by Alex Day
It was too hot to continue with the plan so Edie went down to the beach and sat for a while on the damp, golden sand right at the water’s edge. Being there, especially in her current bad mood, reminded her of why she usually avoided it in the daytime. Tiny brown babies splashed in the warm, clear water of the shallows, whilst further out, older children threw balls and dived down under the surface like tousle-headed seals. Mums and dads lazed on the shore, reading, snoozing, listening to music. Far out by the rope barrier were plastic sun loungers where those unafraid of burning, mostly young people and teenagers, offered up their bodies to the fiercest rays.
A few yachts dipped and swayed beyond the rope and Edie could make out figures upon them, talking, eating, drinking and occasionally diving overboard into the deep water, tiny heads bobbing up and down like a string of baubles cast afloat. Everyone seemed to be playing happy families or happy friends or happy lovers. It wasn’t really the crowds Edie didn’t like, but the togetherness of those crowds. Only she was alone.
Shedding her shorts and T-shirt, Edie waded through the shallows to where the water became deep enough to swim. The sand yielded beneath her and she wriggled her toes as she walked, enjoying the feeling of the abrasive grains against her feet. Sinking gradually under the surface she concentrated on the blissful relief from the heat that the water imbued to her skin. A leisurely breaststroke soon got her to the rope barrier. Pausing momentarily to look back at the beach, she ducked under the rope and struck out in a strong front crawl. She swam past the moored yachts, with their swaying orange dinghies and flags that drooped in the windless air, and further on out until she had cleared the rocky, pine-topped cliffs and had reached the peak of the headland. Turning over onto her back she lay still as a star and let the rhythm of the sea’s steadily beating heart lull and soothe her. Conquering the water somehow gave her the hope and self-belief she lacked on dry land.
When she had completely relaxed, she rolled over onto her front. Without a snorkel it was harder to take the deep, slow breaths that went before a free-dive, but she did it as best she could. Then, in a single smooth movement, she bent at the waist and raised one leg. Letting one arm glide alongside her body, she used the other to clear her ears and made a perfectly vertical descent. She had no fin so could not cover much distance but it was practice she needed, as much of it as possible, refining and honing the techniques the free-divers in Greece had taught her, constantly striving for longer times underwater.
Resurfacing, the calm that free-diving brought her suffused her body and her mind. She made her way back to shore thinking only one thing. There must be a reason Laura had left, whatever everyone else said and if she could solve that mystery, she would not only have her sister back but also know she had achieved something that would make people – namely her family, her parents – proud of her.
Fatima
Many hours later they arrived at the border, enabled by good luck or fate or the will of God to get there in one piece. Small worn out groups of dusty-looking people were gathered under the trees near the barbed-wire fence and the four-metre trench that marked where one country ended and another one began. Staring across at where freedom – of a sort – lay, Fatima marvelled at how the parched brown grass of late summer was exactly the same on both sides. It felt as if her country should be black and shrouded in perpetual darkness whilst across that thin divide they would be able to see sunshine and rainbows and brightly-coloured butterflies.
‘What are they all waiting for?’ Youssef asked.
Fatima’s sorrow rose up inside. How to explain to a child the pitiful lengths his country’s people had been reduced to? To expect a child to understand that the people have to wait there until they get the signal from the smuggler on the other side that the border guards have passed by and they should attempt to cross. ‘Attempt’ being the key word; the barbed wire, the ever-widening trench and the increasingly trigger-happy soldiers all playing their part in preventing the desperate from making it. But they were doing all right so far; they’d got here unscathed, in a journey that had been made tense by boredom and the fear of what might happen rather than by anything that actually had happened.
‘Maybe they’re waiting to meet someone,’ she replied. ‘For a friend or relation to arrive.’ She paused and fumbled in the plastic bag that carried her few possessions. She passed each child a sweet from her rapidly diminishing horde. The distraction allowed her a brief word with Ehsan.
