by Amitav Ghosh
‘This may surprise you, Piya,’ I said, ‘but I saw Rafi just yesterday.’
‘You’re kidding! You saw him? Really?’
‘Yes, I know! What are the chances?’
‘Hmm. I guess Venice isn’t a large city, area-wise, and the population’s only a few hundred thousand, so it’s not all that unlikely.’
‘I suppose not. Anyway, I had a talk with Rafi and even asked him about Tipu. He said he had no idea where Tipu was and seemed annoyed that I’d even asked. I assumed they’d broken up so I dropped the subject.’
‘Could you speak to him again, please?’ I could hear gratitude brimming in her voice. ‘I’d be really glad if you could! I know it’s a very long shot, but…’
It struck me then that far from being a long shot, it was almost a certainty that Rafi had some inkling of Tipu’s whereabouts; this was probably the very question that he had been half expecting and half fearing that I would ask.
‘Of course I’ll speak to Rafi again,’ I said. ‘I’ll do whatever I can. And please don’t worry too much. Tipu is a very smart kid, and he knows what he’s doing.’
‘But he’s still a kid,’ said Piya. ‘So I can’t help worrying. I guess I blame myself for all that’s gone wrong for him. After all, his father was working for me when he died.’
‘It’s really not your fault, you shouldn’t blame yourself.’
She sighed. ‘When it comes to Tipu, I’ve never been able to do anything right. Anyway, let me know how it goes with Rafi. I’ll be in Berlin tomorrow and I’d be glad to come to Venice – it’s a short flight.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But first let’s see what Rafi has to say. I have his number so I’ll call him straight away. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Later today, if possible.’
‘Good. Let’s stay in touch.’
Friends
The dread that I had managed to hold off while talking to Piya seized me with a vengeance when the call ended. I sat in bed as if paralysed, staring at the wall ahead. What was happening to me? To us? There seemed to be a pattern in my encounters with Tipu and Rafi. Yet that pattern was not of our own designing; it was as if something or someone had taken possession of us for reasons beyond our understanding.
And then I recalled the resolution I had made while I was on the phone with Piya: that I would keep faith with myself. I reminded myself that it was possible that this was all an outcome of the randomness that is always immanent in the world – pure chance in other words. Wasn’t it said that monkeys pounding on a typewriter would eventually reproduce a play by Shakespeare? Surely the odds against that were far greater than whatever it was that was happening to me? In any event that was what I had to believe if I were to preserve my sanity.
I forced myself to say aloud ‘This is all chance and coincidence, nothing else’ – and the words had the effect of a prayer, breaking the spell that had descended on me. As my mind cleared it became more and more obvious that Rafi was the key; the first thing I needed to do was to talk to him.
I looked at my watch. It was seven in the morning, not too late to catch him before he started his day job, at the construction site. I called his number but only to find that his phone had already been switched off. Hoping that he would check his messages, I sent him a text asking him to call when he had a break.
Over the next few hours I called and texted Rafi several more times, but with no result. Lunchtime too came and went with neither a message nor a call. Feeling increasingly desperate I decided to go over to Lubna’s office to ask if she knew when Rafi would be getting off work.
The door of her office was ajar and Lubna was seated inside, staring raptly at her computer monitor. Her eyes left the screen briefly as she looked up to greet me and then veered away again.
‘Dekhechhen?’ She pointed at the monitor. ‘Have you been following the news?’
She turned the monitor a little so that I could see the screen from my seat. I found myself watching a news clip of a small blue boat, chugging slowly across an azure sea. The top deck was crowded with dark-skinned people in ragged clothes. Many were looking up at the camera and waving forlornly.
Following the boat, at a wary distance, was a string of coastguard vessels, all flying different flags.
The clip faded away and was replaced by a shot taken somewhere else, of a squadron of sleek grey warships. On the foredeck of the largest vessel, a platoon of sailors could be seen, standing at attention and saluting the Italian flag.
