Gun Island

by Amitav Ghosh

  ‘Who knows what really happened,’ said Gisa. ‘But one way or another, it seems that these rifugiati may have in their possession a huge amount of data on human trafficking. Everybody knows that the traffickers have connections everywhere – not just in the criminal underworld but in the highest places, among the police, and even inside European governments. All these networks could be exposed. It’s being said that this is the reason why so many governments don’t want to accept the Blue Boat. This group of refugees may know too much.’

  * * *

  Lubna had some news too.

  ‘There are all kinds of rumours going around,’ she said. ‘People are saying the Lucania may be boarded by commandos, or attacked by drones.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  She nodded sombrely. ‘Yes. And it seems that we are going to be hugely outnumbered by right-wingers: apparently they’ve chartered a whole fleet of boats. It’s not surprising, I suppose, since right-wing parties have so much money now. They may even block us or ram us.’

  ‘You really think they would try that?’

  ‘Who knows? They’re capable of anything. It depends on how the navy handles the situation. Let’s hope that Admiral Vigonovo keeps his head.’

  The name made Cinta’s ears perk up. ‘What was that?’ she said. ‘Who did you say was the admiral?’

  ‘His name is Alessandro di Vigonovo,’ said Lubna. ‘Do you know the name?’

  ‘Certo!’ Cinta slapped the arms of her wheelchair in delight. ‘Of course I know him! I’ve known Sandro since he was a little boy. The di Vigonovos are an old Venetian family. Sandro’s uncle was the parroco of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, in Cannaregio, and Sandro was an altar-boy there for many years. Everybody thought he would be taking the orders but then he met a girl and fell in love, so he decided to join the navy instead. He is a good man; an honest man…’

  She was cut off by a cry from Piya, who was looking out of a window: ‘I don’t believe it! Fin whales dead ahead!’

  There was a concerted rush to the deck rails, just as a huge whale leapt slowly out of the sea and crashed back again. It displaced so much water that the Lucania was rocked by a wave a couple of minutes later.

  ‘Uau!’ cried Gisa. ‘And they all seem to be travelling in the same direction as us! It is strange, no?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Piya. ‘It makes sense that they’d be heading towards Sicily, like us. They need to pass through the Strait of Sicily to get to the western Mediterranean. In some seasons it’s one of the busiest marine mammal corridors in the world.’

  An hour later Piya gave another shout: ‘Sperm whales at three o’clock!’

  We ran out in time to see a jet of spray shooting up into the air.

  ‘This is amazing,’ I said. ‘How many species have you seen today?’

  ‘Four already,’ said Piya. ‘And there are only eight species of cetaceans in the Mediterranean.’

  ‘Is it normal,’ I asked, ‘to see so many of them at the same time?’

  ‘It depends on what you mean by normal,’ said Piya. ‘It changes from season to season.’

  * * *

  Both Lubna and Palash were much in demand among the media people on the Lucania, who interviewed them at length about matters related to migration. But Palash, unlike Lubna, was careful to conceal his identity: he always insisted on speaking anonymously and when a TV journalist asked him to appear on camera he flatly refused and pushed Lubna forward instead.

  At one point a journalist challenged him: ‘Why are you being so secretive?’

  Palash brushed off the question by saying, ‘It’s just that I don’t like being in the limelight.’

  But later he came over to offer me an explanation. ‘You must think I’m a shady character or something.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’

  There was an awkward silence and then Palash led me over to the deck rails, where we leaned into the wind.

  ‘It’s just that my family,’ said Palash, ‘don’t know about my life here.’

  ‘Really? Why’s that?’

  ‘I came to Italy as a student you see, which sets me apart from most Bengali migrants. Back in Bangladesh, my circumstances were completely different from theirs. Most of them are from villages and small towns, while my father is a banker, in Dhaka. My older brother is a civil servant, quite high up. I studied at Dhaka University and even have a degree in management. For some years I worked as a manager in a multinational corporation. I used to go to work in a car every day, wearing a suit and tie.’

  He gestured at his clothes. ‘I suppose that was where I got into the habit of wearing a coat and trousers. But somehow all that was not enough for me. From an early age I’d wanted to leave Bangladesh. I had a close group of friends and we decided, when we were still quite young, that we wanted to go to Finland.’

  ‘Finland?’ I said in surprise. ‘Why Finland?’

  Palash smiled self-deprecatingly.

  ‘I know it sounds strange – to want to move to Finland! – but in Dhaka there are many young people who have that dream. My friends and I thought of Finland as everything that Dhaka was not: quiet, clean, cool, uncrowded – and, of course our first cellphones were Nokias, made in Finland, so we always had a soft spot for that country. Anyway, whatever the reason, we all wanted to go to Finland, it was our fantasy, our dream. One boy in our group actually succeeded in getting a scholarship to study at a Finnish university. This made the rest of us even more determined, especially after our friend started sending us pictures of the place where he was living – we could not imagine anything more beautiful! I applied for the same scholarship, a couple of times, but didn’t get it. So I decided then that I would pay my own way, at a university somewhere in Europe, and transfer to Finland later.