‘He said we had to phone when we got here.’ Fatima had the paper with the smuggler’s number on it inside her secret pocket, along with her money. He had been found through the refugee grapevine, contacted initially through encrypted messaging services. He came highly recommended but verifying anything was almost impossible. You had to go on trust, combined with a large dose of hope.
‘But I’m not sure if this is the right place,’ she continued. ‘How would we know?’ She looked around at the little groups of young men, of women and children sheltering from the scorching sun under the scrubby trees.
Who to ask, who to have faith in or believe?
They had sent the smuggler a money transfer with the payment for the crossing. Included in the price, he had told them on the phone, in a tone of voice that left no doubt as to his magnanimity, was transportation to the nearest big town from where they could get to the coast. So generous, thought Fatima, unable to quell the sarcasm. A bargain. It cost $500 for her and the children and the same for Ehsan and Youssef. And so the money, so carefully collected and preserved, had begun to slip through their fingers, with no hope of replacing or replenishing it.
Ehsan made the phone call. Fatima had to stand close – too close for comfort – to hear what might be said. The phone rang and rang until the call was dropped. Fatima and Ehsan looked at each other. Both knew what the other was thinking. They had been duped; there was no smuggler. They stood in silence for a while. Waves of fatigue swept over Fatima; she felt light-headed and giddy, unable to think straight. The stress and anxiety of the days since the bombs fell threatened to engulf her. She looked down the long, dusty ribbon of road that swept back in the direction from which they had come, and imagined she could see the deadly fires of destruction creeping up behind them. There was no going back. She straightened her shoulders and along with them, her resolve.
She turned to Ehsan. ‘I think we should keep trying the number. Who knows what these people do all day, it might just be that he can’t answer the phone right now.’
Ehsan nodded. He didn’t seem to have a clue what to do.
‘Why don’t you have a chat with some of those guys over there?’ Fatima gesticulated with her head towards a cluster of four or five dishevelled men who were standing smoking in the full glare of the sun. ‘Ask them for a light or something and get into conversation. Find out what they know, how they are planning to cross.’
Ehsan looked doubtful. ‘I don’t smoke,’ he said, hesitantly.
Fatima had to work hard to quell the irritation that rose up inside her. ‘Well, start,’ she hissed. ‘We’ve got to do something. I can’t talk to them, can I? They’re not going to give their secrets away to a woman.’
She busied herself with the provisions she had in the plastic bag, setting a small cloth on the ground and laying some bread and olives on it. Calling the children over, she let them all have a small drink of water and encouraged them to eat something. Nobody was very hungry.
I should be pleased they’re not eating, thought Fatima, as she packed the food back up, wrapping the bread carefully to keep it away from the dust and dirt that was all around them. It’ll make our supplies last longer. She sat back on her heels and shut her eyes for a moment, gritting her teeth as she concentrated on holding back the tears. A mother’s first instinct is to feed her children and now even the ability to do that adequately was gone, joining everything else in the graveyard of what was once a proper and civilised life.
Ehsan had finally plucked up the courage, or whatever it w
as that had been necessary, to approach the men and talk with them. Grim expressions were exchanged and there was much shaking of heads and making of vociferous gestures. Fatima thought about joining some of the other women and children and seeing if she could glean any information from them. But she didn’t want to draw too much attention to their little group. It was selfish of her, but she knew that if she got involved in anyone else’s story, in their drama, she would start worrying about it and their problems would become hers and she would feel obliged to help in any way she could. And she didn’t want to help anyone else right now. She just wanted to get across that border. After that could come a time for compassion and selflessness.
The twins soon became bored and fretful.
‘Maryam wants to go home,’ announced Marwa, coming to stand by Fatima where she crouched on the ground, her back resting against a tree trunk. The little girl loomed above her, blocking out the sun.
‘Not now.’ Fatima couldn’t think of anything else to say. As she stared at her daughter’s solid little frame poised against the backdrop of the brown soil and the blue sky, she noticed that her leg was red around the knee where she had cut it open when she fell on the day the bombs hit. The gash had not healed and now looked angry and raw. She reached out her hand and gently rubbed it with her thumb. It was hot and Fatima could almost feel it throbbing. Marwa let out a cry of pain and stumbled backwards, out of her mother’s reach.