‘I suppose you heard?’ said Lubna. ‘The navy has been ordered to stop that refugee boat from approaching Italy. And every other country in the Mediterranean has sent coastguard vessels to make sure that they can’t land anywhere else either.’
‘So the minister carried out his threat, did he?’
‘Yes. He did.’
She nodded at the screen, which was now showing live footage of a press conference.
A youngish, forceful-looking man with heavy-framed glasses and slicked-back hair was pounding on a desk and shouting into a microphone: ‘Queste persone non metteranno mai piede in Italia!’
‘Bujhte parchhen?’ said Lubna. ‘Do you understand what he’s saying?’
‘Not all of it.’
‘He said: “These people will never set foot in Italia.”’
‘Salvo che succeda un miracolo.’
‘“Not unless there’s a miracle.”’
Lubna shuddered. ‘I can’t bear to listen to that man.’ She turned the show off and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘So? Did you hear about Rafi? What happened last night?’
‘Has something happened to him?’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to reach him but his phone seems to be turned off.’
‘Rafi was beaten up last night,’ said Lubna grimly. ‘I think he lost his phone. He’s in hospital.’
I stared at her, aghast.
‘Yes, it was a shock to me too,’ said Lubna. ‘I got a call late at night. The man who told me about it thought it was a gang attack, like those we hear about in Roma and Napoli, where right-wing thugs carry out planned attacks on migrants. It was a frightening thought because nothing like that has happened in this region yet. This would have been the first time.’
‘So it wasn’t that?’
‘No, apparently not. This morning one of Rafi’s house-mates came by. He told me a very different story.’
‘I see.’ I didn’t know whether to press her or not. ‘Is it something you can talk about?’
Lubna’s eyes strayed to her watch. ‘I don’t mind talking about it but unfortunately I don’t have the time right now. I have a meeting to go to. It’s better you talk to Rafi’s house-mate directly – his name’s Bilal, and I’ve already spoken to him about your documentary. He said he was willing to talk to you. Come, I’ll introduce you to him straight away – he works nearby.’
* * *
Not far from Lubna’s office was a small marketplace, with a row of cloth-covered stalls running down the centre of the street. The stalls were stacked with colourful vegetables, fruit, herbs and other produce. Prominently on display were fondi di carciofi – artichoke bottoms – little white roundels swimming in basins of water.
These, and many other kinds of vegetables, were artfully arranged to create an impression of quaint and picturesque authenticity. Yet, the men behind the counters were almost all Bengali.
We found Bilal sitting at the side of the street: he was older than Rafi, maybe in his early twenties, tall, broad-shouldered and striking-looking, with flashing eyes, a sharp nose and a coppery complexion. Dressed in pale blue jeans and a striped Juventus T-shirt, he was seated in a plastic chair that looked too small for him. On one side of his chair was a bucket filled with small artichokes; on the other was a bin for the peel and parings. A basin of water lay between his feet and he had a knife in his hands, which he was wielding expertly to strip down the artichokes until all that remained of them was the ivory disc at the bottom.
After making a quic
k introduction Lubna hurried off to her meeting. Then Bilal signalled to me to pull up a nearby chair; his hands flew as he talked, producing a steady stream of fondi di carciofi for the basin between his feet.
The night before, said Bilal, Rafi had received a last-minute call, asking him to fill in for someone who washed dishes in a restaurant. He agreed and by the time he got off work it was quite late. To go back to his shared room in Mestre at that time of the night would have meant that he would have got hardly any sleep since he had to be back in Venice early in the morning, for his construction job. So he had decided instead to spend the night in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of Cannaregio – Bilal had discovered the place last year and had shown it to Rafi and a few other friends.
That part of Cannaregio was often deserted, especially at night. Rafi was passing through a dark calle when two men slipped out of the shadows and attacked him.
Afterwards, a passer-by had found Rafi lying senseless on the fondamenta and had called the Ospedale Civile, which had sent a water-ambulance to bring him to the hospital. He was still there and none of his friends had been able to speak to him yet.
‘Was it just a robbery then?’ I asked.
