The Lightless Sky

by Gulwali Passarlay

  As ours wasn’t a proper bus stop we rather assumed the bus would be empty, but when it arrived it was packed with locals. We were fuming. How obvious could it be that this was a dodgy pick-up? We were certain we’d be caught.

  Raheem stayed behind. Our host had reassured him that, even without papers, he could work in Iran. He knew enough about the country and had such good language skills he figured he’d be better off trying to survive there than continuing to risk all to get to Europe. I was sad to leave him, but I understood his reasons.

  The new group of four: me and Mehran, and now Jawad and Tamim too, travelled on the bus for the whole night, until we were the only passengers left on board. We had no idea where we were going, only that we were driving away from Tehran. I hoped, prayed, that the bus was going somewhere in the direction of the Turkish border, which was what we needed to do in order to keep moving forwards.

  If I made it, it would now be the third time I had crossed the border into Turkey.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Get out.’

  It was 10 o’clock in the morning. The driver had just stopped the bus, without warning.

  ‘What? Where are we?’

  He was dropping us in the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Get out.’

  We did as we were told.

  ‘Now what?’ Jawad and Tamim looked at Mehran as the bus drove off.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Have you got a plan?’ They turned to me next.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just great,’ snapped Jawad. These two were new at this. They had yet to realize that this kind of stuff was normal.

  Not knowing where I was, where I was going or when I’d get there had almost become routine for me now. It never stopped being stressful, but I was used to it.

  We stood by the road not knowing what to do. Less than five minutes later, a car approached us.

  It was the most amazing car I had ever seen. It was silver, with tinted windows and looked like a racing car, of the type I had only ever seen in pictures. As the driver pulled over, it sat crouched low to the broken ground, like a wild animal ready to pounce.

  A young, clean-shaven man in jeans, a grey Western-style suit jacket and red shirt opened the door. He looked very nervous as he spoke: ‘Qubat’s people?’

  I couldn’t contain my smile. It was so wide I thought my face might crack – even as hungry, tired and scared as I was, that car gave me a thrill. If my friends back home could see me now. Imagine driving through the streets of Jalalabad in this.

  ‘What are you grinning at?’ said the man, who was dabbing sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied, swallowing my teeth.

  He looked really annoyed. ‘Why are there four? There should only be three of you. I can’t take four.’ He was right. The car had only one passenger seat and a very tiny back seat. He pointed at Tamim. ‘You wait here. I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘No way. I am not staying.’

  We looked at Tamim, feeling guilty. I looked the man pleadingly: ‘We can try.’

  Two minutes later, Mehran and I were crushed into the tiny back seat. Jawad, who was the eldest, was in the front – even in these strange circumstances we always gave our elders respect – and Tamim was in the boot.

  The man was clearly not happy – sweat was now trickling down his temples. He didn’t take us very far: along a couple of winding lanes and into a small hamlet, eventually pulling into the yard of a small brick house. In front of it was a woman sweeping, using one of the stick brooms my mother used.

  The man ordered us out of the car. ‘This is my parents’ house. You –’ he pointed to Tamim – ‘will stay here, and I will come back for you.’

  Tamim started arguing: ‘Why me? Leave one of the others.’

  I felt bad, but I wasn’t about to give up my place for him. I’d been on this journey for over half a year now; Tamim had been on it for less than a week.

  Mehran and I got in the tiny back seat again.

  The engine roared into life as we pulled away on to some small and winding but smooth country roads. Tamim looked forlornly on from the yard. Mehran and I grinned in silence at each other as we pulled away.

  After about an hour, the driver pulled over again. ‘We are nearing a place where there are lots of police searches and checkpoints,’ he said. ‘I need to take some precautions.’

  We all climbed out, and the driver opened the boot. Jawad and Mehran looked at me expectantly. I moved towards the boot: as the smallest and youngest in every situation, I accepted the treatment.

  ‘No,’ said the driver. ‘The boy rides with me. You two – get in.’

  My friends stared in shock at the tiny space.

  ‘It’s only a few miles. Then you can get out.’

  Neither of them moved.

  ‘Look, the boy can pass as my young brother. You two look like a pair of illegals, which is what you are. So, what do you suggest we do?’

  I tried very hard not to burst out laughing.

  Jawad went in legs first, tucking his back tightly to the back seats. Mehran followed – just: Jawad had to hold him in place by wrapping his arms around his chest so that they neatly spooned each other. I don’t know how two grown men managed to fit in there, and it did not look at all comfortable.

  The driver smirked. ‘Such a cute couple.’

  I could barely contain myself at that – I bit down hard on my lip and snorted.

  Mehran looked up at me, his face red with discomfort and humiliation. ‘You laugh one more time, Gulwali, and you’ll pay for it when I get out of here.’

  ‘Mind your heads,’ said the driver, shoving the boot lid closed.

  Barely able to contain my glee, I climbed into the passenger seat.

  ‘Put your seat belt on,’ the driver barked at me. ‘We are relatives. So you must call me “brother” if the moment requires it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, flushing with guilt, anger and pain at the thought of Hazrat.

