Not one of us wanted to get into that water, nor into the tiny speedboat, or on to the so-called ‘big boat’ beyond it. In the dark, it was impossible to make out how deep the water was or what dangers lurked beneath. Soon, though, the speedboat began ferrying people – as many as they could squeeze in at a time – out to the other boat.
My new group of seven friends hung close together but somehow, in the crush, everyone but Mehran and I managed to get on the speedboat. I began to panic, thinking we’d be left behind. But the speedboat came back. It was my turn.
‘Get in. We have to get in. Come on, Gulwali.’
My feet were stuck to the sand in fear. I could not get into that water.
Mehran literally dragged me into the sea and practically threw me into the boat. As the speedboat lurched into life I almost vomited with the strangeness of the sensation. I was absolutely terrified, but I also knew that if I could survive this, I was one step closer to Western Europe.
On the other side of this horrible water lay Greece.
‘Stay in the game, Gulwali, stay in the game.’ I tried to control my emotions.
When the speedboat reached the main boat, I was instantly glad we had been one of the last on board. The first arrivals had been shoved into the claustrophobic hull below deck, while the others were sitting on a wooden bench that ringed the main deck, which was also crammed with people. I could see Hamid sitting close to the steering wheel. Standing over him was a moustachioed man I assumed to be the captain.
Mehran and I didn’t know where to go: there was no room anywhere. Suddenly, a young crew member, a pale-skinned teenager with pierced ears and a tight T-shirt, grabbed us both. ‘You,’ he ordered, pointing Mehran to the galley steps. ‘Downstairs.’ I went to follow. ‘No. You, the small one, stay on top.’
I managed to squeeze past the bodies to where Hamid was sitting.
As the final people continued to climb aboard, we were sandwiched in tighter and tighter together until it became impossible to move my arms.
Breathing in the oniony smell of the men, I began to feel nauseated, and it took all my self-control not to vomit over my boots.
The captain, a burly looking, muscular man, stood close to Hamid and me by the steering wheel, looking increasingly tense. Finally he exploded at the Kurd, shouting in Turkish. Hamid translated for me in a whisper, pulling comical faces at the swear words: ‘You told me we had sixty tonight. Why have you sent me so many? We can’t take them all. This is a fucking pleasure boat, not a ferry.’
‘Fuck you. Do you want the money? This is the cargo. Take it or leave it.’
The Kurd argued and argued with the captain, who demanded that half the people get off. Many on my deck looked like they wanted to. The captain had locked the hatch to the hull and those inside, including Baryalai, Mehran, Tamim, Ahmad and Engineer, were starting to shout, demanding to be let out.
‘There’s no room down here. Please.’
But the Kurd was having none of it: ‘Shut up, stay still and keep quiet. If you just remain calm, you will be in Greece by the morning.’ He then took a wad of cash and handed it to the unsmiling captain, who had a huddled conversation with the teenage crew member.
The Kurd got off the boat and sped away in his speedboat as the boat’s engine coughed into life, sputtering out a greasy cloud of diesel smoke. I said a silent prayer, begging Allah not to let me die.
The boat had just begun to make progress, and we were starting to settle into our voyage, when chaos broke out: within a few moments, the boat was surrounded by a wire fence in the water. It was almost like a fishing net made of barbed wire – the boat was completely caught up in it. I can only think the weight of the boat had triggered some kind of trip wire that was hidden in the water.
Whatever it was, it alerted the coastguard: I saw flashing lights and heard sirens approaching in the distance. Despite everything, I felt a surge of relief. I was sickened by the crowd of bodies, the diesel smell and the rocking of the boat, which seemed as though it might capsize at any moment.
The captain, however, wrenched at the steering wheel, pushing the boat back and forth, while the crewman yelled at us to keep our heads down.
Somehow, in the dark, the captain found a way out of the mass of wire. Through the clattering roar of the engine, the sirens began to fade.
We were in the middle of the ocean.
The captain had turned off all the lights on the boat to avoid detection. I could make out nothing but endless black, while the only sounds were of the dreadful hiss and crack of waves slapping and sucking at our overloaded vessel. There was no joy at our escape, or sense of new hope. It was terrifying – like landing on an unknown planet.
The people in the hull started to bang on the door again. They were trying to move around and shouting that water was coming in below. The captain took out a gun and fired it into the air. They went quiet. I said a small prayer of thanks that I wasn’t sitting down there. But I was really worried about my friends, and I said a prayer for them too.
After a couple of hours, land began to appear through the hazy dawn. It had to be Greece. I looked with blurred eyes, not having slept properly for several days, just staring out at the glimmer of land, listening to the hushed conversations of those around me.
The captain nosed the boat towards what I could just make out was a small, rocky beach.
‘Greece. We made it to Greece,’ someone called to the people below, who shouted their praise to Allah.
I shoved through the crowd to the side of the boat. Some from my deck had already jumped off and were picking their way over the rocks to the shore. The young crew member had unlocked the hull and was trying to quell the panic as people clambered up the stairs and off the boat, on to the beach.
