by Merle Kröger
Diego likes to cook. In a seafood cookbook, he’d once read that the ancient Romans had a sauce that was their version of ketchup. It was made from fermented mackerel and was called garum. The best garum sociorum was made far from Rome, on the outer edges of the empire, in a small village near the harbor city of Cartagena. In Latin, mackerel were called scomber, and that’s why the Romans named the place Escombreras. This is Diego’s favorite version of the story, lost over the course of the centuries and reappearing in a cookbook.
In Spanish, though, escombreras only means “dump site.” Diego involuntarily glances to his right. On this side, the island is no longer an island; it is a connector to the new harbor basin. As if drawn with a ruler, the concrete quay stretches out toward the sea. Day and night, tankers load and unload here, while freighters are filled with black slag that they transport God knows where. The old village is gone except for the ruins of the church, which stubbornly rear up between the spherical tanks. Four saints, along with the Virgen de la Caridad, used to ornament the church. One of them had been Santa Florentina, for whom his grandfather had named this boat. Instead of the plateau on which the cross had once stood, a bizarre terraced landscape now exists, as if a monster had bitten a giant block of stone out of the mountain.
“Farther that way,” his father hollers from within.
Diego adjusts his course. It’s chilly. Repsol, the Spanish oil multinational, is an empire of darkness. A hazy veil permanently hangs over the valley. The gas flares with their nervous flickering, the bloated tanks, the toxic waste dumps. They are like an ulcer that has spread across his family’s homeland and devoured it. Like the ulcer that is causing his father to waste away, eating him from the inside out. On his days off, Diego goes out with him. No one knows how much longer this will go on.
During that summer of 1969, the tanks burned for eight days and nights, as the wind drove the flames closer and closer to the village. On the ninth night, the residents gave up. After two thousand years of fishing, the fishermen became company employees who transported slag and building materials in their boats. The company paid good money and built them their own neighborhood in Cartagena, apartments with water and power. Repsol is the future. Several from the second generation, including Diego’s father, tried to pick fishing back up again, but it was too late. If there had ever been another future, it died with the village. Dead and buried.
Their last fish trap is far out by the Cala Cortina. Since Diego is always on call, they set out their permanently anchored nets within a thirty-minute radius from Cartagena, a condition the Martínezes are willing to accept in order to no longer be reliant on the cannery’s price pressure. Diego heads toward the black flag that marks the trap. Perhaps they have caught at least a couple of rock lobsters. Diego’s younger brother waits tables at Club Nautico, and they always need extra lobsters there. His father comes out of the cabin, refusing to look toward Escombreras. He steps nimbly across the narrow boards up to the bow. He will not be needing a walker any time soon.
“Ho!”
Diego reacts instantly to the quiet call. The sound of the motor dies away, as the Florentina glides soundlessly toward the trap. Something has been caught in it. His father saw it right away. No word passes between them; no need for it.
Silence.
Wind.
Together they pull him on board. It takes only one look for Diego to know that the boy is beyond all help. This is his fifth year working for the sea rescue service in Cartagena. How many bodies has he already drawn out of the water? No idea. He is not one who holds on to misfortune by keeping count. The first body is always the worst. For him, it was two: a French couple on their honeymoon with a kayak. You eventually get used to it, are happy for every living one you fish out of the water. The world is the way it is. We are all caught in the crisis, and his job is secure. The more people who need his help, the more secure it is.
That’s just the way it is.
The boy here probably came from one of the pateras, the rafts. Over the past year, they have been crossing up here, because Frontex’s drones and radar have been covering more and more of the area from Gibraltar to the north. And they are getting younger and younger. Diego watches his father’s back as he bends over the dead body.
Without warning, the lump in his throat swells, then something bursts.
In astonishment, he hears his own sobs as they burst out, loud and strong, against the jagged rocks of Costa Blanca.
