by Timur Vermes
He looks up and sees the drone hovering barely ten metres above. Staring straight at the camera with a deadly serious expression, he raises both hands and removes his ear protectors so he can toss them into the crowd. Live. Let them try editing that out. Nadeche Hackenbusch isn’t the only one who knows how to play to the camera.
The jets return, this time flying even lower, slowly, scarcely faster than a car in city traffic. He knew this was possible, but he’s never seen it. The noise is painful; he opens his mouth and screams to create some counter-pressure on his ear drums. He could swear he can feel the heat of the engines – certainly those in the column must be able to. Some people clench their fists, women raise their hands in supplication. Now MyTV shows Nadeche with her hair swirling about like a backcombed flaming thorn bush, shooting accusatory looks at the jets, as if the pilots were able to see her – in fact they probably can. It may be coincidence, but when the aircraft now fly off it’s as if Nadeche has personally shooed them away with her angry stares.
Now the water cannon commence operations. A few jets of water splutter over the masses. It’s strangely futile, and in this heat probably even pleasant. It soon becomes clear that the cannon will achieve nothing, especially if they’re not aimed directly at the people. The minister raises his eyebrows at Cilic, who points at the column with an awkward gesture. Of course the Turks aren’t going to shoot twenty bars at infants and small children. As a compromise the mass of people gets a generous soaking. What are they trying to achieve? The problem is obvious: there’s no way the refugees could turn around now. Even stopping would be difficult. It occurs to the minister that the entire border could have been constructed differently. It’s almost as if people are being squeezed through a large funnel towards the crossing point here, whereas it ought to be the other way around: the crossing point should jut out into the crowd like a wedge, to divert the pressure to either side. He makes a mental note of this.
The refugees at the very front have now arrived at the metal barriers. They stop. These are women with children in their arms. The people begin to concentrate, it’s getting cramped, and then the metal barriers open. Rejoicing all around.
The minister looks at Cilic in disbelief. “Already? You didn’t fire a shot! Not even a warning shot.”
“Who are we supposed to be warning? And where are these people supposed to go?”
“You’re literally inviting them in!” This is all the minister says because he’s not sure whether a drone is listening in.
“You know as well as I do. If we don’t open the gates until everyone’s squashed in, dozens of people will die. We might as well shoot into the crowd at random. And we’re not going to do that. Certainly not for a country which is only too ready to level accusations of genocide. Do you expect us to do your dirty work, just so people can then say, ‘Again? You’re doing the same as you did to the Armenians?’”
“It’s your decision,” the minister says. Leubl knew, it could have been anticipated, but still it makes him feel queasy. “I mean, look at it from this perspective: they’re going to be blocking your roads for months. Have fun with that.”
“I don’t think it’ll take that long,” Cilic says.
Deflated, the minister leans over the railings and watches the soldiers move out of the way. They form a sort of cordon wherever they can, and many receive kisses from the women and grateful hugs from the men. He can no longer hear the fighter jets. Soldiers are pointing in the same direction, as if the refugees can’t find the road by themselves. All they have to do is go with the flow. It reminds him of images of Bornholmer Strasse in Berlin, 1989. Would a wedge-shaped border have helped the G.D.R.?
Cilic has gone back inside. Perhaps he feels offended, but the minister doesn’t really care. He was here, he assumed his responsibility and took the last possible opportunity to avert the conflict in advance. It didn’t work, but nobody could have expected that. Now they have three, maybe four months to prepare. Not much time, too little time in fact, but there’s nothing they can do to change it.
The soldiers wave and keep pointing. They must feel like they’re working at an information desk, the same stupid questions. These poor guys must be saying over and over again, “This way for Germany. This way for Germany.”
“I don’t think it’ll take that long.”
It sounded odd, the way he said it. Perhaps it was his accent.
The minister has seen enough. He’s going to get the helicopter to fly him back. He looks inside the control centre one last time, at the screens, the images from the helicopters. C.N.N. footage on a loop – they repeat the same pictures as if new ones would be too expensive. And at the MyTV screen. He freezes, then rushes out the door.
He can’t see it, but he has an idea where it is. It’s where the soldiers are pointing.
“Where are you going?” Cilic calls after him. “You can’t just . . .”
The minister leaps down the steps. He pushes his way past a number of soldiers and follows the refugees. Cilic hurries after him. The minister passes the water cannon and personnel carriers. They’d set up a machine-gun position – what a joke! He can see three armoured combat vehicles and two heavy-duty M60s on the mound. None of this was for the refugees, it was all for him, the gormless German.
“Minister!” Cilic shouts. “You can’t just—”
“On the contrary,” the minister shouts back. “I most certainly can!”
Now that he’s running he realises how cumbersome the bulletproof vest is. He tears open the zip and tosses it aside. It might be almost a kilometre away; he follows the road, plunging through the loose chain of soldiers waving the refugees on, now making faster progress on the tarmac. And then he sees it. It’s far bigger than it looked on the screen, an enormous car park which must have been enlarged only recently, using heavy machinery. He sees the refugees heading towards it, some are already boarding a bus. And behind this bus the next one is waiting.