‘Mummy, that really hurt! Don’t touch me,’ she shouted in outrage.
Fatima bit her lip so hard it began to bleed and her heart missed a beat. The cut must be infected. That was why Marwa had been complaining that her leg hurt earlier. Fatima didn’t know what she could do about it. There would be a doctor on the other side. A pharmacy, at the very least. She would deal with it then. What else could she do? She quelled tears. It wouldn’t help Marwa to see her cry. But she had always looked after the girls so perfectly, tending to their every need both physical and emotional. She had nurtured them tirelessly. And now she could only sit by and watch Marwa suffer.
Perhaps it was good that she had had almost exclusive care of the girls, leaving Fayed free to work long hours to provide for them all, as it meant that they were used to their father’s absence and, apart from every now and again such as on the journey here, they rarely asked for him. But whether they missed him or not, their daddy was gone and she, their devoted mother, didn’t seem up to the job of caring for them alone. She shut her eyes and prayed, even though she was sure God wasn’t listening.
The waiting was interminable. Time crawled. There was nothing to do but listlessly wave away the flies. Youssef stood with drooping shoulders, tracing patterns in the dry, dusty soil with his toe. He found some stones and began to throw them against the stub of an iron pole, remnant of some sign or post long destroyed. He aimed the stones carefully, giving himself a point for every time he hit the post, collecting them up and doing it again and again. He hardly spoke.
He misses his mum, the mother that he barely remembers, thought Fatima. His home, his school, his friends. Security and routine and lots and lots of love is all that children need. The first two are gone and he doesn’t get much of the last from his father. It hadn’t occurred to her before, when she was so busy with the girls and Youssef so busy with his football and schoolmates. But now, stripped down to just the five of them in this hostile landscape at the beginning of their epic journey, it was so obvious that the boy lacked affection that Fatima couldn’t believe she’d been so unfeeling. She just wasn’t sure that she had the capacity to make the difference anymore.
She pondered all of this whilst the twins curled up beside her and dozed off as the sun began to set. The flies circled and landed and took off again, all the while buzzing dementedly, and Fatima waved them away from the sleeping children whilst trying to not let them drive her crazy. At least Marwa was able to rest, despite her leg. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad, after all.
Eventually Ehsan returned from his protracted discussions.
‘What did they say?’ asked Fatima.
Ehsan shrugged. ‘It’s the same for everyone. Sometimes the smugglers answer the phone and sometimes they don’t. You just have to keep trying.’
‘And they always come good?’ demanded Fatima, unable to stop the impatience showing in her voice. ‘How long do you wait before you give up?’
Ehsan seemed to have taken Fatima’s exhortation to take up smoking seriously. He stubbed out his cigarette on the trunk of the tree they were standing by and then ground it beneath his foot. ‘Two days. Three days. If we can’t make contact, we’ll just have to tag along with someone else. Make a run for it when they do.’
Fatima’s eyes fell to the ground. An ant crawled busily amongst the crumbs of bread that had fallen from the earlier attempt at a meal. It looked as if it were trying to choose which morsel appeared most tasty. Fatima wanted to kill it, to squash it and destroy it, just because she could, because it was smaller than her and defenceless and it would feel like a bit of power amidst the general impotence and humiliation. But she didn’t. It was wrong to take a life, even of an ant. Pity the government and the rebels and all the rest of the warring parties didn’t know that.
‘Right,’ she said, flatly. She cast her eyes towards the sky and the horizon. ‘It’ll be dark soon. Do we stay here for the night?’
Shaking his head, Ehsan pointed back down the road they had come by. ‘There’s a town off to the left, about five kilometres away. We should go there tonight.’
Day one had ended in failure. How many more such days would have to be endured in the weeks that lay ahead?
