In the Sea There are Crocodiles (14 page)

Our point of reference was a lighthouse on the Greek coast. But after a while we stopped seeing it. The waves were so high they covered it, and at that point Hussein Ali started screaming, We’re only as big as a whale’s tooth. And the whales will eat us. And if they don’t eat us the crocodiles will, even though you say there aren’t any. We have to turn back, we have to turn back.

I’m not turning back, I said. We’re near Greece, and if we aren’t near, at least we’re halfway by now. It’s the same distance, so it makes no difference if we go on or turn back, and I prefer to die in the sea rather than start this whole journey all over again.

We started arguing, right there in the middle of the sea, with the darkness and the waves all around, and with Rahmat and me saying, To Greece, to Greece. And Soltan and Liaqat saying, To Turkey, to Turkey. And Hussein Ali still bailing water and crying and saying, The mountain’s falling, the mountain’s falling, because the waves were so high—two or three meters or even more—that when they towered over us, when the dinghy was in the hollow between one wave and the next, it was as if they were
about to collapse on top of us. But instead they lifted us right up and, when we were on the crest, let us down again with a bump, like the carousels I’ve been on here in Italy, at the amusement park. But, right then, it wasn’t amusing at all.

So the situation was this: Rahmat and me rowing like mad toward Greece (or in the direction we thought Greece was), while Soltan and Liaqat were rowing toward Turkey (or in the direction they thought Turkey was). The argument degenerated into name calling, and we started hitting and elbowing each other like complete idiots, in a dinghy that was just a little dot in the middle of nowhere, while Hussein Ali was crying and saying, What’s going on? I’m doing my job of throwing out the water and you’re hitting each other? Row. Please, just row.

I think it was then that the boat appeared. Or rather, not the boat, the ship. A very big ship, a ferry or something like that. I saw it coming up behind Hussein Ali as he spoke. It passed very, very close to us.

How close?

Do you see the florist’s shop outside the window? The distance from here to there
.

As close as that?

As close as from here to there
.

———

These high waves were different from normal waves. They got mixed up with the others, and the dinghy made a strange movement, like a horse stung by a bee. And Liaqat couldn’t hold on. I felt his fingers slide over my shoulder. He didn’t scream, he didn’t have time. The dinghy had suddenly tossed him out.

Let me get this right. Liaqat fell into the water?

Yes
.

And what did the rest of you do?

We looked for him as best we could, hoping to see him in among the waves, and we shouted. But he’d disappeared
.

When the waves from the ship—which didn’t stop: maybe it saw us, maybe not, we couldn’t tell—anyway, when the waves subsided, we kept rowing and calling Liaqat’s name. And rowing. And calling. Turning in circles around the spot where we’d been, or so we thought, though in all probability we’d already moved a long way from there.

Nothing. Liaqat had been taken by the darkness.

At that point, I’m not really sure what happened: it may have been exhaustion, it may have been discouragement, it may have been that we felt too small, infinitely too small not to succumb to all of these things—but at that point we fell asleep.

———

By the time we opened our eyes again, it was dawn. The water around us was dark, almost black. We rinsed our faces, spitting out the salt. We looked along the horizon and saw land. A strip of land, with a beach and a hill. It wasn’t too far away. We could make it. We started rowing quickly and painfully, without knowing whether it was Greece or Turkey. We simply said, Let’s row in that direction.

After being on our knees for so long, our legs had gone numb. We had tiny little cuts on our hands: we didn’t know how we’d got them, but they burned every time the salt water made them wet. As we approached the island, the sky grew lighter, and it was then that Soltan saw a flag on a hill. All he said, in a thin voice, was, A flag. He pointed with his index finger. It kept flapping in the wind, but at those moments when it was fully stretched we could see horizontal stripes, alternately blue and white (nine stripes in all), starting with a blue stripe at the top, and in the upper corner, on the same side as the pole, a square, also blue, with a white cross in the middle.

The flag of Greece.

