‘Are they dead?’
‘Yes. This is the story as it appeared in a Spanish newspaper.’
‘Where was this?’ we asked.
‘Not far from here. A few miles that way.’
‘And how did they die?’
He shrugged his shoulders, but we could see he knew more, so we waited for him to regain his composure and tell us.
‘The Guardia Civil say they drowned.’
‘They were there then, eh?’
‘Who?’ the journalist asked.
‘The Guardia Civil.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that what the newspaper says?’
‘The newspaper says they drowned, but some people say different.’
We didn’t want to bother him, so we left it at that: he asked us a few more questions and then he took his leave. But we’d understood him, you could see it quite clearly in the video footage: they’d been killed. Either that or they’d all suddenly died while swimming to the beach, which was as hard to believe as the official version, that they’d drowned at high sea and washed up on the beach all together. We knew what had happened, and it was a moment of truth for me. They’d been shot. It wasn’t the first time a black African had died trying to reach European soil, or even Spanish soil, but it was the first time I’d heard of them being shot. That settled my doubts. In other words – and anyone is free to say whatever they like about it – they simply hadn’t been allowed to reach the beach. I know what I saw, and I tried to reason it through, and I remembered other African stories similar to ours. Force your way in and you might not come out in one piece. That was something my people said a lot, and it’s true, and if it was said by my people, and by our neighbours, and by the people beyond them, it had to be a truth of some substance, for my people were a long way away in a different country, and it had reached them there.
Previously, I’d thought the problem was that we didn’t have papers: we planned to enter Europe without any papers and that wasn’t allowed. I had wondered how they expected us to carry papers when we might be travelling by boat and have to swim the last stretch, but now I realised it wasn’t really that at all. They didn’t kill you for not having papers, that was just the excuse they used.
So I had my moment of truth and that saying from my village stuck in my mind and I said to myself: Okay, they don’t want us coming in, we’re black, and it must be a terrible bind to issue new papers to someone who’s never had them before, so we’re not allowed in. And they’d rather shoot us than have us sneak in. On the other hand, I knew one or two, indeed many Africans, had managed to squeeze in through a crack, or slip in through a door left carelessly ajar, and managed not to be thrown out. But given what I now knew, if I managed to get in and not be thrown out, could I still be sure that when I went to the doctor to get help for my injuries, or any other health issues that might arise, he would not inject me with something to bump me off? How could I be sure, for example, that if I fell sick and put myself in the doctor’s care, he wouldn’t inject me with something to make me permanently impotent? How could I know that at the first opportunity he wouldn’t inject our sisters with something to stop them having children? Could I be sure that when I ordered a cup of tea in a café they wouldn’t spit in it because I disgusted them so? Could I be sure that when I ordered an orange juice, if I were ever fortunate enough to be able to afford one, they wouldn’t blow their noses in it? Do I exaggerate? Not really, not after what I’d seen. I might even have been justified in saying that drinking a cup of coffee in Europe was tantamount to risking your life. That’s right, because how could I be sure that if I went on a long journey and stopped at the service station for a coffee they wouldn’t put poison in my cup, to free themselves of one more black, given the fear they had of us entering Europe in the first place? If I were to think logically, it would have been impossible to think otherwise, impossible for me not to have lived in constant fear, not after what I’d seen. In other words, I couldn’t trust people who had no respect for my life. That’s why I decided not to join the mass scaling of the fence that day. Because in the Africa I’m from, the real Africa, the Africa where people are not offended if you enter their village, there are deaths, but it’s never so clear who’s responsible for them as it was with those brothers on that beach.
I abandoned the mountain, as I said, but as I walked away I had another moment of truth: the sense of resignation among my people was so strong that I’d have no one to accompany me on my return journey. I was as naked as a newborn baby, naked in the sense that I had nothing to offer anyone in order to obtain anything. Furthermore, I was still hobbling from my injuries. If I was to eat, I had two options: hobble on until I met a fellow paperless, countryless man who might offer me something, if he had anything to eat himself, or tour the souks and houses begging for food, which I’d be unlikely to get, given who I was. There was a third option, but its unpredictable consequences stopped me from following it through: become a delinquent. That’s right, steal things, small things, in order to eat, and in the hope of being arrested and taken to prison where, no matter what the conditions, I’d be fed. Or with a bit of luck, or a lot of luck, a lot of lot of luck, be deported to whatever country I said I was from, which would have been my own. However, that would have been a matter for the Moroccan nation itself to decide, a branch of it much more powerful than the forestry police who kept us in line, and I found it hard to imagine that a country with a police force that beat and killed people would bother to repatriate anybody, unless that anybody had a very big name. Becoming a delinquent could easily have cost me a rib, or an arm, a bone in my good foot or even my life, so I rejected the idea.
So I went back to Mount Gurugu. I still rejected the idea of going somewhere I was neither wanted nor awaited, so I made my way, slowly and painfully, to the mountain’s southern face, to the side where the lights of nearby Europe do not reach. If one day a story is published that recounts the incidents that occurred during my stay at the residence, then it will be because my circumstances changed and I was able to make the story known. And if then, by some coincidence, any of my companions from the cave happen to read it, they will remember the saying I told them about not rushing to judge the quality of another man’s teeth, lest he end up with their whole mouth. But if fate doesn’t intervene and, many years from now, an old man with a white beard is found gathering firewood in the Gurugu foothills, let it be known that I chose the southern face, that my gaze was turned towards the River Zambezi.
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The Gurugu Pledge Page 14
