The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe (6 page)

That was how Gustave Palourde, Police Commander Alexandra Fouliche and Police Officer Stéphane Placide came to be crammed into the store’s cupboard-like control room in the middle of the night, watching a video of
an Indian, fresh off the plane, spending a good twenty minutes admiring the automatic doors that led to the entrance hall, before finally deciding to walk through them.

“If he does this with each door, we’ll be here until tomorrow night,” said the security guard who was controlling the video recorder.

“There aren’t any more doors after this,” the store manager, Julio Sympa, corrected him, wiping his round Harry Potteresque spectacles with a thick cloth handkerchief.

“We could always watch the tape on fast-forward,” suggested Commander Fouliche, certain that such a proposal would not make her look like an idiot, in contrast to her name.

“It’ll probably look like a
Benny Hill
episode,” exclaimed the taxi driver, whose cultural references were limited entirely to television.

“Shut up and let us work!” Placide interrupted him angrily. The police officer always had a hard time remaining calm.

Meanwhile, on-screen, the Indian wandered through the corridors. As soon as he moved out of shot of one camera, another picked him up. And he hadn’t spotted a single one! They watched him eat in the restaurant, accompanied by a beautiful blond woman who had bumped into him in the line and broken his sunglasses.

“She’ll end up with her legs spread,” observed Gustave, who felt as if he were watching an episode of
Big Brother
in his trailer.

They fast-forwarded through the meal, and through the man’s wanderings, alone now, along the corridors. It did indeed resemble an episode of
Benny Hill
. When the Indian unexpectedly hid under a bed, they played the video at its normal speed again.

“Birkeland. Excellent choice. That’s our best bed,” said Julio Sympa. Four pairs of eyes gave him dirty looks.

Next, the thief came out from his hiding place, made himself a nice snack in the kitchen and ate it while watching a blank plastic television screen in a showcase living room. After that, he read a newspaper, sprawled out on the sofa in his socks. He could hardly have looked any more comfortable had he been at home.

“We’ve got him!” shouted the security guard, tapping the monitor with his index finger.

Then he jumped up from his seat like a little jack-in-the-box, rushed toward the door and left, without anyone having the faintest idea what had got into him.

The others continued to watch the recording. Around 10:15 p.m., the store manager appeared on the screen, accompanied by a small
fat man who looked like he had always wanted to be a woman, and a full technical team. Julio Sympa thought he looked very photogenic and regretted not having chosen a career in film.

“But the role of Harry Potter was already taken.” He sighed resignedly, adjusting his spectacles.

They watched the Indian hop into a blue metal wardrobe before the technical team appeared and covered it in bubble wrap, and put it inside a wooden crate. The team tied the whole thing up with long straps, then carried it on a huge electric trolley to the freight elevator.

At that moment, the security guard, who was a big fan of American cop shows, entered the control room. He was carrying the Indian’s meal tray, which he’d found on the coffee table in the black-and-white lacquered living room. Piled on top of the tray were a gray jacket, a red tie and a pair of black shoes.

“The plate and glass are riddled with fingerprints,” he declared proudly, “and you’ll undoubtedly find some of his hair on these clothes.”

The police commander wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smelly shoes. Ignoring the security guard, she turned toward the store manager.

“What did you do with that wardrobe?”

“The wardrobe we saw on the video?” the man stammered.

“Yes, exactly. The wardrobe we saw on the video.”

“Dispatched …”

“Dispatched?”

“Yes, sent away. Transferred.”

“I know perfectly well what the word ‘dispatched’ means,” snapped Fouliche, who sensed that she was being treated like an idiot. “But where did you send it?”

Julio Sympa chewed his upper lip. If only he had been Harry Potter at that moment, he could have made himself disappear with a wave of his magic wand.

“To England …”

Everyone gulped at the same time.

Ajatashatru was woken by the sound of voices.

Loud, booming men’s voices.

