by Fabio Geda
Once the Olympics started, there wasn’t any more work, and we spent the mornings and afternoons walking around, without knowing where to go or what to do. That was when I started talking about leaving again.
London, they all said. You have to go to London. Or Norway, if you can. Or why not Italy? If you went to Italy you had to go to Rome and, once you were in Rome, you had to go to Ostiense, which apparently was a station. There was a park there with a pyramid where you could find Afghans. For me, the important thing about Italy was that a boy I knew, someone from my village, from Nava, had managed to get there. His name was Payam. I knew he was in Italy because someone had brought the news to our village. I didn’t know which city he was in and I didn’t have a phone number or anything, but if he was in Italy, maybe I could track him down. It would be difficult, but you never knew.
I’m leaving, I said to Jamal one day. We were with two other friends, having an ice cream. I have some money saved from the work I did for the Olympics, I said. I can buy a ticket and go as far as Corinth, or Patras, and there try to sneak onto a lorry.
I know a trafficker who might be able to help you, said one of the boys.
Really?
Of course, he said. But first, listen, you should still try asking the Greek authorities for political asylum for health reasons.
What do you mean, political asylum for health reasons?
Didn’t you know? There’s a place, a clinic, where they take care of you if you’re ill, and do tests on you if you think you are. And if they find out there’s something wrong with you, they give you asylum because of your illness.
Is there really a place like that? Why didn’t you tell me before?
Well, for instance, because they have to give you injections. Not everyone likes taking tests and being given injections. But if you’ve already made up your mind to leave, what difference does it make, right?
Do you know anyone who got a residence permit that way? Personally, I mean?
Yes, a Bengali boy. He was lucky. You may be, too.
All right.
All right what?
I’ll go, I said. Tell me where it is.
It was an old building with colored windows, nothing like the other clinics I’d seen. You had to buzz the third floor on the entryphone. Jamal and the others would wait for me outside, because it would take a couple of hours. I buzzed. They opened without a word, and I went upstairs.
The entrance certainly looked like the waiting room of a clinic. There wasn’t a counter or a nurse to ask for information, but there were four or five men sitting on chairs, two of them reading magazines, the others staring into space. I sat down, too, and waited my turn.
Suddenly a door opened, as if there’d been a gust of wind (there were four white doors) and a woman came out. She was naked. Stark naked. I opened my eyes wide, then lowered them, I would have liked to put those eyes of mine in my pocket, and put out the fire in my cheeks, but her appearance had caught me so off guard that any position I assumed, any move I made, any breath I took would have seemed awkward and out of place. I was petrified. The naked girl passed quite close to me, and I think she gave me a sidelong glance and smiled. Then she went through another door and disappeared. A man stood up and followed her. But then another woman appeared, and she was naked, too. All at once there were something like a dozen of them, coming in and out. In the end—
In the end, Enaiat?
I stood up and ran out. I ran down the stairs, six steps at a time, and opened the front door, still running, and almost got myself knocked over by a car—I heard a Greek horn and a Greek shout—and that was when I saw the others, including Jamal, on the other side of the street, laughing. Holding their stomachs. They were laughing so hard, they could hardly stand. I swear that was the first and only time I’ve ever been inside a brothel.
I stayed in Athens until the middle of September. One day I shook Jamal’s hand and got on a train for Corinth. It was rumored that the police in Patras were really bad, that some boys had come back with broken legs or broken arms or worse, and that, even though the journey to Italy was shorter from there, it was unpleasant and unhygienic, and you had to share it with the mice. I have a phobia of mice. Corinth, on the other hand, wasn’t so bad, from what I’d heard. I found a Greek trafficker who hid people in lorries. The danger with lorries is that you’re never sure where you’re going to end up. You might think you’re going to Italy and instead you find yourself in Germany, or if things work out really badly you might even end up back in Turkey. The trafficker asked me for four hundred and fifty euros, but I’d left the money for him in Athens, with Jamal.
I can’t give it to you now, I said. When I get to Europe I’ll call my friend and he can bring it to you. That or nothing.