Bilal nodded: ‘Yes, they took all his money. He was carrying quite a lot.’
Bilal took a quick look around, glancing from side to side. Then dropping his voice, he said: ‘You see, Rafi had taken out a big loan recently and had missed a couple of payments. I don’t think they meant to beat him up so badly. I suppose he fought back and the matter must have gotten out of hand.’
‘Why had Rafi taken this loan?’ I said. ‘And from whom?’
Bilal’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The loan was from a scafista – a trafficker. Rafi had taken it out for a friend of his. They had left Bangladesh together and had got separated at the Turkish border – this often happens over there, because you have to run like crazy, over steep slopes. The soldiers on the Turkish side shoot if they see anyone trying to cross. Rafi got lucky and managed to get across, but his friend got hurt and had to go back into Iran. He managed to get over the border later but was stuck in Turkey for a long time. Anyway, a few weeks ago this boy called Rafi and said that he had spoken to a local dalal who had offered him a way out, through some other country. He would be able to get on a boat if Rafi could arrange for a payment to be made in Italy. So Rafi began to ask around and someone put him in touch with an Italian scafista who was willing to accept payment in instalments. Rafi was able to make the first payment, but he missed the second and the third. So…’
‘Did Rafi ever mention his friend’s name?’
‘No.’ Bilal threw me a glance and shrugged. ‘Some of us had warned Rafi not to get involved with the scafisti; they’re dangerous. But what could he do? He was desperate. And I don’t blame him. When you set off on this journey with a friend and one of you makes it and the other doesn’t, you feel terrible. It’s hard to live with that feeling. You’ll do anything you can to help.’
The depth of emotion in his voice startled me. ‘Tomaro hoyechhilo naki?’ I asked. ‘Did it happen to you too?’
He nodded, eyes downcast, his gaze fixed on his knife. ‘Yes. I too left Bangladesh with a friend. His name was Kabir and he was from the same village, in Faridpur district. We had known each other since we were little. We played together, went through school together, and always stood by each other.
‘A few years ago there was a dispute in my family, over land. One of my uncles is mixed up in politics and his sons are the local musclemen for the ruling party. For a long time they had been using their political clout to try to grab a part of what was rightfully my father’s property. Every time there was a flood – which was happening more and more – they would try to move the boundaries. If we protested they would threaten us.
‘One day there was a fight. My uncle and cousins attacked my father and me, so Kabir came to our defence and knocked my uncle down. After that it was like a riot. Kabir and I managed to get away, but from then on, we had to be constantly on the run. My uncle and his sons would hunt us down, wherever we went. They had henchmen everywhere, because of their party connections. They even got the police to charge us with a made-up case.
‘After a year of hiding we realized that we would be killed if we stayed on in Bangladesh. A relative put us in touch with a dalal who said he would get us to the Emirates in exchange for 350,000 taka. It was a lot of money but somehow we managed to raise it and the dalal gave us each a piece of paper, saying that this was an “airport visa”. He sent us to Chittagong where we boarded a plane that took us to Sharjah. Only when we got there did we realize that we would not be able to leave the airport.’
Bilal laughed, in self-mockery. ‘What did we know? We were just eighteen-year-olds, simple village boys who had never even been in a plane before.
‘Anyway, we had to remain in that airport, day after day, growing more and more desperate all the time. We had only fifty US dollars with us and we paid ten dollars for a prepaid card with thirty minutes of talktime. We called our dalal and he told us that we had only two choices. One was to go back to Bangladesh. The other was to go to Libya through Sudan. He said there was a war in Libya but it wasn’t all that bad – many Bengalis had chosen to go there.
‘What could we do? To turn back now was impossible, so we decided to take the second option. We said to ourselves: “After all, how bad can it be? It isn’t as if things weren’t bad for us back home.”
‘The next day we boarded a plane that took us to Khartoum. There were many other Bengalis at the airport, all waiting to go to Libya. After a day we flew to Tripoli. The airport was a shambles, with craters in the roof and shattered windows. Men with guns were walking in and out as they pleased. Some of these men surrounded us and took us outside to a minivan with darkened windows. Only then did we realize that we had been kidnapped.
