City of Jasmine

by Olga Grjasnowa

Then inflatable dinghies turn up. Although they’re only allowed to approach the boats one group at a time, chaos instantly breaks out.

  It’s difficult to get into the boats because their surface is smooth and wet, and Amal keeps slipping off. The smugglers in the boat make no attempt to help anyone, calmly watching the events with their weapons cocked. Amal throws herself in and then pulls one foot after another in behind her. She’s already frozen through and soaking wet. Youssef helps the young widow. He carries the baby above his head, hands it gently to Amal on the boat and looks out for the mother, who can’t swim and is afraid of the water. The young deserters help the autistic teenager and his mother. Amal sees that several groups have to stay behind on the beach for lack of space.

  The boats start off, riding the waves at a sedate pace, and the coast gradually becomes a slim strip on the horizon; at the same time, everything around them grows quiet, only the stars shine brighter. They steer a course for the open sea.

  Half an hour later, they catch sight of the mother ship. It’s not the modern freight ship they were promised but an old freighter that looks like it’s due for the scrapyard. At least it has a steel hull, which calms Amal’s fears slightly.

  Boarding takes hours and is no less dangerous than the journey itself. Several passengers fall into the water, only to be pulled out frozen stiff and scared to death. By the time they’re all on board they notice there are already many people waiting there – some of them have been there for the past four days. A few have a long journey across the Sahara behind them. The ship smells of old sweat, stale air and damp clothes that have been worn too long. It’s now full and ready to make its way to Italy.

  The ship’s interior is built to transport logs and not people – there’s only a single narrow ladder leading to the space where several hundred souls sit tightly packed on the floor. Syrians, Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis; men and women travelling alone, elderly people and entire families with babes in arms. Bodies crammed together, touching one another, legs knocking into other legs, shoulders leaning on other shoulders. It’s the middle classes escaping; the poor remain behind in the refugee camps. It’s the people who once hoped for more from life than simply reaching a safe country, who once had ambitions and a future.

  Amal is the first to go down, followed by Youssef with the baby, whose name is Amina, and then comes Fatima, Amina’s mother. It’s cold and noisy, the air humid and stuffy and the floor covered with plastic sheets and occasional rugs. The weight of their wet clothes presses them down, they tremble with cold. They are allocated seating spaces, which they are not to leave at all on the journey because the ship is so overloaded that the freight has to be precisely distributed.

  With the ship tossing to and fro on the waves at night, Amal doesn’t get a moment’s rest. She hears her neighbours’ coughs and the retching sounds when someone gets seasick, babies crying, old men praying and the engine humming. It all builds up inside her head, which threatens to explode. The swell is strong. Amal pulls her sweater up over her nose, wanting to protect herself from the warmth of other bodies, their expirations and odours, unwashed and unshaved for days, from the smell of faeces, bile and vomit. The floor is covered in a sticky yellowish substance.

  When she wakes her limbs ache. Youssef is asleep and Fatima is playing with Amina, who gurgles with laughter. Amal fights her way to the exit hatch, clambers over sleeping people and climbs up on deck. The sea is calm, the surface glinting in the sunlight. She takes a deep breath and her lungs fill with fresh sea air. For the first time in days, she feels hunger and thirst. A boy dashes over from the wheel, barely older than fourteen, by the look of him. He asks her to go back down below deck – the ship is officially sailing as a freighter under a North Korean flag.

  Something like a community comes together on board, tenuous links are formed, people share the few reserves they still have: food, cigarettes and nappies. An Eritrean who’s picked up some Arabic along the way talks about the lifelong military service in his country and the despotism of the ruling class. The Syrians tell of barrel bombs and poison gas, until at last the memories of better days suppress all stories: a month of peace, schooldays, the scent of freshly baked bread. Men take out their phones and show off photos of their children holding out in Syria, Egypt or Turkey, waiting to be brought to Europe legally.

  Late that afternoon, the ship’s floor suddenly springs a leak and water slops onto the carpets and plastic sheets. A skinny boy from the crew comes scrambling down with a welding device.