‘Slowly. One at a time.’
Baryalai reached the top deck and grabbed my arm. ‘Get ready to jump, little man. Stay with me.’
I felt Hamid’s hand on my other arm. ‘Something isn’t right. Wait.’
It was impossible to work out what was going on, or what to do. People were pushing and jumping, and the boat was lurching.
About forty people had got off when the crew member started pushing everyone back down the stairs and into the hull.
‘Let us get off.’
‘What are you doing? We’re in Greece.’
The captain started up the engine again. As the boat chugged backwards, everyone started screaming, ‘What are you doing? Let us off.’
One man started frantically trying to climb off. The captain clubbed him with his gun, then waved it menacingly towards the rest of us. ‘Sit down.’
I was in shock, horrified to see that Baryalai had got off without me. I hoped the captain was going to drop the rest of us nearby. Maybe the group was too large to dock all at once?
Hamid put his hand on mine. ‘Shush, Gulwali. We’ll be OK.’
‘I want to stay with Baryalai.’
‘Gulwali, stop it. He’ll catch us up. He’ll be fine. And so will we. Really.’
As we got further out to sea, not to land, my heart began to sink. I glared angrily at Hamid.
‘I told you it wasn’t right, Gulwali. I don’t think that was Greece.’
‘Why didn’t you warn Baryalai? Why did you let him get off?’
‘I couldn’t stop him. I wasn’t really sure. I’m sorry, Gulwali.’
Tears burned my eyes. After finding Baryalai after so long, I couldn’t believe I had lost him again. He’d been my protector for so many months.
Nor did I know whether Mehran and the others had got off or stayed on. Neither of us had seen them, so we hoped they might still be below.
Everyone expected the captain to throw us overboard.
We had been afloat for two days, seemingly drifting, although we’d been told the journey would only take a few hours. My whole bod
y hurt from lack of sleep and the painful position I’d been sitting in.
We’d had no food since the first day.
I was sure now I would die. I would drown in this murky water; an icy, cold, lonely death – away from my mother’s warmth, my father’s strength and my family’s love.
The journey was supposed to be the beginning of my life, not the end of it.
‘Help us. Over here. Help us.’
I began to hear foreign voices over our own. I dared to look up, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Four coastguard boats were circling our stricken vessel. People were cheering, shouting, ‘Over here. Over here.’
My first, fleeting reaction was one of disappointment. I didn’t want to be arrested and sent back, especially not to Turkey – again. But that thought passed in seconds – I was only thankful I wasn’t going to die.
A voice from a loudspeaker boomed at us, words I couldn’t understand. The police on the nearest boat were gesturing wildly. Everyone was screaming at them. Some men started to leap into the water, making the boat rock dangerously from side to side even more.
I hesitated. I didn’t know if these people were lying to us too: if they were going to help us or if they’d let us die. But the boat was going down fast. If I jumped in I might drown, but if I didn’t jump I would definitely drown.
As usual, there were no good options.
I held my breath and closed my eyes, preparing to jump. The waves were so big. I wondered how long I could stay afloat by flailing my legs. Then something fell beside me; it was a rope. The coastguards were throwing ropes up to the ship. Desperate hands lashed them to deck cleats as the police boats managed to lasso their boats to ours to keep us afloat.
The coastguard began fishing people out of the water, throwing those of us still on board life jackets. I had no idea how a life jacket worked, but I yanked it over my head. It felt safe.
And it was then that I realized that I felt safe – for the first time in days.
My body started to shake uncontrollably and my legs buckled beneath me as shock set in.
As our boat was righted and towed to the shore, shock seemed to spread through our crowd like a virus. Grown men started to cry and shake, thanking Allah, whooping and cheering, celebrating that we were alive. Hamid hugged me with relief.
After towing us to port, the police tied our boat to a large metal hoop fixed into the solid stone of the harbour wall. We were told to stay on board and not to move. I wanted so badly to get off that stinking boat, but I took solace in the fact that at least it was afloat, and not going anywhere.
A few people boarded, one of them a smartly dressed woman with flowing light brown hair, who came over to me and threw a blanket round my shoulders, then gave me a bottle of water. She had translucent olive skin and round blue eyes. She was wearing a fluffy white sweater and, in my delirious state, she looked just like an angel. She wasn’t there with the police or the coastguard, but with a group of townspeople who had heard we had been brought ashore, and stood waiting with blankets and food. This I couldn’t believe. It was the first act of human kindness I had witnessed in weeks. As she fussed over me, saying words I didn’t understand, I started to cry: all of the pain and fear and loneliness of the past three days coming out in great, big, hiccupping sobs.
The woman’s face crumpled sympathetically, and she motioned to a friend, who brought over some fish with vegetables, and a bar of chocolate. She smiled at me with her big kind eyes peering into mine, continuing to speak to me in her soft voice. I just stared at her with tears rolling down my face, shoving the food into my hungry mouth.
