by Amitav Ghosh
I seated myself beside Cinta and tried to warm her hands between mine. The water was almost up to our chests when we heard a siren, wailing in the distance. It grew louder and louder until suddenly a white and orange launch appeared beside us.
Crossings
The reason for the prompt arrival of the ambulance was that the hospital – the Ospedale Civile – was very close by, at the other end of the Fondamente Nove. The journey there took only a couple of minutes.
The hospital was well prepared for the acqua alta: the ambulance pulled into a covered dock where an emergency nurse and technicians were waiting with a stretcher. I followed them down a plastic-enclosed tunnel into an immaculately clean modern building. Cinta was whisked through a door marked Pronto Soccorso Traumatologico while I waited at the reception desk in my dripping clothes. After a while a kindly nurse took pity on me and handed me a set of green overalls and a pair of hospital slippers. When I had changed she gave me a plastic bag for my wet clothes and then led me through a warren of corridors, cloisters and staircases into what seemed to be an old monastery. Ushering me into an immense, empty loggia, she left me to wait for news of Cinta.
I went to a tall, stone-framed window and gazed down at the strange spectacle of the flooded city. Wooden passerelle had appeared everywhere, tended by gumboot-wearing migrants; and at every corner there seemed to be a group of Bengalis, selling boots, galoshes and plastic shoe protectors.
So absorbed was I that I didn’t notice that someone had come up behind me. I jumped when he began to speak, in Bangla: ‘Bané bhalo rojgar hoi. We earn well on days like this. For us it’s like home – we’re used to floods.’
‘Rafi!’
He was wearing a blue hospital gown and slippers. One of his arms was in plaster and he had a black eye and lacerations on his face.
‘I saw you walking past my ward,’ he said. ‘What’s brought you here?’
I told him the story, briefly, and he said: ‘So Bilal was at that old warehouse on the embankment, was he?’
‘Yes. It was incredibly lucky for us that he was there, at just that time.’
Rafi nodded. ‘I know that place well. On flood days we sometimes spend the night there. I’ve been on those jetties. I’ve heard them.’
‘Heard what?’
‘The worms. It’s just like the Sundarbans. There, if you put your ear to the embankments you can hear the crabs burrowing inside. My grandfather showed me how to listen to them. Sometimes, if you listen carefully, you can tell if an embankment is going to collapse. It’s the same over here.’
Rafi’s evocation of the Sundarbans made me recall my first encounter with him, when I was inside that shrine and he was staring at me wide-eyed through the entrance. I remembered how he had retreated as I advanced on him – and a shiver went through me at the thought that the cobra had been following me all the while, with its hood upraised. I remembered also the tenderness with which Rafi had cared for Tipu on the way back to the hospital in Lusibari.
‘There’s something I need to ask you, Rafi,’ I said, looking him squarely in the eyes. ‘And this time I want you to tell me the truth. I need to know. Did you and Tipu leave Lusibari together?’
He swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘And is it true that Tipu had many more seizures?’
‘Yes,’ said Rafi. ‘But they weren’t like what happened that day in the steamer. When the fits started up again they were different. Sometimes he would be quiet, sometimes he would start shaking; sometimes he would seem to be sleepwalking; sometimes he would be talking and arguing, with his eyes closed.’
‘Were you always with him when they happened?’
‘No. The first couple of times it happened at his home. His mother got very worried and wanted him to see a doctor and take medications, which Tipu didn’t want to do. So after that, whenever he felt a seizure coming on, he would call me and we would go somewhere in my boat. He liked to be on the water; he said it reminded him of his boat trips with his father, when he was little.’
‘Did he talk to you about what he saw during these seizures?’
‘A bit,’ said Rafi, ‘not much. He said most of the time he himself couldn’t understand what was going on. He would hear voices, or sense a presence, or see a place – even places that he had never been to. Sometimes he would hear his father’s voice – that always made Tipu happy. But there were times when he was terrified – and he could never explain what it was that he was afraid of. He said he could see a kind of darkness closing in around him. And the more it happened the more restless he became. He kept saying he needed to get away from Lusibari. I’d been thinking of moving too so we decided to leave together. Had I been on my own I would probably have gone to some city in India – but Tipu wasn’t interested in moving to Kolkata or Delhi. It was he who persuaded me that we should try to get to Europe – he said it would be easier for us to be together here. He began to make arrangements and we started to collect money. He insisted that it be done in secret; he was sure that his mother and his aunt Piya would try to stop him if they found out that he was planning to leave the country. He thought they might even put him in a mental hospital. So he made up a story about a job in Bangalore.’
‘But the two of you went to Bangladesh instead?’
‘Yes. Tipu already knew some dalals in Bangladesh and he made arrangements with them over the phone. One night we crossed the Raimangal River and went over to Dhaka. The money that we had put together – most of it was Tipu’s – was just about enough to pay for the cheapest kind of journey, overland, with a little left over, to see us through on the way. We spent two weeks in Dhaka and then the dalal put us on a minibus, along with a group of other men. I was carrying only a backpack, and so was Tipu. We had some clothes, a bit of food, and around 250 US dollars each, that’s all.
