Baghlan Boy

by Michael Crowley

  Misha led Farood in the direction of Berzan’s boat. ‘The captain hasn’t decided yet.’ Misha stopped, raised his sunglasses and smirked. ‘Look around you, brother. People are on the move everywhere. It’s like some nature thing and people can’t stop themselves. Like the moon is in a one-in-a-thousand-year phase and everyone knows it’s time to head off. Like those geese we saw in Iran. And not just Syrians now. Africans, Asians, all migrating. One big flock of people as fast as they can, all moving north, whatever the risk, whatever the cost, and we have tickets to sell them. I’ve heard that people are willing to give you their wives for a place on a boat. You should come along with us and quit working for Berzan.’

  Farood looked at the crowd on the beach. They were not tourists. ‘I’ll have a think. There is plenty of money to be made here.’

  ‘Berzan. I don’t know how you can stand to look at him. I can smell that cellar off him. And my own blood. He still owns you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He thinks he does.’

  Farood’s reply couldn’t take the edge off his shame. They walked to the boat and to some relief Berzan wasn’t there.

  ‘Expect he’s at the laundry,’ said Farood.

  ‘How much you making a day?’ asked Misha.

  ‘Nine or ten thousand lira,’ said Farood.

  ‘And you get half?’

  Farood made a ‘round about that’ gesture with his hand.

  ‘Are you two living on this boat?’ enquired Misha.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sleep there every night?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Like being on the road again.’

  As they stood on the quay by Berzan’s boat a mother tugged at Farood’s arm and asked of him in English, ‘Please… please… a place on your boat.’

  He swept the woman’s arm away without looking at her. Two police officers strolled in their direction; Farood and Misha ignored them. The older, more senior-looking officer took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket, held it out in front, looked at the image before him.

  Farood told the officer, ‘This woman, I don’t know her, okay?’

  ‘You’re Farood Abdali, right?’ said the officer.

  Farood shook his head as they took his wrists and handcuffed him. He was led to a parked van and neither he nor Misha asked why. Misha charged out of town on his motorcycle.

  Only when Farood arrived at the century-old police station did he begin to protest his innocence. ‘Why have you arrested me? I’m just here on holiday.’

  ‘Sure, because Afghans are always coming here on holiday, staying in hotels, buying gifts and drinking beer. We don’t know what you’ve done – we were told to bring you in, so we’re hoping you might tell us.’

  *

  The cell that contained Farood wasn’t really a cell; it was an area under the stairs that had been barred off, with standing room in about a third of it. There was no air-conditioning and Farood had been left a bucket in one corner. The two officers went out, came back with food for themselves and a bottle of water for Farood. Flies congregated in his cage for the shade and the stench. He wondered why Misha hadn’t followed him down and whether he had told Berzan. Either way, what did he owe Berzan? Not even the last few hours.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I’m taking people over to Greece. I’ll tell you all about it.’

  The arresting officer moved listlessly down the corridor, holding a chicken sandwich.

  Farood lowered his voice. ‘I’m helping a man who owns a boat. We take the Syrians to Greece.’

  ‘Really, is that right? You’re one of those people traffickers, aren’t you? My God.’

  Farood continued, ‘They pay us for the trouble. And it’s not even my boat.’

  ‘And you think that makes it alright, do you?’ asked the officer.

  ‘No. The man that owns it, he’s from Istanbul. I know where he lives.’

  ‘Okay, so what’s his name?’

  Farood hesitated. His father would never betray, not even an enemy. It was against his honour.

  The officer took a bite from his sandwich and spoke through the food. ‘I’ll tell you, shall I? If you can’t say it yourself. His name is Berzan. Ber… zan.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ admitted Farood.

  ‘And he smells worse than the fucking migrants. Isn’t that right?’

  Farood took a step back from the bars.

  The officer swallowed the last of the sandwich. ‘You’re not here because you’re a trafficker who dumps people in the sea. You’re here because you are wanted in the UK. But we’re wondering what you did over there. You’re an Afghan, right?’