After you’ve been hungry for so many days you can’t imagine the joy of food. But I was so dehydrated and unaccustomed to eating, I could barely swallow. But, once I’d forced it down, my shrunken stomach couldn’t cope, and I needed to go to the toilet almost immediately. I had to scream at the coastguard to make them understand that I needed to go – now. Two men escorted me off the boat and towards a toilet. But they stood guard, watching. As my bowels exploded, they were decent enough to wait a discreet distance away.
When I came back from the toilet, I was doubly relieved to see Mehran, Tamim and Ahmad were there and safe, even if they were as shaken and upset as I was.
The next twenty-four hours were confusing and scary.
The coastguards were recording everyone’s name, age and the country we were from. Hamid was using his language skills again to translate for them, in English. After that, we were loaded on to a ferry and taken to the other side of the harbour, where there were two coaches waiting for us.
From there we drove for five hours to a big city.
We guessed correctly that it was Athens.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In Athens, we were taken to an immigration centre. It felt like I was entering a fortress: guards with guns and dogs stood looking at us behind a 3 metre high steel-mesh fence topped with razor wire; more guards stood by at several security barriers we had to pass.
Being imprisoned was fast becoming my way of life; for the fourth time in barely six months, I was back behind bars.
We were fingerprinted, and the police brought a doctor who gave me some medicine for my stomach. There was a Pashtu speaking Afghan translator at the centre, and they began to interview us again, asking our names and ages. They kept asking about the captain and where he was. I just said the same thing, over and over: ‘I don’t know.’
A few days later, I found out that the authorities had arrested him. As the boat went down, someone had handed him a shalwar kameez to wear so he could blend in with us. But, of course, he couldn’t hide his ethnicity during interrogation. A police officer told me he could be jailed for twenty-five years.
It’s very hard to say how that made me feel. He was paid a lot of money to take us to Greece and by agreeing to overload his boat, he nearly killed us. But I forgave him because at least we were alive – it was something to be grateful for. I also felt sorry for his family who would miss him if he were in prison.
I told the translator about Baryalai and the others left behind. He promised us someone would investigate, and that if they had been dropped on a Greek island near Turkey, it was likely they would have been deported back to Turkey.
I felt terrible about Baryalai. He had been there for me so many times, always sticking up for me, always protecting me, coming back for me, urging me to carry on, calming me with his words of wisdom. If I’d had one true friend on that whole awful journey it had been him.
But, as tough as it sounds, I resolved to move on and forget him.
Those were the rules of the game: keep going, don’t look back.
I’d heard whispers from other migrants that people being detained in Greece were being deported back to Turkey.
I was terrified that at any moment I could be sent back too. It would have been a bitter blow. I’d finally made it to Western Europe and I did not want to be sent back. I was still living the game of Snakes and Ladders. This was how my life was for now – I accepted the pitfalls and perils, but that didn’t make them any easier to bear.
As ever, getting information on our legal situation was a constant source of stress and confusion. Officials at the immigration centre gave us papers detailing our case, but what were we supposed to do with them when they were written in Greek?
We were questioned again and again.
As Hamid spoke the best English out of all of us, after a while the police conscripted him to act as translator. In fact, Hamid’s English was so good it was actually far in advance of that of the Greek interrogator’s.
At one stage they interrogated a frail old man. He was weak and trembling, and I don’t know how much he actually understood about what was happening to him. His answers certainly got Hamid into trouble.
The policemen were asking questions of the old man; Hamid translating them for him, and
then translating his answers back to the officers. The police officers’ reactions gave me some clues as to their response.
Hamid continued his role in the interrogation. ‘Where are you trying to get to?’
‘England.’
‘What is your final destination?’
‘England.’
‘What is your preferred country in which to seek asylum?’
‘England.’
The smaller of the two officers obviously thought Hamid was being insolent – with the third answer, he whipped his hand across Hamid’s face.
We sat up in shock. The other officer screamed at his colleague in disgust.
That night, the guards put us in one large holding cell. It was incredibly cramped and we were all filthy, so the smell was horrible. They did feed us, though – lukewarm trays of mass-catering food like you get on board aeroplanes. When we lay down to sleep, we sprawled over each other, each man’s body forming a pillow for another. I slept with my head on Hamid’s legs.
The following morning the guards came and separated eleven of us from the others: Hamid, Ahmad, Engineer and myself were part of the smaller group. I assumed we were going to be questioned again, so I didn’t bother saying farewell to Mehran and Tamim. But, instead of leading us along the now-familiar corridor to the interrogation room, we were taken to a different wing.
There, they issued us with new clothes. We also got towels and toiletries, and were allowed to take a hot shower.
I tried to ask one of the officials about Mehran – we managed enough English to just about have a conversation. After trial and error, it seemed that we had been separated according to age. But this didn’t make sense to me, because Mehran was younger than Hamid. Mehran was tall for his age, so perhaps that’s what had swayed their decision.
It was a bitter blow for me. Baryalai was gone, and now I was without Mehran too. We’d been together since those early days in Mashhad in Iran. He made me laugh, and could always be counted on to lift my spirits when I needed cheering up. It was hard to rely on these friends for so much, and to then have them taken away from me.
The Lightless Sky Page 21