THIRTEEN
Edie
When the sun disappeared over the sea that evening, Edie was ready to get started on number three of her plan. She had bargained with Stefan to have the evening off, pointing out that she hadn’t had a break in weeks. She had worn her skimpiest T-shirt to talk to him about this, together with her shortest, tightest shorts and had quickly gained his agreement.
Phone in hand ready to use as a torch, Edie locked the door of her room and looked surreptitiously around her. Establishing that the coast was clear, she set off into the olive groves. Creeping around the resort in the gathering dusk suddenly struck her as insane; she was like some bizarre parody of Inspector Clouseau, himself a bizarre parody. All she needed was a false moustache and a magnifying glass to complete the picture. And then she remembered the serious nature of her task and the smile faded from her face. Noises emanating from cabana 18 that indicated a couple having a good time made her cover her ears and hurriedly divert her path; the last thing she wanted was to come across anyone having better sex than her. Vuk’s failure to reciprocate the pleasure she had given him the night before was rankling. She wanted more from him and did not want to face the possibility that what she wanted was more than he could give.
Edie continued through the olive grove, picking her way across the sandy soil, frequently having to pause to impatiently kick out the stones that kept finding their way into her sandals. She knew that there was a derelict old building somewhere around here – Zayn had shown it to her during her early days on the resort. The ruins of a shepherd’s hut from a bygone age, he had said, but she couldn’t remember exactly where it was. Remnants from the modern day were also still in evidence; there had been a Soviet-era high rise hotel on the site that had been razed to the ground and although the rubble had long since gone, there was still a bizarre row of huts that resembled changing rooms for a municipal pool that she had seen when exploring one day, right at the beginning of her stay. Why she had got it into her head to look for Laura here, she had no idea. She must have read too many rubbishy thrillers and filled her head with far-fetched tales of woebegone women gagged and bound in darkened rooms, awaiting their fate in a pitiful yet alluring way.
Poking around in the semi-darkness – the sun had fully set now and only the moon and the stars lit her way – she found her way to the concrete huts. They stood, fo
rlorn and empty, the doors of those that still had them swinging open, graffitied and ugly. There was no sign of life, or any indication that anyone ever came near them. A lizard darted out from under a pile of leaves making Edie start, stifling a scream. She forced herself to go right up to the huts and peer inside each and every one of them. All were empty. And then she arrived at the last one and saw that on the door was a padlock and chain holding it tight shut. Nervously, Edie shrank into the shadows. She paused, listening to the sound of her own breathing, waiting until the thumping of her heart had stilled. Eventually, summoning all her courage, she stepped towards the locked door.
What the fuck are you so scared of, wuss, she demanded silently of herself. It’s a padlock, not a werewolf or a mad axe murderer. But it was the fact that the lock, together with its accompanying chain, was so shiny and new that disturbed her. She tiptoed closer, trying to make no noise at all. She reached the door and shone light upon it. The lock was pristine, not a rust mark to be seen, the door solid; no gaps, no cracks. She crept around the side of the hut, hoping to find a window through which she would be able to see inside. There were none, but at the back, right up at the top beneath the flat, corrugated iron roof, was a horizontal ventilation hole about the size and shape of a household brick.
Edie stood looking up at it, defeated. There was no way she could reach it, not even to get a handhold on it and haul herself upwards – and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she lacked the upper body strength to do that anyway. It seemed that she had reached a dead end with this part of the search and the quiet was so absolute and intense that she did not imagine that there could possibly be anyone inside the hut. If they were, they were locked in from the outside … And then an icy cold trickle of fear ran through her body, from her stomach to her legs, making her feel weak and unstable. What if Laura was in there? What if some mad man had snatched her and hidden her away, before or after doing terrible things to her? Just because Lucia the policewoman had gone on about it never having happened before didn’t mean it never would. You heard these stories of girls who get taken as teenagers and locked up and kept as sex slaves by evil perverts who make them have their babies with no medical care – Edie had seen the film Room – and, and …