All right, he said.
The thing to do in Corinth is go to the port, find a lorry and hide in the trailer, with the merchandise, or between the wheels. Over the next few weeks I hid several times, sometimes in quite dangerous places, but the inspectors always found me. The inspectors in Corinth are wily, and clued up to what goes on. They come in with their torches and they even look inside the boxes or sacks or go under the trailers and inspect every nook and cranny, which is what they’re paid for, and I think a lot of them deserve every last cent of their salary. If they catch you, they don’t arrest you, they just grab you by your jacket and chase you away. Sometimes with dogs.
So, after a while, I got fed up with these traffickers who couldn’t organize anything and decided to do it myself. Jamal would hold the money for me.
I moved to the beach (you can sleep well on the beach, and take a shower). I joined a group of Afghans who were also dreaming of leaving, and it became like a kind of game. Every now and again, three or four of us would go to the port and try to get on a lorry. Some days when the weather was nice, and we were in a good mood, we even tried ten or eleven times, in a single day I mean. I managed it once, but the lorry—I told you this could happen—instead of embarking on a ship drove straight out of the port. I had no idea where it was going. I started to beat on the bodywork, from inside the trailer, and when we were about twenty or thirty minutes from the city the driver must have heard me. He stopped, got out and opened up. With a wrench in his hand. Although, when he saw that I was young (I think that was the reason), he didn’t hit me. He screamed a few insults at me, which was only fair, and chased me away.
One evening, with a lovely sunset over the sea, I said to the boys on the beach, Let’s go and try.
At the entrance to the port there were three containers one on top of the other, like a three-story building. I climbed to the top and, making myself as small as possible, squeezed in through a little hole. Suddenly, a machine hooked the building. I held my breath. The building was moved into the ship. One hour later, the freighter closed its hatches. I was very happy, I swear. I was really bursting with joy. I’d have liked to shout, but now wasn’t the time. And besides, it was quite dark and I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t have anything to eat or drink, so I immediately calmed down and realized that before I could say that I’d made it, I had to see how it was going to end.
I stayed there for three days, shut up inside the belly of the ship. There were weird noises, all kinds of rumbling and roaring. Then the ship stopped. I heard the noise of the anchor dropping, which is a noise that’s easy to recognize. Where am I? I wondered.
Italy
I mustn’t get up yet. I mustn’t move. Keep still, breathe, wait. Be patient. Patience can save your life.
Once it had left the port—fifteen minutes had passed, I’d say, anyway less than half an hour—the lorry slowed down and entered a yard, a yard crammed full of other lorries and machines and trailers. My friends in Greece had advised me not to get out straightaway, but to wait until the lorry had traveled deep inside the country (whichever country it was), as far away from any border as possible, and then to take advantage of the driver stopping, at a motorway café for example, to s
lip out. I stayed there, all huddled up, calmly waiting for the lorry to set off again. I went over what I should do, so that I could be quick and accurate when the time came: jump to the ground, land on the tips of my toes, roll over if necessary to soften the blow, look for a way out, then run, don’t turn around, just run.
But the lorry didn’t set off again. Instead, I felt something like an earthquake. I leaned out. A huge crane had hooked the container I was in. I got really scared. What’s going to happen? I thought. What if I end up in a metal crusher? I had to get out straightaway, I told myself, and jumped down.
Three men were working around the crane. I landed like a sack of potatoes (despite my mental rehearsals a bit earlier), because my legs were like wood and couldn’t cushion the fall. As I landed, I let out a scream. And it may have been because of the scream, or because of the fact that they weren’t expecting to see an Afghan fall out of the sky, but those three men were really scared, and even a guard dog that was there took fright and ran away. I’d fallen on concrete, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted by the pain. Immediately looking for a way out, I noticed that part of the perimeter wall dividing the yard from the street had collapsed. I ran in that direction, on all fours, like a little animal: I couldn’t stay on my feet. I thought the three men would follow me, instead of which one of them started shouting in English, Go, go, and pointing toward the main road. Nobody tried to stop me.
