In the Sea There are Crocodiles (17 page)

I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but you should never refuse a Coca-Cola, so I opened the can and drank and it struck me that the guy was really strange, first getting angry and then treating me to a Coke. Don’t you agree? So, when we came to the next station—I was still sipping my Coca-Cola—I leaned over, innocently, and said,
Please Rome, please Rome
. At last, he understood. He said,
Rome
. Not
rum. Rome
.

I nodded.

Using hand gestures, he told me he was going to Rome, too, and that the central station—Termini, he called it—was his stop, and that I didn’t have to worry,
because it was the last stop. So at Rome we got off together. On the platform he shook my hand and said,
Bye bye
, and I replied,
Bye bye
, and we parted.

The square in front of the station was packed with cars, people and buses. I went around all the yellow bus stops until I found number 175. I knew I had to get off at the last stop.

It was dark by the time I got to Ostiense. There were lots of people there, the kind you call tramps and I call poor people, but no Afghans. Then I saw a long line of people against a wall, and there were Afghans among them. I joined the queue. They told me they were waiting to eat, and that the food was distributed by the monks from a monastery, and that if you asked them they also gave you blankets and cardboard boxes to bed down in.

Are you hungry? one of the monks asked when it was my turn.

I guessed what he was asking me, and I nodded. They gave me two rolls and two apples, nothing else.

How do you choose a place to settle, Enaiat? How can you tell one from another?

You recognize it because you don’t feel like leaving. Not because it’s perfect, obviously. There aren’t any perfect places. But there are places where at least no one tries to hurt you
.

If you hadn’t stayed in Italy, where would you have gone?

I don’t know. Paris, maybe
.

And is there a place like Ostiense in Paris?

Yes, I think there’s a bridge where you can go. I can’t remember which bridge, but I know you get there by bus. I even used to know the number of the bus. Now, fortunately, I’ve forgotten it
.

I had two hundred euros in my pocket, my savings from Greece. I had to decide in a hurry what to do, because if I needed to buy a ticket or something like that, I couldn’t expect that money to grow in my pocket like a plant, could I? There are moments when you give the future a strange name, and at that moment the name of my future was Payam.

As I mentioned before, I knew Payam was in Italy, but not exactly where, and as a lot of people live in Italy, I had to get cracking if I wanted to find him. So I started looking for him, mentioning his name to everyone, and after all that mentioning of his name, one day I met someone who told me he had a friend who was in England now and who might have talked to him about a boy called Payam who he’d met in a reception center in Crotone, in Calabria. Of course, it could have been another Payam. There’s no copyright on names.

We went to a call shop and phoned this friend in London, who had found work in a bar.

I have a mobile number if you want it, he said.

Of course, I replied. Do you know where he lives?

In Turin.

I wrote down the mobile number on a piece of paper and dialed it without even leaving the booth.

Hello?

Yes. Hello. I’d like to talk to Payam.

Payam speaking. Who’s that?

Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.

Silence.

Hello? I said.

Yes, I can hear you.

This is Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.

Silence.

Is that you, Payam?

Yes, this is Payam. Are you really Enaiatollah? Where are you calling from?

Rome.

That’s not possible.

Why not?

What are you doing in Italy?

What are
you
doing in Italy?

Payam really couldn’t believe it was me. He asked me trick questions about our village and my relatives and his. I answered everything correctly. In the end he said, What are you planning to do?

I don’t know.

Then come to Turin.

We said goodbye and I went to Termini station to catch the train. On that occasion, I remember, I learned my first word of Italian. I got an Afghan to go with me, someone who had been in Italy for a while and spoke the language quite well, to buy the ticket and make sure I got on the right train. He came into the carriage with me, looked around, chose a kind-looking lady and spoke to her. This boy has to get off in Turin, he said. The word he used was
scendere
. As it happens,
shin
is an Iranian word meaning “stone.” It stuck in my mind, and I found I could get my mouth around the words
shindere
Turin,
shindere
Turin. If I said that, I’d avoid mix-ups, like when I’d come to Rome.