  The driver took a pair of sunglasses and a magazine from the glove box. ‘Put these on.’

  I’d never worn sunglasses before. They felt fun to wear. And I really liked the way I didn’t need to squint in the afternoon light.

  ‘Read the magazine and ignore what’s going on around you.’

  ‘But I can’t read Farsi very much,’ I said, puzzled for a moment by the role the magazine was supposed to play.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s a car magazine – just look at the pictures and smile at the guards.’

  ‘Um, OK,’ I said, beginning to think it would be easier in the boot.

  ‘Salâm aleykom,’ he said, his Farsi accent strong. ‘Now you say it.’

  I knew this of course. Every Muslim knows the Arabic greeting, ‘Peace be with you.’ Most Muslims around the world use the simple, shortened version, ‘Salaam’, peace, as a way to say hello.

  ‘Asalām-alaykom,’ I responded. I tried to say it in the best Farsi pronunciation I could muster, but clearly it came out with a Pashtu accent, with all the emphasis in the wrong places.

  He groaned. ‘Say it like that and we’ll get arrested for certain. Try to sound like less of a peasant, and more like you belong both in this car and in Iran.’

  I bristled at that. ‘Asalâm aleykom.’

  ‘That’s better. Not like an Iranian, but better. Please just smile and look at the magazine. Say nothing unless you are forced to.’

  When the moment came at the checkpoint I was shaking so much I could barely hold my magazine still. Being in the car was no longer exciting – I just wanted it to be over.

  I watched a truck full of migrant workers being searched in front of us. I could recognize them as Afghans. They had papers, which the police studied in detail. The polic
e pushed them around and handled them roughly. I was terrified of what treatment we were surely about to get.

  ‘Remember what I told you, boy,’ said the driver, through the corner of his mouth.

  The border guard approached his side of the car.

  ‘Salâm aleykom.’

  The steely faced police officer ignored the driver’s greeting. ‘What’s your business?’

  ‘My brother and I are visiting relatives for the day.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said the guard, as if he had his doubts.

  I felt the guard’s eyes on me. I lowered my magazine.

  ‘Salaam,’ I said, in as bright a tone as I could muster, hoping it came out the Iranian way. I was shaking inside and out, terrified. I tried to control my hands to hold the magazine steady.

  ‘His mother wants me to discuss a wedding match for him, with my cousin. He is getting of an age. That’s who we are going to see.’

  ‘What’s your favourite car, boy?’ the guard demanded.

  I pointed to a smart black police Land Cruiser parked by the gate.

  He grunted with approval. ‘If only choosing a wife was as easy, hey.’

  The two men laughed.

  ‘OK,’ said the guard, sweeping his arm. ‘You can go.’

  I thought of my friends in the boot and said a silent prayer of thanks.

  Shortly after getting a safe distance away from the police security check, the driver made a quick phone call to whoever was waiting up ahead. We drove on for another fifteen minutes or so before we came across a blue four-wheel drive, parked by the road. I recognized it as the type of vehicle commonly driven in the Kurdish inhabited mountainous regions. I guess it meant that that was where we were headed.

  ‘Come on. Jump in,’ the driver of the new vehicle urged.

  I was first in, diving on to the back seat.

  The others were struggling to get of the boot of the first car, and were not helped when the driver slammed the boot shut again as another car came around the corner. From my hiding place I looked on, horrified, convinced he’d just chopped my friend’s hands off.

  The car passed and he opened it again. ‘For God’s sake, get out of my bloody car.’

  An angry Mehran snapped back at him, ‘We were trying to do just that until you shut the lid on my head.’

  I laughed with relief. If his mouth was working, that meant he was fine.

  Mehran and Jawad got in next to me, both bitterly complaining about their bad backs and cramped legs.

  ‘If I was afraid of coffins before, I really am right now,’ Mehran said, rubbing the small of his back. ‘That was awful.’

  I started to snigger.

  He threw me a furious look and waved a fist. ‘I mean it, Gulwali. You laugh at me one more time—’

  We were interrupted by the sound of the silver car and the rude young man disappearing into the distance. The sound of the engine still gave me a small thrill, even as the racing car vanished out of sight around a bend.

  Ensconced in our new vehicle, we wound slowly upwards for the next few hours until the driver of the blue car dropped us off in a steep valley, the splintered hillsides sparsely thatched with coarse thorn bushes. A trail of pea-green willow trees marked the passage of a stream that tumbled below us.

  ‘Hey.’

  The voice drifted up on the cool dusk air.

  ‘Hey. Over here.’

  One of the strangest things about this journey was how whenever a smuggler or driver gave us an instruction, we simply followed it. Whether it was get in the car, stay silent, follow me, eat this, shave your beard, hand over your passport – we simply followed orders. Without questioning or really even thinking, we put our lives into the hands of strangers, time and again. We had no choice. When they said come, we little lost sheep had to follow.

  It’s very hard to explain the feeling of repeatedly putting your complete trust in the hands of strangers who see you as a commodity. Every time I did as one of these men asked, I had an acute awareness that this could be the last instruction I would ever follow. Each of these men had the power to take us to our deaths, at any time.

