In the Sea There are Crocodiles (13 page)

As I’ve said, whenever anyone wishes me good luck, things go wrong. And anyway, what did it mean, Greece is that way? All I could see was sea.

But he was just as scared as us, because what he was doing was illegal, so he abandoned us at the top of the hill and left, mumbling something in Turkish.

We opened the cardboard box. It contained the dinghy (the deflated dinghy, of course), the oars (there were even two spare ones), the pump, the adhesive tape—at the time I thought: adhesive tape?—and the life jackets. It was like an IKEA flatpack for illegals. With instructions and everything. We divided the things among us, put on the life jackets, because it was easier to wear them than to carry them, and walked down toward the woods that divided the hill from the beach. We were something like three or four kilometers from the beach, and in the meantime darkness had fallen. In those years, now that I think of it, I lived more in the dark than the light.

So anyway, we started walking toward the beach and
there was this big wood with darkness filling the spaces between the trees and not even twenty minutes had gone by when we heard noises, strange noises, not the wind in the branches and the leaves. No, something else.

Must be cows, Rahmat said.

Must be goats, Hussein Ali said.

Goats don’t make a noise like that, stupid.

Hussein Ali punched Rahmat in the shoulder. Neither do cows for that matter, idiot.

They started pushing each other and fighting.

Be quiet, I said. Stop it.

They must be wild cows, said Liaqat. A kind of wild cow you only find in Turkey. But we didn’t have time to comment on this statement by Liaqat, because just then these cows of his suddenly appeared on the path, running toward us. They ran like devils, these wild cows, and they were short, short and squat. Run, cried Hussein Ali, the wild cows are coming. And we started running hell for leather until we found a ditch, or something like that, and dived in and hid among the shrubs.

We waited for silence to fall again and after a while Liaqat put his head out and said, Hey, they aren’t cows. They’re pigs.

Wild pigs, Hussein Ali said.

Wild pigs, Liaqat repeated.

They were boars. But none of us had ever seen a boar.
We waited until they’d gone away, then climbed out of the ditch and set off again along the path to the beach.

Ten minutes later, we heard barking.

Those are dogs, said Hussein Ali.

Congratulations, said Liaqat. I can see you’re educated. Can you also recognize the noise a sheep makes? And a horse?

They started pushing each other and quarreling, but immediately stopped because, just then, a dog appeared from behind a tree. First one, then another. Then a third one. Then the barking of the dogs got closer and we saw them on our right, standing on a rock. They weren’t behind a gate or anything, they were free. And there were lots of them.

Wild dogs, cried Hussein Ali. This country is full of wild things.

The dogs jumped down from the rock, with steam coming out of their mouths and their tails up in the air, and we started running again, as fast as an avalanche, and once again we dived into a ditch, which this time was much deeper than we had thought, and we rolled down until we ended up on the bank of a dried-up stream.

The dinghy, I cried. Don’t make a hole in the dinghy.

We moved all the stones and debris out of the way, and when we finally managed to get up, none of us were seriously hurt. Scratches and bruises, yes, but nothing
permanent. And we still had the dinghy and the pump and everything. That was when I noticed Liaqat’s life jacket.

Liaqat, I said, your jacket is torn.

Liaqat took it off and turned it over and over, but there was nothing to be done. It was unusable. He looked at me in desperation, then gave a twisted smile. So’s yours, he said. He approached Hussein Ali. So’s Hussein Ali’s.

Not a single jacket was still intact.

But we’re on the beach, said Rahmat.

Yes, we’re on the beach, echoed Hussein Ali.

Is there a school where they teach you to state the obvious? said Liaqat.

Quick, let’s inflate the dinghy, suggested Rahmat.

It’s too late.

What?

It’s too late, I repeated. We have to wait till tomorrow.

It isn’t true, we can make it.

The trafficker had told us it took about three hours to cross the strip of sea separating us from Lesbos. But it must have been about two or three in the morning by now and the risk was that we would arrive in the first light of dawn, when we might well be seen. We needed darkness and invisibility. We needed to do things properly. We had to wait for the following night.

I’m the oldest, I said. I’m the captain. Let’s put it to the vote. Who’s in favor of leaving tomorrow night?

Hussein Ali was the first to raise his hand, followed immediately by Soltan and Rahmat.

Liaqat sighed. Then let’s get some rest, he said. Not too close to the sea, if possible. He threw a pointed glance at Hussein Ali. We don’t want a wild wave to attack us while we sleep, do we?

Hussein Ali didn’t get the joke. He nodded and said, Or a crocodile. And he said it seriously, with his eyes wide open.

There aren’t any crocodiles in the sea, Liaqat said.

How do you know?

I just know, stupid.

Well, you’re talking rubbish. You can’t even swim.

You can’t swim either.

That’s true. Hussein Ali shrugged. That’s why I’m afraid of crocodiles.

But there aren’t any. Can’t you get that into your head? There. Aren’t. Any. They live in rivers.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that, whispered Hussein Ali, looking at the water and shifting a small stone with the tip of his foot. There could be all kinds of things down there in that darkness.

———

It was a good day, the next day, a really good day, even though we’d used up all our supplies of food and water. Soltan tried to drink water from the sea, and after the first mouthful he started to scream that the water was poisoned, that the Turks and Greeks had poisoned it to kill us. We kept ourselves to ourselves (well there wasn’t anyone else), slept for a long time and built traps for wild pigs. We didn’t think about the dangers of the crossing. Death is always a distant thought, even when you feel it close. You think you’ll make it, and so will your friends.