He had not even noticed that he’d nodded off. Since he had been in the wardrobe, he had been shaken about all over the place. He had felt himself lifted off the ground. He had felt himself moving on wheels. He had also been banged against walls, stairs and other UOs (unidentified objects).

Several times, he had been tempted to come out and confess everything. It seemed preferable to being taken on a roller-coaster ride toward an unknown destination. There was something oppressive about the combination of the darkness and the incomprehensible French voices on the other side of the wardrobe.

Nevertheless, Ajatashatru had held out.

After some time, he had no longer been able to hear or feel anything. He had wondered if he were dead. But the pain he suffered when he pinched the back of his hand had confirmed
to him that he was still alive, at least for the moment, and that he had simply been abandoned to his fate in the silence and darkness. He had attempted to escape from the wardrobe, but without success. Exhausted and resigned, he must have fallen into the sweet embrace of sleep.

Now, listening to the loud voices, the Indian thought he could identify five different speakers. It was not easy—they all had the same deep, muffled tone, as if they were coming from beyond the grave—but one thing was sure: these were no longer the same voices he had heard around him in Ikea. These men spoke very quickly in a language full of onomatopoeia and sudden sharp sounds that was not unknown to him. An Arabic language spoken by black people, thought the Indian.

One of the men laughed. It sounded like a spring mattress groaning under the bouncing weight of two lovers.

The fakir held his breath, unsure whether these were the voices of friends or enemies. A friend would be anyone who was not offended by finding him in this wardrobe. An enemy would be anyone else: Ikea employees, policemen, any potential female purchaser of the wardrobe, any potential husband of the potential female purchaser
coming home from work and finding a shoeless Indian in their new wardrobe.

He swallowed with great difficulty and attempted to make saliva in his mouth. His lips were sticky, as if someone had glued them together. He was filled with a terrible feeling of panic, far worse than the fear of being discovered alive: the fear of being found dead in this cheap sheet-metal wardrobe.

During his performances back home in his village, Ajatashatru went weeks without eating, sitting in the lotus position inside the trunk of a banyan fig tree, just as Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, had done two and a half thousand years earlier. He allowed himself the luxury of eating only once a day, at noon, and then he would eat only the rusty bolts and nails brought to him by the people of the village as offerings. In May 2005, a fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Ram Bahadur Bomjam had stolen his thunder, with the teenager’s worshippers claiming that he had meditated for six months without eating or drinking. So, the eyes of the world’s media had turned toward the impostor, abandoning Ajatashatru in his little tree.

In reality, our fakir loved food and could never have gone more than a single day without
eating. As soon as the sun set each evening, his followers came and unrolled the canvas that hung in front of the fig tree, and he ate the food brought to him by his cousin and longtime accomplice Nysatkharee (pronounced
Nice-hot-curry
). As for the screws and bolts, they were made of coal. So, while they were not exactly delicious or digestible, they were a lot easier to swallow than actual rusty steel nails.

Ajatashatru had never fasted while locked inside a wardrobe without having food secreted in a false bottom. Perhaps he could manage it if he had to. The doctor in Kishanyogoor had once told him that no human being, even a fakir, could survive more than fifty days without food, or more than seventy-two hours without water. Seventy-two hours: in other words, three days.

Of course, only five hours had passed since the last time he had eaten and drunk, but the Indian did not know that. In the darkness of the wardrobe, he had lost all sense of time. And, as he felt thirsty right then, his hypochondriac nature (not especially compatible with his job as a fakir) led him to believe that he had already passed the fatal deadline of seventy-two hours locked inside this wardrobe and that his life was about to be extinguished like a candle flame.

If the doctor was correct, the Indian had
to drink as soon as possible. It no longer mattered if the voices outside were those of friends or enemies: this was a matter of life and death. So, our fakir once again pushed at the door of the wardrobe, attempting to escape. Once again, however, his efforts were in vain. With his puny arms, he could not—unlike his Bollywood heroes—smash open wardrobe doors. Not even Ikea wardrobe doors.

He must have made some noise, however, because the voices suddenly hushed.