During the journey the lady asked me if I had the number of someone who could come and pick me up from Porta Nuova station. I gave her Payam’s number and she called him to make arrangements. She told him what time we’d be arriving and where. Everything went well. In Turin, surrounded by trolleys and bags and a party of children coming back from a trip, Payam and I barely recognized each other. We hadn’t seen each other since I was nine (maybe) and now I was fifteen (maybe) and he was two or three years older than me. Our language sounded strange to us the way it never had when we were children.

———

It was Payam who went with me to the Office for Foreign Minors, without even giving me time to get used to the shapes of the houses or the coolness of the air (it was the middle of September). He had immediately asked me—I still felt the warmth of his embrace on my chest—what my intentions were, because I couldn’t stay undecided for too long: indecisiveness wasn’t healthy for someone who didn’t have asylum. He knew this because, when he arrived, he didn’t have asylum, but he was lucky and some people had helped him. I looked outside the window of the café we’d gone into for a cappuccino—I know a place where they make the best cappuccinos in the city, he’d said—and I thought of the boy in Venice and the lady on the train to Turin. I’d liked both of them so much, they made me want to live in the same country where they lived. If all Italians are like that, I thought, then this might be a place where I could settle. To tell the truth, I was tired. Tired of traveling all the time. So I said to Payam, I want to stay in Italy. And he said, All right. He smiled, paid for the cappuccino, waved to the barman, who he seemed to know, and we set off on foot for the Office for Foreign Minors.

The sun was setting and there was a strong wind sweeping the streets. By the time we got there it was late and the office was closing. Payam spoke on my behalf,
and when the lady told him there wasn’t a place for me in any of the social housing, and that for a week I’d have to fend for myself, he asked the lady to wait a moment, turned and repeated every word to me. I shrugged my shoulders. We thanked her and left.

He was living in social housing and couldn’t put me up.

I can sleep in a park, I said.

I don’t want you to sleep in a park, Enaiat. I have a friend in a village just outside Turin, I’ll ask him to put you up. So Payam called this friend of his, who immediately agreed. We went to the bus station together and Payam told me I shouldn’t get off until I saw someone stick their head in and tell me to follow him. That’s what I did. After an hour’s journey, at one of the stops, an Afghan boy put his head in at the door and made a sign to me with his hand that I’d arrived.

I went to the Afghan boy’s place but after three days—I’m not sure what had happened—it turned out he wasn’t happy about it, he was sorry and all that, but he couldn’t put me up anymore. He said I was an illegal, even though I’d gone to the Office for Foreign Minors of my own free will, and if the police found me in his house there was a risk he would lose his papers.

As was only right, I told him not to worry, I didn’t want to cause him any trouble. I’ve slept in parks for
so long, I said, that a few more nights certainly won’t harm me.

But when Payam found out, he again said, No, I don’t want you to sleep in the park. Let me call a social worker.

The person he called was an Italian woman named Danila who had apparently, like us, tried to talk to the Office for Foreign Minors, but it really did seem that there wasn’t even a broom cupboard that had room for me, so she—Danila—had said to Payam, Bring him to my house.

When Payam and I met, he said, There’s a family that are going to put you up.

A family? I said. What do you mean,
a family
?

A father, a mother and children, that’s what.

I don’t want to go to a family.

Why?

I don’t know how to behave. I’m not going there.

Why? How should you behave? You just have to be nice.

I’m sure I’ll be a nuisance to them.

No. I assure you. I know them well.

Payam kept insisting I should accept Danila’s offer until he was hoarse, as anyone would do with a person he likes and feels responsible for. He wouldn’t even hear about leaving me alone at night, knowing I’d be sleeping
on a bench. So in the end I gave in. More for his sake than mine.

The family lived outside Turin, in an isolated house beyond the hills. Getting out of the car—Danila had come to pick us up from the bus stop—I was greeted by three dogs, and as dogs are probably my favorite animals, I thought, This doesn’t look too bad at all.

