* * *
—
My clammy hands slip on the steering wheel. I try to look innocent, not too smiley, but not distant either. We crawl inexorably closer to the big steel gate that swallows cars one by one as their passage is authorized.
From afar, I study the policemen searching the trunks of cars, but mostly the officer standing a little way back, the one who intervenes occasionally to check people’s papers.
When we’re still five or six cars from the gate, I see him look over at us. Just for two or three seconds, no more, but he scrutinizes us intently. Then turns his attention back to vehicles closer to him.
Only one Ford left in front of us, and we’ve all fallen deathly silent inside my car.
The Ford goes through. I put the car into first gear to edge closer to the gate.
The policeman stares at us.
He walks toward me.
From the first step he takes, I get the picture.
It’s all over.
Over.
* * *
—
My cell phone rings and I’m so startled I almost drop it. Julia says, “Daddy?” She’s gotten used to seeing me on the phone with her father the whole time. But no, it’s Sandra.
“I’m so sorry about this morning, Zena. This is really hard for my father, you know, you have to see it from his point of view. Look, I don’t like thinking of you there all on your own while Stéphan’s catching this ferry. I’ll come over, ok?”
I mumble a vague “yes” and hang up quickly. I’m happy my sister-in-law’s concerned about me but right now all I can think about is freeing up the line so Stéphan has no trouble getting a hold of me.
* * *
—
The policeman asks me for my documents, studies them at length, and hands them back. He tilts his chin toward the rear seat of the car.
“What about them?”
The words Zena kept repeating before I left come back to me in a flash: “If you get caught, say you don’t know them.” Impossible! There’s no way I’m denying my loved ones.
“They don’t have passports,” I tell the policeman. “They lost them. But they’re my family, they’re my wife’s parents.”
Three more policemen—in uniform this time—have joined him. They stand behind him, arms crossed over their chests, legs spread, eyeing us menacingly. They think this is an open and shut case: I’m a people smuggler and these illegal immigrants are my clients.
“Documentation for the car!”
Sweat beads on my forehead. I can’t seem to find my car registration document (Zena will discover later that when Julia was playing with my wallet she took it out and hid it under the sofa). The policeman turns to his coworkers.
“And the car’s stolen.”
Then he turns back to me and barks, “Step out of the vehicle!”
All six of us climb out of the car. One of the policemen sits at the wheel. The steel gate opens, he starts to drive through slowly and the uniformed policeman waves us after him, then they bring up the rear. Their hands hovering over their service pistols.
The police post is only a few hundred meters away. As soon as we’re through the door the nightmare begins. The policemen push and prod us, yelling at us to remove shoelaces and belts—“Come on, faster, faster!” We’re thrown into a cell and then called out one by one to have our fingerprints taken. Mayada faints and collapses onto the floor. Her father and I rush to pick her up but she can’t stand. We don’t yet know it, but she has a serious problem with her pancreas and this journey is especially punishing for her. My mother-in-law cries softly, terribly concerned for her daughter and clutching her arm, which is agony. The policemen confer for a moment and eventually bring us a filthy old mattress and put it outside our cell.
“The women outside!” one of them snaps.
Wafaa and Mayada lie down on the mattress outside the locked cell where I sit disconsolately with Saif, Samer, and Anas.
* * *
—
There’s a big problem, I just know it. Stéphan hasn’t called back so I try to call him. But it hangs up immediately every time and then starts going straight to voicemail. He should have called me back by now. They’ve been arrested while they were boarding, I’m sure they have. I desperately want to cry, but I can’t. Sandra’s here, our daughters are playing together and we’re drinking tea and chatting about how we’ll arrange the house when my parents are living with us. When Sandra arrived she admitted that she’d had a fight with her father because she really didn’t like the way he talked to me this morning. That gave me a moment’s comfort. But I haven’t told her I’m waiting for this call from Stéphan—I have this absurd feeling that voicing my concerns out loud could transform my fears into reality.
At about five in the afternoon I can’t take it anymore. I break down and tell Sandra what’s going on. Julia and Charlotte stare at me in alarm. My sister-in-law remains calm and tries to reassure me.
“I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon.”
* * *
—
We’ve been waiting for hours.
The temperature is over a hundred degrees in this cell, and I’m so thirsty. At first we tried to talk a bit but the heat and our fear soon floored us. Anas is sleeping, sitting propped against the cell wall. Samer is listless and utterly silent, holding his head in his hands. Saif is painfully dejected and keeps saying how ashamed he is to have put me in this situation. Not for a moment does he think of himself.
“Why did you come?” he asks from time to time. “You’ll be in trouble now…”
I keep saying the same things over and over, reassuring words that I try to believe myself.
“It will all be fine, God is great, they won’t kill us, don’t worry, we’ll be out soon…”
I regularly call out to the policemen who watch us from their office only a few meters away. I always ask for the same things: being allowed to call Zena, contact the French embassy, and ask for a lawyer. The answer is “no” every time, in defiance of the most fundamental rights and agreements regarding justice that are in force across Europe.