  Farood bowed his head.

  ‘Are you a rapist?’

  Farood withdrew, crouching in the lowest part of the cell.

  The officer shouted down the corridor to his colleague. ‘He’s a rapist! Was she English? I bet she was, wasn’t she?’

  Soon after they locked up and left him behind. The knowledge, the familiarity of being in a cell had never really left him. A warrant from England. How had they found him? Sabana. She was the one person who could trace him to this town. She would prefer to see him in a cell, so she could feel sorry for him, laugh at him. Dumb Afghan. Sitting under some stairs, stinking of urine and disinfectant. She hated his freedom; it frightened her.

  On the veranda of a rented house, on a hill above the harbour, Misha had just finished reporting back to the captain.

  ‘Does Berzan know?’ asked the captain.

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ replied Misha.

  ‘Go watch him, see what he does.’

  Misha watched Berzan ferry paying passengers to Lesbos, remonstrating with some, offering assistance to others. Maybe he thought Farood had joined the captain’s crew. His pride would prevent him from going to find out. Berzan considered he had done his best for the Afghan. The Turkmen was a thief, as all of them were.

  At night in the police station a rat ran through a slither of moonlight; the phone rang. In the morning the same two officers arrived with coffee and a pastry for the prisoner who was unlocked from his barred cupboard.

  ‘Showtime, Farood.’

  ‘What’s happening, boss?’

  ‘Izmir,’ said the officer.

  ‘I want a lawyer.’

  ‘Plenty of lawyers in England.’

  Izmir was a long way. All this just for him. He was uncuffed and the motion of the vehicle rocked him into the sleep he had been denied the night before. He dreamed that he was sitting at the back of a room full of people, strangers to him, and that he knew he had been sentenced to hang. Sabana emerges from the crowd, kneels before him. She tells him that his appeal has been unsuccessful. Behind her, in the opposite wall, there is an open window. The crowd part as if to make way. There is nothing stopping him running and diving away. He asks himself where he will go and he doesn’t know. There is no home and no friends with homes. He cannot run; he will have to hang.

  The rear doors of the van opened; a light surge awoke him.

  ‘Out!’ shouted the officer.

  Farood stepped out and looked around. There was just the road. Scrub ether side.

  The officer grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face the van. ‘Go, Afghan, don’t come back.’

  The van pulled away to reveal a motorbike glimmering in the sun. The rider raised his visor.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Farood.

  ‘I was just passing,’ said Misha.

  Whilst the van headed back down the hill to town, Misha glided his bike higher up the road. Swaying behind him, Farood couldn’t feel the engine, couldn’t feel the ground beneath the wheels, until they turned onto a track that led to a pale blue house on the summit of the hill. The bike pulled up and two goats bleated.

  Inside the captain was watching cof
fee come to the boil on a stove. ‘How are you, Farood?’

  ‘Good, thank you.’

  ‘Tired, I would imagine. You can’t sleep in a police station. The only people who sleep there are the police.’ He poured Farood a coffee. ‘They let you go then, that’s good.’

  ‘They were going to send me to the UK. Back to prison. Could I have some water, please?’

  Misha obliged with a jug from the fridge.

  ‘Misha insisted I get you released.’

  Farood smiled, but the captain didn’t.

  ‘How?’ asked Farood.

  ‘I told the sergeant that if they didn’t release you, we wouldn’t take any more migrants away, and neither would anyone else. At first, he laughed at me. But then he changed his mind. Possibly it’s the rate they’re arriving.’

  The captain led them outside. They looked down on the brochure-blue Aegean. He went on, ‘But the police don’t want you here either. You’re going to have to leave. I promised him that. You should come with us. I didn’t tell him about that part.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘It is the “why” that is important, Farood. Some of the people you took to Lesbos drowned. Berzan will drown some more today, no doubt. The coastguard is on the lookout. Hopefully they’ll shoot him. We’re leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re coming, right?’ asked Misha.

