by Sara Alexi
“So where are you? Are you at home? What happened to the house and everything?”
Michelle laughs.
“I was made into partner two years ago. I could have taken him to the cleaners. Anyway, he pretty much just wanted to walk away so that made it easy. It’s just the evenings when it’s quiet, or at night when I wake up and I have forgotten and I find I’m alone. But you’ve been there, Juliet.” Her voice drops and becomes quieter as she speaks.
“Yes, I have been there, and it is tough no matter how much of a sod they’ve been. But it is just an adjustment, nothing bad is happening. Soon you will be like me and loving the freedom.”
“Actually I already love that part. No one to answer to. After work last night, I took the train into the centre of London and saw a show. I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of public transport to go home afterwards, so I booked into a hotel. That kind of freedom is priceless. I can’t imagine what Richard would have said if I’d done that when I was still with him.”
“Good for you. But I guess it wouldn’t harm if I called you more often in the evenings then, just to remind you that you are not completely alone!”
“If this is what Greece does to you, then maybe you made the right move.”
Juliet can hear genuine pleasure in her voice. She opens the door a crack so she can see Aaman. He is still intent on his work but he is smiling.
The sun grows hotter as spring merges into the beginning of summer. The garden needs less and less work as the days pass. Aaman is rebuilding a stone wall at the front of the house that has collapsed over time. He and Juliet have done several runs to the local riverbed, which is dry in the summer, for boulders and stones to finish the wall. Juliet sits drinking a well-deserved coffee as Aaman thoughtfully reconstructs the wall.
“Do you think we should paint it when it is finished to match the white wall behind the pomegranate trees?”
“I think that is up to you.” He continues at his own steady pace. Juliet looks over her cottage with a sense of accomplishment.
“What’s it like where you stay, Aaman?”
“It is in an orange grove.”
“That sounds nice.”
“No, it is not very nice. It is a barn that the farmer had made for illegals to sleep.”
Juliet creates a picture of a wooden-beamed, stone-walled barn with single beds dotted around the walls, a huddle of armchairs at one end, and a flagged stone floor.
“It doesn’t sound too bad.”
“No, I am grateful.”
“I’m going to the village shop. Is there anything extra that we need? No? OK, see you in a bit.”
As Juliet walks down the lane, she notices that all the weeds have gone. It looks oddly bare. The edge of the road where it meets the wall is entirely clear of nettles and grasses. Juliet misses the dots of colour the wildflowers had brought, but is glad the spiky, variegated leaved plants are no more to be seen, or felt. The vines that creep over the fence of the disused barn next door have been trimmed, and the lemons harvested from the untended tree next to the barn. The house next to that, which, as yet, has shown no sign of inhabitance to Juliet despite the well-tended front yard, is clear of the weeds and leaves around the gate. There are signs of Aaman’s care and attention everywhere.
Two dogs hurry after each other in the road, and a lady leading a ram says good morning. The square has tables taken from the kafenios, and clusters of farmers at each drink small cups of Greek coffee and the occasional ouzo shot. The warmth is bringing the life outside.
Juliet stops to look at some of the headlines on the newspapers that have been pegged on a line outside the shop. She can hear Marina chatting inside.
“Yes, she has met a boy. He is nice boy. His father? He has the land with the mandarins down by the old river. Yes, that’s right, you were at school with him. Well, his boy has been in America for work all these years. Yes, twenty eight and never married! Yes, I know, the same age as my eldest. No, she is still single. One such a baby and married and already divorced and meeting this nice boy and the other such a woman and no thoughts of marriage at all! What can you do? So I arranged for his family to come to me at Easter. It was a very good time, we ate, we drank, we sang, When the evening was finishing I see them sitting quite close and talking quietly. I do not say anything. You know me, I will not interfere. It is best. Ah, here is Tzuliet, Goodbye, Mrs Eleni. Tzuliet, how are you? There is much talk in the village about you.” Marina still struggles with Juliet’s name.
