by Ele Fountain
In the middle of the night, after the third day, there is a knock on the door. Three smugglers come in.
“Boat,” says one of them in English. “Put on all your clothes and come.”
Almaz and I are already wearing everything we own.
We walk sleepily down the stairs to a truck waiting outside. A cool wind is blowing in from the ocean and seeps through my thin layers of clothing in a few seconds.
We climb into the truck and the man gestures that we should move into the middle, as close together as possible. Once we are squashed into a tiny space, one of the armed men climbs in. The others begin passing him huge sacks, which he stacks around us. The sacks of rice are a decoy. In the middle of them sits the true cargo: people.
Soon we are completely hidden behind a wall of rice. The sacks push down on us, shunting us farther into the middle of the truck. At least they protect us from the freezing morning air, but I don’t know for how long we will be traveling like this.
The truck bumps slowly along the road, and after a few minutes we must join a highway of some kind. The truck chugs along at top speed. After a little while I drift off to sleep.
I wake maybe several hours later. We have stopped, and the smugglers are throwing bread rolls and bottles of water into the truck. Then we keep going. We must be traveling along the coastline. The wind is still strong, but doesn’t drive away the gathering clouds. I can hear seabirds screeching over the roar of the engine.
By late afternoon, the truck comes to a stop again. This time we climb out and gather next to a strip of sandy beach with a small concrete jetty jutting into the shallow sea. I have never seen the sea before. Almaz is staring out across the water. The horizon is gray, which makes the water seem dark blue, almost black.
Gathered around the jetty are men clutching bright-orange jackets. They walk toward us, waving the orange bundles at us and talking urgently.
“Who wants to buy a life jacket?” asks one of the smugglers.
Almaz and I have no money, but some people in our group are reaching into their pockets.
“Do you think we need one?” Almaz asks, looking concerned.
“No, we have a boat. We don’t need a life jacket, too.”
Almaz looks up at me and smiles her warm smile, which helps me to forget the biting wind for a moment.
The smuggler points to two small orange inflatable dinghies. I look at them in horror.
He sees my face and says, “No, no. Big boat.” He points out to sea.
We are to get in the little boats, which will take us to a bigger boat.
“Do you think there really is a bigger boat?” Almaz whispers.
“I guess if there were lots of little boats, then they would need to pay lots of people to sail them. It makes more sense for them to use one big boat,” I whisper back.
The smugglers point to me and the other men, and we start to drag one of the boats toward the edge of the water. We push it alongside the narrow jetty until it begins to bob up and down by itself. We push the second boat up behind it. The smugglers herd the others onto the jetty, but I can’t see Almaz. For a second I panic and then realize she is in the middle of the group of women. I push my way past the men, and even though one of the smugglers is shouting at me, I go and stand with Almaz.
People begin to step gingerly into the nearest boat. It wobbles and they sit down abruptly. When there are seven or eight people sitting down, the guard nods to Almaz, who steps into the middle of the second boat. I follow. The smuggler tips the engine propeller down into the water and tugs at the starter cord. A high-pitched roar breaks the silence and we steer slowly away from the jetty.
Almaz shivers in the breeze and spray flicks up onto our thin clothes, sucking away any warmth we have left. I put my arm around her shoulder, and it steadies us both as waves slam against the bottom of the boat. As we carve a path out to sea, I decide that I don’t like being surrounded by water. It seems alive; it seems angry.
After a few minutes the smuggler at the back of the boat shouts and points. In front I see a large blue fishing boat bobbing on the water. Almaz looks up at me, and I smile, full of relief that there is a big boat after all.
We must be the last people to join. As we steer closer, I can see hundreds of heads, moving up and down as the boat gently rocks with the waves.
We pull up to where a rope ladder hangs over the side of the larger boat. Our dinghy is moving to a different rhythm in the waves, and the boats bump against each other.
Men wait at the top, their arms outstretched. Almaz tries to grip the rope without falling between the two boats. She clings on, and looks up, reaching a hand to the next rung, where one of the men grabs her arm and begins to haul her toward the top. The other women go next; then it’s my turn.
