The Lightless Sky

by Gulwali Passarlay

I fell headfirst through the hole and into the darkness, where I landed heavily on what I thought was grain or beans. A cloud of soft powder blew into my face. I was sure it was agricultural. I crawled into a back corner and stayed still. Whatever this stuff was, it was soft to lie on, which made a nice change.

  We stayed in the truck all night, not making a sound. In the morning the driver came and the truck started moving. We felt the lorry go in the direction of the port – you get used to judging distances – but, just before it should have turned right towards the port, it drove straight on for half a mile instead.

  When the driver opened the door we ran, because we knew it wasn’t the port.

  He was screaming at us in English, only a few of words of which I understood: ‘…not run…ambulance, ambulance…’ None of us had any idea what he was on about so, so we just kept going as fast as we could.

  I was black from whatever had been in the truck, covered in fine dust. Maybe because I was the first in the truck, but for whatever reason, I had emerged far dirtier than anyone else.

  We found a water pipe to wash some of the mess off, and I rubbed water over my face. It felt good to get it off. I felt clean again. I felt…burning.

  The pain intensified. It felt as though my face was on fire. I screwed my eyes closed. ‘Help. Help. Help,’ I shouted, scrambling for more water.

  Qumandan was there, splashing me down. ‘That’s it, Gulwali, wash it off.’

  ‘Get my eyes. Rinse my eyes.’

  More burning. The water only made it worse.

  I screamed – the pain was beyond anything I’d ever felt, as harsh chemicals corroded me.

  Qumandan dragged me like a dead goat, all the way past the food points, to where the medical clinic was.

  The nice lady at the food point was there – she saw me and screamed in horror. ‘We’ve got to take him to hospital.’ She grabbed hold of me and put me in her car.

  I passed out from pain.

  When I awoke everything was black. Although I couldn’t see it, I was in a real bed. The sheets were soft to the touch, and smelled clean.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  It was a woman’s voice. I thought I might be dead, but she had a French accent, therefore I was most likely alive. A hand rested on my shoulder, then it lifted, and began to peel my head. Slowly I could detect light. I felt gauze pads being lifted from my eyes. A blurry image hovered.

  ‘Gulwali,’ said the blur.

  A bright light blinded me – first in my left eye, then the right. I blinked and the image grew clearer. A middle-aged woman stood over me – blonde hair, white gown, kind face.

  Next to her was an Afghan man I didn’t recognize. He stepped forward and addressed me in Dari. ‘You are in Paris. In a hospital.’

  I just blinked.

  ‘The doctor says your eyes will be fine. They will give you drops for them, and cream for your skin, as well as some painkillers.’

  I smiled, by way of thanks. My lips hurt. They felt blistered.

  ‘We will discharge you now. We will take you back to where you want to go.’

  Where I wanted to go? I had nowhere, only my temporary home in the Jungle.

  The journey back was very strange. I lay in the rear of the ambulance, my face misted with ointment. The Afghan rode with me, but we said nothing. My mind was filled with relief about my eyesight, but I was equally concerned about what this new setback might mean for the rest of my journey. I was also furious at Karwan for making me get in the lorry. He must have known, suspected at least, that it was dangerous. Was that why he let me go first?

  The rights and wrongs of the matter were no longer important. The only thing that mattered was my getting to England – by fair means or foul.

  When I returned to the Jungle, things had changed. Karwan had disappeared. The agents were so secretive. The police were always asking us to reveal who they were. The truth is, we didn’t really know. Secrecy was part of their business. They didn’t tell us where they lived, or any other details about themselves. I couldn’t figure it out – but it wasn’t of major concern to me, any way. I was paying them to get me to England, not be my friend.

  We found a new agent, a man called Pustiwan. We begged him to take us on. We didn’t have enough money, so we had to call one of his people in the UK to guarantee credit.

