“I’ll never forget my first takeoff,” Mamadu tells me. “My stomach sank; it took my breath away. The passenger sitting next to me gives me a paternal smile when he sees me join my hands in prayer; he doesnn’t know I’m just begging God not to let one of the sixty capsules inside me explode. It’s a Royal Air Maroc flight, with a stopover in Casablanca, then from there to Lisbon. I tell myself that it will all be over in a few hours. I can’t help but think how excruciating it will be to expel the capsules, or how I’ll survive a whole day in some unknown European capital. I look anxiously at the tourists who’ve boarded in Casablanca. If I had a sign on my chest that said ‘I’m a drug runner’ I probably would have been less conspicuous amid all these smiling, carefree men and women in shorts and flip-flops, cameras dangling around their necks. Then, like a lightning bolt, a thought comes to me and suddenly chases away my fear. Are these the people who use the stuff inside of me? Are they my clients? So I start looking at them differently, at the stranger in the center row, this really fat guy who’s resting his crossed arms on his belly. The woman next to him, she’s big too, is assailing him with words that have got to be important, but he acts like nothing’s wrong, or maybe he’s fallen asleep. Then I remember what Johnny said about the effects of cocaine, and I think these must be the two principal states: euphoria and oblivion.”
I’m struck by Mamadu’s wisdom, by his ability to see.
“I’ve done nineteen trips from Bissau to Lisbon, Madrid, Amsterdam. You could say I have a job with an ongoing contract, at least until I’m caught or a capsule opens inside of me. I’ve realized by now that I’m a resource that can be sacrificed. Which is why the bosses turn to people like me, even if the amount of merchandise I can carry is small. Because the risk is small too. If I’m arrested, somebody else will be ready to take my place the very next day.”
Mamadu didn’t start to see any money until after he’d done three trips. Johnny would always drag things out, say he didn’t have any cash on him; if Mamadu kept doing such a good job, the small change he had coming to him would soon become a distant memory. But every now and then Johnny would offer him a line, just one, because you have to be familiar with the product you’re selling, he’d say. A bit of white powder revs you up to face customs and the cunning gazes of those European women. Not that Mamadu needs the cocaine. He’s refined his disguise: Now he’s an African until he gets to Casablanca, and then a tourist for the rest of the trip. Tourists have no nationality; being a tourist is an attitude, and at that point the color of your skin, your bloodshot eyes, and your crumpled clothes don’t matter. The fear he felt on his first trip has dissolved into routine. Word that controls are being tightened or news of the mounting tide of seizures don’t bother him at all. European countries have been flexing their muscles for years now, trying to stop the relentless flood of cocaine. Governments have decided to strike at the heart of illegal trafficking, and the list of detainments and seizures grows longer every day. But those names and facts have nothing to do with Mamadu, nor does the new transportation method some mules thought up: They impregnate their clothes with liquid cocaine. At this point he can toss down capsules as if they were cookies. And besides, he can’t stop now. Johnny has told him that there’ll be a stewardess on his next flight who is part of the organization, who facilitates the mules’ work.
“She’s cute,” Johnny added, “and it seems she just broke up with her boyfriend. You could ask her out.”
“I did the math,” Mamadu says to me. “By my thirtieth delivery I should have enough money to treat her to dinner in a fancy restaurant in Lisbon.”
Andean folk art paintings
January 21, 2005, Fiumicino airport: A Guatemalan citizen is detained. Five paintings with pre-Columbian motifs are found in his luggage. Behind each painting is an envelope containing a kilo of 92 percent pure cocaine. Total value: €1 million.
Treated and partially treated calfskins
September 14, 2005, port of Livorno: The ship Cala Palma, which sailed from the Venezuelan port of La Guaira is impounded. Found among the calfskins are 691 kilos of 98 percent pure Colombian cocaine.
Statues of the Virgin Mary
March 30, 2006, Brooklyn: The DEA arrests eleven people for cocaine smuggling. They had hidden the precious merchandise—194 kilos of it—inside statues of the Virgin Mary, destined for various churches and cemeteries.
