The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  ‘They weren’t the same as the people who came to pick us up. They changed several times on the way north. At the Algerian border the Tuaregs took over. Then our trolley, the leader, disappeared. That was the man who was related to Checkna’s family, a cousin of a cousin. A new trolley came, a connection man. We had to hand over our passports and more money. They said it was to bribe the guards and the customs officials, and the gangs in the desert. We travelled in the back of a covered truck to Morocco. We stayed in Rabat for three weeks. I don’t know what went wrong. One night the police raided the house where we were staying, and we were driven back to the Algerian border, to the desert near Oudja. Several hundred people were waiting there. Three days later we were taken to Tunisia. It costs more than Libya, but it’s safer. They told us it was possible to make it to Italy from there, and then it wouldn’t be hard to hide inside a truck and get to France. There are lots of people from northern Mali living in Paris. They would help us find work and apartments. Sambala said he wanted to get a job with Paris Saint-Germain, the football team.’

  ‘Ask him what happened in Paris,’ I said, wanting to hurry him along. Arnaud gestured for me to be patient, and Salif continued speaking, hardly pausing to breathe. Like Scheherazade in A Thousand and One Nights, he was keeping death at bay, I thought. By telling his story, he was able to stay among the living.

  ‘She was called the Ariadne. It was a big freighter. I saw it from shore the day before we left. Our connection man pointed it out. We were luckier than we could ever have dreamed. The Ariadne was headed directly for France, bound for Marseille. We sneaked inside the container during the night. There were several children with us, but they were given sleeping pills so they’d sleep the whole way. We had a barrel for water and another one in which to relieve ourselves. One man was nervous. He started pounding on the wall after we climbed in and sat down. We grabbed hold of him to make him stop pounding because he might give us away. We had only a small amount of food. They explained this was so we wouldn’t need to relieve ourselves too much. It was for our own good. I counted forty-two people in the container. Then they closed the doors and everything went dark.’

  I shifted position on the floor. On the TV the first half of the soccer match was over. They were showing commercials. Salif leaned back against the wall, his face changing colour from the flickering images on the screen.

  ‘It was night time when they opened the doors. It was hard to breathe. I had a headache and felt very tired, even though I’d fallen asleep several times. Some people could not be roused. They were carried out. I don’t know what happened to them. We were taken to a big truck. It said MPL Express on the side. It was red. A long-haul truck.’

  I gave a start. I’d seen that name outside the warehouse earlier in the afternoon in Saint-Ouen.

  ‘What happened when you got to Paris?’ I asked.

  Salif scratched his leg along the edge of the cast. I’d had my arm in a cast when I was fifteen, and I remembered how horribly it itched.

  ‘When we were sitting in the container we whispered about organizing a party when we arrived,’ he went on. ‘Checkna has an uncle in Paris. We were going to find him and have a festive meal. We were going to borrow some money and pay it back later.’

  Salif suddenly fell silent. A spasm rippled through his body.

  ‘You can see he’s not well,’ said Arnaud, placing his hand on Salif’s shoulder. Salif didn’t react. Then he continued.

  ‘We arrived early in the morning. The sun was just coming up. They opened the back doors of the truck and told us we were going to a safe house. It was like a huge warehouse, with workplaces inside. No people around outside.’

  ‘I think I know where it is,’ I said, picturing the ferocious dog in my mind.

  ‘They told us to go inside,’ Salif went on. ‘It smelled terrible in there. It smelled like human waste. With crowds of people in every room. Big rooms with people lying on the floor in rows. What is this place? I thought. Where am I? Sambala said it looked like a football camp. That made us laugh. I thought it would just be a few nights until we’d be able to arrange a place to live. But they locked the doors. They shoved us into a room. It looked like an office, with tables and chairs and a picture of a girl in a bathing suit on the wall, a calendar from 2001. There we met a man they called Boss Maillaux. He said we had debts we needed to repay. The trip was expensive. And interest had been added on. We had to work to earn the money. That sounded OK. But one guy, not one of us, started protesting. He’d expected to be living with one of his uncle’s friends. They hit him. They beat him with boards until he was silent. There were three of them. One used a metal pipe. They dragged the guy out of the room. I never saw him again. Then Boss Maillaux asked if anyone else had anything to say. No one did. If we tried to escape, he said we’d get the same treatment. They would take our parents’ houses. Things would go very badly for our parents. They would take our younger siblings too. They would rape our little sisters.’

  The air in the room was starting to feel stifling. I wondered why the blinds had to be closed, since we were up on the tenth floor. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone would be able to look in.

  ‘Usually the threats are enough,’ said Arnaud. ‘After a while they don’t even need to lock the doors. The entire operation is based on fear. If anyone successfully escaped, the whole bubble would burst.’

  ‘But you managed to run away,’ I said, turning to Salif. ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘We worked all day, every day. Moving freight and then working at a construction site, demolishing a building. One night there was trouble in the safe house. A guy from Senegal who’d been there long before we arrived. He was shouting that he’d been duped. He wanted his money. He wanted to get out of there. They hit him. He was bleeding. We bandaged his wounds, but he got sick. He had a high fever. He was raving in delirium. He said he was out wandering and his child couldn’t walk. I said that we’d work harder, that we’d do his job too. I said that he needed a doctor. One night they came to get him. They said there was no room for anyone who didn’t work. I asked if they were taking him to a hospital. They told me to shut up and forget about that man.’