‘There were around twenty-four men on the bus, but they weren’t all paying passengers, like us. Some worked for the dalal; it was their job to get us across the border. They were tough, hard men, and you couldn’t argue with them; you had to do exactly what they said. They weren’t all bad, some of them were friendly and helpful. But Tipu didn’t like them, he used to call them “jackals” – he said that’s what men like that are called in America, except that he used some other word.’
‘“Coyote”?’
‘Yes, that’s it. From then on, all the way to the Turkish border, we always had some jackals with us – they would change after each leg, but they were always there, keeping an eye on us. Much of the time we didn’t even know their names.
‘That first minibus brought us from Dhaka to the Indian border, at Benapol in West Bengal. Our dalal had already paid the necessary bribes so all we had to do was walk through the immigration checkpoint. There was another minibus waiting for us on the other side, with a fresh set of jackals.
‘We got into the bus and a few hours later we were in Kolkata. We were taken to a connection house and locked inside. We stayed there for three days, twenty of us hidden in two rooms with one bathroom between us. You couldn’t step out, even for a breath of air. If you complained, or asked too many questions, you’d be slapped or beaten; sometimes the jackals would hit you with pistol butts.
‘On the third night, very late, we were woken abruptly and told to be ready to leave in fifteen minutes. Outside the house was an old truck, with brightly painted sides: its cargo area was fully enclosed with wooden panels, so that people couldn’t look in. One by one, we were packed into this space, like cows or goats – there was just about enough room for each of us to sit.
‘The truck was slow, with a bad suspension. Every time the driver changed gears clouds of exhaust would blow in, choking us. During the day it was like an oven. There were no windows to look out of. We just had to sit there, bumping against each other as the truck rattled on. From time to time, after many hours, the truck would stop and let us out to relieve ourselves. Sometimes people would get car-sick and throw up inside; the smell was so bad that others would throw up too.
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‘Most of the time we had no idea where we were. Sometimes, if we asked, they would say “near Agra”, “near Indore” – but often they wouldn’t answer. Then one night the truck stopped at a connection house in a place that looked like a desert. They told us that we were close to the Pakistan border but if we wanted to go any further we would need to arrange for an extra payment of fifty US dollars each.
‘This came as a huge shock to us, because we thought we had already paid in full. We didn’t know what to do. We had not planned on using our dollars so early in the journey; we had thought that we would need the money later.
‘Tipu flew into a temper and began to argue with the jackals. I tried to shut him up but it was impossible; he was beside himself with rage, shouting and cursing. One of the jackals slapped him, and when that didn’t stop him two of them dragged him into another room. We heard some hard blows followed by cries from Tipu. Then suddenly his voice changed and became very strange, like the howl of an animal. I’d heard him do this before so I knew he was having one of his fits. This went on for a minute or two and then the two jackals came rushing out, looking shaken. They told me to go inside and get Tipu.
‘I found him lying on a bed, with his pants down. There was a stick on the floor – Tipu told me later that they were going to shove that stick into him but his seizure had come on before they could go through with it. Tipu can be frightening sometimes when he gets into one of his fits, and I think that’s what saved him that day. Anyway, we paid up quietly and the jackals didn’t stop us from going on with the others.
‘When we next got out of the truck it was very dark. We were told to start walking, although we couldn’t see where we were going. At some point we crossed into Pakistan without knowing it, and after a while we spotted someone who was signalling with a torch. Now we were handed over again, to another set of jackals. They made us walk until we came to a road where a truck was waiting.
‘Then the whole thing began again: long stretches on the road with occasional halts at safe houses, in places whose names we never learnt. And as before, one night our vehicle came to a stop and we were told that we had now come to the Iranian border and would need to make further payments.
‘This time it was not a surprise and no one argued, not even Tipu. He had become quieter after that incident at the India border. One day while we were crossing Iran, he told me that he could feel that there was trouble ahead, for us. Then he turned to me and said: “Rafi, if something happens to me and we get separated you must go on, no matter what.”’
Rafi’s voice had been level all this while but now it began to shake and he raised a hand to wipe the corner of his eye.
‘To ami oké bollam,’ he continued, ‘I said to Tipu: “I would never leave you and go.” And he said: “No, you must. If we’re parted you must go on by yourself and you must have faith that we’ll find each other again.” It was almost as if Tipu knew what was going to happen.
‘In Iran our jackals were Afghans and Kurds: they had dealt with so many Bengalis that they could even speak a little Bangla. After many days of driving we reached a range of mountains, in western Iran. It was very cold now and we caught glimpses of snow. Most of us had no warm clothes or even shoes – Tipu and I had left Bangladesh wearing rubber slippers. We had to pay the jackals whatever they asked to obtain anoraks and sneakers – we had no choice.
‘We came to a small Kurdish village in the mountains and the jackals took us to a house that was already full of dozens of other men, mainly Hazaras, from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. We were told that we would have to wait until a guide came to show us the way across the border, into Turkey.
‘After a few days some Kurdish men came and loaded us into a truck that was covered with tarpaulin. We were told that when the truck stopped we would have to run as fast we could. They warned us that if we were spotted by Turkish border guards they would open fire. If that happened we had to keep running, they said, in the hope that the soldiers wouldn’t see us in the dark. If we managed to make it over then we would be met by guides, on the other side.