As I jump into the hull of the bigger blue boat, I feel safer. Next to me is a mother with a small baby strapped to her chest in layers of bright cloth. The wooden sides and gentler motion are reassuring. Almaz pushes through the closely packed bodies to reach me. I think we are lucky to be near the edge. From the middle of the boat wafts a sour smell of vomit. Not everyone is okay with the rolling of the waves. Lots of people are wearing the bright life jackets they were selling by the jetty. They look warmer than everyone else. There is no roof or shelter from the wind, and although it’s not yet dusk, the clouds make it feel later.
There is a grating vibration through the floor of the boat as they haul in the anchor. I guess that’s what’s happening because right after that, the boat spins around, and we start bumping through the waves toward Europe.
Almaz and I have been thrown together once more with people we know nothing of. Only, this time there has been no time to talk, no chance to learn anything of the lives that brought the others to share this boat with us. Are they scared, too? There is no one to turn to for reassurance. Then, as I look up, I recognize the doctor, separated from us by two or three rows of people. He must have stayed in a different safe house.
“Hey, Doctor!” I shout. The words leave my mouth before I have a chance to stop them.
He turns around, as do many others to see who is making the noise. He nods at me and shouts hello.
It is a small thing, but I feel better. Safer. I feel Almaz slip her hand inside mine. I feel a flicker of warmth as I realize that she has no doubts about me; she trusts me to look after her.
We haven’t been sailing for very long when the wind becomes much stronger and the clouds lower. The engine of the boat splutters as we ride the waves, struggling under its heavy load. I can hear the men steering the boat shouting to one another. The first few drops of rain begin to fall, and I put my arm around Almaz’s shoulder again. We are both shivering, our faces shiny wet with spray and rainwater.
I don’t know if the sea is always this rough. I see my fear reflected in the faces surrounding us.
Boat
Cold salty water stings my eyes and soaks my T-shirt. I cling to the clammy wooden edge of the boat as a huge wave swells toward me. The boat tips, and I gasp as people slide against me and the air is pressed from my chest.
The sky is turning from light to dark gray; white foam tops the waves. The wind pushes relentlessly against my face, and with the next rolling wave the boat dips so low that buckets of water gush in over the side, soaking me again with freezing water. I feel it creeping above my ankles. No one cries out. Even the baby strapped to the mother beside me is quiet.
Green-gray waves make a wall around us. We rise to the top of another but there is nothing to see except spray blowing like rain in the icy wind. Europe is sprawled somewhere in front of us but I can’t see land. As we slide into the trough, more water rushes over the side of the boat. It’s up to my knees. My feet are numb but I can tell that my shoes are heavy with water. I look up again and see a swirling wave bigger than the others rolling toward us in fury. The boat tips. This time we keep on tipping. The wave crashes over us as if we are on the shore, only we’re in the middle of the sea. I h
ear screaming and then nothing as water rushes over my head.
I can’t tell which way is up to sky and wind, and which way is down toward the depths of sea beneath. I open my eyes. They sting but show me nothing more than cloudy bubbling water and the legs of someone just out of reach. I kick up once, my chest burning. I kick up again, knowing that in a second I’ll no longer be able to fight the desperate urge to breathe in. I kick one last time, my legs tingling. I am about to pass out just as wind blasts my face; I suck in air and some spray.
Choking, I pant and gasp; the currents tug me left and right as the swell lifts me up and down. I cannot swim but instinct makes me kick my feet to stay afloat. The shoes my mother bought with three weeks’ wages are so heavy. I try to push them off without going under.
I know I can’t kick water for long. Already my thighs and arms feel tired. I see four, maybe five, other heads swirling in the waves. How can three hundred people disappear so quickly?
A yellow plastic bag washes toward me. There are clothes inside. The knot has been tied tightly so the bag is like a floating pocket of air. I cling to it.
A boy appears next to me, bobbing up from under the waves like I did seconds before. I reach out my hand to him. He looks at me. His eyes are big and oval-shaped and he reminds me of Bini. I reach my hand out to him again and he tries to grab it but instead sinks beneath the waves. He doesn’t come back up.
Who will come to save me? Who knows where I am apart from the others tossing and bobbing in the waves like me? What would Bini do now?
As the next wave lifts me up, I see Almaz clinging to a yellow container. I lose sight of her in the spray but the container is bright and I fix my eyes on it with absolute determination. Slowly I kick my legs, which does nothing, but the waves are moving us together. As she drifts closer, she turns and sees me. She reaches out a hand. I stretch mine and grab her fingertips, then her wrist. We cling to each other, with the container and bag to keep us afloat.
