In the Sea There are Crocodiles Read online

  First we traveled on a bus as far as the border, a bus with lots of seats. We traveled not as illegals, hidden under the seats, but with tickets like important people. We were very happy. We could never have imagined that our journey to Iran would be so comfortable, and in fact the rest wouldn’t be. But we’d certainly got off to a good start.

  At the border we joined another group of people. In all there were seventeen of us. We got into a Toyota pickup truck: there were four seats in front, which were taken by the trafficker and his companions, while the seventeen of us crammed into the back, packed as tightly as olives. There was even one of those longbeards—among the illegals, I mean—a fat, tousle-haired man who seemed to take an instant dislike to me, even though I hadn’t done anything to him, and who during the journey tried constantly to shove me out of the truck with his knee, pretending he wasn’t doing anything. After a while I had to say to him, Stop it, don’t do that, don’t do that, but it was like talking to a mountain, what with all the noise of the wheels and the engine. The Toyota was climbing along mountain roads, with ravines below, and even without his shoving I was already in danger of falling. I started begging him, saying I hadn’t done anything wrong. Sufi didn’t know what to do either, he wanted to help me, but how? At that point, without saying anything, another man, who might have been a Tajik, stood up calmly, as if he was going to go and drink a little water, punched the longbeard in the face and told him to leave me alone, because I hadn’t done anything to him and we both had a long journey ahead of us and wanted to reach our destination, and there was no reason to make trouble for each other.

  The longbeard calmed down.

  After hours of traveling, we arrived and they made us get out. I couldn’t say where we were: a low, bare, arid mountain, where the ground crunched underfoot. It was dark and there were no lights. Even the moon had hidden. The people traffickers made us hide in a cave because the order was to take only five people to the city at a time.

  When it was our turn, mine and Sufi’s, the traffickers made Sufi get in the back of the truck and me in the front, in the passenger seat next to the driver. They told me to squat down. Then two other people got in, so that instead of being able to look out of the window, as I’d really been hoping to do, I spent the short ride into the city between the feet of those two passengers, with the soles of their shoes resting on my back.

  The city we came to, when we came to it, was called Kerman.

  Iran

  A two-story house. A yard with trees and a low stone wall separating it from the street, but obviously we couldn’t go out there to play buzul-bazi or football. On the first floor there was a bathroom with a shower and two spacious living rooms with cushions and rugs and a lot of windows, all of them blacked out. The ground floor was the same. Except for the toilet, which was outside, in the yard, hidden by a cypress tree. In short, that house in Kerman was a nice house.

  We and our trafficker weren’t the only people there but also other groups of people, all illegals in transit, I had no idea where from. Some people were sleeping, or eating, or talking in low voices, or cutting their nails. A man was consoling a child who was lying on the floor in a corner, crying desperately. A trafficker was sitting at the table, cleaning a long knife. A lot of people were smoking and the room was shrouded in smoke. Not a single woman. Sufi and I sat down against a wall to rest. They brought us something to eat: rice with fried chicken. The rice was good, and so was the fried chicken. And maybe it was because of the fact that I was alive, in a nice house in Iran, or because of the tasty rice and fried chicken, or because of all these emotions together, but I started shaking.

  I felt hot and cold at the same time. I was sweating. When I breathed, I produced a thin whistling sound, and I was shaking so much, not even an earthquake could have shaken me to the core like that.

  What’s the matter? said Sufi.

  I don’t know.

  Are you ill?

  I think so.

  Really? In what way?

  Go and call the man.

  Which man?

  The one who defended me from the longbeard.

  The man who had stopped my bones shattering at the bottom of a ravine during the journey in the Toyota knelt down next to me, placed a hand on my forehead—his hand was so big that his fingers stretched from one ear to the other—and said, He’s burning. He has a fever.

  Sufi stuck a finger in his mouth. What can we do?

  Nothing. He has to rest.

  Could he die?

  The man wrinkled his nose. Na ba omidi khoda, little Hazara. Who can say? Let’s hope not, all right? I think he’s just very tired.

  Can’t we call anyone, like a doctor?

  They’ll see to it, said the man, pointing to the Baluchis. In the meantime I’ll go and get a cloth and wet it in cold water.

  I remember I opened one eye. My eyelid was as heavy as the iron shutter of osta sahib’s sandal shop. Don’t go, I said to Sufi.

  I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.

  The man came back with a wet cloth. He placed it gently on my forehead, and said some words I didn’t understand. A few drops of water trickled through my hair and onto my neck and cheeks and behind my ears. I heard music and I think I asked something like, Who’s playing? I remember the word radio. I remember I was in Nava, and it was snowing. I remember my mother’s hand in my hair. I remember my dead teacher’s kind eyes, he was reciting a poem and asking me to repeat it, but I couldn’t. Then I fell asleep.

  ———

  One after another, in small groups, everyone left the house, except for two of the traffickers. Even the nice man with the big hands left. I got a little worse, and there were several days I don’t remember anything about: only a sensation of warmth and a fear of falling, of slipping away without being able to grab hold of anything. I felt so ill I couldn’t move. It was as if someone had poured concrete into my arm and leg muscles. Even my veins didn’t work, the blood had stopped circulating.