  I found myself getting tired very quickly after I got burned. I still don’t know what it was, only that it had some kind of chemical reaction with water.

  Jan and Qumandan were kind and looked after me, bringing me food and insisting I stay in bed and rest. But when we went out to get on the trucks, the other people under Pustiwan’s charge got very angry with me, accusing me of being too slow and spoiling their own chances. They looked at me now as if I were a weak link – as if what happened on the chemical truck that night was somehow my fault.

  It just added to my sense of despair. I’d been there for so long, and I barely knew a single person who had made it to England. I prayed that we’d get news that someone had made it, just to give us hope. I was beginning to wonder if this was what the rest of my life would look like.

  When I felt stronger, we tried jumping on trains heading for the tunnel. But it was just too dangerous – I knew the risks of trains first-hand, and even if you got on board, it was easy for security to find you. And that meant another long walk back to the pile of stinking rags we called home.

  Over the time we were there, security became tighter, too. Some guys were detained and kept in jail for up to twenty days.

  I’d got word that Shafique was in Dunkirk – he thought it might be easier to cross from there. I’d thought about going myself, but as bad as things were here, I couldn’t quite believe there was an easier option that I’d been overlooking.

  I was miserable, stressed beyond belief. I was a failure for coming all this way, only to be thwarted by a stretch of water I could almost picture swimming on a calm day.

  One evening the others went out. I don’t really remember what they said they were going to try. I just felt sick and tired. My face was still incredibly painful; it had blistered, turned black and was peeling. I wished Jan and Qumandan good luck, and buried my head under my dirty blanket.

  They didn’t come back.

  I wanted to be happy for them, but it was the worst thing I could imagine. My one chance to escape had come and gone because I had been too tired. I cursed myself – told myself what a stupid little boy I had been. When I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, their departure pushed me into a very dark place.

  I was too scared to stay in the hut alone, but there were always newcomers looking for a place to sleep, so I found some Afghans who seemed nice enough and they were grateful to have the space.

  Pustiwan tried to convince us to ride underneath some other trucks – those that had weighted suspension. When the lorry is empty, some of the wheels fold up to save on tyre wear. It’s a good place to hide. But if the truck is loaded, you can be crushed to death in a moment. I knew someone who had died this way, and I didn’t want it to be my fate – ground to bits in the suspension unit like lamb kofte.

  Myself and a few of the others refused. A couple of guys knew the risks and went anyway.

  ‘Brave, no?’ saidPustiwan.

  ‘Foolish,’ I said, touching my cheek.

  That Friday, Pustiwan appeared with a ladder under his arm. ‘A new plan,’ he proclaimed proudly, rubbing his belly.

  We cut our way into a park full of trailers waiting to be hitched to a cab and driven off.

  Pustiwan tutted and paced back and forth, making a great show of inspecting each trailer, until he found one he judged to be just right. ‘Nice.’

  He placed his ladder against the frame of the canvas siding and climbed to the roof. He used a razor to neatly slice a hole large enough to fit a man. My face throbbed as he did i
t – I was not going first on this occasion.

  ‘This is a good one,’ he declared. ‘Come, quick.’

  We climbed in one by one. The cargo was boxes of something heavy. I was relieved.

  ‘Two days,’ Pustiwan said, his head poking through the hole. ‘Two days to England. Ha ha ha.’

  He spent the next ten minutes repairing his opening, then left without a word.

  There were five of us. We sat for two days. No food or water. We lay in silence waiting and waiting. I dozed a little, but my dreams were surreal and disturbing – my blistered face hung broken from the wheels of a lorry. I tried to lie still – to conserve energy, fluid, mental strength. After what felt like a week, the trailer shuddered into life as the cab hitched itself to us.

  We were all suddenly wide awake.

  ‘This is it,’ someone hissed through the gloom.

  As depressed, angry and exhausted as I felt, I got a rush of adrenalin. Perhaps this time I would make it. We began moving. Now came the sense of expectation. Either we would be making the long walk home, or we would be on a ferry bound for England.