“Really, Marina? What on earth about?”
“They say you are making the old farmhouse into a palace. The postman says the garden is bountiful with food you are growing and you are planting trees and making everything beautiful.”
“It is a palace and the garden is looking amazing, but your garden is the same.” Juliet loves this banter.
“Ah, the same, it is the same, but maybe I did not do it so quickly.”
“I have help.”
“Of course you have. Why wouldn’t you? What can I do for you today?”
Juliet reels off her list, and between them they gather the goods.
Walking back home, the sun directly in her face, Juliet muses on how nice people are and what a nice spot it is in which she lives. The village feels idyllic, just like the dream she searched for when she moved out here, the situation only improved by someone to share it with. It feels perfect, she feels lucky.
Chapter 12
That night, Aaman wakes to an unfamiliar sound. He listens. He can sense that some of the other men have woken too. There is a stillness. A snapping of a twig. A bird flaps. A leaf rustles.
A sound of many feet. A shout. Flashlights outside. A burst through the doorway. Light beams on startled eyes. Many shouts. Power wielded. Ugly laughter. Fluent Greek. Guns at the ready.
The men are pulled from their bunks. Aaman scrabbles to check his savings are well hidden. He misses his chance. Pulled away, patted down, handcuffs slapped on, linking them in a chain, pushed through the door to waiting hands. The black shape on the floor is kicked. A small groan but it doesn’t move. It is kicked again. There is no groan. The bunks are cleared. The men lined up outside. Full moon. Sharp contrast.
There is a discussion about the black shape. They turn him over. A shiny black beetle runs out of his beard.
“Nekros!” The policeman shrugs.
“Afiste.” The man in charge pats the air as if telling a dog to drop a bone.
The illegals, blinking in the moonlight, are chained one to another. The cold metal blinks in the starlight. Uncuffed hands wipe sleepy eyes, reshape sleep-torn hair. They foot-scrape the mud floor corners of the barn to see if anything has been left, secreted in the shadows. There is nothing. They march the men to the edge of the orange grove to a waiting van.
Aaman turns to see his last glimpse of the barn, his paper hoard. The orange trees cup the mud building in a quiet embrace. The moonlight slices the tops of the trees, reaching down through the door, spotlighting the floor where the bearded man lies, unmoving, face in the dirt.
And there, behind a tree, a face, a grinning smile. Teeth. Mahmout.
Aaman is in the back of an army truck with all the familiar, and some unfamiliar, faces from the barn. The Nigerians still heavy with sleep, mumbling, limp-boned hands make decisions about what to do with rolled euro notes missed in the pat-down, notes they have had down their trousers whilst sleeping. There are three new Indian faces. They look scared. The two tall Russians are there, which surprises Aaman as he thought they had never been in the barn. They must have fallen on hard times. The rest are the usual Albanians, Romanians, Croatians, and Bulgarians.
Three of the Greek police throw armfuls of shoes and sandals that have been collected from around the barn into the van with them. The chain of illegals pulls against each other in the scramble to reclaim footwear. The men snap and curse each other as the bracelets cut and pinch.
The truck is green, inside and out, mesh at the
windows, and smells of stale smoke. No police ride in the back with them. One of the Russians lights up two cigarettes from a pack and a lighter he has hidden under his hat. He passes one to his friend. An Albanian asks for one but is ignored. The Russian says something to his friend, and they both laugh heartily as if they are at a party. The Albanians speak in hushed tones, planning, plotting damage control. The Romanians and Croatians lean back as if this is the thousandth time they have been in this situation and they are thoroughly bored with it. One has a torn jacket which he inspects. It must have happened in the raid. Several are already back on the edge of sleep, heads rolled back, mouths gaping.
Aaman watches through the mesh. The orange grove gives way to a road. They are heading for the nearby town. They pass the nursery where he and Juliet chose the fruit trees, her hair glowing gold in the sun. She had a white, floaty blouse that day and the strap on her sandal broke. She leant against him as she hopped back to the car.
