Refugee 87

by Ele Fountain

  I feel a thrill of excitement, which quickly begins to fade. My thoughts are mirrored in Bini’s face. I am wondering why no one else has managed to escape. It must be impossible to make it past both the guards and the boundary.

  “What’s in it for you?” Bini asks.

  “Like I said, we need our families to know the truth. Then we can at least have some peace. But escaping is beyond us.”

  “Why didn’t you try when you still could?” I ask quietly.

  Before anyone has a chance to answer, Bini cuts in. “Is it because you knew you’d just get killed? I guess you’ve got nothing to lose if we go and get killed instead.”

  “That’s a fair question,” says Yonas. “Most of us came from other camps—we would have been physically unable to make it even when we first arrived. It didn’t take long for those who were taken here first to end up looking like the rest of us. We didn’t have a plan back then. By the time we did, it was too late for any of us.”

  “But they might decide to let you out one day,” says Bini.

  “I’ve been in prison for fifteen years, and in all that time I’ve never known them to set anyone free. Certainly the only way people leave this compound is with a sheet over their face.”

  “There’s nothing they could offer us—that we want—apart from our freedom,” says Nebay. “There aren’t many perks here for good behavior. But if you prefer to rot with us, then go ahead.”

  “Escape and do what? Go back home?” Bini says.

  “Keep your voice down,” hisses Nebay.

  “No,” says Yonas. “Escape from this country. You will take the information you have learned about us to somewhere safe, and from there you will let our families know. You would be arrested immediately if you returned home. The military will be monitoring your houses, and those of your relatives.”

  “Our families,” I gasp.

  Yonas doesn’t answer.

  Once more I feel tears rush to my eyes, and suddenly I am very grateful for the darkness.

  After a minute, Bini says, “I think I get why you want to help us escape, but we’re stuck in this box, and outside there are guards everywhere. Wouldn’t we be shot immediately?”

  “Your opportunity will be when you gather firewood,” says Nebay. “The guards don’t get much more to eat than we do. They’re unfit, and they’re bad shots. You would have a chance.”

  “Has anyone tried to escape before?” Bini asks.

  “Yes,” says Yonas after a while. “They brought his body back the next day and showed us all what would happen if we tried to do the same.”

  I look over at Bini, but for once I cannot tell what he’s thinking.

  “What happens if we do make it away from the compound?” he asks. “Where would we go? You said we were in the desert miles from anywhere, so how can we ever leave the country?”

  “Quieter,” snarls Nebay.

  “You’re asking the right questions,” answers Yonas. “We’re miles from everything—except the border.”

  Courage

  The container gets hotter. I don’t know if I can take much more.

  Bini lies on his back staring at the ceiling, sweat glistening on his face.

  I have no idea what time it is, but it feels like a couple of hours since today’s brown soup. That means early afternoon.

  No one has spoken for a while. Now that Yonas has mentioned escape, it’s hard to think about anything else.

  “Shouldn’t we be making a plan?” I whisper. “Finding out how they think we can escape? Yonas said we don’t have much time.”

  “Look at them,” Bini whispers back. “They’re barely alive.”

  “Normally we sleep in the daytime.” I tune in to Nebay’s voice and realize he’s talking to me. “But you’re right; we need you to be ready in case you have a chance to go tonight.”

  I try to concentrate on what he’s saying through the veil of heat.

  “We’re helping you because you’re going to help us. To do that, you must learn each of our stories.”

  “We know them already,” says Bini.

  “Can you remember everyone’s names? The names of our wives or parents?” Nebay asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “You must learn the villages we came from, and, if there is one, a phone number. Test each other and, later, we will test you, too.”

  “Okay,” says Bini, nodding.

  “Also, there is one thing Yonas didn’t tell you. The guards will interrogate you. It’s standard practice. They will wait a few more days until you’re starting to really miss your family and some decent food, until they think you’ll tell them anything, and then they will take you away for questioning. Only, it won’t be just questioning. By the time they’ve finished, neither of you will be running anywhere for some time. That is another reason why none of us was in any shape to escape, even when we had only been here a few weeks.”

  “But all we did was pack a bag,” I say. “Our mothers had arranged for us to leave the country. All the guards know, though, is that we had packed a bag to go somewhere.”

  “They will want to know where to, who with, how. They won’t rest until they have some answers.”

  We are no more than halfway around the room when there is the now-familiar bang as the bolt slides down. The doors to the container swing open.

  “You, eighty-seven, get up.” A guard points to me. “And you, eighty-eight, and you, twenty-four.” The guard points to Bini and the small man who served dinner. “Outside, now.”

  I step over to the entrance and turn to look at Nebay, but the guard gives me a hard shove. Nine other men are already waiting outside. I’m not sure whether they are the same men as yesterday. We head back to the metal gate and the guards push us out of the compound.

  “You have twenty minutes. Gather as much wood as you can carry.”

  Three armed guards follow us out and point toward the scrubby thornbushes at the base of the small rocky hillock.

  I try to catch Bini’s eye, but he is looking down.