  ‘Yeah. Sure. But there’s something I want to ask Berzan before we go.’

  ‘So, phone him.’

  ‘No. I want to see him.’

  The captain sighed and said, ‘If the police get either of you, I’m not getting you out a second time.’

  *

  They went down at dusk. Berzan’s boat wasn’t in; people were bedding down on the beach.

  Misha handed Farood his motorcycle helmet. ‘Put it on. If the cops show up, we’re straight on the bike. After I left Berzan’s cellar I promised myself I’d never be locked up again.’

  Eventually the boat came trundling out of the darkness. Farood took a couple of steps to the edge of the quay.

  Misha cautioned him, ‘Whatever you’re going to do, do it on the boat.’

  Before the engine was off Farood shouted to Berzan, ‘Throw me the rope.’

  He held out a hand and smiled, tied off the rope and boarded the boat.

  Berzan looked past Farood at Misha and said loudly, ‘Be careful of him. The Turkmen is a snake in the grass.’

  Misha jumped down on to the boat. ‘You need to go home, Berzan.’

  Berzan lit a cigarette. ‘You’re telling me what to do? I made you, Turkmen. Made you both. You need to thank me that you have the balls to do what you’re doing. You were like mice when I found you.’

  Misha sighed, affected a tone of weariness. ‘Berzan, you only teach people about cruelty. It’s all you know.’ He turned to Farood. ‘You wanted to ask him something. Do it and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘How did you know I was in prison?’ asked Farood.

  ‘What?’ replied Berzan.

  Farood raised one foot onto a bench seat. ‘You said I’d been sent to jail in England. But I never told you that. How did you know that?’

  ‘Someone told me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Khalid,’ answered Berzan.

  ‘Khalid? How do you know Khalid?’

  Berzan flicked his cigarette overboard. ‘I know plenty of people in the UK. People who take people like you. Khalid I’ve known a long time, since he was in London. He told me about you, nothing special, just how he had stitched you up and we laughed, we both laughed. sounded like a work of art. He said you told him all about me, how you cried when you told the story. He said you spoke to him like he was your fucking mother.’

  With which Berzan laughed, until Farood swung Misha’s crash helmet down onto the crown of his head, the blood dribbling from his ears and mouth. Misha started the engine and steered the boat out into the darkness.

  Part Three

  Thirty-Three

  Coast of Libya, October 2012

  It had first assumed a place of significance in the seventh century BC when the Greeks arrived.The surrounding province became one of the greatest intellectual and artistic centres of the Greek world, famous for its medical school, its learned academies, its Hellenistic architecture. It even produced a school of thinkers: the Cyrenaics, hedonists who believed that pleasure, especially physical pleasure, is a supreme good in life. The Greeks bequeathed it to the Romans, and the remnants of their villas, their subterranean cisterns and baths were photographed by the few bold tourists who continued to visit, against consular advice. There were pillars and statues, most without faces, reaching back into the desert for miles, some with daises growing at their feet. There were the remains too, of the later Christian era that survived the Cretan earthquake of 365 AD but could not withstand the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. To the south beyond the desert, are mountains, green in the North African sense of the term.

  At the southern end of the town, a group of men and boys were crashing hammers into statues and plinths. Two men with automatic rifles circled them, urging on their work. A boy, sore-shouldered, let his hammer drop to his side for a moment’s rest, looked out across the open ground littered with artefacts and sighed. A rifle shot cracked into the sky; the guard shouted at him to get back to work.

