by Fabio Geda
The sun was setting and there was a strong wind sweeping the streets. By the time we got there it was late and the office was closing. Payam spoke on my behalf, and when the lady told him there wasn’t a place for me in any of the social housing, and that for a week I’d have to fend for myself, he asked the lady to wait a moment, turned and repeated every word to me. I shrugged my shoulders. We thanked her and left.
He was living in social housing and couldn’t put me up.
I can sleep in a park, I said.
I don’t want you to sleep in a park, Enaiat. I have a friend in a village just outside Turin, I’ll ask him to put you up. So Payam called this friend of his, who immediately agreed. We went to the bus station together and Payam told me I shouldn’t get off until I saw someone stick their head in and tell me to follow him. That’s what I did. After an hour’s journey, at one of the stops, an Afghan boy put his head in at the door and made a sign to me with his hand that I’d arrived.
I went to the Afghan boy’s place but after three days—I’m not sure what had happened—it turned out he wasn’t happy about it, he was sorry and all that, but he couldn’t put me up anymore. He said I was an illegal, even though I’d gone to the Office for Foreign Minors of my own free will, and if the police found me in his house there was a risk he would lose his papers.
As was only right, I told him not to worry, I didn’t want to cause him any trouble. I’ve slept in parks for so long, I said, that a few more nights certainly won’t harm me.
But when Payam found out, he again said, No, I don’t want you to sleep in the park. Let me call a social worker.
The person he called was an Italian woman named Danila who had apparently, like us, tried to talk to the Office for Foreign Minors, but it really did seem that there wasn’t even a broom cupboard that had room for me, so she—Danila—had said to Payam, Bring him to my house.
When Payam and I met, he said, There’s a family that are going to put you up.
A family? I said. What do you mean, a family?
A father, a mother and children, that’s what.
I don’t want to go to a family.
Why?
I don’t know how to behave. I’m not going there.
Why? How should you behave? You just have to be nice.
I’m sure I’ll be a nuisance to them.
No. I assure you. I know them well.
Payam kept insisting I should accept Danila’s offer until he was hoarse, as anyone would do with a person he likes and feels responsible for. He wouldn’t even hear about leaving me alone at night, knowing I’d be sleeping on a bench. So in the end I gave in. More for his sake than mine.
The family lived outside Turin, in an isolated house beyond the hills. Getting out of the car—Danila had come to pick us up from the bus stop—I was greeted by three dogs, and as dogs are probably my favorite animals, I thought, This doesn’t look too bad at all.
The father was called Marco, and even though he’s a father, I can call him by his name, not like my father, who I have only called Father. And the children, Matteo and Francesco, I feel up to saying their names too. They aren’t names that cause me pain.
As soon as we entered the house they gave me these big slippers, shaped like rabbits, with ears and a nose and everything—maybe they did it as a joke—and after washing our hands we had dinner at the table, with forks and knives and glasses and napkins and all that, and I was so afraid of making a fool of myself that I copied every single gesture they made. I remember there was also an old woman with them at dinner that evening. She sat stiffly, with her wrists resting on the table, and so I did the same: I stiffened my back and placed my wrists on the table, and seeing that she wiped her mouth after every bite, I wiped my mouth after every bite, too. I remember that Danila had made a starter, a first course, and a second course. My God, I remember thinking, these people eat so much.
After dinner they showed me a room. There was a bed in the room, just one, and it was all mine. Danila came up, bringing me pajamas. Here you are, she said. But I didn’t know what pajamas were. I was used to sleeping in my clothes. I took off my socks and put them under the bed, and when Danila gave me those pajamas, I put them under the bed, too. Marco brought me a towel and a bathrobe. Matteo wanted to play me some of his favorite CDs. Francesco had dressed as an Indian—an American Indian—and called me to see his toys. They were all trying to tell me things, but I didn’t understand a word.
When I woke up in the morning, Danila and Marco had gone to work and the only other person in the house was Francesco, who was about to leave for school. I found out later that he was worried about my presence, and was wondering, What’s this guy up to? At the same time, I was afraid to leave my room, and only went down (my room was in the attic) when Francesco called to me from the bottom of the stairs to say that, if I wanted, breakfast was ready. And it was true. On the table in the kitchen were biscuits and fresh orange juice. Fantastic. That whole day was fantastic. The next few days were fantastic. I would happily have stayed there forever. Because when you’re welcomed by people who treat you well—but in a natural way, without being intrusive—then you just want to go on being welcomed. Don’t you agree?
The one problem was language, but when I realized that Danila and Marco liked to hear me tell my story, I started talking and talking and talking, in English and in Afghan, with my mouth and with my hands, with my eyes and with objects. Do they understand or not? I asked myself. Be patient, I answered myself, and carried on talking.