Once more, Ajatashatru held his breath and waited, eyes wide open in spite of the fact that everything around him was pitch black. But he was not onstage, in a glass box filled with water, with a lid that would be removed as soon as the curtain went down. So he only held his breath for a few seconds before inhaling again with a loud, horselike snort.

He heard a few shocked cries from the other side of the wardrobe, and then signs of agitation: a tin of food falling onto a metal floor, people pushing and shoving.

“Don’t go!” he shouted, putting on his best English accent.

After a brief silence, a voice asked him, also in English, who he was. He had no doubt about the accent: the speaker was definitely African, and
probably black. Then again, when one is trapped in the dark interior of a wardrobe, everyone can appear black.

The Indian knew he had to be careful. They could be animists, and believe that objects were alive, a bit like in
Alice in Wonderland
. If he did not tell them the truth, they might imagine they were dealing with a talking wardrobe and would run as fast as their legs would take them from that cursed place, taking with them his only chance of escaping from his Swedish prison. What he did not know was that these men were not animists but Muslims, and that, as they were inside a moving truck, they were not able to run for their lives, no matter how desperately they might want to.

“Very well, then, as you ask me, my name is Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod,” the Indian began, using his poshest British accent (no wardrobe could possibly have such a refined accent). “I am from Rajasthan. You may not believe this, but I became trapped in this wardrobe while I was measuring its dimensions in a large French—or, rather, Swedish—furniture store. I do not have any food or water. Could you please tell me where we are?”

“We’re in a cargo truck,” said one of the voices.

“A cargo truck? Well, fancy that! And is it moving?”

“Yes,” said another voice.

“Strange, I can’t feel anything, but I’ll take your word for it. Not that I have much choice. And would you mind telling me where we are going, if that’s not too indiscreet?”

“England.”

“Well, I hope so anyway,” said yet another voice.

“You hope so? And could I possibly ask you what you are doing in a cargo truck whose destination is not entirely certain to you?”

The voices conferred for a moment in their native language. After a few seconds, a deeper, more powerful voice—probably the voice of their leader—took over the conversation and replied.

The man said that his name was Assefa (pronounced
I-suffer
), and that there were six of them in the truck, all from Sudan. The others were called Kougri, Basel, Mohammed, Nijam and Amsalu (pronounce all that however you like). Hassan, having been arrested by the Italian police, was missing. The seven men had left their country—or, more precisely, the town of Juba in South Sudan—almost a year ago. Since then, they had been on a journey worthy of Jules Verne’s greatest novels.

From the Sudanese town of Selima, the seven friends had crossed the border shared by Sudan, Libya and Egypt. There, Egyptian traffickers led them into Libya, first to Kufra, in the southeast, and then to Benghazi, in the north of the country. Next, they were taken to Tripoli, where they lived and worked for eight months. One night, they boarded a cramped boat with sixty other people, bound for the small Italian island of Lampedusa. Arrested by the
carabinieri
,
they were placed in the Caltanissetta refugee center, but were helped to escape by other human traffickers, who held them elsewhere and demanded a ransom from their families. A thousand euros—an astronomical sum. The community banded together, and the ransom was paid. Except for Hassan, who never escaped the refugee center.

The hostages had been liberated and put on a train that went from Italy to Spain. They ended up in Barcelona, thinking that they were in the north of France, and spent a few days there before they were able to set right their mistake by taking another train toward France, and more particularly toward Paris. So, these illegal aliens had taken almost a year to make the same journey that a passenger with the correct papers could have made in barely eleven hours. One year of suffering and uncertainty versus eleven hours comfortably seated in an airplane.

Assefa and his acolytes had hung around in Paris for three days before taking the train to Calais, the final stop before the United Kingdom. They spent ten days there, helped to a great extent by Red Cross volunteers who gave them food to eat and a place to sleep. This was how the police knew the approximate number of illegal aliens waiting in the zone. The Red
Cross served 250 meals? Then there must be at least 250 illegals in the area.