Wooden doors
February 24, 2007, Guildford, Surrey, Great Britain: Paul Sneath, an English bloke from a good family, is sentenced to eighteen years for bringing 17 kilos of cocaine into the country. He had purchased handcrafted wooden doors carved with exotic parrots and had them stuffed with sheets of plywood soaked in liquid cocaine. On the market the drugs would have brought about £3 million.
Statue of Jesus Christ
May 30, 2008, on the Nuevo Laredo border crossing, across from Texas: A Mexican woman is detained at customs. Agents find 3 kilos of cocaine hidden inside the large statue of Jesus Christ in her luggage.
Fake pineapples
August 22, 2008, Naples: The ROS, which deals with organized crime, seizes 100 kilos of pure cocaine hidden in wax pineapples in a house in Poggiomarino. Value: €40 million.
Squid
January 2009, port of Naples: During routine controls, the Finance Guard discovers 15 kilos of cocaine hidden among 1,600 cans of squid shipped from Peru.
Children’s books
April 9, 2009, Christopher Columbus airport in Genoa: An Italian woman, twenty-one years old, is arrested after picking up a package of children’s books sent from South America. Inside are 300 grams of cocaine.
Ceiba speciosa
April 30, 2009, port of Vado Ligure, Savona: The Naples Finance Guard intercepts a shipment of Ceiba speciosa, a tropical tree known in Latin America as Palo Borracho, or drunken tree. Noted for their irregular, bulging trunks, the trees concealed 250 kilos of cocaine.
Suitcases
June 2, 2009, Santiago de Chile airport: Sandra Figueroa, a twenty-six-year-old Argentinian woman, catches the customs officers’ attention: The bags she is dragging along are too heavy. A chemical analysis reveals that her luggage is made of fiberglass, resin, and 15 kilos of cocaine.
Frozen sharks
June 17, 2009, port of Progreso, Yucatan, Mexico: The Mexican navy seizes eight hundred blocks of cocaine, hidden inside twenty or so frozen shark bodies.
Containers
June 21, 2009, Padua: The Carabinieri of Padua, with the help of antidrug dogs, discover about 400 kilos of cocaine in containers of bananas and pineapples on a trailer truck.
Trunks of precious wood
July 22, 2009, Calabria: The Maesano Brothers’ network is uncovered. Thanks to their import-export business they were shipping a container a month to Bolivia, with tools for cutting down forests. The container would be sent back full of precious tree trunks stuffed with blocks of cocaine, each weighing at least 100 kilos.
Transportation trailers
November 12, 2010, port of Gioia Tauro, Calabria: In the context of Operation Meta 2010 an undocumented container from Brazil filled with trailers for agricultural transport is inspected. Sophisticated tests reveal anomalies in the metal tubes that make up the frames. The tubes are opened with gas torches and one thousand blocks are extracted: 1,000 kilos in all.
Airplane cockpit
February 1, 2011, Fiumicino airport: Two airport technicians, grilled by customs officers made suspicious by their behavior, confess their desire to steal precious objects from the hold of a plane that has just landed from Caracas. But the investigators, alarmed by the antidrug dogs’ agitation, discover thirty blocks of cocaine—35 kilos—stuffed behind the instrument panel in the cockpit.
Frozen fish
March 19, 2011, port of Gioia Tauro: A container that arrived by cargo ship from Ecuador is intercepted. Hidden inside, among the frozen fish, are 140 kilos of pure cocaine.
/> Palm hearts
April 8, 2011, port of Livorno: The Rome Carabinieri seize a container filled with cans of palm hearts on a ship from Chile. In the cans they find 1,200 kilos of cocaine.
Cookbook
October 2011, Turin: A package sent from Peru via Frankfurt is seized. Inside is a cookbook, the pages of which are stuffed with cocaine. It weighs 500 grams. The person to whom the package is addressed, an Italian, is arrested in his home. In addition to cocaine, investigators find equipment for preparing individual doses, scales, and a press for packaging blocks. Subsequent investigations uncover a criminal network that was trafficking cocaine from Peru to Italy by way of Germany.