  For a week I ate nothing but watermelon. I was very, very thirsty. If I could, I would have drunk constantly to put out the fire in my throat.

  Take this.

  What is it?

  Open your mouth. That’s right. Now drink and swallow.

  What is it?

  Don’t sit up. Rest. Rahat bash.

  Obviously the traffickers couldn’t take me to a hospital or a doctor. That’s the biggest problem about being an illegal: you’re illegal even when it comes to your health. They gave me some medicines they knew, which they had in the house, little white pills to be swallowed with water. I don’t know what drug it was—I wasn’t only a patient, but also an Afghan and in debt to these people, so I couldn’t ask any questions—but whatever it was I recovered in the end, which was all that mattered. After a week, I felt a lot better.

  One morning, our trafficker told me and Sufi to get our things together—which made me laugh, because we didn’t have anything to get together—and follow him.

  We went to the station in Kerman.

  It was the first time I had walked in a street in Iran by day, and I was starting to think that the world was much less various and mysterious than I had imagined when I was living in Nava.

  The station, I remember, was a long, low building, with stone steps leading up to a row of columns under a wavy roof. And there was a sign over the roof, partly blue and partly transparent, with the words Kerman Railway Station on it in English, in yellow, and the same thing in Farsi, in red. Waiting for us there were two other Baluchi traffickers, partners of our own trafficker, and a small group of Afghans I had seen the day before in the house.

  We got into the train through different doors. It was going nonstop to Qom. Qom is an important city between Isfahan and Teheran, a sacred place for Shia Muslims, because it houses the tomb of Fatima al-Masuma. I was in Shia territory now. And even though it didn’t matter that much, I felt as if I was at home, or at least hoped I was, hoped I was in a place where I would be tre
ated well, which amounts to the same thing.

  I was euphoric.

  I was cured.

  I was ready and willing.

  It was a wonderful sunny day, and Sufi and I were together, in Iran.

  You say you felt big, Enaiat. You’d got taller because of the fever. They say children grow when they have a fever, did you know that?

  Yes. I did.

  How tall are you now?

  One meter seventy-five, I think.

  And when you were in Iran?

  As tall as a child often or eleven. How tall are they? I don’t know.

  How much time had passed by then, since you’d started your journey?

  Since I’d left Nava, you mean?

  Yes.

  Eighteen months. Yes, I’d say about eighteen months.

  And we said you left at the age often.

  That’s what we said, Fabio. Although we don’t know.

  Although we don’t know, of course. Right.

  And what time of year did you arrive in Iran?

  In spring.

  Good. At least time is certain.

  No, Fabio. Nothing’s certain.

  Time is, Enaiat. It runs at the same speed in every part of the world.

  Do you think so? You know something, Fabio? I wouldn’t be so sure.

  On the way to Qom. Speeding on a top-notch train across Iran. Seen from a distance, through the windows, Iran looked much greener than either Pakistan or Afghanistan. It was a wonderful journey, I remember: sitting comfortably, together with dozens of local passengers, the smell of eau de cologne, the dining car, clean seats soft enough to sleep in.

  Our trafficker and his partners sat three or four rows from me and Sufi and all the other Afghans, so they could stay hidden among the passengers and still keep an eye on us. At the station in Kerman, before the train doors closed, they had said, Whatever happens, we don’t know each other. Is that clear? You must never ever say you’re with us. If the police get on the train and check you out and then tell you to follow them, do as they say. If they take you to the border, don’t worry, we’ll come and get you. Is that understood?

  We nodded and said yes. They looked at us and asked us again if we’d understood correctly, and we said yes a second time, all in unison. Then, just to be sure and to do things properly, they asked us a third time.

  I think they were a little nervous. When the ticket inspector got on, they immediately went and talked to him and showed him some papers. I think they even gave him some money.

  We got off the train at Qom. For some the journey ended there—the traffickers phoned some people to come and pick them up—but Sufi and I and a few others got on a bus to take us from Qom to Isfahan. Our trafficker and the bus driver must have known each other, because when they caught sight of each other, they hugged and exchanged kisses on the cheek.

  Halfway through the journey, the bus suddenly slowed down. Sufi squeezed my arm.

  You’re hurting me, I said.

  What’s going on?

  I moved aside the curtains, which we’d drawn to shield ourselves from the sun. Sheep, I said.

  What?

  Sheep. We stopped because of a flock of sheep.

  Sufi collapsed in his seat, his hands over his ears.

  An hour later we arrived in Isfahan.

  1) I’ll take you where I want. 2) You’ll work where I want. 3) For four months I’ll take your wages.

  Those were the conditions. Everything may have gone smoothly up until then, they may have taken care of me when I was sick, the train may have been comfortable and the coach may not have been stopped by the (Iranian) police but only by a flock of (Iranian) sheep, but now Sufi and I were going to find out where we would be spending the next four months—at least—of our lives, and what work we would be doing. That was why the journey from the bus station in Isfahan to our destination—destination and destiny are very similar, aren’t they?—seemed to me longer and more dangerous, I swear, than all that getting on and off of trains and buses in the middle of nowhere that had gone before.