“I don’t think it’ll take that long.” The duplicitous fucker.
There must be dozens of buses. Hundreds. From every year of manufacture, every size, every make, even buses from municipal corporations. The minister can feel his heart hammering, and not just because of the short sprint.
He turns around. Cilic catches him up, exhausted.
“Minister—”
“What is this?” the minister bellows. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You have to understand . . .” Cilic pants. “What do I have to understand? What the hell do you think you’re doing? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
“You’d do the same!”
“What would I do the same?”
“Did you seriously think we could allow half a million people to make their way through densely populated area. This isn’t some banana republic, this is the Republic of Turkey! Somehow we have to keep these people under control. And if they have to pass through our country, then at least they can be quick about it!”
The minister looks helplessly at the car park. Cilic is right, of course. It’s obvious. If someone’s on a bus they stay on the road. They’ve got emergency accommodation they can put up with for a while. Maybe not half a year, maybe not even two months, but definitely for the time needed for the remainder of the route. It needs to be fast for the Turks. Perhaps, the minister thinks, his fence-building has even accelerated all this.
The time needed for the remainder of the route.
The minister does some frantic calculations. Turkey’s road system is not particularly extensive; it’s unlikely they could keep their larger two-lane roads free all day just for the buses. So the buses will be diverted onto side roads. But the moment they get near a motorway, things will move much more quickly. So it’s patently clear he doesn’t have another four months. Turkey is almost two thousand kilometres long. Ten days by bus at the most.
He’s got another two weeks if he’s lucky.
46
They’re flying.
&n
bsp; Lionel’s up at the front of the bus beside Mahmoud, who’s doing the driving. One hand is holding onto Mahmoud’s seat and the other onto a pole. He looks through the window in front of him and sees the bus suck up the dusty track beneath. He glances at the speedometer. The needle isn’t working, but it could be forty kilometres. Per hour.
They’re flying.
This is without question the ugliest bus Lionel has ever seen. It might be the oldest bus he’s ever seen too, but he can’t be sure because it’s so ugly it defies all other classification. At the front it’s curved and notched, like a carrot. Its windscreen is made of two panes of glass, divided down the middle, so it must be older, from the sixties or maybe even the fifties. Beneath this, and just above the bumper, is a radiator grille so unusually small and narrow that the round headlights are perfect as the corners of a mouth. The undersized grille lends the vehicle the features of a surly caterpillar.
A violent judder shakes the bus. Whatever suspension it once had must have given up the ghost long ago. The judder is followed by a short, unpleasant crunching as parts of the undercarriage plane the tarmac, and the engine grumbles when Mahmoud shifts up a gear. As the bus pulls itself together and accelerates, Mahmoud adjusts his captain’s hat.
“Sorry about your job,” Lionel says to Mahmoud.
“What?”
The bus may be old, but it’s louder than it is old.
“I said, I’m sorry about your job,” Lionel shouts.
“Why?” Mahmoud shouts back.
“Well, you used to be an admiral.”
“I’m still an admiral,” Mahmoud shouts, pointing enthusiastically at his hat. The bus jolts and the hat slips down over his face.
Lionel looks through the side windows. They were kept small, as if glass were more expensive than metal. You wouldn’t need to do much to turn this into a prisoner transport vehicle. The Turkish countryside drifts past. It’s not so different from other landscapes they’ve passed through: hot and vast, rocky and dusty. There are more buildings here and the roads are better. They just seem shockingly bad when you’re in an ancient bus.
But at least they’re in a bus. They’re flying towards their destination. Who’d have believed it?
It was the Turks’ idea. They called him and asked whether he was the guy off the telly. Yes, he replied, he was the guy off the telly.
“Is it true what they’re saying?” A voice, neither young nor old, calm, composed, energetic. A man. He spoke the sort of English Lionel knew from British people.
“What are they saying?”
“They’re saying you’re planning on coming into Turkey with a mass of people.”
“We’re planning on passing through.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We’re planning on passing through. That is correct.”
“Then I’m afraid I have to inform you that we cannot allow this.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I do.”
“What does that mean?”
“I know that you can’t allow us to do it.”
“So what?”
“I’ve no experience in these matters. But we’ve been on the move for a long time now. We’ve crossed many countries. And nobody has actually given us permission to pass through, but then again nobody has really troubled us either. The same thing could happen with Turkey.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry, I might not have expressed myself very well. We know, of course, that we’re making a huge wish come true here, so it’s only fair if we make other people’s wishes come true in return. Just tell us what we can do for you, and what we can do for whoever else—”
“I don’t think you understand. This is the Republic of Turkey. What you’re talking about might work for planning consent. But not for hundreds of thousands of people. Let me spell it out: if you try to cross our border, no matter where, we will stop you. With all the means at the disposal of a sovereign state.”