Until the day when a bed became free in a hostel for migrants.
I went there by myself, on foot.
There’ll be an Iranian lady there who can act as your interpreter, they said.
Good. Thanks.
It’s a place where you can have a quiet life, they said.
Good. Thanks.
Do you want to know anything else?
Study. Work.
Just go there first, then we’ll see.
Good. Thanks.
But there wasn’t any Iranian lady. They’d told me I could have a quiet life there, which was true, I could. But the place itself wasn’t quiet at all. There was constant shouting and quarreling. And besides, it was more like a prison than a home. As soon as I arrived, they confiscated my belt and wallet with the little money I had. The doors were closed from the outside, and sealed. You couldn’t go out (and you can imagine how accustomed I was to freedom, after all those years spent going all over the place by myself). I mean, I appreciated everything, it was still a clean, warm place, and there was pasta and things like that for dinner, but I wanted to work or study—preferably study—instead of which two months went by, under me, like water flowing under a transparent sheet of glass, and for two months I didn’t do anything, didn’t even speak, because I still didn’t know the language, although I tried to learn it from the books I’d been given by Marco and Danila. The only distractions were watching television, in silence, and sleeping and eating. In silence.
Doing nothing wasn’t what I’d planned, and I couldn’t receive visits, not even from the family who’d looked after me. But after two months Danila and Marco started to worry and arranged for a youth worker named Sergio, who wasn’t only a youth worker but also a friend of theirs and someone who was known to the home, to pick me up on Saturday afternoons and take me to spend some of my free time (and I had plenty of that) with the boys from a youth group.
Sergio came to fetch me, and that first Saturday was a wonderful day. When I got to the youth group, I found Payam there. He took me by the hand and introduced me to everyone. Danila was also there. So I got a chance to talk to Danila, and tell her, thank you thank you, but I wasn’t really very happy in that place, for these reasons, that I hadn’t come all this way just to eat, sleep and watch television. I wanted to study and work. At that point Danila made a face like someone who’s thinking about something, and the thing they’re thinking about is important, but at that moment, even though it seemed as if
she had something to say to me, she didn’t say anything. The following week, though, when I went back to the youth group, she came up to me, took me aside and in a low voice, as if the words weighed on her, asked me if I’d like to go and stay with them, because they wanted to do something to help me, and they had plenty of room, as I’d seen, and if I liked that room they could give it to me. Not only would I like to, I replied, but it was a really fantastic idea.
So Danila and Marco sent off the request. A few days later, the time it took to get through the paperwork, they came and fetched me from the home. They told me I was being fostered. They explained what that meant, that I had a house and a family, three dogs, my own room, and even a wardrobe where I could put my clothes. They explained that I was the first child they had fostered, but they could see I was the right one.
The thing they didn’t need to explain, because I already knew, was that we were going to get on well with each other.
That’s how it started. What I’d call my new life. Or at least, the first step. Because now that I’d been welcomed in the house of Marco and Danila, I had to try and stay there, and staying there meant not getting myself expelled from Italy, and not getting myself expelled from Italy meant being recognized as a political refugee and granted asylum.
The first problem was the language. I spoke very little Italian. Everyone made an effort to help me. I could barely read the Latin alphabet, and was always confusing zero with the letter O. Even the pronunciation was difficult.
It might be better if you did some courses, said Danila.
School? I asked.
School, she said.
I gave her a thumbs-up sign to let her know how pleased I was. I remembered the school in Quetta, the one where I went to hear the children play. In a fit of euphoria, I chose three courses, because I was afraid that one wasn’t enough. I would leave with Danila in the morning, when she went to work, at eight, then walk around until half past nine, when it was time for my first class at the Parini Adult Education Center, which is something they have in Turin, and also in other cities, too, at least I think so. Then I left, went to another school, attended my second class, came out again, went to the youth group, attended the Italian classes there in the afternoon, and at that point, happy and exhausted, returned home. This went on for six months. In the meantime my friend Payam continued acting as my interpreter when I couldn’t manage by myself, for example at home, when someone had to tell me something and I didn’t understand, they’d phone him and he’d translate. Sometimes Danila even called him to find out what I wanted for dinner, even though I really didn’t mind what I ate as long as it was something that filled my belly.
In June I took the middle school exam (even though the teachers at the Parini Center didn’t want me to, they said it was too early, but that was because of that old question of time, which isn’t the same everywhere in the world).
In September I enrolled in upper school, where I immediately cut a sorry figure. Or rather, I think I did, because I sometimes don’t notice when something funny or strange happens, because if I did notice, I would avoid it happening, would avoid being made to feel a fool, and so on. Once the health education teacher called me to the blackboard and asked me to write things, I can’t remember what, something to do with chemistry, or with sums, but instead of numbers there were letters or something like that. I said I didn’t understand it at all. She explained it to me, but I said again that I didn’t understand, not even her explanation.