  We’re not ready. If Bini runs, though, I must go, too. I cough to get his attention, but he is walking next to a guard and cannot turn around. I hope he doesn’t think that’s a sign for us to go. The sun is hot and my pulse is racing. Sweat sticks to my T-shirt.

  The guards walk a little way ahead.

  Bini bends down to pick up some thin sticks. He scratches one of them on the ground and I read the word no.

  “What are you doing?” barks one of the guards. It’s the one with the thick eyebrows and small violent eyes. He seems to dislike us more than he dislikes the other prisoners.

  Bini doesn’t answer but bends down to pick up more sticks.

  The guard grabs Bini’s collar and lifts his head. “You’re not a student now,” he hisses, scowling up at Bini. “Work faster.” He shoves Bini to the ground.

  Bini gathers the sticks he has dropped and carries on searching for more without looking up.

  The guards assemble on one side, picking their teeth and talking. Watching us gather firewood seems like a nuisance for them.

  When our arms are filled with thin thorny branches, we head slowly back toward the compound. The other men struggle to walk with their arms full, even though the wood doesn’t weigh very much.

  The guard with small eyes walks over beside me and Bini. “Tomorrow we will have a little chat with you, eighty-seven.” He prods my side with his rifle. “You will need to have some answers. The day after, it will be your friend’s turn.” He smiles, but it is a smile to freeze blood, even in the desert.

  There is silence as we step inside the container.

  Bini and I sit back down with Semere, the man we were speaking to before the guards came. He smiles at us. Perhaps he is glad that we didn’t try to leave. We pick up where we left off—finding out the name of his home village, a phone number for a close relative.

  Finally, the only person left to speak to is Yonas again.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to re
member everything you’ve learned?” he asks anxiously.

  “No problem,” says Bini. “It’s much easier than binomial theorem.”

  Yonas looks at me, confused.

  “Sure, Bini’s right. It’s pretty easy compared with what we have to remember at school.” I pause but force myself to continue. “One of the guards said he wants to have a chat with me tomorrow.”

  I can just make out Yonas closing his eyes. “We will carry on as we are,” he says. “The rest is up to fate.”

  My head swirls with names and stories of how the people in the room were first taken by the military. I feel as if the skin has been peeled off the country I knew, and now I see the rotten fruit inside.

  “Let’s test each other,” says Bini.

  We recite names and villages until the gaps between our answers become longer. Bini starts to doze.

  I cannot stop from thinking about what will happen during my time with the guards tomorrow. I might tell them something by mistake that will put my mother in danger. Yonas made it sound as if they would hurt me. If I am badly hurt, then I won’t be able to leave here with Bini.

  The box finally begins to cool down and the men start shuffling around in their blankets, preparing to rest.

  I turn to face Yonas and ask softly, “If we do make it out of the camp, then where do we go? How do we know which direction the border is?”

  “For that,” he answers, “you will need to talk to Tesfay.” Yonas points to the bread man. “I know that he has a wife but no children, and he tried to escape from a military camp similar to this one, two years ago. Only, at that military camp he wasn’t a prisoner—he was in charge of logistics.”

  As if the guards have been listening to every word, there is a clank and the doors swing open to reveal a figure with a rifle slung over his shoulder, holding a basket of stale bread. Bread must come first.

  As Tesfay gets up to pass it around, Yonas takes off his shoe and removes what looks like a sock from his foot. I look more closely and see that it is a small bag made from the same cloth as the blankets.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to use this. You can carry a small amount of bread in here,” he says. “Saves time if you need to leave in a hurry, which you will.”

  On the far side of the container, Idris takes something plastic from under his blanket and holds it up. Bini steps over to take it, but Idris snatches it back.

  “If they find this on you, then you’ll go straight to the punishment cells and you might not come back.” His voice is so much younger than his face.

  I can just make out that he’s holding a small water bottle squashed flat, with some sort of cord attached to the top.

  “You tie it around your waist and then tuck it into your pants. The guards can’t see it, and you’ll be able to run with your hands free.” Idris conceals it back beneath his blanket.

  Before we can eat our rolls, Nebay beckons Bini over. He passes him a piece of bread two centimeters by two centimeters.

  “For your bag,” he says.

  Bini looks at the bread, then at Nebay, and smiles. Before he can sit down, others in the room beckon him over and also give a small piece of bread, until Bini’s hands are both full. Yonas passes me the bag from underneath his blanket and we carefully place each square of bread inside, murmuring our thanks to everyone in turn.

  I’m not used to making new friends. Maybe they aren’t friends, exactly, but I know more about the people in this container than any of my old neighbors.

  As we are plunged into darkness once more, I am amazed at how quickly I have absorbed the shape of the box and where people sit. I understand why they always pick the same spot, and why, although it stinks, Yonas has to sit so close to the toilet.

  Bini grabs hold of my shoulder and we step carefully between the legs and blankets to reach Tesfay.

  “Don’t sit on top of me,” he says. “Stop there—you’re close enough.”

  He sits very still, but I can hear his breath wheezing in and out. I know that soon Bini and I will sound the same as him.