COASTAL ROAD NEAR ESCOMBRERAS | SPAIN
Zohra Hamadi
Zohra’s in high spirits. She’s actually done it. She took her brother’s car and drove it to Spain. It is fifteen hours to Almería if you avoid the toll roads, according to the route planner on her phone. It hasn’t worked out quite like that: she has been traveling for almost twenty-four hours, snatching a few hours’ sleep here and there. Zohra had figured the trip would take longer. Before today, she’s never driven farther than the supermarket with the kids, and once a couple of kilometers on the road between the ferry in Oran and Sidi Bel Abbès. She also wondered if her back would hold up for the journey, since it was so soon after the last round of rehab. But it has. Maybe her body has finally grown used to the pain.
Would you believe it? The courts have just decided that she is healthy enough to live in Algeria, and now she does actually feel better. “Are you serious?” Zohra asked the female judge. “I should continue my treatment in Algeria? Not even the president lets himself be treated in Algeria.” They’d all laughed, everyone in courtroom 305 of the district court in Marseille North, Department for Residency Permits for Foreigners, the judge most of all. Then she had announced that Zohra would be deported if she could not prove that she had a permanent job within one month. That had been six weeks ago, and obviously she hadn’t been able to find a job that quickly.
She drives through the brown mountains, the sudden bleakness of her surroundings dampening her spirits. It is scary here, an abandoned lunar landscape. No oncoming traffic. The jolly vacation chaos of La Mancha, just a couple of kilometers behind her, is nowhere to be seen. Ancient walled chimneys protrude from the brown earth.
The voice of her satnav is too loud. “Take the second exit at the traffic circle toward Cartagena.”
Around the next bend appears a futuristic jumble of shiny steel pipes. The plant is dazzling in its shades of green, yellow, and red, and in between, spiked pyramids of black dust trickle down from conveyor belts. Trucks with tarps hiding their cargoes drive in and out. One of them cuts her off, wedging itself directly in front of her. Zohra hits the brakes hard.
Where am I?
Gas. Round tanks. Pipes, now running along both sides of the road. A refinery. Memories of Algeria pop up. Arzew. Oran. Along the coast. Where is the ocean?
Another traffic circle.
More pipes.
Without using its blinker, the truck in front of her takes a sharp right and frees up the view. The entire valley is a single refinery, whose bundles of pipes run right down to the harbor, almost man-high in diameter. Next to the road, workers in overalls and helmets are sitting on the pipes, taking a cigarette break. This is almost the exact moment she catches the biting smell of gas.
Her hands clutch the steering wheel; her entire body tightens. Just get away from the gas. Her mother had been scared even before the man came to change the cartridge in the kitchen. Zohra, a young girl back then, had hidden herself back in the far corner of the overgrown garden, near the olive trees.
Another traffic circle. The Renault Espace skids around the bend. She must drive more slowly. Beneath her to the left, a massive flame flickers out of a high chimney, swathing everything in a cloud of smoke and haze. Behind it, tankers are docked in the inner harbor against blocks of concrete.
Which side of the ocean am I on? This could well be Algeria.
A tunnel.
Zohra drives in. The tunnel is too dark for sunglasses, but it’s just for a short moment. It’s already getting light aga
in up ahead. She slows down, and a truck honks behind her. The lights in the rear mirror blind her, and it will only take a moment before it will be riding her bumper. And then? Without papers? The owner of the car unreachable?
She emerges from the tunnel, sees a parking area out of the corner of her eye, and pulls over. The trunk lays on its horn and thunders past. She turns off the car, hands shaking.
Pull yourself together, Zohra, it’s not far now.
Only now does she see that, below her, the sea runs into a small bay. Parasols are packed in close. Families are picnicking, and people are standing in the water, chatting. It is as if the gas refinery on the other side of the tunnel was just a bad dream, an illusion. She allows her gaze to wander languidly out to the sea. An old fishing boat is bobbing between two poles over there, as two men pull in their nets. Tranquillo, the Spanish say, whenever she tries to order a coffee. Everything is tranquillo here.