Around midnight we came out into the open. We moved the equipment close to the rocks, to be protected and not be seen by passing boats. The dinghy had to be inflated with the pump, a pump with a balloon that you pressed with your foot. It was a blue and yellow dinghy—not all that big, to tell the truth, and the maximum weight it was intended for was lower than the combined weight of the five of us, but we pretended not to notice.

We were so busy inflating the dinghy and setting up the oars that we didn’t see a light approaching, a light at sea.

It was Rahmat who saw it. Look, he said.

We turned our heads in unison.

Out on the water, I couldn’t say how far out, a boat was passing, with red and green lights flashing at the
sides, and it may have been those red and green lights or something else, but we became convinced it was the coast guard. It’s the coast guard, we said. Did they see us? we asked each other in panic. Could they have seen us? Who knows? How can we know? We deflated the dinghy, ran back up the beach and dived back into the undergrowth.

It was a fishing boat, almost certainly.

What should we do?

Best to wait.

For how long?

An hour.

What if they come back?

Tomorrow, then.

Best to wait until tomorrow.

Yes, yes. Tomorrow.

Shall we sleep?

Let’s sleep.

What about guard duty?

What guard duty?

We ought to take turns at guard duty, said Hussein Ali.

We don’t need guard duty.

If they saw us, they’ll come looking for us.

But maybe they didn’t see us.

Then we can leave.

No, we can’t leave, Hussein Ali. And besides, if they
came looking for us, we’d notice. You can’t park a boat on a beach without making a noise. If you want to, you can take first turn at guard duty.

Why me?

Because you suggested it, that’s why.

Who should I wake up after me?

Wake me, I said.

All right.

Good night.

Good night.

When Hussein Ali started talking in his sleep I was still awake. Anyway, there wasn’t really a need to keep guard.

On the third evening, we had a discussion and decided to leave a bit earlier. Since the boat had passed at midnight, then it was just possible, we calculated, that at ten they would still be having dinner or watching television. So a couple of hours after sunset we went to the rocks, inflated the dinghy and put it in the water. We stripped down to our pants.

As I’ve already said, I was the oldest, and I was also the only one who could swim a little. The others not only couldn’t swim, they were more scared than I can say. When the time came to get into the water to hold the dinghy still and let everyone get in, I stepped forward,
like a hero, and put a foot down where I thought I’d find the seabed, though I had no idea what the seabed was like. That was how I discovered that even in the sea there’s rock. Boys, I said, there’s rock in the sea. And they all said, Really? I was just about to reply Yes when, attempting another step, I slipped and ended up with my whole body in the water. Groping with my hands, my arms stiff, I managed not to drown. I grabbed hold of the dinghy and held it steady so that the others could get in.

Hurry up, said Hussein Ali. The crocodiles will eat your feet.

Liaqat gave him a slap on the head.

If not a crocodile, he said, maybe a whale.

With the help of Soltan and Rahmat I climbed on board.

Then what did we do? We grabbed hold of the oars and started hitting the surface of the water really hard, as if trying to give it a thrashing, so hard that I even broke an oar. Our strokes were fairly random, because if one thing was certain it was that none of us could row. We all rowed on one side. When we rowed on the right, the dinghy veered to the right, and when we rowed on the left, the dinghy veered to the left.

What with one thing and another, we ended up on the rocks.

Now I don’t know how dinghies are made, but ours must have had two layers of inflatable rubber, because although it got a hole in it, it didn’t sink.

Still, we needed to fix it.

With a huge effort, we managed to get back to land and pull the dinghy up onto the shingle.

Fortunately we had the adhesive tape (so that was what it was for), and we patched up the hole with it. But we weren’t sure that it would hold so we decided that Hussein Ali, who was the smallest of us, would keep his hands pressed on the patch instead of rowing.

Rahmat and I took up position on the left.

Liaqat and Soltan on the right.

Now, I said. And the four of us started to paddle.

At last, we set off.

Greece

T
he sea started to get rough about midnight, I think, or thereabout. We were rowing fast, but we couldn’t shout out encouragement to each other, the way professionals do, who always have someone either behind them or in front saying,
And one and two, and one and two
, and so on, because rowers row in unison. We couldn’t, because we didn’t want to make a noise, we were afraid even to sneeze—which, as we were half naked, wearing nothing but underpants (we’d packed our clothes into plastic bags which we’d sealed with adhesive tape to stop water getting in)—was something that might well happen. We were afraid to sneeze because we thought the coast guard would pick up our sneezing on their radar over the noise of the waves.

We’d been told that by rowing fast we would land on the coast of Greece in two or three hours, but that
was without taking into account the water coming into the dinghy. When the sea got rough and started pouring down on us as if it was raining, I took a water bottle, tore it in half with my teeth to make it into a bowl and said to Hussein Ali, Leave the patch and start throwing the water back in the sea.

How?

With this, I said, showing him the half bottle. At that moment a wave ripped it out of my hand, as if it had heard me and didn’t agree. I made another one. I took Hussein Ali’s hand and pressed the bowl into it. With this, I said again.

We were still rowing. But why then did we feel as if we weren’t moving? Or worse still, that we were going backward? And as if that wasn’t enough, the inflatable tubes got in the way, the inflatable tubes we’d been given to use as life preservers. We’d tied them to the dinghy with long ropes because we were afraid they’d bother us as we rowed, so unfortunately, when the wind blew hard, it lifted these inflatable tubes, turning them into balloons that made the dinghy rotate or swerve.

Every now and again, the current or the wind or the waves threw us back toward the coast of Turkey—or so we assumed, because when we were tossed about like that, we weren’t really sure which way was Turkey and which
way was Greece—and little Hussein Ali, still collecting the water that was filling the dinghy, started whining. I know why we can’t get to Greece, he said. We can’t get to Greece because the sea goes uphill in that direction.