And then tiredness and despair win the day and we descend into silence. I’ve done everything to keep it at bay but I’m succumbing to my fear. It’s so hot. What if there was a fire? Would anyone think about us in time, would we get out? If there’s a full, French-style investigation this will go on for months! I’ll lose my job and Zena doesn’t have one. We’ve just taken out a huge loan to build our house. We’ve got a young daughter, shit, a very young daughter who needs us and now we’re going to lose everything! I’m sinking, submerged in the horror film whose script I’m writing myself. But in all this darkness a series of luminous images come to me, as if part of my brain is standing guard to stop me from descending into madness. I remember the candlelit evenings when my grandmother read us the Gospels in Greek. She was very pious and had extraordinary mystic visions that she described to us after the readings. As a child I loved her descriptions of fantastical things and the wonders of ancient scripture. I’ve been thinking about her a lot since I’ve been in Greece. I can’t explain this but I feel she’s watching over me, from wherever she is.
Shortly before eight in the evening a policeman finally comes over to us with a document in Greek.
“You want food? Then sign this.”
I refuse, without a moment’s hesitation.
“I can’t sign this, I don’t know what it says.”
“Just what happened, nothing else.”
“But how can I be sure? I don’t believe you.”
“I’m the one who makes the decisions around here. Don’t you get that?”
We’re both getting heated. Alerted by our raised voices, another policeman—a younger man—intervenes. He takes his fellow officer to one side and they both disappear from view, then the young
er officer returns with a sandwich and a bottle of water for each of us.
As I finish eating, the young man returns and talks to me through the bars.
“So, you speak Greek?”
“Yes, I have family here, my grandmother was Greek.”
“And who are they, then?”
“They’re my wife’s family, her parents, her brother and sister, and her cousin.”
He nods thoughtfully, then looks me right in the eye.
“Come, we’re going to talk in my office.”
He gets me to tell him my whole story, and all about Zena’s parents, of course. He listens attentively and for the first time since our arrest I feel fully human again—I’m just a man sitting across from another man.
“So you see, they’re my family,” I say when I’ve finished explaining. “If your family was in their situation what would you do?”
“I do understand but I’m sure you know that there are people smugglers here every day, real ones taking advantage of people’s misery to make money. It’s my job to stop them.”
“Ok but I’m definitely not a criminal! I’m not a criminal! Where are they, these criminals?”
“They’re outside,” he says simply, and I’m amazed by his honesty.
“Listen,” he continues. “You’ll have to appear before a judge tomorrow but by the evening you’ll be out. We won’t keep your family, they can try their chances again. But you be careful, if you’re caught again, you’re screwed. You’ll go straight to prison. You must leave them to find their own way. And they can forget about sailing from Patras to get out of Greece, we’ve been closely monitoring this port for fifteen years because it’s a hot spot for people smuggling.”
I feel almost light-headed as he hits me with these harsh facts. I’ve failed, then, but that’s not the worst of it. What will happen to Saif Eddine, Wafaa, and the others? How will they cope? How will they get out of Greece and not give up? My father-in-law will eventually snap and decide they should all go back to Syria. While I’m thinking about this, the young policeman suddenly does something extraordinary considering the circumstances: He turns his computer screen toward me.
“I’ll show you. They’ll have to go through Thessaloníki, then the Balkans. Look.”
He does a quick Google search and clicks on a newspaper article explaining that Macedonia has just opened its border with Greece. In the summer of 2015, when thousands of migrants are traveling across Europe to get away from war, some countries have opted to look after their own interests and close their borders, but not Macedonia.
“There, that’s the only way they can go, the only possible route.”
He stands up.
“We’re going to get you out of this police station, it’s our closing time. Some of the officers will transfer you to another place for the night. We know your parents-in-law won’t leave without their own children so the younger two can spend the night in a hotel if you’ve got the money for it.”
“Of course, I’ll give them the money.”
I return to the cell with my mind full of new questions and fears but thankful for this conversation that has given me a relatively clear picture of what lies ahead. And whatever else happens, I’m glad Anas and Mayada can sleep in a hotel tonight. A few minutes after I get back to the cell, they come for us. I give Anas enough money to pay for a hotel room with Mayada. Before I climb into the van taking us to our accommodation, I’m allowed one telephone call. I choose to call Zena.
* * *
—
Julia and Charlotte have finished their dinner and Sandra has sat them down to watch a cartoon. Julia’s far too young to understand it, but she’s proud to be with her big cousin and that’s enough to keep her happy. I suppose I should make something for Sandra and me to eat but I don’t have the heart. And I’m not hungry either, obviously. The phone rings. It’s Stéphan at last! His voice is expressionless and sounds very distant.