  The engine is turned off and without its own impetus, their freighter can’t compensate for the high waves. Several people start vomiting. The cabin boy goes on welding unperturbed.

  ‘This is crazy,’ Youssef whispers.

  ‘We’re going to die,’ Amal notes laconically.

  Youssef presses himself to her more firmly, but the cabin boy manages to repair the leak. The passengers applaud him and pat him on the back and the ship soon resumes its course. Amal falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Shortly before midnight, the ship stops; the passengers grow restless and call for the captain. A few minutes later he actually turns up – an athletic man in his mid-thirties who would clearly rather be doing any other job in the world than this one. He explains to the anxious crowd that they’re waiting for deliveries. The smugglers got their calculations wrong; the ship doesn’t have any blankets and not enough drinking water. His voice is firm and authoritative.

  The crowd grows displeased. ‘You’re waiting for more people!’ an elderly man calls out.

  ‘No, just for supplies,’ the captain claims.

  ‘We’ll all go down if we take on any more people,’ says a young woman. A murmur of agreement passes through the crowd.

  The captain shrugs. ‘If you don’t need water or blankets, we can move on right away. Then I’ll cancel the delivery.’

  ‘Let’s take a vote!’ suggests a voice from the crowd.

  The passengers carry out a show of hands. The decision to continue the journey is passed almost unanimously. The engine comes back to life.

  Half an hour later, the ship sets course for Italy again. The sea grows rougher; mountains of water lift the boat aloft and drop it. Waves break across the prow, water runs below deck. Amal’s clothes absorb the brine, growing heavy, wet and icy cold.

  Fatima is asleep, her breathing soundless. The sleeping baby is no more than nine months old. Amal holds her in her arms – and here of all places, in the belly of the ship, she is overcome by an all-encompassing desire for her own child. The yearning is physical and hard to explain, except perhaps in the international language of pheromones. Amal knows now that she needs a baby, the tiny arms against her chest, the legs against her belly, the warm breath and the blind trust of which only an infant is capable.

  The sea becomes more settled as morning approaches. A long queue forms outside the toilet, the only one for over seven hundred passengers. Amal and Youssef have stopped eating and drinking so they don’t need to use it.

  At noon the patched hole starts leaking and is welded shut again. The applause is less enthusiastic this time. They continue. But only a few hours later, an ominous black cloud appears in the sky. The wind picks up, double and then four times its previous strength. Fat drops of rain beat against the deck and then the storm breaks its bounds. The waves are ten metres high, rolling right across the ship. Lightning flashes out of the wall of cloud. The crew’s movements become more hasty and urgent, the captain decides to turn back and wait out the storm between two Greek islands. The ship is tossed on the waves like a toy. Children squeal, old women scream at the tops of their voices. Men pass prayer beads between their fingers and the storm grows stronger. The ship is thrown upwards by a wave, rises above its foaming crest and descends seconds later into a trough. The deck is flooded with green water and white foam and the water leeches down to the inside of the ship. Then a wall of water looms before the prow and cascades down on them with elemental force. A l
oud, metallic boom passes through the ship’s corpus but it doesn’t break in two. The bad news: a transverse wave has crashed against the ship. And then comes another.

  For three and a half hours, the crew manoeuvres the ship to the islands and somehow they actually make it all the way. The Greek coastguard radios the captain – who assures the officer he’s transporting salt from Greece to Croatia and only has to wait out the storm. But the coastguard doesn’t trust him and a helicopter circles above the ship taking photos. The passengers have to stay hidden below deck and are told to put on their lifejackets, which Amal and Youssef do immediately. In the end the ship sets off again on an altered route, heading for Croatia to avert suspicion. The storm is still blowing but it’s no longer life-threatening.

  The captain steers the ship along the coastline. When he reaches Albanian waters he contacts the coastguard and confirms he’s on his way to Croatia. Moments later, though, he changes course again, full speed ahead to Italy. The crew breaks off contact to the coastguard.