The Russian burps. They slow as they approach a large, square, modern building set back from the road on the edge of the town. Aaman reads phonetically, out loud to himself, the sign on the building. One of the Albanians hears him, translates into English, the common language: Police.
They are unloaded into the car park and taken inside in a line, one handcuffed to the next, through the large, glass front door to the reception beyond. It is bright, marble, shiny with a very high ceiling. It is a useless space. Aaman thinks of all the rooms that could be contained within this room. The jobs it would create to convert it, the men it could house, the income the rooms could earn, the wealth it would generate to employ more men to build more rooms. Aaman concludes that the West has its head on backwards.
The policeman at the desk in the main hall drinks a coffee and eats a slice of cheese pie. He listens intently to the officer leading the men and then waves a dismissive gesture and resumes reading his newspaper. The officer who has brought them in insists on something from the man at the desk and pokes a finger at the man’s newspaper to accentuate his point. The policeman eating his pie, drinking his coffee and reading his newspaper is highly affronted. There commences an argument, and Aaman can see bits of pastry spat into the air. One large piece falls out of the policeman’s mouth onto his jacket, and he picks it off and eats it before continuing to push his point.
Aaman thinks of Juliet drinking her morning coffee. He looks around to find out the time. He is near enough to the arguing policemen to see that the one nearest has a watch on. Aaman waits until he gesticulates, his sleeve rising. It is nearly six a.m. She will not be awake yet. It is only a matter of the minutes ticking past. His time is over, they intend to make him leave the country, he feels sure of that. But to which country will he be sent? No country to the West wants illegal immigrants. They will forbid it. If they take the immigrants to a more Eastern country, they know they will just return to Greece as it is the route to the West. They won’t know where to send him. They may put him in a detention centre. He has heard of people held there for years.
They stand in the lobby for over an hour, the two officers arguing, leaving occasionally to find some paperwork or another officer who comes and joins in the heated discussion. At one very angry point of the discussion, one takes out a cigarette and is about to light it when he reaches for the packet again and offers one to the man with whom he is arguing. He accepts. They stop to light up using one lighter, the one accepting mutters something, and they both laugh before resuming their positions and continue shouting their differences.
Aaman shifts his weight, limbs responding as if in treacle. His eyes blink slowly. Even the barn’s wooden bunk feels attractive. There is a yank on his cuffed wrist as the line tension changes. The Albanians try to sit on the floor but the Russians shout at them as they pull on their handcuffed wrists, the metal digging into soft skin. One of the Indian men is crying silently, talking to himself. Aaman understands the dialect. His wife is in a village twenty miles from here, and he is expected back. He has been an illegal for twenty years, his children go to school here, his wife cleans floors in a government building, he was just staying overnight as it was too long a walk from his village to the town and back in one day.
Aaman turns away. He looks down a corridor with rooms off to the side. At the end of the corridor is a green wooden door. There is a moth at a window above the door. The window is dirty, streak marks from where a damp cloth has been wiped over it has created arches of sunlight. The moth starts at the bottom of the arch, banging itself against the glass, hoping for an exit, a passage to freedom, and each time it buffets against the window, it gains a little height. The dance takes it to the top of the arch and down the other side until it takes a rest, its little feet on the wooden frame. It crawls for a while and then begins the process again, sometimes at the other end of the arch, sometimes at the same end, seeking the elusive light, the freedom of unimpeded flight.
The officers have stopped shouting. A man in civilian clothing has entered the lobby holding high a copper ring hung from which, on a tripod of metal ropes, is a copper tray. On the tray are two small Greek coffee cups. The arguing policemen have stopped to order coffee from the delivery boy. The Russians sigh and pull the Albanians to the floor as they themselves now give up and sit, leaning against the wall. The whole line follows suit as each is pulled down by the last. Aaman is the little one on the end.