  I stood up, making my knees creak. ‘Is it OK if I pull up the blinds?’ I asked, reaching for the cord. Arnaud nodded.

  As daylight fell into the room, I saw how gaunt Salif was. His elbows stuck out like sharp knobs above the bandages on his hands. I thought he must have been fit and healthy when he left home. A soccer player. I thought about how a person could fade away so completely that nothing was left but a shell of what he used to be.

  I stood there, leaning against the windowsill.

  ‘There were more than ten of us demolishing that building,’ Salif went on. ‘Plus several white foremen supervising. There was a guard stationed with us from the safe house. I thought to myself: he can’t shoot in the middle of the day, not while other people are watching. And at some point he’ll have to go and relieve himself. I watched him. I told Checkna and Sambala that when the right moment came, we were going to leave. I would give them a signal and then we’d run, all three of us at once. We would phone our families and then we’d hide. Maybe go to the police. Or find somebody from home who would help us. We whispered to each other in the evenings, deciding that we’d help all these people who were being held prisoner, that Allah had sent us here for a reason, and then we’d earn money and send it home to our families.

  ‘One day when the guard headed for the sheds where the toilets were, I whistled the signal. We ran as fast as we could. Sambala was the fastest. I followed, with Checkna close behind. We ran through the gate in the fence and out onto the street. We had never seen the street before because we were always driven there inside a delivery van with the windows painted black. They shouted after us, but we didn’t turn around even for a second. We just kept on running. First we ran through an industrial area, then came the residential neighbourhood, with high-rises. After seven blocks we ran into a
Muslim woman. I asked her the way to the nearest mosque. She stared at us like we were crazy. “We have to find the mosque!” I shouted, and she pointed. It wasn’t far. The imam let us in. He gave us tea. We asked him to call Checkna’s uncle, who owns a café. They have a phone. We asked him to tell our parents to be careful, to protect themselves. The imam made the phone call from the next room. He came back and said that he’d talked to them. That we were supposed to call again in two hours. Then we’d be able to speak to our mothers.’

  Salif buried his face in his bandaged hands, then used the sheet to wipe his eyes. He cleared his throat before going on.

  ‘He said that he’d also called someone who could help us.’ He turned to look at Arnaud. ‘Later on Arnaud came to pick us up. In the night, when it was dark. He took us to the hotel.’

  ‘It was an emergency situation,’ said Arnaud. ‘There was no time to look for any place else.’

  ‘And then Patrick Cornwall came there to interview you,’ I said. We’d been in the apartment more than an hour, and I still hadn’t found out anything new about Patrick. I was starting to feel inclined to agree with Arnaud. It was a mistake for me to have come here to meet Salif. To get dragged into his story.

  ‘The American was supposed to help us. He was going to talk about us in the newspaper. Then he was going to get them arrested, those crooks. Boss Maillaux and the others.’

  Salif punched the wall. That must have hurt because of the burns on his hand.

  ‘Do you know who the others were? Did Patrick know?’

  Salif nodded. ‘He asked about the safe house. About the number on the building. About what it said on the side of the trucks. He asked about everything. Where the construction site was. I showed him on a map which way we had run. I remembered it exactly because I had counted the blocks. I wanted to know where I was.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Salif tapped his feet on the bed and looked at Arnaud for help.

  He has lost all sense of time, I thought.

  ‘About a month since the first time he talked to Patrick,’ said Arnaud.

  ‘And the last time? What did Patrick say then?’

  ‘It was a good place. We had our own beds,’ said Salif. He didn’t seem to have heard the question. His story was taking its own, specific direction.

  ‘I was lying in bed reading. The American had brought me some books. I heard doors slamming in the corridor and a loud bang. Then I noticed the smell and the heat. Do you understand? Both at the same time. The fire exploded. I ran out into the hall and saw that the stairwell was full of flames. I screamed and ran back to the room to get the others. I ran out into the hall and started pounding on doors to wake up everyone who lived there. I couldn’t run down the stairs. The fire was everywhere. Beyond the stairs was a ledge with big windows. I thought to myself: I’ll go over there and break the glass and jump out, and the family that lives on the floor below can toss their children down to me and I will catch them. The little girl has just learned to walk, and the boy is six years old and pretends he’s a famous footballer like Ronaldo. We’ve played football in the hall with him. Sambala and I.

  ‘But I don’t go over to the ledge and the window, because the flames are getting even bigger. It burns my hands. Piles of trash are burning, and boxes and chairs. I know that all those things weren’t there before, because we sat on the ledge with the windows open and breathed in the smell of earth from the park as we talked about women. Sambala and Checkna and I. So I’m standing there looking at the chairs burning, and I realize that someone has started this fire on purpose. Then I feel them pushing past me. Sambala and Checkna are yelling and running down the stairs, straight into the flames.’