  But I knew Allah was always with me. I prayed often, I talked to God, I found comfort in my faith. I don’t even know if that was a choice I’d consciously made. I simply had to. Faith was all I had left.

  We scrambled down a rocky embankment to see a fast-flowing stream, where a leather-jacketed man who owned the voice was standing. At the fork of the river, under a low-hanging willow tree, stood a tiny, crooked shepherd’s hut. Its gnarled wooden door hung wide, clinging on by one remaining hinge.

  ‘Wait in there.’ He pointed at the hut. ‘I will come soon.’

  Nervously, we entered the dark interior of the hut. The dirty floor was uneven and scattered with leaves and the remains of cigarette butts, long since gutted for any scraps of tobacco. There were a few puddles of clothing in the corners that had been used as pillows, and ancient evidence of a fire in the crooked fireplace.

  It was much colder in this mountainous valley. My T-shirt felt as thin as tissue paper, and I rubbed my shoulders to keep warm.

  Mehran scrabbled about on the floor, trying to find a cigarette butt that still contained some tobacco. I rubbed and massaged my shins, knowing that we’d be on the move again before long. We were most definitely still in Iran, but where exactly I couldn’t tell.

  We spent several hours there, until the day turned to night. We were huddling together for warmth when two men carrying hissing, crackling walkie-talkies burst through the broken door. One of them started to jabber instructions at us in Farsi, but they spoke with the heavy accents we recognized as unmistakably Kurdish. ‘Soon we go. Gather your things. But quietly. Very quietly. Many soldiers and police.’

  The second man spoke into his walkie-talkie. The hiss and static made it almost impossible to hear. It sounded as if he was talking in code. ‘The little birds are in the nest. When do they fly?’

  We left the hut and formed into a small column. Again, we followed orders, unquestioning, readying ourselves for the next ordeal.

  The pair of smugglers had a huddled conversation before the second man evaporated into the darkness.

  ‘We wait,’ the remaining man said, smoothing his moustache and lighting a cigarette.

  Before long, his radio belched two bursts of static.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, grinding his cigarette into the ground. ‘Say nothing and do as I do. Many police looking for you. No talking, no smoking, no farting. You make noise, you go to prison.’

  We nodded solemnly.

  ‘Follow me. Where I walk, you walk. When I stop, you stop.’

  We nodded again.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  He moved a lot faster than his age and build suggested. My anxiety levels skyrocketed: if this guy was hurrying because we were at risk of being caught, then, I reasoned, we must really be in danger. I didn’t want to go back to prison – any prison, but especially not an Iranian prison.

  We snaked our way along a narrow sheep track that followed the stream. A crescent moon sliced through the cloud, giving enough light for me to see the second smuggler standing in silhouette a few hundred yards ahead, on higher ground. He was scanning the horizon behind and beyond us, issuing instructions to the man with us on the walkie-talkie. It felt like a well-organized military operation.

  As we walked, all I could hear was the gentle padding of cautious steps on well-trodden dirt, and the occasional crack of twigs snapping underfoot. If the guide ducked we ducked, if he jogged we jogged too; when he stopped to hide so did we, and when he slowed to a more relaxed pace we breathed a little sigh of relief and did the same. We copied him as if it were a child’s game of Follow My Leader. If we hadn’t been so petrified it might have been funny.

  The guide stopped suddenly, causing me to cr
ash into Mehran’s back, almost knocking him over.

  ‘Gulwali. Watch it.’

  ‘Quiet, you idiots.’

  Somewhere ahead in the dark, a walkie-talkie rasped.

  ‘Get down and shut up,’ the guide whispered.

  I fell down hard, knocking my hand painfully on a rock as I went. It was all I could do not to cry out in pain. As I lay in the black grass with just the sound of my own breathing in my ears, I stared up at the moon. I wondered if my mother could see the same moon right now. For a brief second, I wanted to scream at her, to tell her she shouldn’t have sent me away. She shouldn’t have put me through this agony.

  ‘Get up. Move it.’

  The guide seemed to be getting increasingly nervous as his walkie-talkie crackled out new instructions.

  We continued in the same way, running and crouching like infantry soldiers entering enemy territory. At last, the guide led us off to the side of the track and under some trees.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sitting under a tree were four young men, Iranians. I panicked – for a second, I thought they might be secret police. Then I realized they looked as scared as we did, maybe even more so.

  ‘You are Ralph’s people, yes?’

  They nodded in confirmation of our guide’s question. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Never mind who I am. You need to get up and follow us.’

  They looked at each other, hesitating.

  ‘Hurry up. I won’t wait for anyone. Stay if you want to stay, but the way you need is this way.’

  They followed. Our column was now eight people strong: the guide, Jawad, Mehran, me and now the four young Iranians, who belonged to somebody called Ralph.

  The narrow path we’d been following opened out into a wider, fertile valley. We had just set out across it, making our way directly through the centre, when suddenly gunfire rang out across the hills above us.

  ‘Get down. Police. Police.’

  It was chaos: we got down, but the Iranians ran back to the trees for cover. The shots rang out again. It was impossible to work out if they were shooting directly at us, or across the valley at each other.