“Yes,” he said, “then I suppose that’s what you’ll have to do.” He remembers how his temples were throbbing. Because he had always known this moment would come. The moment when money no longer helped. The moment for talking. “Then we will use our lives.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’ll keep marching. You see, for us it makes no difference. It’s the same as stepping into a tiny rubber dinghy. Putting one’s life at risk. For us your country is like the sea. We don’t expect the sea to let us pass either. We just keep going and see whether we die.” At this point he took an especially deep breath, even though he didn’t need to; it was merely for emphasis. “You would have to kill us.”
“Then we will kill you. Do you understand?”
“Then you will kill us. I do understand.”
The line went silent for a while.
“Then you will kill us like the sea kills us. But I’ll say it again: it makes no difference to us, it might even be quicker. It’s cheaper at any rate, because we don’t need life vests. It will only make a difference to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody blames the sea for its actions. The sea is the sea. With you it’s different. You are the Republic of Turkey. You have a choice.”
“You too. You could stop.”
“And grow old and die on your border? We won’t do that. We will keep marching and force you to make a decision. You will have to decide whether we live or die.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Lionel decided to go all out: “And just so there’s no misunderstanding, we’re going to make your decision as difficult as possible. We’re going to have the world’s cameras alongside us. And the first people you’ll have to kill will be our women and children.”
Then the voice on the other end said, “I’ll pass on this information and get back to you.”
“Hey!” The bus is filled with shrieks and laughter. Lionel grabs onto the strip of metal between the two windscreen panes. A few children have hit their heads and are crying. Mahmoud turns around and shouts, “Brakes really well, doesn’t it?”
He crowbars his way into first gear and accelerates.
It took them just under a week to call back.
“Let’s say you weren’t shot at when you tried to cross the border,” the ageless man said. “What would you do then?”
“Are you talking about me, or all of us not being shot at?”
“Just you.”
It was something Lionel had been obliged to reconcile himself to. Malaika, this kind-hearted sheep of a camel, would never let the two of them go on to Germany alone. “Well, I’d wait with the others until I was shot at too, something like that.” He rolled his eyes and then said, “I’m afraid I can’t abandon this undertaking.”
He wasn’t sure what was more difficult to accept: the realisation that, for better or worse, he was inextricably connected with this refugee trek; or the phlegmatic observation from the other side. “That’s what we thought. No, what would you do if you weren’t shot at, all of you?”
“Surely you’ve seen on T.V. what we do. We just keep walking.”
“And where do we, where do you get the assurance that you’ll be able enter the next country – Bulgaria, say – at the other end of Turkey?”
“Well, I think we’ll walk through Turkey and then do the same at the next border. That’s when we’ll find out if Bulgaria’s going to open fire on us.”
“And you think it’s going to work again?”
“I think it’ll work even better.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, we can tell the Bulgarians that not even the Turks shot at us.”
He heard a brief laugh on the other end of the line.
“I know letting foreigners into your country isn’t necessarily a popular move. But you’re not risking much. You’re not responsible for the Bulgarians. In the worst-case scenario you’ll have a heap of corpses lying around o
n your border. But we’ll make the burial easy for you because we’ve got our own diggers in tow.”
“They’re quite something, your diggers. In fact your entire organisation is remarkable. At the moment you’re covering fifteen kilometres a day. That’s going to take for ever. Turkey can’t let hundreds of thousands of people prowl unsupervised around the country for months on end.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s the structure of our march. That’s our food, our water. And fifteen kilometres per day is really pretty good.”
“Would you be prepared to board buses?” the voice said. Lionel told him he’d call back in a couple of days.
A man is tending a cow at the side of the road. Lionel’s surprised the man isn’t tending a second cow or at least a goat too. He’s seen several men like this, each with one cow. He wonders how this country can be so much better off than his own, but maybe two people could share a cow and live off it, so long as there’s no civil war, putsch or famine. Mahmoud hoots a greeting; the man gives a friendly but slightly apathetic wave. It almost looks as if the cow is minding the man.
He got together with Mahmoud and a few others to work out how they were going to allocate the tankers, but then the Turk said there was enough water in Turkey, provided they stayed on the move. Negotiations were carried out with “if” and “perhaps” prefixing most sentences. They would send buses with soldiers, to which Lionel replied that his people wouldn’t board them unless they could drive themselves. Then the Turk said that they’d have to seal off the route using the military, to which Lionel replied that this was fine in theory, but they’d check on their phones that it really was the way to Bulgaria, then the Turk said, or Greece, and Lionel said, or Greece.
If absolutely necessary, the Turk said, it might be possible for the refugees to do the driving, but then they might have to go past a few areas where there were other refugees, and Lionel said this was nothing new, but it was already hard enough keeping the payment system ticking over. And the Turk said it might not be necessary any longer because food, water, fuel and electricity could be provided, this was definitely a possibility if, in return, they were to drive past a few refugee camps. Lionel did some more calculations and realised they’d need more buses and some mechanics for repairs, if they wanted to be sure of a speedy transit. The Turk did some calculations of his own and said Lionel might be right, and in any case it was a good idea because they’d want the buses back afterwards. Then, without knowing why and off the top of his head, Lionel said, “Unless the Bulgarians need them too.”