  Towards noon, the sea now smooth as silk, the ship goes under. Its sinking is fast and unspectacular. People flee onto deck through the small hatch, only a few of them making it out in the crush. Those who possess lifejackets put them on and jump into the cold sea. Most of them can’t swim.

  Youssef is the first to reach the deck. Amal is behind him. Fatima hands her the baby, Amina, writhing and screaming. Then Fatima climbs out after Amal. Youssef and Amal drag her to the ship’s rail but she grips it, not daring to jump. Youssef, however, leaps without hesitating. The ship is already listing, its stern now almost down to the water’s surface. Amal too climbs over the rail and tries to pass the baby down to Youssef in the water as safely as she can. Once he has the child in his hands he swims as far away from the ship as possible.

  Suddenly, the ship’s weight shifts and the bow rises. People scream. Youssef signals to Amal to jump and at last she plummets into the sea, head-first.

  The water surface feels like concrete, instantly pressing the air out of her lungs. Her throat and nose fill up with liquid. She sinks despite the lifejacket – which now proves to be a fake, absorbing water instead of keeping Amal afloat, dragging her down like a stone. Amal tries to struggle out of it, finally succeeding and kicking her way up to the surface.

  Amal gasps for air. She barely has the strength to keep herself above water and she looks around for something to cling to. Parts of the wreck are floating on the surface, and other survivors too, calling desperately for help. Then she sees a lifejacket washed up without its owner, a genuine one. She swims over and grabs hold of it. Just as she’s about to put it on, she sees Youssef in the distance. He still has hold of Amina and Amal struggles over to them, her energy spent. Youssef is overjoyed to see her. He says he thought she was dead and then he says he loves her.

  They lay Amina on Amal’s new lifejacket and keep talking to her to keep her awake. Amal clings to the float while Youssef, still wearing his vest, supports her from the other side, but her strength is waning. Amina keeps crying, Fatima is nowhere in sight and it seems to Amal that more and more people are going under. Amal hopes she’ll die first; she couldn’t stand to watch Youssef or the child drown.

  ‘Help will be here soon,’ Amal repeats over and over.

  ‘Someone will have informed the coastguard,’ Youssef says.

  Amal and Youssef play with the baby, singing, but their voices tremble. A while later, no one can say when, another woman entrusts her child to Amal. It’s a boy of about two. The woman doesn’t have a lifejacket so Youssef gives her his. As he does so he returns Amal’s gaze and whispers, ‘I’m a good swimmer.’ Amal wants to tell him not to give his lifejacket away anyway, but she can’t.

  Amal keeps the two children occupied as they sit side by side on the lifejacket. She does everything to stop them from falling asleep, recites counting rhymes, pulls faces, tickles their little bodies. But the children cry for their mothers. The adults’ voices too sound more and more desperate. Despite the lifejacket, the boy’s mother has drifted away, slowly. Amal doesn’t have the strength to turn around to her. It’s getting colder and colder, they haven’t eaten properly for days and they can barely feel their limbs now. She could just close her eyes. She’d be at peace then. It would all be over at last.

  ‘This is the Italian coastguard.’ A few minutes or hours later, Amal can’t tell, they hear amplified voices from far away. A helicopter circles above them, followed by rescue boats. They’re red, inflatable dinghies bearing the words Guardia Costiera. Amal bursts into tears at the sight of them.

  The Italian officers are wearing white protective suits, masks and plastic gloves to protect them from infection.

  First they lift the boy and then the baby out of the water. They’re both alive. Then Amal too feels herself pulled up. On board, she is wrapped in a warm blanket. She is taken to another, larger ship where she finds Amina and the boy again, also wrapped up warm. Youssef is with them too and Amal realizes she’s experiencing the happiest moment in her life. They are taken to the infirmary.

  A doctor examines the children. Amina starts crying in Amal’s arms; Youssef tries to soothe her gently. The friendly paramedic asks Amal what her children’s names are.

  ‘Amina,’ Youssef answers and then whispers, ‘Amal, what on earth should we do?’