  But when we got to a sparsely populated area on the southern outskirts of the city, our trafficker took us to a building site where they were building an apartment block, four storys high, but very, very long, with lots and lots of apartments side by side, all of them the same. There were different firms operating there, each of which had won the contract for one section. It was very hot and dusty. We walked around to the other side of the building. A tall Iranian with small eyes sprang out from behind a container filled with bricks and told us to come in.

  The trafficker shook hands with the Iranian, who looked as if he must be the site foreman to judge by his clean shirt and neat beard, introduced us in a few words, just our names, as if we were expected and arrangements had been made in advance, then turned to us and said, Behave yourselves. That was all. Behave yourselves. Then he picked up his bag from the ground and left.

  The site foreman scratched his head, and asked, What can you do?

  Nothing, we said. (Honesty was the best policy.)

  I thought as much, he replied. Come with me.

  Sufi and I looked at each other and followed him.

  The building was a skeleton, without doors or windows. The foreman led us to an apartment where there were no tiles on the floor, just rough, cracked concrete. This is where the people who work for us live, he said. I walked to the middle of the room and looked around. The windows and doors were sealed with nylon. There was no running water, nor any gas. The water, said the foreman, was brought by lorry, and to cook they used gas cylinders which were refilled in a nearby shop. An electric cable, patched up with adhesive tape, climbed up the outside wall of the building, came in through the window, ran along the ceiling and hung down by the door to the corridor, with a lightbulb on the end.

  Go and get some sand, said the foreman. Sand. From around there.

  We came back with two buckets of sand each, just to show that although we were small we were strong.

  Pour it in that corner. Good, like that. Smooth it with the broom and unroll a rug on top of it. One of those over there, that’s it. Unroll it. You’ll sleep here until the building is finished. Then we’ll go to another site. Stay clean and remember you’re not alone. The better you behave, the better you’ll get on with everyone, okay? You’ll soon get the hang of things here, washing, eating, praying and the rest. If you have any problems talk to me, don’t try and solve them yourselves. Now go down to the yard, introduce yourselves to the other workers and do what they tell you to do.

  They were all illegals. Not a single one of the bricklayers, carpenters and electricians working for that firm had papers. And they all lived there, in that big housing complex, in the apartments under construction. Let’s be clear about this, they didn’t live in them because it made them do better work, or even work harder—although in a way both things were true: if you build a house which isn’t yours, but feels like it is for the moment, you start to grow fond of it and end up taking better care of it, and if you don’t have to waste time going home in the evening and coming to work in the morning, you can start work as soon as you wake up and stop just before going to bed or having dinner, if you still have the strength to eat—no, they lived there because it was the safest place to be.

  The fact is, nobody ever left the site.

  The site wasn’t only our home.

  The site was our world.

  The site was our solar system.

  During the first few months, neither I nor Sufi set foot outside the site. We were afraid of the Iranian police. We were afraid of ending up in Telisia or Sang Safid, and if you don’t know what they are, that’s only because you’ve never been an Afghan refugee in Iran, because all the Afghan refugees in Iran know what Telisia and Sang Safid are. They’re legendary. They’re supposed to be temporary detention centers, but they’re more like concentration camps, judging by what I read later about concentration camps. I don’t know if I’m explaining m
yself well. What I mean is, places without hope.

  In Afghanistan, you only had to say their names to suck all the air out of a room like in those vacuum-packed bags they use for food. Clouds would cover the sun and the leaves would fall. It was said that the police there forced people to climb to the top of the hills—in those wide, open spaces—carrying a tarpaulin from a lorry on their backs, and then made them get inside the tarpaulin and rolled them down the hill onto the rocks.

  When I was still in Afghanistan, I’d met two boys who’d gone mad. They talked to themselves, screamed, peed in their clothes. And I remember someone telling me they’d been in Telisia, or else in Sang Safid.

  About three days after Sufi and I arrived, I saw a group of workers arguing about who was supposed to go and do something somewhere. I was running past, with a bucket in my hand, but I stopped to listen.

  Go where? I asked.

  To do the shopping.

  To do the shopping? Outside?

  Have you seen any shops on the site, Enaiat jan? said one of the older ones. Every week, someone has to go and do the shopping. I’ve been three times in the past few months. Now it’s Khaled’s turn. He’s only been once.

  Yes, but that was three weeks ago. How long is it since you last went, Hamid? Eh? How long? Two months. More than that.

  That’s not true. I went last month, don’t you remember?

  The dust has clogged up your memory, Hamid.

  Anyway, the fact was that one person a week, always one of those who had been there for a long time and knew how to get around the city, did the shopping for everyone. He would take a taxi and go and buy what was needed from a particular shop, a general store where there was a bit of everything and the shopkeeper was a friend, then come straight back. Not even time for a chay or a bit of bread. When he came back, the shopping was divided up. We cooked together, ate together, cleaned together. Each his own task. Each his own turn.

  In the end, it was the man called Hamid who went that day. I watched him get in a taxi. Good luck, kaka Hamid, I shouted.