  Salif slapped his hands to his cheeks. ‘I shouted, but they didn’t come back, and the fire was rising towards me. There was nothing I could do. I ran up the last set of stairs. I knew I could get out onto the roof.’ He looked from Arnaud to me. ‘I’d made sure of that. I don’t like to be closed in. I don’t sleep well. In the safe house I didn’t sleep at all when the doors were locked.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ I said.

  Salif went on talking with his eyes fixed on the TV, as if that was all he could look at any more, after spending weeks in the apartment in which there was nothing else to see.

  ‘I didn’t notice any fire engines down on the street. I had the cell that Arnaud had given me. I phoned him from the roof, but he didn’t answer.’ He glanced at Arnaud, who was looking down at his hands. ‘Then I called Patrick Cornwall. He’d given me two numbers. They were programmed into the phone. The first was busy, but when I called the other number, he answered. I shouted that he had to come and help us. Then I jumped.’ Salif grimaced, remembering the pain when he’d landed on the lower building next door and broken his leg.

  ‘There was a ladder on the other building. I climbed down and hid in the back yard, between two sheds. The fire engines arrived. I lay there for a long time, not daring to move. Then I heard someone yelling my name. It was the American. When he got closer I called out, but not very loudly. I was afraid someone would see me. The police or those other men. The American heard me. He was upset. Tears were running down his face.’

  I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

  ‘“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”, he kept saying, speaking first English and then French. I don’t understand English. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one who started the fire. He said that he’d talk to the police. He said they weren’t going to get away with this. He was crying. He was going to write about us, tell our story to the world. He helped me get away from there, and then he got hold of Arnaud. Arnaud came to get us. We went to see a doctor.’

  ‘A doctor who works for us,’ Arnaud interjected.

  ‘What do you know about the people who started the fire?’ I asked.

  ‘Patrick Cornwall said that they did it to get us. It was our fault. It was because of us that the fire was started.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t say that,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s what I think, at least.’ Salif looked away, turning his gaze to the wall.

  ‘Did Patrick mention the names of any of these crooks?’

  Salif nodded. ‘He showed me maps and photographs. He said that he was going after them, that they would pay for what they’d done.’

  Arnaud translated what he’d just said as: ‘He didn’t know any of their names.’

  I’d heard two versions of what Salif had said. It took a few seconds for me to realize that I’d actually understood Salif’s French. Arnaud was trying to fool me. Why?

  ‘What were their names?’ I asked now, hearing as if from a distance Arnaud translating my question into French for Salif as: ‘You don’t need to say anything more.’

  Then I stuck my hand into my bag and took out the envelope with the photographs. I’d had copies made in a photo shop near the market.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Arnaud, trying to take the pictures from me, but I refused to hand them over. Salif wasn’t able to look through the photos himself because of his injured hands, so I did it for him.

  ‘Do you recognize any of these men?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You’re not even looking,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ve already seen them,’ he said. ‘The American showed them to me on the day of the fire. I told him that I don’t recognize the others. Only one of them.’

  ‘One of them?’ I repeated, stupefied, feeling the blood freeze in my veins. ‘Which one?’

  ‘He came twice to the safe house. He didn’t talk to us. Only to Boss Maillaux. It was a blurry picture, bad camera. I don’t know what his name is.’

  I quickly shuffled through the photographs.

  ‘There,’ said Salif.

  In the photograph the man was standing behind Alain Thery, off to one side. It was impossible to tell where the picture had been taken. The wall of a building in the background. Part of a window. A third
man was standing there with them. Only now did I realize I knew him. Shaved head. His nose that seemed a little too small. It was the man who had thrown me out of the office on avenue Kléber.

  ‘I think we should go now,’ said Arnaud. ‘You can see that’s all he knows.’

  I inhaled so deeply that it seemed like all the air in the room was drawn down into my lungs and there was no oxygen left.

  ‘Did he mention the name Alain Thery?’ I asked.

  I didn’t need to wait for Arnaud to translate. I saw Salif’s reaction at the name. He nodded.

  ‘Yes, yes. Patrick Cornwall said that he was the boss. I didn’t recognize him.’

  ‘What about Josef K?’ I said. ‘Did Patrick say anything about him?’

  ‘Josef?’ Salif shook his head and looked unhappy. ‘No Josef.’

  Arnaud got up from the bed and headed for the door.

  ‘We need to go now,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Are you afraid Salif will say something more that you don’t want me to hear?’

  ‘It’s complicated. He doesn’t know the whole picture,’ said Arnaud, fidgeting with his scarf. I’d noticed he did that whenever he was stressed or nervous. The scarf was almost a sort of security blanket for him.

  ‘I know that Patrick wouldn’t give up,’ I said. ‘I know that he would do everything in his power to get those people. Ask Salif what Patrick said to him before he left that night.’

  Arnaud stood in the doorway as he translated. Salif nodded hesitantly.

  ‘He was going to talk to the police,’ said Salif. ‘He was going to tell them what I saw. Arnaud says that when the police catch them, I can leave here a free man.’

  Arnaud didn’t translate the last part, but I understood from the context. Salif hadn’t been told that the police had dropped the investigation.

  ‘Thank you for talking to me,’ I said.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ asked Salif.