———
The first road sign I saw was a blue one.
On it was the word Venice.
I walked for a long time, along a road where there wasn’t much traffic. Suddenly, I saw two figures in the distance, coming quickly toward me. As they got closer, I realized they were riding bicycles. When they saw me, they slowed down and stopped, probably because of my filthy clothes, or my filthy hair, or my face. They asked me if I was all right, if I needed anything, which I really appreciated. We spoke in English, as best we could, and when the first one said he was French I said, Zidane. Then, when the second one said he was Brazilian, I said, Ronaldinho. That was all I knew about their countries, and I wanted them to know how much I liked them. They asked me where I was from. Afghanistan, I said. They said, Taliban, Taliban. That was all they knew about my country.
One of them—the Brazilian, I think—gave me twenty euros. They indicated the direction of the nearest town, which was Mestre. I waved goodbye to them and started walking again, and walked until I found a bus stop. There were two or three people waiting, among them a very young boy. I went up to him and said in English, Train station?
Now I don’t know who that boy was, maybe he was an angel, but he really helped me a lot. He told me to get on the bus with him. When we arrived in Venice, at Piazzale Roma, he bought me a roll because I must have looked as if I was hungry, then he took me to a church where he collected some new clothes for me and where I was able to wash, so that I didn’t disgust people.
I may be stating the obvious, but isn’t Venice beautiful? Everything on water. My God, I thought, I’m in paradise. Maybe all Italy is like this. In the meantime I kept saying to that boy, Rome, Rome, until he realized that I wanted to go to Rome. He went with me to the station and even bought me a ticket. Maybe he was related to the old Greek lady, I thought. In my opinion, kindness like that only gets handed on by example.
I had no idea how far it was from Venice to Rome or how long it would take me to get there. I didn’t want to miss my stop, because then I’d be lost, so not surprisingly I was worried. I knew what I had to do when I got to Rome: I had the instructions memorized. I had to leave the central station and look for a number 175 bus in the square. Even in Greece we all knew that.
On the seat facing me was a fat gentleman who immediately opened his laptop to work. Every time we stopped at a station, or even if the train only slowed down, I leaned forward and said, Please Rome, please Rome. But there must have been a serious problem of communication between us, because whenever I said, Please Rome, please Rome, he would reply, No rum, no rum, because I pronounced Rome as rum.
After a while, after all this asking Please Rome, please Rome, the fat man started shouting angrily, No rum. No. Enough. He was really furious. He got up and walked away. I was afraid he was going to call the police. Instead of which he came back a few minutes later with a can of Coca-Cola and slammed it down in front of me and said, No rum. Coca-Cola. No rum. Drink. Drink.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but you should never refuse a Coca-Cola, so I opened the can and drank and it struck me that the guy was really strange, first getting angry and then treating me to a Coke. Don’t you agree? So, when we came to the next station—I was still sipping my Coca-Cola—I leaned over, innocently, and said, Please Rome, please Rome. At last, he understood. He said, Rome. Not rum. Rome.
I nodded.
Using hand gestures, he told me he was going to Rome, too, and that the central station—Termini, he called it—was his stop, and that I didn’t have to worry, because it was the last stop. So at Rome we got off together. On the platform he shook my hand and said, Bye bye, and I replied, Bye bye, and we parted.
The square in front of the station was packed with cars, people and buses. I went around all the yellow bus stops until I found number 175. I knew I had to get off at the last stop.
It was dark by the time I got to Ostiense. There were lots of people there, the kind you call tramps and I call poor people, but no Afghans. Then I saw a long line of people against a wall, and there were Afghans among them. I joined the queue. They told me they were waiting to eat, and that the food was distributed by the monks from a monastery, and that if you asked them they also gave you blankets and cardboard boxes to bed down in.
Are you hungry? one of the monks asked when it was my turn.
I guessed what he was asking me, and I nodded. They gave me two rolls and two apples, nothing else.
How do you choose a place to settle, Enaiat? How can you tell one from another?