‘Our truck came to a halt near a steep slope. When the tailgate was lowered we jumped down and began to run, just as we had been told, falling and slipping on the loose rocks. Tipu and I were terrified of being separated; we did our best to stay close to each other.
‘Suddenly we heard the sound of gunshots. There were spotlights and red flashes behind us. We were going downhill now and we began to run for our lives, faster and faster, tumbling and falling. The shots hit some of the men ahead of us; we saw them lying on the track, screaming in pain, but there was nothing we could do. We kept on moving, jumping over the bodies as if they were fallen animals. There were maybe thirty or forty of us, running blindly, in a panic: it was like a stampede.
‘I don’t know how, but I ended up taking shelter in a hiding place with a dozen Hazaras. I’d thought Tipu was beside me but when I looked around he wasn’t there. I began to shout his name but the others stopped me, saying that I would give away our location.
‘I told myself that Tipu was probably lying low somewhere and that I would find him in the morning. But next day he was not among those who came out of hiding to join us: there was no sign of him anywhere.
‘You can imagine my state then. I had no idea where Tipu was and nor did I know what to do next. It was Tipu who had studied the routes and knew where to go. All I could do was follow the others.
‘We went down the mountain and were met by some Kurds who led us to a town and showed us where we could get a bus to Istanbul. After a few hours on the bus my phone rang: it was Tipu, calling through a social media app. He told me that he had taken a fall while we were scrambling downhill and had hurt his foot badly. During the night he had slowly crawled back the way we had come and had managed to reach the Iran border. The next day a group of Bengalis had helped to get him to the Kurdish village where we had stayed before. The people there had remembered him and had helped him get his foot treated. He told me that he was planning to stay there till his foot healed; after that he would make another attempt to get across the border.
‘But in the meantime, Tipu had gone online to make arrangements for me. He told me that I should get off the bus at a town near Istanbul and join a group of refugees who were planning to walk to Europe. Following his advice I joined the refugees – there were a few Bengalis among them, but the others were from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and some other countries too. I followed them over the border into Bulgaria, and then on through Serbia, into Hungary and Austria.
‘All through this Tipu stayed in touch with me; it was he who said that I should try to make my way to Venice. I had often heard him talk about this place so I agreed – where else was I going to go anyway? At that time I knew nothing about Italy and Europe.
‘In Austria I took a train that brought me to Italy where I was entered into a Centro di accoglienza near Trieste. After a few days I was moved to a camp outside the city – and it was while I was there that Tipu made his next attempt to cross into Turkey. This time he succeeded, and I thought he would try to join me as soon as possible. But somewhere along the way something happened to change his mind. He had a dream in which a woman, an Ethiopian, had appeared before him, – she was like a forishta, an angel, he said. After that he could talk of nothing else – he became desperate to find her. I tried to tell him that he was crazy to think that he’d be able to find a forishta he’d seen in a dream – but then one day, about three weeks ago, he called to say that he’d been able to contact the woman he had dreamt of, and that she had asked him to come to a town somewhere in Egypt. He had already spoken to a dalal in Turkey who had agreed to make all the arrangements. Now it was just a question of finding the money.
‘By this time I had left the camp and come to Venice, so I was earning a bit. I had offered to send Tipu money many times before but he had always said no, he would ask when he really needed it. Now I could tell that he was desperate, a
nd I couldn’t turn him down. I didn’t have enough to make the payment – it was quite a large sum – so I contacted a scafista who agreed to let me pay in instalments: it was the scafista who transferred the money to Tipu’s dalal.
‘Tipu flew to Egypt as soon as the payment was made, which was about sixteen days ago. He called me once, from an Internet café somewhere in Egypt. He said he didn’t have a phone any more and anyway it wouldn’t be of any use to him because it would be taken away when he was moved to the connection house where he was going. He told me not to worry, he had met up with the people he had been looking for and it wouldn’t be long before we saw each other again.
That was the last time I heard from him.’
* * *
It took some time for the story to sink in.
‘What I don’t understand, Rafi,’ I said, ‘is why you didn’t contact Tipu’s mother, or Piya? They could have sent him money.’
Rafi shook his head. ‘Tipu didn’t want me to do that. He was adamant about this – he said under no circumstances was I to ask for help from his mother or Piya. He made me promise not to tell them anything – or you either.’
‘Then why are you telling me now?’
‘I’ll show you.’
Thrusting a hand into his hospital gown, Rafi pulled out a piece of paper that he had folded into a small square.
‘This was one thing they didn’t bother to take when they beat me up,’ he said wryly, unfolding the sheet.
It was a picture that he had torn out of a newspaper, a photograph of a blue fishing boat, crowded with refugees.
Tapping the picture with a fingertip, Rafi said: ‘Do you see this face over there? That’s Tipu. You may not be able to tell because the picture’s faded a bit. But, it’s him, I’m sure of it. Tipu is on that Blue Boat.’
* * *
We were still talking when I realized, suddenly, that a couple of hours had passed with no news of Cinta.
