the forest. They were daily figuring how to brave the razor wire surrounding the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Morocco, probably the last step of their journey for safety. An average rock violently fell on Samba Diallo’s right foot. His face contorted in pain as blood gushed up. Suddenly, he said, “I am freezing.”