Our lives depend on a plastic bag and a water container.
Almaz’s lips are blue and her hands keep slipping from the container.
“Kick water!” I shout.
I put my hands over the top of hers and press down on the yellow plastic.
I become aware of a new sound over the roar of the wind and waves. It is coming from overhead. The sea around me flattens in a circle of white spray, as if pushed by a great wind from above. I look up and see an orange figure slicing through the sky toward me. Above the figure a red-and-white helicopter hovers.
I look down at Almaz, but she is no longer clinging to the yellow water container. I turn frantically around, the seawater streaming down my face. I cannot see her anywhere. Her hands must have slipped from beneath mine, my fingers so numb I didn’t notice. She has gone.
I feel something touch my leg and plunge my head beneath the waves, reaching my arms downward. I grab some clothes and, with my muscles burning, pull upward. There is an arm, and I tug it toward my chest, dragging the rest of the body with me to the surface. Almaz’s whole face is bluish.
The orange figure is next to me and clips something to me. Then they clip something to Almaz. We are flying up through the air toward the helicopter. The orange figure pats me on the back.
We reach the helicopter’s mouth and strong arms pull us in toward the center. They strap me into a seat in the corner, then turn immediately to Almaz. One person holds her wrist; another sweeps their fingers inside her mouth. They place a mask over her nose and mouth. It’s attached to a small bag, which one of them squeezes, while the other presses down on the mask. Almaz coughs and they push her to sit upright; she coughs more and some water comes out. They lay her on her side. Her eyes flicker open and look at my bare feet.
I sit back in my seat and close my eyes as someone pushes a bottle of water into my hand. I can barely grip it. My body feels so heavy; my legs and arms ache as if they have been bruised all over. But I don’t care.
Almaz nearly sank beneath the waves, like so many others, but now she is lying here, next to me, alive.
We have the chance for a second life.
Inside my head I carry the stories of what went before. Those stories are the threads that will tie me to my other life. I am still Shif. But from now on there will always be two parts to me.
I hope the people I love can join me and Almaz soon. Then the raw edges of my divided world can begin to heal. In the meantime, we have each other.
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Author’s note
I began writing Refugee 87 when I was living far from home with my family, in Ethiopia. Our move to Africa coincided with the height of a global refugee crisis. News channels showed images of refugees fleeing war or persecution in their own countries. Some of these people were from Ethiopia.
Everyone I knew back in the UK was shocked by the images of refugees on the news, but many didn’t know why people were risking their lives in this way. The more I heard the phrase “boatload” of refugees, or people discussed in terms of quantity, the more I wanted to hear about who these people were, and what they might be escaping from. People don’t make perilous journeys unless they are leaving something worse behind.
While we were in Ethiopia, a state of emergency was declared after anti-government riots. We were on lockdown in the capital, Addis Ababa, for a few weeks. The internet was shut down, as well as the phones briefly. New laws said you could be put in jail just for criticizing the government. There were systems in place to help us leave the city—and country—if we needed to, but the experience changed me. Why should I be able to leave easily if I was in danger, but not my Ethiopian friends?
Before moving to Ethiopia, I was, for many years, a children’s book editor. I’d often spoken to authors about their inspirations, but I’d never planned to have any of my own. Now there was a story I wanted to tell. The story of a boy who had left everything he knew in search of safety. That story was Refugee 87. For the first time, I truly understood the need to write.
I immediately knew where the book would be set. I also decided not to name the country where Shif comes from, or any of the countries he passes through. I wanted the focus to be on his experience rather than the politics of one regime. Also, Shif’s story has echoes for children across the world today—Central America, Syria, Myanmar, South Sudan. I have left many clues in the story, though, if the reader wants to find out. All the places exist, and Shif’s journey can be traced on a map from beginning to end.
Debra Hurford Brown
About the Author
Ele Fountain worked as an editor in children’s publishing, where she was responsible for launching and nurturing the careers of many award-winning and bestselling authors. She lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for several years, where she was inspired to write Refugee 87, her debut novel. Ele now lives in what she describes as a “not quite falling-down house” south of London with her husband and two young daughters.