Two days ago, Zohra was also tranquillo. Lonely, yes, but you can dream. Then the call from Karim’s mother, who can’t understand why her son’s fiancée insists on living in France, instead of with her future husband in Algeria. The constant reproach in her voice, usually concealed, was out in the open this time. “He is on his way again.” To be with you. She didn’t say it, but Zohra knew she was thinking it.
Even though he promised Zohra he would wait until she has a job and a resident’s permit, until she can finally get him to join her. “Then we’ll get married, my darling, inshallah.” Only Karim is not the sort of man who waits. He doesn’t let other people tell him what to do. He needs to be with his fiancée as she waits around, on her own in France. To protect her. To get a job. To finally have a normal life: apartment, car, work, kids. These dreams are the ones shared by everyone in the neighborhood La Solidarité, Marseille, Fifteenth Arrondissement. On the weekends, they head to the beach at La Redonne. The children build castles in the sand, as the men show off their muscles and the women their beauty.
People from Algeria, like Zohra, like her brother, like her cousins. They have all gone home for the summer vacation; only Zohra had to stay behind. If she goes now, she can’t come back.
“Stay there,” her parents said. “We sacrificed everything so that you could get to France for your back treatment.”
“Stay there,” Karim said. “I will come to you. Algeria has no future.”
She is alone in Marseille. The high-rises are deserted. Makes coffee. Gets all the keys together. Day after day, the same tour through the empty apartments, one after the other. Get the mail, water the flowers, air the place. Outdoors, the heat kills her whenever she walks around between the empty houses. She misses the children: two nephews, one niece. She normally spends her time with them while her brother and his wife are at work. Now the days are endless.
“Almería,” Karim’s mother said. “That is where he will go ashore at night. He will call you as soon as he is there.”
Zohra wants to surprise Karim. That is why she took the car keys and set off, toward Karim. He will not arrive before dark. The drive ahead of her should take less than two hours.
Almost there. No rush now.
She suddenly feels an irresistible urge to go and sit with the people on the beach, to pretend that she is part of them. To pretend that this is La Redonne. She needs only to go down there, and her family would be already waiting.
Zohra opens the door, gets out carefully. First one foot, then the other. She stands up. The pain hits her immediately, like a knife in the back. She tries to remember the breathing exercises the doctor taught her.
Panic, all alone in this foreign country.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Merde, damn. Tears shoot to her eyes.
She cannot drive on.
Breathe.
She is drawn to the people, almost instinctively. The scoliosis forces her to hunch her back over like an old woman. She slowly limps down the path that leads to the bay. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Step by step. An eternity. Finally there.
The sea laps lazily on the beach. Two blond children, identical, crouch in the waves. One gets up and comes toward her, holding out a spade to her. Zohra’s cell phone rings.
RAFT (NO NAME)
Karim Yacine
Allah, why are you doing this to me?
Why? Until now, he has never wrangled with fate, has simply trusted God. And now, on this crossing, this trust is shattering, piece by piece, like a glass dome under which he has spent his entire life up to now. The glass is no longer holding together, as it rains thousands of tiny splinters into the sea, revealing the merciless sun.
He feels finished.
Karim wipes his forehead.
Am I going crazy?
The night was reluctant to end, out there in the fog. It was hours till Karim actually knew where he was heading, so he just kept going, until dawn broke, somewhere off to his right. He’d corrected his course, saying nothing to the others. They had always had enough gas before, when he followed a direct course. Eventually it was light, and Abdelmjid divided the dates for breakfast. Slowly the men’s trepidation evaporated, only the cousin remained quiet, eating nothing. Who could blame him? His brother is either dead or in prison. What is worse, nobody knows.
Karim has done this five times, and he has never lost a man. Never! He made it twice without a glitch, was driven back to land by the coast guard two other times, and once, because of engine problems, was fished out by the Spanish sea rescue service. That time they had cheered, as they sat in the rescue boat. He had filmed it all with his phone and later uploaded the recording to the internet. The videos of the Harragas are cult material in Algeria. It’s like an addiction, man—they get so many clicks and likes.