What school have you been to? she asked.
I said I hadn’t gone to school.
What? she said.
I said I’d done six months of Italian classes and then the high school exam as an external student and that was it.
What about before that? she asked.
I said I hadn’t done anything before that. Yes, I’d gone to school in Afghanistan, in my little village, with my teacher who wasn’t alive anymore, but that was it.
She got very upset. She went to the principal to complain and for a moment I was afraid I’d be thrown out of the school, which would have been a tragedy for me, because school was the one thing that interested me. Fortunately, another teacher intervened. She was patient, she said, we would take things one step at a time, health education and psychology could wait, and we’d give priority to the other subjects. So, as there was a boy in my school who was a bit handicapped, and he had special support, while I didn’t, for a few months I took advantage of the opportunity and during the health education and psychology periods I left the class and studied with him.
Language, Enaiat. As you’re talking and telling me your story, I keep thinking you’re not using the language you learned from your mother. At evening classes, right now, you’re studying history, science, math, geography, and you’re studying these subjects in a language that isn’t the one you learned from your mother. The names of the food you eat aren’t in the language you learned from your mother. You joke with your friends in a language you didn’t learn from your mother. You’ll become a man in a language you didn’t learn from your mother. You bought your first car in a language you didn’t learn from your mother. When you’re tired, you rest in a language you didn’t learn from your mother. When you laugh, you laugh in a language you didn’t learn from your mother. When you dream, I don’t know in what language you dream. But I know, Enaiat, that you’ll fall in love in a language you didn’t learn from your mother.
I remember I didn’t get on too well with my classmates during the first year, because I really liked being at school. For me it was a privilege. I studied a lot and if I got a bad mark I immediately went to the teacher to say I wanted to catch up, and that was something that bothered the others a lot. Even those who were younger than me said I was a swot.
Then things started getting better. I made friends. I learned a lot of things that forced me to look at life with different eyes, like when you put on a pair of sunglasses with tinted lenses. When I studied health education, I was surprised by what they told me, because when I compared it to my past, to the conditions I’d lived in, the food I’d eaten, and so on, I wondered how it was possible that I was still in one piece.
I was at the end of my second year when a letter came to the house saying that I had to go to Rome to meet the commission that would decide if I could be granted asylum as a political refugee. I’d been expecting that letter. I’d been expecting it because I’d met an Afghan boy at the Parini Center who’d arrived in Italy just before me and whose story was very similar to mine. So everything that happened to him tended to happen to me, too, like being summoned because of his papers and things like that. He’d received the letter a few months earlier, had gone to Rome, had met the commission and the outcome had been that he wasn’t recognized as a political refugee. I remember his desperation when he came back and told me. I couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t they granted him asylum? If they hadn’t granted him asylum, they wouldn’t grant me asylum. I remember that he put his head in his hands, this friend of mine, and wept, but without tears, wept with his voice and his shoulders, and said, Now where can I go?
One day I left on a train with Marco and Danila and traveled the same route I’d taken to get from Rome to Turin but in the opposite direction. We presented ourselves punctually in this building in an area the name of which I forget. We waited a short while, then they called my name, which echoed down the corridor. Marco and Danila stayed there. I went in.
Sit down, they said.
I sat down.
This is your interpreter, they said, indicating a boy next to the door.
I said I preferred to do without. Thank you.
So you speak Italian well, they said.
I replied that yes, I spoke it quite well. But that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want an interpreter. If you speak directly to people you convey emotions more intensely. Even if you stumble over your words and don’t get the intonation right, the message you get across is closer to what you have in your
head, compared with what an interpreter could repeat—don’t you think so?—because emotions can’t come from the mouth of an interpreter, only words, and words are just a shell. We chatted for forty-five minutes. I told them everything. I told them about Nava, about my father and mother, about the journey, about how, when I slept in Marco and Danila’s house in Turin, my nights would be disturbed by nightmares, a bit like the wind disturbing the sea between Turkey and Greece, and in those nightmares I was running away from something and, in running, I often fell out of bed, or else I would get up, tear off the blanket, wrap it around my shoulders, go downstairs, open the door of the yard and go and sleep in the car, all without realizing it, or else I would neatly fold my clothes on one side, and lie down in the bathroom, in a corner. I told them I always sought out the corners to sleep in. I was a sleepwalker. I told them all this, and after a while the commissioner said that he couldn’t understand why I wanted political asylum because in Afghanistan the situation wasn’t so dangerous for Afghans, when you came down to it, and I would be perfectly all right if I could be in my own home.