  Although there was a headland and a jetty, the captain anchored his trawler a quarter of a mile out – he wanted advance warning of anyone approaching. The town was built on trade, beginning two millennia ago with olive oil, wine and slaves. Recently people traffickers had built a squat lighthouse to watch out for naval vessels, or competition. Their destination was Crete, 230 miles north-east. It was where the captain planned to take his cargo, the cargo being a mass of people fleeing behind the government army that was fleeing faster by land and sea. The captain had been informed that the town was in no man’s land, and those people who had missed the last government boat were prepared to pay handsomely for someone to take them to Europe’s most southern landfall, anywhere at all if it was away from the approaching militias. As soon as the captain and his party were ashore it was clear that their intelligence was wrong, was stupid, in fact. They were questioned by militiamen as soon as they crossed the road, the captain forced to hand over money for anchoring his boat nearby – the caliphate extended into the sea.

  The captain, Farood and Misha walked through the streets of the little town, some of ancient stone, some of broken tarmac. On a street corner, a militiaman thrust a Qur’an into Misha’s hands. He took it and walked on, shrugging his shoulders.

  A few yards on, the captain looked behind and saw that the militiaman was watching them. Without glancing at Misha, he said, ‘Turn around and thank him. Graciously.’

  Misha walked backwards for half a yard, grinning and bowing.

  ‘That’s too much,’ said Farood. ‘You’re not his slave, just yet.’

  ‘You know what, boss,’ said Misha quietly, ‘we should be packing something ourselves.’

  ‘That would only make me all the more nervous.’

  Turning left off the strand they delved into the innards of the town. There were a handful of market stalls on cobbled stone, selling socks, mobile phone cases, pieces of goat. There were parked cars and cars being driven with bullet holes in, you could pass an egg through. There were new ruins to join the ancient ones; there were mothers and children peeping from doorways, but few walked the streets. Black flags fluttered from white apartment blocks built for tourists. A dog, shot multiple times, rotted on the street.

  ‘So where are our migrants?’ asked Farood.

  ‘They’re here somewhere. The bandits aren’t here for the good of their souls alone,’ said the captain. ‘Anyone thirsty?’ he asked.

  They passed through three blocks of rolled-down shutters and closed doors. Wom
en, veiled and shrouded, scurried away from them. They found a teashop and sat in the darkness at the back. The owner bowed to them, mistaking them for militia. When he brought the tea, Farood offered him some money but he wouldn’t accept.

  ‘I’m going to grow one of those beards, man,’ said Misha.

  ‘It will take a bit more than a disguise to fit in.’ The captain smiled.

  A procession moved past the front of the shop. Leading it was a man no more than twenty, with a gangster roll of a walk, an automatic rifle slung lazily over his shoulder, the backside of his jeans halfway down his backside and a matchstick in his mouth. His beard was long and combed. Behind him staggered people who bore the faces of prisoners more so than migrants. The three came to the door of the shop to observe.

  An African man, the soles of his shoes flapping, holding a child above his head, went to the head of the line, to the side of militia homeboy. ‘Hey, hey. I want to know, where is my daughter?’

  ‘I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘You do, you do. You took her to your boss.’

  ‘Ah yes. They have gone. Gone on ahead,’ said the homeboy, pointing out to the sea.

  The man carrying the child continued to keep pace with him.

  ‘But how did they pay? They don’t have any money – I have their money.’

  The father came to a halt as the answer occurred to him. The homeboy left him behind; the captain walked to him and offered him some tea.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ asked the captain.

  ‘From Derna, in the east, some way.’

  ‘Do you know where they’re taking you?’

  ‘Some camp, they say,’ he said, pointing.

  They returned inside. Misha smoked, something he had taken up recently, after Lesbos.

  ‘You said farewell to Berzan then?’ asked the captain.

  Farood folded his hands together. ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘And you feel okay about this?’ probed the captain.

  The other two nodded.

  The captain leaned in like a coach in a dressing room. ‘Some say killing a man is no big deal. People die all the time, they say, which is true. But killing someone is a responsibility; it sets you apart from other men, not only because most people don’t kill. It’s a responsibility because nothing changes the world so much as death. Not even a birth. When you kill a man, it changes the world, in ways we cannot comprehend.’ He got to his feet. ‘Come. Let’s follow and go find that camp.’