Coffee
October 27, 2011, port of Barcelona: The Civil Guard score the biggest drug seizure ever in the port of Barcelona: 625 kilos of cocaine hidden in a container transporting coffee.
Canned asparagus
December 10, 2011, Lima, Peru: Five hundred liters of liquid cocaine worth $20 million are seized in a home in a Lima suburb. The drug was in the brine of canned asparagus.
Artificial breasts and buttocks
December 21, 2011, Fiumicino airport: A Spanish model coming from São Paulo in Brazil is detained. A search reveals 2.5 kilos of pure cocaine crystals inserted in her artificial breasts and buttocks.
Valentine’s Day flowers
February 2012, port of Hull, England: Eighty-four kilos of cocaine hidden in boxes of flowers that an English florist purchased for Valentine’s Day are seized. The man had gone to Holland to buy them himself, and sailed from Rotterdam. He was loading his truck when the British police noticed that three boxes weighed five times more than the others.
Genitals
April 2012, Folcroft, Pennsylvania: Ray Woods, twenty-three years old, from Philadelphia, is detained by the police in an area known for drug dealing. When he is searched they find forty-eight doses of cocaine in a bag strapped to his penis.
Legumes, aluminum, foodstuffs
June 7, 2012, port of Gioia Tauro: The Finance Guard seizes 300 kilos of pure cocaine onboard the MSC container ship Poh Lin, which had set sail from South America. The drugs were found in three containers—in nine large black bags hidden among foodstuffs, legumes, and scrap aluminum—on their way to northern Italian businesses that do not usually import such products.
Peanuts
June 8, 2012, port of Gioia Tauro: Discovered in a container from Brazil are 630 kilos of cocaine. It was divided into 580 blocks and stuffed in sixteen bags hidden inside a shipment of peanuts.
Medical supplies for earthquake-damaged areas
June 8, 2012, port of Genoa: The Carabinieri find over €1 million worth of cocaine hidden among medical instruments being shipped to a business in Emilia that had suffered serious earthquake damage. The container, which arrived from the Dominican Republic, immediately raised suspicions because such medical equipment usually comes from China.
Sugar
June 15, 2012, port of London: Just outside the capital city, in one of the harbor terminals on the Thames, 30 kilos of cocaine hidden in a load of sugar that had arrived on a cargo ship from Brazil are seized.
Skins
July 22, 2012, Portugal: The Portuguese police arrest a businessman from Vicenza who works in the tanning industry. The investigators find 120 kilos of cocaine in the container of skins sent from Brazil.
Cocoa
August 23, 2012, port of Anversa: Belgian authorities discover just over two tons of cocaine in jute sacks filled with cocoa seeds onboard a container ship from Ecuador. The cocaine, worth €100 million, was on its way to a warehouse in Amsterdam.
Parquet
August 23, 2012, port of Caacupe-mí, Paraguay: Hidden among irregularly cut pieces of wood for parquet floors are 330 kilos of cocaine; they are seized on a container ship ready to set sail from the private port in Caacupe-mí, on the Paraguay River. A corrupt customs officer is arrested.
Roast chicken
September 3, 2012, Lagos, Nigeria, airport: A Nigerian engineer returning from São Paulo, Brazil, where he had worked for the past five years, is detained at customs. The police find 2.5 kilos of cocaine hidden among the leftover roast chicken he brought to eat during the flight.
Hair
September 26, 2012, JFK airport, New York: Kiana Howell and Makeeba Graham, two girls who have just arrived from Guyana, a former British colony between Venezuela and Brazil, arouse the customs officials’ suspicion. When they are searched, each is found to have a block of cocaine, weighing about 1 kilo, hidden in her hairdo.
Chickpeas
October 12, 2012, port of Gioia Tauro: 100 kilos of cocaine sent from Mexico on the ship Bellavia are intercepted. The drug was hidden in sacks of chickpeas, officially destined for Turkey.