The father was called Marco, and even though he’s a father, I can call him by his name, not like my father, who I have only called Father. And the children, Matteo and Francesco, I feel up to saying their names too. They aren’t names that cause me pain.

As soon as we entered the house they gave me these big slippers, shaped like rabbits, with ears and a nose and everything—maybe they did it as a joke—and after washing our hands we had dinner at the table, with forks and knives and glasses and napkins and all that, and I was so afraid of making a fool of myself that I copied every single gesture they made. I remember there was also an old woman with them at dinner that evening. She sat stiffly, with her wrists resting on the table, and so I did the same: I stiffened my back and placed my wrists on the table, and seeing that she wiped her mouth after every bite, I wiped my mouth after every bite, too. I remember
that Danila had made a starter, a first course, and a second course. My God, I remember thinking, these people eat so much.

After dinner they showed me a room. There was a bed in the room, just one, and it was all mine. Danila came up, bringing me pajamas. Here you are, she said. But I didn’t know what pajamas were. I was used to sleeping in my clothes. I took off my socks and put them under the bed, and when Danila gave me those pajamas, I put them under the bed, too. Marco brought me a towel and a bathrobe. Matteo wanted to play me some of his favorite CDs. Francesco had dressed as an Indian—an American Indian—and called me to see his toys. They were all trying to tell me things, but I didn’t understand a word.

When I woke up in the morning, Danila and Marco had gone to work and the only other person in the house was Francesco, who was about to leave for school. I found out later that he was worried about my presence, and was wondering, What’s this guy up to? At the same time, I was afraid to leave my room, and only went down (my room was in the attic) when Francesco called to me from the bottom of the stairs to say that, if I wanted, breakfast was ready. And it was true. On the table in the kitchen were biscuits and fresh orange juice. Fantastic. That whole day was fantastic. The next few days were fantastic. I would happily have stayed there forever. Because when you’re
welcomed by people who treat you well—but in a natural way, without being intrusive—then you just want to go on being welcomed. Don’t you agree?

The one problem was language, but when I realized that Danila and Marco liked to hear me tell my story, I started talking and talking and talking, in English and in Afghan, with my mouth and with my hands, with my eyes and with objects. Do they understand or not? I asked myself. Be patient, I answered myself, and carried on talking.

Until the day when a bed became free in a hostel for migrants.

I went there by myself, on foot.

There’ll be an Iranian lady there who can act as your interpreter, they said.

Good. Thanks.

It’s a place where you can have a quiet life, they said.

Good. Thanks.

Do you want to know anything else?

Study. Work.

Just go there first, then we’ll see.

Good. Thanks.

But there wasn’t any Iranian lady. They’d told me I could have a quiet life there, which was true, I could. But the place itself wasn’t quiet at all. There was constant
shouting and quarreling. And besides, it was more like a prison than a home. As soon as I arrived, they confiscated my belt and wallet with the little money I had. The doors were closed from the outside, and sealed. You couldn’t go out (and you can imagine how accustomed I was to freedom, after all those years spent going all over the place by myself). I mean, I appreciated everything, it was still a clean, warm place, and there was pasta and things like that for dinner, but I wanted to work or study—preferably study—instead of which two months went by, under me, like water flowing under a transparent sheet of glass, and for two months I didn’t do anything, didn’t even speak, because I still didn’t know the language, although I tried to learn it from the books I’d been given by Marco and Danila. The only distractions were watching television, in silence, and sleeping and eating. In silence.

Doing nothing wasn’t what I’d planned, and I couldn’t receive visits, not even from the family who’d looked after me. But after two months Danila and Marco started to worry and arranged for a youth worker named Sergio, who wasn’t only a youth worker but also a friend of theirs and someone who was known to the home, to pick me up on Saturday afternoons and take me to spend some of my free time (and I had plenty of that) with the boys from a youth group.