  I expected to turn left out of the park, towards the port. We’d made this attempt a thousand times. But, instead, the lorry turned right.

  ‘Are we going the right way?’ I asked.

  No one was sure. I could handle the hunger and thirst as long as I thought we were heading in the right direction, but we weren’t. Panic set in. Someone started banging in the dark.

  ‘Stop, stop. Let us out.’

  We all started shouting. I thumped my hand against a box – anything to get the driver’s attention. Maybe he heard us, maybe he didn’t. We kept driving. Further and further from the port.

  After half a day the truck slowed to a halt. We heard voices outside. We were silent. The doors swung open, blinding us with daylight.

  ‘Halas.’

  It was the police. We climbed down on to the roadside. I had no idea where we were. None of us did.

  ‘England?’ someone ventured.

  ‘Belgium,’ the officer said. Then he burst out laughing.

  The police tried to question us, but the language barrier made it impossible. In the end they made a great show of taking our names, then pointed to the nearest crossroads.

  It was going to be a long walk.

  We walked for twenty-four hours. More police stopped us. We tried to explain our situation, but I’m not sure they understood or cared. ‘Calais,’ they said, pointing to a nearby road. We kept walking.

  I don’t know how I kept going. I just stared at my feet – left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. I thought it would never end.

  I thought the Jungle was the most beautiful place I had ever seen when we finally staggered into camp. I flopped on to my pallet bed and fell straight to sleep. No lorries for us tonight.

  At first I thought it was my mother, waking me for school – but the policeman was more persistent than my dreams. It was the weekly raid. I could have died. All I wanted to do was sleep. The horror of daily life now infiltrated my dreams. It was torture. The French police knew we didn’t have any real options. All they wanted to do was humiliate us, take away what little dignity we had left. They wanted us to leave – to no longer be their problem – and so they left us no choice but to keep trying to go to Britain.

  Each time I got caught, their taunts filled my ears: ‘No chance this time, maybe the next.’

  It was a perverse game, and I was trapped playing it for as long as it took – as long as I could keep going. It was the game without end. They thought it was funny. Every night was the same – cat and mouse with the police. Over and over.

  Life only has value as long as you believe it is worth living. I was no longer sure. I was becoming detached from my surroundings. Nothing mattered any more. The instinct to survive is strong, but when survival is all that there is, you are left with the obvious question: ‘Why go on?’

  My life was a living nightmare. We kept trying trucks. The routine was the same. Break in, get caught, walk miles home.

  One night the truck we were in took another right turn. I groaned inside. I no longer had the strength to fight it. The others banged and yelled, and then in desperation started to cut through the back of the trailer unit to escape. At that, the truck pulled over and the driver threw the doors open, glaring, baseball bat in his hands.

  We had nothing to lose.

  The six guys I was with leapt on the driver, kicking and beating him.

  He dropped his bat and curled into a ball on the side of the road. ‘Nein, nein. Halas…Bitte. Bitte.’

  I wanted to feel sorry for him. Part of me actually did. But ultimately I didn’t care. He had a home, a family, a life. What did I have? Nothing.

  Passing cars honked their horns. We stopped kicking and started running. We sprinted past a petrol station with a car dealership attached. It had Mercedes flags flying from masts, along with red, yellow and black ones.

  ‘Deutschland,’ someone puffed. ‘We’re in bloody Germany.’

  I was glad I was running so hard, because if I’d been standing still I think I would have fallen down crying. Not that I wanted to keep going. Only the Jungle waited for me.

  I slowed until I was jogging by the roadside, watching the traffic rush past. It would have been so easy to step out. No more hunger. No more fear. No more Jungle. No more England.

  I thought of my mother. I kept running.