Balloons
October 14, 2012, port of Limón, Costa Rica: During routine checks of a cargo ship anchored in the port of Limón, which leads into the Caribbean, antidrug agents discover 119 kilos of cocaine hidden among multicolored balloons usually used for children’s birthday parties.
Shrimp and bananas
October 18, 2012, Milan: The Milan DDA arrests about fifty people tied to a huge cocaine network importing into Italy, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Germany. The loads, hidden among frozen shrimp and cartons of bananas, arrived from Colombia and Ecuador, either in ships that docked at the Hamburg and Anversa ports or in planes that landed at the Vienna airport. The trafficking was managed by the Lombard branches of the most powerful Calabrian families: the Pelles of San Luca, the Morabitos of Africo, the Molès of Gioia Tauro.
Sweet potatoes
October 19, 2012, Paramaribo, Suriname, airport: Customs officials, whose suspicion was aroused by the excessive weight of six sacks of sweet potatoes leaving the Johan Adolf Pengel airport, the main airport in this former Dutch colony in South America, discover 60 kilos of cocaine inside the tubers.
Carpets
November 27, 2012, Milan: The Carabinieri of the province of Milan arrest fifty-three Italian and Colombian citizens, accusing them of drug trafficking, unlawful possession of weapons, receiving stolen goods, and money laundering. The network, based in Cesano Boscone, was impregnating imported carpets with liquid cocaine. Once the carpets arrived in Milan they were washed with special products to release the drug from the wool fibers, which was then dried.
15.
FORTY-EIGHT
You’re dreaming. Another life, more profoundly yours. Money or sex. You dream about your children and your dead, who come back to life. You dream you’re falling forever. That you’re being strangled. That someone is trying to get in the door, or has already come in. You dream of being trapped, no one comes to free you, you can’t get out. You dream that they want to arrest you, but you haven’t done anything wrong.
There’s nothing uniquely yours about your dreams and nightmares. They’re so much like everyone else’s that in Naples you use them to play Lotto, the Italian lottery, with the numbers from the Smorfia Napoletana: ’E Gguardie, the police, 24; ’E ccancelle, prison, 44; ’O mariuolo, the thief, 79; ’A fune nganno, the noose around your neck, 39; ’A caduta, the fall, 56; ’O muorto, the dead man, 47; ’O muorto che parla, the dead man talking, 48; ’A figliolanza, offspring 9; ’E denare, money, 46. For sex, you’re spoiled for choice. For example: Chella ca guarda ’nterra, she who looks at the ground, which means cunt, 6; ’O pate d”e criature, the father of babies, or penis, 29; ’O totaro dint’ ’a chitarra, a fish inside a guitar, which means intercourse, 67.
I have them too, those dreams. When they start off well, they turn into nightmares. When they’re nightmares right from the start, there’s little that is dreamlike about them. My days invade my nights, the more or less 3,196 days as of this writing since I’ve been living under police protection. I’ve learned to forget my dreams. When they wake me, at most I get up and drink a glass of water. I have trouble falling back to sleep, but at lea
st I’ve chased away my nightmares with a few sips. All but one nightmare.
I’m screaming, I can’t stop screaming, louder and louder. No one seems to hear me. It’s a variation on the nightmare in which you want to scream but no sound comes out. Do you know that one? I wouldn’t know what number to tell you to play, though. There’s 65 for cry, 60 for lament, and 90 for fear. But there’s no number for screams in the cabala of the city where everyone screams all the time. Maybe try betting on the mouth, 80. I’m not betting anything.
I write about Naples. But Naples plugs her ears. Who am I to draw attention to things I’ve not experienced firsthand in some time? I can’t possibly understand; I have no right to speak. I’m no longer part of the body of that mother city who welcomes you with her gentle, resplendent warmth. Naples has to be lived, that’s all. Either you’re in Naples or you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re no longer from Naples. Like some African or South American cities, Naples offers you citizenship right away. A citizenship that you lose, however, when you leave, when you put some distance between your skin and your judgment. At that point, you can’t talk about Naples anymore. It’s prohibited. You have to stay in Naples, stay inside Naples; if not, you’ll always get the same response: “What do you know?”
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