‘For the next year and a half we were beaten, tortured, and sold by one gang to another. They made us work from morning to night, paying us almost nothing and giving us only bread to eat. We were like slaves; what we went through was something that should not happen to any human being.
‘But somehow through all of this Kabir and I managed to stay together and we even saved a little money. As the months went by we also became more worldly-wise. We learnt that there were Bengali dalals in Tripoli who could arrange for you to take boats to Europe. One day, with some careful planning, we were able to slip away from the gang that was then holding us. We made our way to Tripoli and paid a dalal who sent us to a town called Zuwara where they put us in a “connection house”. This was just a concrete warehouse with a tin roof; some two hundred other people were already there – Nigerians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Iraqis, Afghans, and also some other Bengalis.
‘A couple of months dragged by and then one night we were woken at 2 a.m. and told that it was time for our “connection” and we needed to get to the seafront quickly. We were herded to the beach and stripped of every belonging other than the garments on our backs.
‘It was about 4 a.m. when the boat appeared – it was just a small, battered fishing vessel. To get to it we had to wade through chest-deep water. After hauling us in the scafisti told us where we had to sit: those who had paid extra were on the upper deck and those who hadn’t were sent down into the hull below. Since Kabir and I had not been able to make the extra payment we had to go below deck, and were seated near the engine, which was belching clouds of black smoke.
‘Once the boat began to move, water started to seep into the hull. We tried desperately to bail it out but it only got worse. By noon the next day the rear part of the boat was almost submerged, and we were hardly moving. We thought we would die, but then, like a miracle, a helicopter appeared above us – we could hear it, even down below. On the deck above, people became very excited and began to jump up and down, yelling and screaming. It was then that our boat began to go down.
‘A frenzied scramble broke out, with all of us trying to claw our
way out of the hull. Kabir and I managed to get out just before the boat sank. We had grown up swimming in rivers and ponds so neither of us was afraid of the water. We tore off our jeans and shirts and started to swim, trying to stay close to each other. We thought for sure a rescue ship would come soon and we would be safe. But a long time went by with no sign of either the ship or the helicopter. The sea was not rough that day but there was a steady swell. To fight the waves was tiring and after a time it became hard for us to stay close. We slowly drifted apart, losing sight of each other.
‘By the time the rescue ship finally came I was exhausted and barely able to stay afloat. I managed to catch hold of one of the lifebelts they were throwing out; I clung to it while the speedboat was rescuing others. I looked around for Kabir and didn’t see him, but I wasn’t worried. I thought that he had probably been rescued already. When at last the lifeboat came for me I got in and looked around to see if Kabir was there. He wasn’t.
‘I was one of the last to board the rescue ship. Looking at all the people on deck, I felt sure that Kabir was among them. They were handing out those shiny silver blankets and I wrapped one around my body and went up and down the ship like a madman, hoping to find Kabir. Every time I saw a Bengali, in the distance, my heart would lift, in hope – and then I would see that it wasn’t Kabir. In the end I collapsed, out of exhaustion, but when I woke up I started looking again. It went on like that until we got to port, and even afterwards, when we were taken to the camp. I could not bring myself to accept that Kabir hadn’t made it. To this day I keep thinking he will turn up somewhere.’
There was a break now in the rhythmic motion of Bilal’s hands; holding his knife at an angle, he raised his wrist and drew it across his eyes. Then he scooped up a handful of white artichoke bottoms and held them out towards me.
‘Do you see these?’ he said. ‘For every euro I make from doing this work, I keep forty cents for my own needs. Of the rest I send thirty to my own family and thirty to Kabir’s. He was an only child and his parents have no one to support them. For as long as they live I will send them money. I have to, don’t I? It’s only because Kabir was my friend that he’s not here today. And the strange thing, you know, is that never once, through all that we suffered, did he blame me.’