  “You want to know how to escape,” Tesfay whispers, “and whether you might live.” It’s not a question. He wheezes for a couple of breaths. “With one of those I can help you,” he says. “Assuming you make it away from the camp alive, you’ll need to head due west. In the afternoon, your shadow should fall to your left, moving around behind you. At dusk, one of the first and brightest stars to rise will be in the southeast; leave it behind you to your left. After sunset, the moon will rise in the east; head away from it.

  “If you run in the daytime, you’ll probably die from heat exhaustion; if you don’t, they’ll catch up and shoot you. Late afternoon or dusk is best, but you won’t have a choice. The border is approximately six miles from here. If you walk without stopping, it’ll take you two hours to reach it. You have to get to the border before they send out extra troops to catch you. They won’t expect you to know how to get there, which is in your favor. There aren’t any roads in the desert, which is good. But they have trucks and they have guns. If you can run far enough to get out of their line of sight, then find some soft sand and bury yourself in it. They’ll be looking for upright figures on the horizon. The border has a fence and checkpoints. The guards aren’t always watching, and sometimes the towers are too far apart for them to see very clearly, but they also have guns.” Tesfay continues in his special quiet voice until he seems satisfied that we know everything he has to share.

  “And what are the chances of us actually making it away from the camp alive, really?” Bini asks.

  Tesfay says nothing for a moment. “The chances of them ever setting you free from this camp are zero. Your chances of making it away from the camp are slightly higher than that.”

  Before Tesfay can say any more, there is a loud bang. I jump. Perhaps they have come for me a day early. Seconds later, I realize the guards are lifting the bolt on one of the containers next to us. There is a brief sound of shouting, then someone sobbing. Then the container doors slam shut and there is a hissing noise on the gravel. Someone’s feet trailing in the stony sand as they are dragged away from the container.

  We crawl back to our corner. I fall asleep with numbers, names, and villages running through my head, trying to block out the cries of the man who is being beaten in one of the whitewashed buildings.

  Fear

  I wake as light shines through the bullet holes above me. A hundred small suns.

  Then I become aware of the eyes upon Bini and me again. The other men are awake. Now, though, I see that they look at us with hope, not menace as I’d thought before.

  “Time for me to test you,” says Nebay.

  We move closer to him, and he starts by pointing from prisoner to prisoner, choosing either me or Bini to tell him his name, what happened to him, and any details of his family we might know. Although we speak in no more than a whisper, I know that the men are listening to every word.

  We get it all right.

  “I thought everyone living in this box was going to die in this box. But now that you’ve arrived, that’s not true anymore. Even if we don’t get out of here, our stories might.” Nebay says nothing more.

  I never noticed it before, but my life used to move at a steady pace. For the last week, time has taken on a new dimension. I understand that it can accelerate in a heartbeat, then slow almost to a stop. I must learn to cope with a different rhythm.

  The container gradually heats up with the morning sun.

  “Want to play chess?” asks Bini.

  I stare at him blankly.

  “I’ll go first. I move my king’s pawn two spaces to e4.”

  I feel a smile creep across my face. I need to think for a minute. “Okay, I move my king’s pawn to e4, too.”

  “You mean e5,” says Bini.

  “Ah, so you keep counting from your side. In that case, e5.” I find it much harder moving the pieces in my head.

  After eight moves, it’s chec
kmate. Bini beats me.

  “Bad luck.” He smiles.

  “I hope not,” I reply.

  With every bang of a container bolt, I wonder if the guards are coming to take me away for questioning. But today follows the same pattern as the previous days; the container becomes hotter and hotter, until all thoughts are pushed from our minds and we begin to doze again.

  I wake and notice that the temperature has dropped very slightly.

  No one has come to get us. In fact, the camp is very quiet.

  “Do they come at the same time every day?” I ask Yonas.

  “Not every day, but if they do come, it’s always before dusk.”

  The bullet-hole discs of light start to creep slowly across the floor toward the container wall as the sun sinks from its zenith.

  A few minutes later, there is the crunch of feet in the dust and a bang as the bolt of the next-door container slides open. They must be going to collect firewood.

  Idris plunges the flattened bottle into the water bowl, holding it under for a few seconds, then screws on the lid, shakes off the drips, and throws it to Bini.

  Yonas passes the bag of bread to me. I stuff it under my waistband, then pour a cup of water and gulp down half, then give the other half to Bini.

  Bini is just rebuttoning his pants when the bolt slides on our container.

  The guard peers in. “You, eighty-seven, and you, twenty-four, out now,” he shouts, pointing to me and Tesfay. As he stares through the darkness, I feel as if my heart might have stopped. I can’t go without Bini. He points toward our corner of the room again. “And you, eighty-eight.”

  We get quickly to our feet and walk to the entrance without turning around.

  My heart starts thumping as if someone is banging the side of the container. I’m sure the guards can hear it.

  “Act tired,” whispers Bini.

  As soon as we step down onto the sandy path, they slam and bolt the doors, then push us in the back with the butts of their rifles toward the men from the other containers, and then to the metal gate.