Don't Tell Me You're Afraid (18 page)

On the last morning Zena and her grandmother ended up at the back of the jeep bed. We had slept a distance away from the vehicle to steer clear of little Said, who wouldn't stop crying. When they called us at dawn, we knew we had to get a move on; otherwise we would be left for last. The grandmother could hardly walk: She'd sprained her ankle; maybe her foot had been in the wrong position for too many long hours. I ran ahead to save a place for them. But someone started yelling, saying I couldn't hold places for anyone else, everyone had to fend for himself. I said something about an elderly lady, and an Ethiopian woman started shrieking, threatening to slap me if I didn't stop it. She sat down next to me. I tried to move back but there was no way; the mass of humanity was too dense. I had to stay where I was. I called out loudly to Zena, and from the back she told me not to worry: They had found seats.

All of a sudden, after a few hours, someone shouted something in a language that wasn't mine. Perhaps Arabic, perhaps Ethiopian, maybe Sudanese or English. Then someone up front started pounding his fist on the roof of the driver's cab.

“Stop! Stop!”

I thought someone felt sick; it happened occasionally. The
driver went straight on as if he hadn't heard. The man kept on banging and banging. After a while the trafficker lowered the window and stuck out his arm, his open hand facing the jeep bed in the Arabic gesture that means “Go to hell.” Shove it!

Then word passed from ear to ear.

Someone had fallen out. Zena's grandmother had fallen out.

T
HEY
DROPPED
US
OFF
AT
the Libyan border. It was October 12, 2011.

The Land Rover stopped and we waited there.

I don't know how they knew that Sudan ended at that particular spot, since we were surrounded by nothing but sand. In any case, Sudan ended there. We waited for hours.

Then they came to pick us up.

Libyan traffickers.

Much worse than the Sudanese, so everyone said. Because in Libya the law is more severe.

They showed up, loaded us onto a small bus, and took us to the prison in Kufra.

Our worst nightmare had materialized.

We all knew what Kufra was. A place where you were likely to stay forever, if you didn't have the money they demanded—and it was a lot of money. Or else when you started stinking like a corpse, they took you back to the border with Sudan, just before
you died. They left you in the middle of the Sahara to drop dead there.

That's what everyone said.

Our arrival, however, was not traumatic. The place was better than the prison in Sharif al Amin: bigger, more spacious. A light-colored building of rough concrete blocks, it stood right in the middle of the desert.

All around, the usual endless expanse of golden sand dunes. We breathed the smell of dust, stirred by a slight breeze that drifted in through the gate, which the guards left open during the day. When we first arrived, we were treated well. They separated the women from the men and they brought us as much food and water as we wanted. They washed me. Dressed me in new clothes. They said, “Welcome to Libya.” They put me on a mattress, and after weeks with my back on the sand it was a blessing.

All this, however, lasted two days.

At the end of the second day they came back and demanded money.

A thousand dollars to take me to Tripoli.

As usual, if I didn't have it I could make a call. One minute maximum.

They came five times a day to remind me to pay. Five times with sticks and their “
Hafta,
hawaian,
” “Pay, animal.” Until I paid. It can go on for weeks, months. They don't care; they don't give up. But only if you're clever enough to make them believe that sooner or later you will pay.

When they realize that you're one of those who won't pay, there are only two possibilities.

If you're a man, they'll take you back to the border.

If you're a woman, they'll rape you in exchange for a one-way ticket. This is what I was told by Taliya, a Somali girl, the third day after I arrived. I could tell she was from my country, and I needed to talk to someone, to feel the consolation of a voice, to talk freely with another human being. We slept next to each other, and that day I ran into her in the communal yard and spoke to her. “What's your name? Are you Somali?” I asked, sitting down next to her on a bench against the clay wall. She kept her eyes lowered. Who knows at what point in the Journey she'd lost the nerve to look people in the eye?

I repeated the question: “What's your name?”

She wouldn't speak. But I persisted.

After a while she said, “Taliya,” then continued staring at the ground. I started asking her the dumbest questions; I just felt like talking. Taliya didn't answer anymore. I kept it up like a raving lunatic for half an hour, maybe an hour. I wanted her to answer. Finally all she said was: “I let them fuck me like a dog to get out of here. I've been in this place for four months.”