  Our little group split up at that point. I was exhausted and, try as I might, I couldn’t keep going. Two men agreed to stay with me. We plodded in silence for hours. My reserves of strength – mental and physical – were all but gone. I wanted to lie down in the soft grass on the side of the road and sleep, and, if I was lucky, maybe never wake up. I fought these thoughts, but I was simply too weak.

  Perhaps I would have given up but at that moment, out of nowhere, a blue sedan pulled over in front of us. A middle-aged brunette woman got out. She smiled. It was genuine, and I smiled back at the uninvited warmth she radiated.

  ‘Refugee?’ she said, in English.

  It was a word I knew.

  ‘Oui,’ we said.

  She opened the passenger door and I flopped gratefully inside. I don’t remember her name. I’m not sure we even asked, but she was very friendly and clearly sympathized with our situation. She gave us a baguette and a bottle of water. I devoured the bread in seconds, washing it down with the water.

  I began to feel a little better almost immediately – I’m not sure whether it was the food, or just the simple act of caring she showed.

  She dropped us off near the Jungle, where our makeshift shelter waited.

  I should have been at rock bottom, but the act of kindness stayed with me. It sustained me psychologically for a few weeks, in fact – one small gesture from human to human. But the routine of life in the Jungle went on unchanged, and it wasn’t long before I was lower than ever.

  The burden was just too much. I was a young boy – I had no natural business being in such a place. I should have been in school, playing with friends, or spending time with my family; instead, life was a constant struggle to live.

  To survive, and whether I actually wanted to, was increasingly on my mind. And I suppose that’s why, some time later, standing in front of a refrigerated lorry full of bananas, I didn’t hesitate.

  The six other guys I was with weren’t so sure. ‘We’ll freeze to death in there,’ one said.

  I just kicked the mud off my worn-out boots and climbed up.

  ‘Gulwali,’ they asked. ‘Are you sure?’

  I shrugged. What difference did it make? Freeze in a banana truck, or freeze in the Jungle during this cold November? December would be even colder. Better to risk everything than to go on living like this. I couldn’t do it any more – not another mouthful from the soup kitche
n, not another mad sprint from the police or a driver, not another endless walk in the cold. My face was burned, blistered and blackened – just like my soul.

  If the other guys knew my state of mind, I doubt they would have followed. But they did.

  ‘The kid knows what he’s doing.’

  But I no longer knew anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As I got in the refrigerator lorry, I turned to the agent. ‘Don’t say it.’

  Every time we got into a lorry he waved and said, ‘Khodahafiz. Farhda Englise,’ which means, ‘God be with you. Tomorrow, England.’

  He was Kurdish of course, but he said the words in Farsi. At first I found it funny; then it wasn’t any more. Now, it felt as though he was taunting me, jinxing me.

  We knew the distance from the lorry park to the port entrance, we knew the sensation of going over the speed bumps that led to the port check-in, we knew how it felt when the truck slowed to join the queue for security checks. As each familiar sound or bump passed, I checked my mental map, plotting our course towards the elusive ferry.

  The lorry stopped, and I heard the French police open the door at the French checkpoint. I was convinced it was over. In my mind I was beginning to climb down and into their custody, just as I had done a hundred times before. But somehow, this time, they didn’t see us. We were hidden right at the back, behind boxes of bananas, and perhaps that night the police couldn’t be bothered really looking inside. They closed the doors.

  I had entered uncharted territory. This was the closest I had ever reached after a long month of trying – a month that had felt like three times as long.

  The lorry drove slowly forward to what I knew would now be the English checkpoints, and the doors swung open again. I flattened my body as if trying to become one with the boxes of bananas. Through a crack I could see the guards playing their torches around the dark space. Then their boot soles slapped hard against the concrete, and the doors slammed shut, plunging us into the comfort of absolute darkness.

  The lorry wobbled forwards. My heart raced with each new noise. A hollow, metallic clank-clank-clank as each axle passed over a ramp sent a chorus of excitement through the trailer.