Reaching shallow water, we got out of the dinghy. We dragged it ashore, close to the rocks, our backs stooped so as to be as inconspicuous as possible, although there
didn’t seem to be anybody about. We deflated the dinghy, first squeezing the air through the plugs, then, getting impatient, ripping the plastic with stones. We folded it quickly and hid it under a rock, and covered the rock with sand. We looked at each other.

What shall we do? asked Hussein Ali.

We were in our underpants. We’d lost our clothes. What could we do?

Stay here, I said.

Where are you going?

To the village.

What village? We don’t know where we are.

On the coast …

On the coast, said Soltan. Congratulations.

Let me finish, I said. We were supposed to get to Mytilene, right?

Do you know which way Mytilene is?

No. But there has to be a village around here. A few houses. Some shops. I’ll look for food and even some clothes, if possible. You wait here. There’s no point wandering around like four stray dogs, getting ourselves noticed.

I want to come too, said Hussein Ali.

No.

Why?

I’ve already explained.

Because you can hide better when you’re alone, said Rahmat.

Hussein Ali gave me a dirty look. Make sure you come back.

I’ll be back as soon as I can.

You won’t leave us, will you?

I turned away without replying and set off along the path that climbed the hill. I walked for a long time, without knowing where I was going. I may even have got lost, which is quite possible when you don’t know where you’re going.

The houses appeared out of nowhere, behind the trees. In among the houses was a supermarket. There were groups of tourists, families on holiday, elderly people out for a stroll. An ice-cream parlor with a long queue in front of it. A newsagent’s. A garage that hired out scooters and cars. And a little square with benches and a playground. From the ice-cream parlor came cheerful music, played very loud.

The supermarket. The supermarket was paradise. The supermarket was my target. All I had to do was go in, take some food, nothing too difficult, fruit would do, and clothes, maybe bathing trunks, if they had any. Young boys walking around in bathing trunks in a seaside resort is one thing, but young boys walking around in their underpants, well, that’s another matter entirely.

A police car passed. I hid behind (more inside than behind) a flowerbed. I squatted there for a few minutes watching the movements at the front of the supermarket, to see if I could get in without attracting attention, and came to the conclusion that there was no way I could go in through the front. But I could always go around the back. So I flattened myself against the walls of the houses like a lizard, slid under a gate, getting a couple of nasty scratches on the stomach in the process, and finally climbed a metal fence. I entered the supermarket like a ghost, taking advantage of the fact that the assistant unloading boxes of snacks was too busy to notice me. As I placed my bare foot on the cold, slippery tiles of the section of the supermarket selling household goods, I heard voices I recognized coming from behind a shelf. I poked my head around.

Rahmat, Hussein Ali and Soltan were strolling along the aisles, watched from a distance by a bewildered young blond assistant.

They’d disobeyed. I had no idea how they’d managed to get there before me. I stepped out, signaling to them to act normally and pretend we didn’t know each other.

Each of us took something for himself: food but no clothes, because they didn’t sell them. People were looking at us in astonishment, wide-eyed. We had to hurry. But,
when we tried to leave, we found the door of the storeroom at the back was blocked. There was still the main door, but to get out that way we’d have to make a run for it. As we sped down the fruit and vegetable aisle, then the toiletries aisle, then some other aisle I can’t remember, I wondered if the person yelling in Greek was the manager, and if the manager who was hurling insults at us in Greek had picked up his Greek telephone to call the Greek police. Oh, if only those three idiots had waited for me! I would have done everything differently, much more discreetly. Instead of which, we hurtled out through the glass door—without crashing into anyone, thank God—but no sooner had we taken a few steps along the pavement, surrounded by children with ice cream running down over their fingers and little old ladies in silvery sandals and people with scared looks on their faces (although I doubt young boys in their underpants could really scare anyone), than a police car slammed on the brakes—just like in the films, I swear—and three huge policemen got out.

I hardly had time to even be aware of this police car before I was inside it. With Hussein Ali. In the backseat. Just the two of us.

The others had apparently managed to get away.

———

Pakistanis?

No.

Afghans?

No.

I know you’re Afghans. Don’t mess me around.

No Afghans, no.