And yet, all the laughter from that video clip dried up the moment they reached Murcia.
And that’s exactly where they will land again. If…
Karim looks over at the cruise ship. If they don’t give a few liters of gas, take them on board, do something.
Abdelmjid keeps waving, like he has been doing for at least the past ten minutes. He has taken off his red scarf and is waving it back and forth like a lunatic. The others’ voices drone on in his ears. One of the two boys from the neighborhood is filming everything with his phone. Yet another YouTube clip.
“Their gonna get us outta here!”
“We’ll be cruising, man, too cool!”
“Huhuhu, cruiser, we’re coming!”
“Shut up, all of you! Damn it, Abdelmjid, sit down! Or do you want to kill us?” He must have said it aloud because suddenly everything is quiet. Abdelmjid sits down but continues waving stubbornly.
Karim needs to think. The cruise liner has stopped. Nice. And now? What are they planning to do with us? They show no signs of giving us any gas or taking us on board.
They’re waiting.
We’re waiting.
Murcia, deportation prison. Three years ago, the Spanish policeman had dragged him out of the cell after a few weeks and pushed him out the door. Just like that, with nothing in his pockets, no money, no phone. “You want to get to Europe? You’ve got it. Go! Get out of here!” The cop had spat in the dust at Karim’s feet and then whispered: “If you show up again, you’ll sit here until you rot. We’ll nail you for human trafficking.”
Now what’s going on?
Nothing’s going on! They keep us here until the Guardia Civil shows up, to entertain the gawkers up there.
“Stop waving this second, Abdelmjid, or I’ll throw you overboard!”
Abdelmjid stops, finally.
Kiss your future good-bye, Karim Yacine! Salaam alaikum, Zohra. Salaam alaikum to our unborn children. Salaam alaikum, Europe.
How late is it? How long will it take?
Karim looks at his phone and is surprised to see that it has connected to the cruise ship’s mobile network. He activates the GPS.
Not far to the coast anymore, to Cartagena. It is only a few kilometers from there to Murcia. The despair d
rives tears to his eyes. His fingers automatically find their way over the keypad, to hear her voice one last time.
“Hello?”
She sounds so close.
“Forget about me, darling. I’m as good as dead.”
SPIRIT OF EUROPE | BRIDGE
Léon Moret
They call it the ejection seat, when they are in the mood for joking. Léon isn’t in the mood right now. The modern ergonomic office chair is firmly bolted to the floor, directly in front of the panorama window, its fabric cover navy blue. When it is quiet out on the water, the boy with the binoculars is allowed to sit here. Now Léon is sitting on the ejection seat, 180 degrees of blue stretching out before him. Aquamarine to sky blue. Divided into squares, big ones above, smaller ones below. Windscreen wipers are attached at irregular intervals in the top squares. There is no logic to it.
Just like the raft, bobbing up and down out there.
Not again.
It can’t be. Twice in three months. How many of these damned things are drifting around the Mediterranean, breaking down right in front of his nose?
Léon has an uneasy feeling, a tugging at the back of his throat, like when you get too much MSG in your chop suey at the Chinese restaurant. He should be immune by now, considering the amount of preservatives added to the food here. Rajiv from food and beverages recently shared this information with him after a few beers. If this wasn’t done, everything would rot in front of them. Germs would spread. Rajiv had shivered. “And you know, Léon, my friend, what our cruise director always says.” Rajiv had gotten up, looked into the imaginary camera of Cruise TV, and shouted: “There is only one remedy against sickness on board: wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!” He’d flailed around like a cheerleader, as Léon wept with laughter.
But now he has this nasty feeling, because the raft is triggering a vague memory. That is the way it is with things you mess up and can’t undo: first, they flow through you hot like molten metal, then the steel solidifies and you only feel only the occasional prick. Small pangs in your insides, which don’t bother you much. Things that don’t carry any consequences never really happened.