  ‘And the boy?’

  Amal gives him a confused look, only gradually realizing she’s now responsible for two small children.

  The doctor still has a friendly enquiring look on his face.

  ‘Youssef ?’ Amal suggests, looking at the real Youssef.

  ‘Nice name,’ says the doctor.

  The children are given milk to drink and fall asleep right away, exhausted. Amina is wrapped in a thick blanket, back in Amal’s arms. The boy is asleep on Youssef’s lap. Something about Youssef’s touch surprises Amal; for the first time, she sees what tenderness he’s capable of.

  As soon as the ship docks, two Frontex officers embark to look for smugglers. As they leave the ship, Amal and Youssef hear a woman screaming behind them. Amal turns around and sees the little boy’s mother fighting her way through the crowd, in tears. Youssef turns around too, beaming. The boy reaches out his tiny hands for his mother. The woman has reached them now and takes her child in her arms to the sound of sobs; her son, too, is crying and laughing at the same time.

  On the shore, the immigration authority and aid workers await them. They are given a number to replace their identity from that point on. Amina is taken to hospital and examined there. She’s released the next day with a clean bill of health.

  In the meantime, Amal and Youssef have to undergo long interrogations. They now know there were more than seven hundred passengers on board their ship. Only three hundred survived. There’s no trace of Amina’s mother. The immigration officers all wear masks. Amal and Youssef are scared their story will be blown – they’re scared Amina will be put in a home in Italy, and they’re scared of looking like kidnappers. But the officers don’t want to know anything about Amina, all they do is doubt Youssef and Amal’s marital status.

  The next day, a clapped-out bus takes them through the afternoon heat from the hospital to the reception centre, where they have to register. Amina sleeps against Amal’s chest.

  After survival comes bureaucracy. They’re told they have to give a new form to their existence; refugees have to apply for asylum in the country where they first touch dry land in Europe, in their case Italy. But they have no documents any more – the sea destroyed Youssef’s directing diploma, Amal’s passport, their birth certificates and all the cash they had. The other refugees who’ve been in the camp for longer tell them they’ll be deported immediately under the circumstances.

  The camp itself is overcrowded, with people sleeping on floors or on tattered mattresses, the walls damp, the toilets blocked or non-existent, and the people’s faces are so empty with hopelessness and apathy that Amal begs Youssef to escape. To anywhere.

>   The Italians are so overwhelmed by the new arrivals that the police officers don’t look too closely, and so Youssef, Amal and Amina manage to simply sneak out of the camp.

  They have neither money nor documents but they want to leave Italy as soon as possible and try to get to northern Europe, where their chances for asylum are better. Amal still has the jewellery she sewed into her bra but it seems impossible to sell it swiftly here in the Italian countryside. They walk to the nearest station and board a train. They fear ticket checks for the whole journey, hiding in the toilet, but no one comes. At Milan, they get off the train.

  The main station is crowded with refugees. A young Syrian man lends Amal his phone and she logs into Facebook and calls her brother. To her surprise, he picks up. His voice sounds as carefree as ever while tears run down Amal’s cheeks.

  ‘Ali, I need your help,’ she says.

  ‘Are you still in Beirut?’

  ‘No, in Milan.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘It’s a long story but I… I mean we, we have to get out of here. Ali, can you send me some money?’

  ‘I’ll go straight to Western Union.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘No, I really will pay you back.’

  ‘Amal, try to get to Germany. I’ll wait for you there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Berlin.’

  ‘I’ll call you again.’

  ‘The money’s on its way.’

  The young man accompanies them to a branch of Western Union a few hours later, where they collect several hundred euro against the stranger’s ID. Then they go to a department store – they need new clothes so as not to stand out.

  The bright lights, the music, the make-up displays, the buzz of voices and the pushy saleswomen are too much for them. Amal chooses a dress and buys it without trying it on, and gets vests, babygros, a hat and a jacket, nappies, bottles, formula, a rattle and a blanket for Amina; Youssef has to manage with cheap jeans and a white T-shirt.