  ‘By this time I was already working and making good money so I started saving up. I knew that I could not expect any help from my family; they were completely against my going abroad – they wanted me to stay on in Bangladesh. So without telling them I started sending out applications to European universities. The University of Padova accepted me so I decided that I would go there. Between my savings, and loans from friends, I was able to obtain a student visa and a plane ticket.

  ‘But things didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I took classes in Italian and learnt to speak it quite well – but I still couldn’t keep up with the coursework. After a year of trying, I gave up on my studies and put in an application for a work permit. When it was turned down I appealed, and kept on appealing, again and again. In this way four years have gone by and I am still in a kind of limbo – not just in terms of my status in Italy but also in regard to the other Bengalis who are here.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because everything about me is different, you see,’ said Palash. ‘My Bangla accent, my manners, my background. The others can tell when they hear me speak; then they find out that I did not come here in the same way that they did; that I have not had to deal with the same kind of suffering or hardship. They assume that I won’t be able to do the kinds of work that they do, so they don’t share information with me – for example about such and such a shop owner needing a delivery boy or about a hotel that is looking for someone to clean the toilets. I would be happy to do that kind of work over here, although back at home I would have scorned even to work as a clerk, in an office. But here I would be happy to deliver pizzas or wash plates. I myself can hardly believe that there was a time when I worked as a manager, dressed in a suit and tie.’

  ‘Why don’t you go back home then,’ I said, ‘and take another job? Surely your family would help you find one?’

  He smiled ruefully but I noticed that his eyes had begun to glisten.

  ‘It’s impossible for me to go back now. My family still does not know that I dropped out of university and am now scraping by on the streets. My parents would not be able to imagine that a son of theirs was doing that kind of work. They think I’m still a student going to l
ectures and writing papers, at my university. If I tell them the truth now I would have to admit that I had been lying all along; that they were right to tell me not to go abroad; that I had made a terrible mistake and would have done better to listen to their advice. I would have to acknowledge that in chasing a dream I destroyed my life.’

  ‘Was your dream a kind of curse then?’ I said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Palash wearily. ‘But everyone has a dream, don’t they, and what is a dream but a fantasy? Think of all the people who come to see Venice: what’s brought them there but a fantasy? They think they’ve travelled to the heart of Italy, to a place where they’ll experience Italian history and eat authentic Italian food. Do they know that all of this is made possible by people like me? That it is we who are cooking their food and washing their plates and making their beds? Do they understand that no Italian does that kind of work any more? That it’s we who are fuelling this fantasy even as it consumes us? And why not? Every human being has a right to a fantasy, don’t they? It is one of the most important human rights – it is what makes us different from animals. Haven’t you seen how every time you look at your phone, or a TV screen, there is always an ad telling you that you should do whatever you want; that you should chase your dream; that “impossible is nothing” – “Just do it!” What else do these messages mean but that you should try to live your dream? You ask any Italian and they will tell you that they have a fantasy, maybe they want to go to South America and see the Andes, or maybe they want to go to India and see the palaces and jungles. And if you’re white, it’s easy: you can go wherever you want and do anything you want – but we can’t. When I look back now and ask myself why I was so determined to go to Finland, I always come back to this: I wanted to go there because the world told me I couldn’t; because it was denied to me. When you deny people something, it becomes all the more desirable.’

  As he was speaking, a strange sense of recognition began to dawn on me: it was as though I were seeing myself in Palash. I remembered the restlessness of my own youth and how it had been fed by another, very powerful medium of dreams – novels, which I had read voraciously, especially savouring those that were about faraway places. I thought of my teenage years and all the time I had spent hunting for cheap paperbacks in the alleys and back lanes of Calcutta (Aldo Manutius might well have had me in mind when he pioneered the publication of inexpensive books; I was addicted to them in much the same way that people of Palash’s generation were to their phones).

  Back in those days there were very few bookshops in Calcutta and their wares were far beyond my reach: instead I had frequented libraries and second-hand bookshops. Reading was my means, I thought, of escaping the narrowness of the world I lived in. But was it possible that my world had seemed narrow precisely because I was a voracious reader? After all, how can any reality match the worlds that exist only in books? Either way, the fact was that novels had done for me exactly what critics had anticipated when ‘romances’ first began to circulate widely, in the eighteenth century: they had created dreams and desires that were unsettling in the exact sense that they were the instruments of my uprooting.

  If mere words could have this effect, then what of the pictures and videos that scroll continuously past our eyes on laptops and cellphones? If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words then what is the power of the billions of images that now permeate every corner of the globe? What is the potency of the dreams and desires they generate? Of the restlessness they breed?

  * * *

  Towards sunset some twenty dolphins appeared suddenly, and began to frolic in the Lucania’s bow wave, right under our noses. Piya identified them as yet another species, striped dolphins, and even she was impressed now. ‘This must be some kind of record,’ she said. ‘We’ve sighted more than half the cetacean species of the Mediterranean, in one day. It’s incredible.’

  ‘Or maybe miraculous?’ said Cinta slyly.