Once seated, Aaman sleeps, one eye open. Some part of him hears the police eventually make their peace and the one behind the desk makes a phone call. He is not surprised when the arresting officer pulls them to their feet and takes them back into the yard and into the truck. The Russians complain loudly, they mime the need to pee and Aaman’s mind takes in the Russian words. The Russians’ complaints are ignored as though they are whining dogs. The policeman leaves the door open and goes to drink his coffee, sitting in the sunshine with his new found friend, the reception officer.
More time passes. One of the Russians pulls the line about so he can pee off the edge of the truck. The sitting policemen jump up and hurry over, drawing their batons and calling him a dog. The Eurasian aims at the police so they cannot get near. He finishes, the police call him more names and then dismiss him as a concern as they return to their ashtray of smouldering cigarettes and steaming coffees.
The men sort out their line, settle down, and fall asleep. Aaman imagines that Juliet will now be awake and wondering where he is. This thought hurts him. She has been so kind, so caring, so generous, she will think he has not taken what she offered with any value. His solar plexus knots. She will think he took it for granted. She will think he has given up on his studies and does not value the work. She will think he was just using her for his evening meal. But the worst pain of all is that she might think he did not value her friendship. She will wonder where he is and then she will grow angry. She might even feel disappointed that she was so kind to someone who was not worth it. And it is absolutely a possibility, although not very likely, that she may feel a little bit alone by the end of the day.
His chest aches at his yearning to be at her cottage. His eyes fill at the pain of how she might see him. His lost opportunity to learn more on the computer and give himself such a good future makes him nauseous. Altogether, he feels dizzy and feels he may pass out. He opens his drooping eyelids and gasps for air. The doors bang shut.
Juliet has come to love waking in her cotton-sheeted bed, looking up at the roof beams with the sun peeking in stripes through the slats of the shutters. Now the sun is strong, the strips of sunlight make the dust dance, specks of fairy dust, now you see it, now you don’t. She eases herself to sitting. A cat paw claws under the gap at the bottom of the door.
It feels different somehow. The sun too strong. Too warm. The cat awake. No cockerels crowing.
“Oh my God, I’ve overslept.” Juliet pulls on her jeans and sweatshirt and wonders how long Aaman must have been waiting.
After a brief journey, Aaman is unloaded again. He watches the
Albanians climb out and laugh when they realise where they are. One of the Russians, as he ducks his head to climb down, asks in very bad Greek why they laugh. They say this place is called Little Albania. The Russian groans. “You mean the detention centre?” No-one bothers to answer him.
Aaman is shackled to the Indian man who is still crying and talking about his wife and wondering who will take the children to school. Aaman does not respond. He sees Juliet on the porch drinking her coffee and stroking the cat. She will be scorning him, thinking him unworthy, that he has betrayed all her kindness. A new thought comes to him. What if this becomes to her another experience of someone letting her down, going away with no notice? He hopes he isn’t that important to her. Just a gardener, he tells himself. I am just a gardener.
The first in the line has his handcuff removed and is ushered through the wire mesh gates. Each in turn thereafter is yanked in after him, uncuffed and pushed forward. There is a window next to the main door, where they are each asked to turn out their pockets. Cigarettes and matches are allowed, lighters and money and everything else is confiscated. Two lighters, twenty-five cents, nine mobile phones, and a spoon is their total. They are then ushered into another room where they are told to strip, bundled through a cold shower and given back their clothes once the guards have felt through them. Tired and hungry, they are shown to a block with more men than beds that backs onto a yard full of men coming and going out of many other blocks. The dominant language is Albanian. He learns two words in the first few minutes he is there, the first being Hello and the second obviously a derogatory obscenity that can be used as a negative or for camaraderie. It makes Aaman smile, but he is not sure why.
As they are now unshackled, the Albanian men soon disappear into the sea of their brethren. The Russians look around for other Russians and soon find their corner. The Romanians and Croatians don’t seem interested in finding their own kind, but after an hour or two, their own find them. The atmosphere has something of the holiday camp about it, but with a grim undertone.