It took Hodan twenty-eight days to wire the money to me at a small wooden shack for the transfer of cash that coincidentally stood at the entrance to the prison. Twenty-eight endless days in which I lived on water and peanuts. After the first forty-eight hours, in fact, they didn't give us anything else, just water and peanuts. Like monkeys. If you had money you could buy something directly from the guards. But if you had money they came and took it from you as an advance on the thousand dollars.

The prison was divided into two sections, male and female. There was a shared yard where we could walk around and breathe in the dusty desert wind. Nothing ever happened. We
were depleted, reduced to shadows of ourselves. No one spoke; some ranted and raved due to the heat or the solitude, longing for home. I tried to keep calm and stay out of trouble.

One day four Ethiopian men who'd been in Kufra for five months decided to get together and teach the guards a lesson, after having been beaten by them numerous times. They knew they'd end up getting the worst of it, but by now they were out of their heads; they wanted to lash out, get a taste of hammering someone. Word of what was about to happen had spread; this was the only kind of thing we told one another about. It was our entertainment; our lives played out on the edge of survival. At two in the afternoon we gathered in the yard to witness the settling of scores. Two guards were the cruelest: When they beat you, they did it to inflict pain, to leave marks. Two of the Ethiopians called them over with some excuse. Grumbling, the guards sauntered over in their short-sleeved green uniforms, clubs and guns in their belts. The other two Ethiopians immediately came up and surrounded them, kicking and punching wildly, until the guards fell to the ground. The Ethiopians let it all out, unleashing on the two guards all the hatred they'd nurtured for months. Before long, however, six other guards ran up. One of the two on the ground was barely moving, completely covered in blood, while the other one appeared to be dead, lying motionless, his eyes wide open. I watched, anesthetized, inured to it by now. The blazing sun had shriveled my brain. Nothing shocked me. One of the six bent down and felt his fellow officer's pulse. He must have been dead. They asked who'd killed him. No one breathed a word. They asked again. Nothing. The one in command, the smallest of all, pulled out his gun and fired into the air. He asked again. One of the Ethiopians,
the heaviest one, stepped forward. “I was the one who killed,” he said in Arabic. The little man in uniform ordered him to kneel down, right there in front of everyone. Then he asked him to confirm it. “I was the one who killed,” the Ethiopian repeated. We all knew what was coming. No one closed his eyes or looked away. The Ethiopian knew it too; he didn't turn a hair. The commander leveled his gun. A single shot, point-blank. The Ethiopian joined the other man on the ground.

I spent twenty-eight endless days prowling around like a ghost among ghosts. At night I couldn't sleep because of the heat, and during the day I tortured myself, weak as I was, looking for a corner with a speck of shade. I wanted to train, do some exercises, stretch my muscles leaning against the wall. But the peanuts weren't enough; I had no energy. My vision clouded over; when the sun was at its peak, I had hallucinations. Sitting on the ground, my back against a wall, I saw Aabe, the courtyard, the eucalyptus. I thought I was up there with Alì, hidden among the cool branches. Or on the mattress in the evening, holding Hodan's hand tightly. I didn't even have the money to call her or Hooyo.

There was nothing I could do except sit there and wait. With the part of my brain that remained alert, I felt that I was slowly but surely losing touch with myself. I was giving up; I no longer had the strength. At times I thought it didn't matter to me: I would stay there on the ground forever.

Then too, day and night, I would dream about delicious foods. The breakfast buffet at the hotel in Beijing. It had everything: fruit juices, hard-boiled or scrambled eggs, sausages, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, coffee, tea, cappuccino, hot chocolate, croissants, biscuits with honey, toast, cold cuts, cheeses. And someone to
serve me. Every day I went over that food in my mind. And to think I hadn't even tried it all. I sat there for days, out of my mind. I was out of my mind.

Until the money from Hodan arrived and I paid.

Finally I could go, I could leave Kufra.

Then they showed me what would be my home for the next week of the Journey.