  Piya frowned. ‘Not even close! It’s just a little bit unusual. But I’ve been in places where you can see a dozen different cetacean species in an hour.’

  The sight of the frolicking dolphins created a buzz of excitement on the ship and people began to cheer and clap. The mood seemed to communicate itself to the animals, who responded with an extraordinary display of acrobatics, leaping, somersaulting, and even looking us in the eye as they flipped over in mid-air.

  ‘They’re great old hams, these striped dolphins,’ said Piya with more than a touch of disapproval. ‘They know exactly how to play an audience.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘But wouldn’t that imply that they can understand human feelings?’

  ‘It means nothing of the kind,’ said Piya sharply. ‘It’s just something they do.’

  The show certainly had a transformative effect on the Lucania: the atmosphere on board suddenly lightened, changing from a mood of misgiving and apprehension to one of festive camaraderie. Soon bottles of wine and grappa began to circulate and cauldrons of steaming pasta appeared in the galley – apparently a Catholic charity had brought along large stocks of food. In a while the sound of guitars and accordions began to echo across the decks, sometimes accompanied by snatches of song.

  It was a very clear night, with bright moonlight. Even after nightfall the dolphins continued to keep pace with the Lucania, leaping high every now and then, as if to keep an eye on us.

  At some point Piya fetched me a heaped plate of pasta and some wine. We raised our glasses (disposable and organic) in a silent toast and covered our knees with a metallic blanket. Our shoulders rubbed gently against each other as we devoured our pasta.

  After her last mouthful, Piya lowered her fork and turned to me. ‘Tell me, Deen,’ she said, ‘do you think you could ever live somewhere other than New York?’

  I was about to say no, when I remembered what Cinta had said about a door being opened, just a crack …

  ‘Why do you ask?’ I said guardedly.

  ‘Because it struck me that you might like Eugene, Oregon,’ she said. ‘It’s got great weather and a good library. You should check it out sometime.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘Where would I stay?’

  ‘I guess,’ she said tentatively. ‘You could stay with me; I have a guest-room.’

  My heart was now beating so hard that I was afraid she would hear it. I knew that saying too much might turn her off forever, so I forced myself to sound casual. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘And you know what? If you like Eugene, and feel like hanging around with me a bit longer, it would be easy to arrange something more comfortable. The apartment next to mine just fell vacant.’

  It was a struggle not to betray the joy that was building inside me. Trying to keep my voice steady I said: ‘It’s certainly something to think about. I guess I could let out my apartment in Brooklyn – the rent would bring in enough to live on.’

  ‘You should look into it.’

  ‘I will.’

  I fell silent, overtaken by an overwhelming feeling of gratitude – towards the Gun Merchant, to his story, to Manasa Devi, and even to that king cobra: it was as if they had broken a spell of bewitchment and set me free.

  My eyes wandered to the moonlit sea and I was reminded of a phrase that recurs often in the Merchant legends of Bengal: sasagara basumati – ‘the ocean’d earth’. At that moment I felt that I was surrounded by all that was best about our world – the wide open sea, the horizon, the bright moonlight, leaping dolphins, and also the outpouring of hope, goodness, love, charity and generosity that I could feel surging around me.

  The Storm

  The camaraderie and optimism of those hours faded quickly the next day when a motley flotilla of vessels came into view ahead of us. They were all charter boats, hired by activist groups of many stripes: their varying opinions were evident from the flags and banners that were on display on each vessel.

  Return to Sender!

  No room here; go home
>
  No human is illegal

  We are Indigenous, the only Owners of this Continent

  Climate migration = invasion

  Refugees are not your enemies

  Immigrants are all God’s children

  Enough is ENOUGH

  Send them back with birth control

  As we closed on the vessels ahead it became clear that right-wing, anti-immigrant groups had indeed mustered by far the larger force, with many more boats and supporters than we had. On the evidence of the flags that were fluttering above their decks it seemed that some of their supporters had come a long way to support their cause – from Germany, Hungary, Russia, Singapore and Australia.

  As the ships drew closer, the mood on the Lucania grew increasingly sombre. When word went around that a meeting was being convened on the rear-deck, Cinta insisted on attending, in her wheelchair. I pushed the chair to the stern and stood behind it while the other passengers seated themselves around us, cross-legged.

  My experience of meetings of this kind dated back to my college days in Calcutta, when ‘leaders’ would stand behind microphones loudly haranguing their audiences. But here there were no leaders and no microphones either. Those who had something to say held up their hands and took turns speaking. The default language was English even though only a sprinkling of those present were native speakers.

  The first to speak was a woman in a big, shabby-looking caftan. Expressing herself in halting English, she said that the question we most urgently needed to discuss was what our tactics would be in the event that another vessel tried to block our way or even ram us. This agenda was accepted by a show of hands and then speaker after speaker rose to express their views on the subject. For the most part the feeling was that we needed to be patient and non-violent. A few of the more fiery young activists took the view that if projectiles were thrown at us then we should retaliate in kind – but this proposition was voted down and it was decided that in case another vessel approached us in a threatening manner we would join hands and face the other ship resolutely, but without resorting to violence of any kind.