Oh, no Afghans no? Afghans yes, you little rats. Afghans. I can recognize you from the smell.

They dragged us to the police station, and shut us up in a little room. We could hear steps in the corridor and voices saying things we didn’t understand, and I remember that what I was afraid of more than anything else, more than being beaten or put in prison, was being fingerprinted. I had heard all about this fingerprinting business from some boys who worked at the stonecutting factory in Iran. They’d told me that in Greece, as soon as they caught you, they took your fingerprints, and if you were illegal you were screwed, because after that you couldn’t ask for political asylum in any other country in Europe.

So Hussein Ali and I decided to make nuisances of ourselves in order to get thrown out before the fingerprint people arrived. But to get thrown out you have to be a serious nuisance, a professional. First of all, we started whining and yelling that we had stomachaches because
we were hungry, and the policemen brought us dry biscuits. Then that we had to go to the toilet. We kept saying, Toilet, toilet. After the toilet we started crying and shouting and moaning, and kept it up until night fell. Police on night duty are usually less patient, and if things go badly they hit you till you bleed, but if things go well they let you go.

We took the risk. Things went well.

It was almost morning, still dark, and with very few cars around, when two of the policemen, fed up with our yelling, threw open the door of the little room and, dragging us by our ears, flung us into the street, shouting at us to go back where we’d come from, bunch of screaming monkeys. Or something like that.

We spent the whole morning searching for Soltan and Rahmat. We found them outside the town, near the beach, but I didn’t have time to be pleased at finding them because I immediately lost my temper. I’d been hoping they’d have found some clothes in the meantime—trousers, T-shirts or whatever, maybe shoes—but they hadn’t found a thing. All four of us still looked like tramps, and it isn’t true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can.

One thing I’d done while I was in the police station (as an illegal, you have to be able to exploit every opportunity)
had been to have a good look at a large map of the island on the wall: the place where we were was marked in red, Mytilene in blue. It was from Mytilene that you could catch a boat for Athens. It might be a day’s walk, through fields and along secondary roads, but we’d get there, even with aching feet.

We set off, walking along the edge of a road. The sun was hot enough to bake bread, even if you stood still you broke out in a sweat. Soltan was complaining—I don’t think Hussein Ali had any breath left, otherwise he would have complained, too, as usual—and from time to time he would lean into the road and wave at the cars to stop and give us a lift, even though he was half naked. I dragged him away, saying, No. What are you doing? They’ll call the police again. But he kept on doing it.

Let’s stop here, I beg you, he said. Let’s wait for someone to give us a ride.

If you carry on like that, I said, it’ll be the police who pick you up. You’ll see.

Not that I wanted to be the bird of ill omen, or whatever you call it. Not at all. It was in my own interest to continue the journey with them, so we could look out for each other, but they kept on and on about how tired they were and how much better it would be to get a lift from a small van or something like that, so finally I said, No, and walked away from the group.

Nearby there was a small shop with a petrol pump and to the right of it, a dirty, flaking old phone box half hidden by the branches of a tree. I went in, grabbed the telephone and pretended to be making a call, instead of which I was keeping my eyes on my companions, to see what they were up to.

When the police car arrived—with its lights on, but without a siren—I thought for a moment I should dash out and yell, Run away, run away, but I was too late. I huddled in the phone box and watched as they fled and the police caught up with them and beat them with truncheons. I saw it all from a kneeling position, through the dirty windows, unable to do anything, and praying that no one thought of making a phone call.

As soon as the police car had gone, with a screech of tires, I left the phone box, crept past the service station, making sure there was nobody around, and set off hell for leather along a sandy, deserted country lane. I kept on running, running, running, without knowing where I was going, until my lungs were ready to burst and I had to lie down on the ground to recover. When I realized I was fine, I got up and started walking again. After half an hour, I passed a courtyard. It was the courtyard of a private house, surrounded by a low wall and with a big tree in the middle. I didn’t see anyone, so I climbed over.
There was a dog, but it was tied up. It saw me and started barking, and I hid under the thick branch of the tree.