A freight container with no light and just a small opening at the top to let air in. I would share it with two hundred and twenty other people. Without saying a word, now as worn-out as the tattered rags we wore, we climbed in.

Being in a container is like being in a gas chamber. The sun heats the metal walls to such a degree that after a few hours everything is vaporized. Breath, urine, feces, vomit, sweat. Everything evaporates in a toxic cloud that obstructs your breathing.

For the first stretch, maybe half an hour, we stood, as if we were about to get off at any moment: We didn't know how to act, what to do. Then we sat on the floor, and we soon learned that the only way to support your back was to lean against someone else's body.

The metal sheets of the walls were scorching hot, like fire. We tried to stay as close to the center as possible to keep away from the heat that was inescapable; it stole your breath and erased your thoughts. When we were little and got sick, Hooyo would put mint leaves and rosemary in a pot of water and boil it. Then she would make us lean over it for hours, our heads covered with a cloth, so we could inhale the steam and clear our noses and our heads. At the end we would be dripping, all our pores open. Being in the container was a thousand times worse; it was like
being in the boiling pot itself. The floor too was flaming hot. We tried to keep our knees bent, so that only our shoes (for those who still had them) touched the metal. But you can't stay in the same position for hours, so we took turns straightening our legs. The relief was so great that we put up with burning our thighs. The flesh bright red like blood.

The only way to survive was to climb over the others in turn and stick your nose out of the opening for a few seconds. After two hours without oxygen, before blacking out, you have hallucinations. Visual, auditory. We needy
tahrib
refugees, penned in that container, talked to people who existed in our eyes only, screamed at people who shouted in our ears only.

Being caged in the container opens your eyes to people's foolishness. After a few hours there are no more gender differences. Men and women are all the same; you are reduced to the lowest common denominator. All that remains of you is a shadow struggling to survive. You no longer even remember whether you're a woman or a man. There may have been a few Ethiopian Christians in the container, but the majority of people were Muslim. Yet none of the women had her legs or head covered. Everything showing, everything exposed, because there's nothing left anymore except that body that only a detail or two reminds you is yours. The mole you have on your thigh. The crooked toes on your feet. The scar on your belly. You're you. But you're also no longer you, dissolved into the vapors of other bodies. When the stranger next to you can't hold his bowels, or when you can't, and you go on breathing and journeying for days in that nauseating stench, with no food or water, you no longer even know who you were before. The image of my mother on Hodan's wedding day as she takes my face in her
hands, her eyes swollen with tears, and tells me: “You look beautiful, my daughter. You're the most beautiful one in the family.” My awkwardness at being all dressed up in those colored veils, the white
hijab
wrapped around my head and shoulders. The first time I saw myself as feminine, the first time I felt special.

Maybe I was nobody anymore. Maybe I had always been made of the stuff of dreams.

On the third day in the container, a forty-two-year-old man, a Somali, died. The woman next to him noticed it, after who knows how long. For two days they'd been trying to give him water from a bottle that had appeared out of nowhere, but he could no longer swallow.

He'd stayed in Kufra only one afternoon; he had the money for the leg to Tripoli with him. Most likely he was feeling sick and had decided to get to the city as soon as possible. His throat had become clogged as a result of the sand he'd inhaled on the jeep in the desert. The granules had formed a dense plug that the water couldn't get through.

He died of suffocation. When the news spread through the container, whispered from ear to ear as usual, without anyone's saying a word we intoned the
Salat Al-Janaza, the prayer for the dead. Each in his own language. We accompanied that man, whose name I never even knew, on his personal journey.

That night when we stopped to sleep, we dug a hole in the sand and we buried the body in the earth that had longed to take him back.

Every so often, as I sat like a limp sack on the metal floor that burned like fire, leaning against someone, the London Olympics
came to mind. That's what kept me alive: the urge to set my legs in motion, to let my muscles explode. It was the only way I managed to survive. I dreamed about the coach I would have once I got to Europe. For some reason I imagined him to be the coach Mo Farah had. I saw myself in England before reaching Helsinki. I measured my times, seeing them improve week after week, day after day.

I saw myself in the final.

I pictured the fans standing up and applauding. This time because I had finished first.