You recognize it because you don’t feel like leaving. Not because it’s perfect, obviously. There aren’t any perfect places. But there are places where at least no one tries to hurt you.
If you hadn’t stayed in Italy, where would you have gone?
I don’t know. Paris, maybe.
And is there a place like Ostiense in Paris?
Yes, I think there’s a bridge where you can go. I can’t remember which bridge, but I know you get there by bus. I even used to know the number of the bus. Now, fortunately, I’ve forgotten it.
I had two hundred euros in my pocket, my savings from Greece. I had to decide in a hurry what to do, because if I needed to buy a ticket or something like that, I couldn’t expect that money to grow in my pocket like a plant, could I? There are moments when you give the future a strange name, and at that moment the name of my future was Payam.
As I mentioned before, I knew Payam was in Italy, but not exactly where, and as a lot of people live in Italy, I had to get cracking if I wanted to find him. So I started looking for him, mentioning his name to everyone, and after all that mentioning of his name, one day I met someone who told me he had a friend who was in England now and who might have talked to him about a boy called Payam who he’d met in a reception center in Crotone, in Calabria. Of course, it could have been another Payam. There’s no copyright on names.
We went to a call shop and phoned this friend in London, who had found work in a bar.
I have a mobile number if you want it, he said.
Of course, I replied. Do you know where he lives?
In Turin.
I wrote down the mobile number on a piece of paper and dialed it without even leaving the booth.
Hello?
Yes. Hello. I’d like to talk to Payam.
Payam speaking. Who’s that?
Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.
Silence.
Hello? I said.
Yes, I can hear you.
This is Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.
&n
bsp; Silence.
Is that you, Payam?
Yes, this is Payam. Are you really Enaiatollah? Where are you calling from?
Rome.
That’s not possible.
Why not?
What are you doing in Italy?
What are you doing in Italy?
Payam really couldn’t believe it was me. He asked me trick questions about our village and my relatives and his. I answered everything correctly. In the end he said, What are you planning to do?
I don’t know.
Then come to Turin.
We said goodbye and I went to Termini station to catch the train. On that occasion, I remember, I learned my first word of Italian. I got an Afghan to go with me, someone who had been in Italy for a while and spoke the language quite well, to buy the ticket and make sure I got on the right train. He came into the carriage with me, looked around, chose a kind-looking lady and spoke to her. This boy has to get off in Turin, he said. The word he used was scendere. As it happens, shin is an Iranian word meaning “stone.” It stuck in my mind, and I found I could get my mouth around the words shindere Turin, shindere Turin. If I said that, I’d avoid mix-ups, like when I’d come to Rome.
During the journey the lady asked me if I had the number of someone who could come and pick me up from Porta Nuova station. I gave her Payam’s number and she called him to make arrangements. She told him what time we’d be arriving and where. Everything went well. In Turin, surrounded by trolleys and bags and a party of children coming back from a trip, Payam and I barely recognized each other. We hadn’t seen each other since I was nine (maybe) and now I was fifteen (maybe) and he was two or three years older than me. Our language sounded strange to us the way it never had when we were children.
———
It was Payam who went with me to the Office for Foreign Minors, without even giving me time to get used to the shapes of the houses or the coolness of the air (it was the middle of September). He had immediately asked me—I still felt the warmth of his embrace on my chest—what my intentions were, because I couldn’t stay undecided for too long: indecisiveness wasn’t healthy for someone who didn’t have asylum. He knew this because, when he arrived, he didn’t have asylum, but he was lucky and some people had helped him. I looked outside the window of the café we’d gone into for a cappuccino—I know a place where they make the best cappuccinos in the city, he’d said—and I thought of the boy in Venice and the lady on the train to Turin. I’d liked both of them so much, they made me want to live in the same country where they lived. If all Italians are like that, I thought, then this might be a place where I could settle. To tell the truth, I was tired. Tired of traveling all the time. So I said to Payam, I want to stay in Italy. And he said, All right. He smiled, paid for the cappuccino, waved to the barman, who he seemed to know, and we set off on foot for the Office for Foreign Minors.