“We’ve been arrested.”
I burst into tears.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, my darling. Listen, this is important, I don’t have the registration document for the car. I need you to look for it and fax it to the number I’m about to give you as soon as possible.”
“Ok, ok, but what’s going to happen to you all?”
“We’ll all get out tomorrow.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I’m sure of it. Fax over the document and everything will be fine. I promise.”
I hear a rustling sound on the phone and the call is abruptly cut off.
Sandra breaks down and cries too when I tell her what Stéphan has just told me. I search all over the living room and eventually find the document under the sofa.
“We can’t stay here,” Sandra says. “This is unbearable. Get some things, we’re all going back to my place for the night. There’s a tobacco shop on my street that has a fax machine, we can send the fax first thing in the morning.”
* * *
—
No one has told us where we’re going. After a few minutes’ drive we arrive outside a large, hangar-like building with a prefabricated sanitary block a few meters from the door.
“If you need the toilets, use them now,” one of the policemen tells us.
Saif, Wafaa, Samer, and I take turns. The stench and filth are indescribable. Next, our handcuffs are removed and we’re taken into the building. It looks like a gymnasium inside and is completely empty. We’re immediately hit by an acrid smell of urine and excrement that catches at our throats. Strangely, we’re alone. A policeman explains that we’re lucky because otherwise they would have had to take Wafaa to a different hangar. It is only now that we realize we will be sleeping here, on the bare, grimy floor. I’m outraged, furious—is this Europe? Really? And is this how Europe treats people in custody? How can there be such total contempt for our dignity? I would never have believed that one of the world’s top tourist destinations would inflict conditions like this on detainees, and people who have yet to be judged too! What upsets me most is seeing my elderly and already very strained parents-in-law being treated like cattle or criminals. But there’s nothing I can do about it, nothing. My powerlessness is unendurable.
I settle myself on the floor and, with a big smile, Wafaa hands me the scarf she has around her neck, gesticulating for me to use it as a pillow. We have almost nothing left, but this almost nothing is shared. I wonder briefly at the close connection I have developed with Zena’s parents. Until now there was always a restraint between us because of our cultures, the geographical distance between us, and the generation gap. We tended to feel a little awkward if the three of us ended up alone together without Zena. But since I arrived in Patras yesterday, that’s in the past. I have become their son.
7.
In court
We haven’t slept a wink in this stinking hangar. I’ve spent the night calling myself a naive idiot and upbraiding myself for making all the wrong choices: I shouldn’t have kept the rear windows of the car closed, we should have split into two groups, Zena’s parents could have boarded on foot instead of in the car, and then we could all have slipped through unnoticed…I can hear Saif and Samer tossing and turning nearby, unable to get to sleep, and poor Wafaa moaning in pain every time she moves. After this sleepless night, the policemen come for us at eight o’clock. They handcuff us again and load us into the van that will take us to Patras’s criminal courts in the pedestrian part of town. Three hundred meters short of our destination, the vehicle has to stop and we walk the rest of the way. I’ll never forget the humiliation of those few minutes on foot—all those people watching us, staring at us! I’m dirty, handcuffed, with no belt or shoelaces…
We enter the building and are shown to the second floor. So far, only our fingerprints have been taken, back at the small police station, but now they start taking legal ID photos, fa
ce-forward and profile. Then we’re split up: Samer, Wafaa, and Saif will be brought for an immediate trial within the day. Mayada and Anas are still at their hotel—oddly, they are not being prosecuted.
I, meanwhile, am taken before an examining magistrate, a woman of about fifty who does not respond to the nervous smile I give her. It is in this office, where there is also a court clerk and a uniformed policeman, that my handcuffs are finally removed. And at last, for the first time since my arrest, there is an interpreter present. She speaks French quite well, but has no knowledge of the law or legalese. I decide to play my “Greek-speaking” card again in an attempt to establish a connection with the judge: It seems to be working modestly and I think I can see her softening while we chat briefly about my Greek origins, her daughter’s trip to France…but we very soon revert to the proceedings.
“Mr. Pélissier, would you like to have a lawyer?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You should know that if you have a lawyer the proceedings will be extended by forty-eight hours.”
“What? Well then, no, I don’t want a lawyer. Anyway, I know the facts, I wanted to help my family who are in danger.”
“Very well. So I suggest you plead guilty.”
“I see.”
“I shall list the evidence against you and the interpreter will relay it to you in French.”
She lists the evidence and asks me if I accept it.
“Yes, those are the facts.”
“Be careful, Mr. Pélissier, this is serious, we’re talking about aiding and abetting the illegal movement of foreigners.”
“I understand, but they’re my family!”
“Well then, prove it.”
“My family record book will prove we’re related if you use it in conjunction with my father-in-law’s driving license, but I don’t have my record book—it’s in my car, which has been impounded.”
I Just Wanted to Save My Family Page 5
