Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

“It doesn’t matter. I must talk to Samira.”

She takes me to a room on the second floor which is stained with the same dark panels. Samira is at the window when the door opens. She’s wearing a long dress, buttoned down the middle, with a Peter Pan collar. The light from the window paints an outline of her body inside it. Watching me carefully, she takes a seat on the sofa. Her pregnancy rests on her thighs.

Sister Vogel doesn’t stay. As the door closes, I glance around the room. On the wall there is a painting of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Both are pictured beside a stream, where fruit hangs from trees and fat naked cherubs dance above the water.

Samira notices me looking at it. “Are you a Christian?”

“A Sikh.”

She nods, satisfied.

“Do you dislike Christians?”

“No. My father told me that Christians believe less than we believe. I don’t know if that is true. I am not a very good Muslim. I sometimes forget to pray.”

“How often are you supposed to pray?”

“Five times a day, but my father always said that three was enough.”

“Do you miss him, your father?”

“With every breath.”

Her copper-colored eyes are flecked with gold and uncertainty. I can’t imagine what they’ve seen in her short life. When I picture Afghanistan I see women draped in black like covered statues, mountains capped with snow, old caravan trails, unexploded mines, scorching deserts, terra-cotta houses, ancient monuments and one-eyed madmen.

I introduce myself properly this time and tell Samira how I found her. She looks away self-consciously when I mention the prostitute on Molensteeg. At the same time she holds her hand to her chest, pressing down. I see pain on her forehead.

“Are you OK?”

“Heartburn. Zala has gone to get medicine.” She glances at the door, already missing her friend.

“Where did you meet her?”

“At the orphanage.”

“You didn’t leave Afghanistan together.”

“No. We had to leave her behind.”

“How did she get here?”

“In the back of a truck and then by train.”

“By herself?”

Samira’s face softens. “Zala can always find a way to make herself understood.”

“Has she always been deaf?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Her father fought with the mujahideen against the Taliban. When the Talibs took over they punished their enemies. Zala and her mother were imprisoned and tortured with acid and melted plastic. Her mother took eight days to die. By then Zala could not hear her screaming.”

The statement sucks the oxygen from the room and I feel myself struggling for breath. Samira looks toward the door again, waiting for Zala. Her fingers are splayed on her belly as if reading the bumps and kicks. What must it feel like—to have something growing inside you? A life, an organism that takes what it needs without asking or sharing, stealing sleep, changing hormones, bending bones and squeezing organs. I have heard my friends and sisters-in-law complain of weak nails, molting hair, sore breasts and stretch marks. It is a sacrifice men could not make.

Samira is watching me. She has something she wants to ask.

“You said Mrs. Beaumont is dead.”

“Yes.”

“What will happen now to her babies?”

“It is your decision.”

“Why?”

“They belong to you.”

“No!”

“They’re your babies.”

Her head pivots from side to side. She is adamant.

Standing suddenly, she rocks slightly and reaches out her hand, bracing it on the back of the sofa. Crossing the room, she stares out the window, hoping to see Zala.

I’m still contemplating her denial. Does she love her unborn twins? Does she imagine a future for them? Or is she simply carrying them, counting down the days until the birth, when her job is done?

“When did you meet Mrs. Beaumont?”

“She came to Amsterdam. She bought me clothes. Yanus was there. I had to pretend I didn’t speak English but Mrs. Beaumont talked to me anyway. She gave me a piece of paper with your name. She said if I was ever in trouble I had to find you.”

“When was this?”

“In February I saw her the first time. She came to see me again in September.”

“Did she know you were having twins?”

She shrugs.

“Did she know why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she know about the debt? Did she know you were forced to get pregnant?”

Her voice softens. “She thanked me. She said I was doing a good thing.”

“It is a crime to force someone to have a baby. She did a very foolish thing.”

Samira shrugs, unwilling to be so harsh. “Sometimes friends do foolish things,” she says. “My father told me that true friends are like gold coins. Ships are wrecked by storms and lie for hundreds of years on the ocean floor. Worms destroy the wood. Iron corrodes. Silver turns black but gold doesn’t change in seawater. It loses none of its brilliance or color. It comes up the same as it went down. Friendship is the same. It survives shipwrecks and time.”

The swelling in my chest suddenly hurts. How can someone so young be so wise?

“You must tell the police what happened.”

“They will send me back.”

“These people have done very bad things. You owe them nothing.”

“Yanus will find me. He will never let me go.”

“The police can protect you.”

“I do not trust them.”

“Trust me.”

She shakes her head. She has no reason to believe me. Promises don’t fill stomachs or bring back dead brothers. She still doesn’t know about Hassan. I can’t bring myself to tell her.

“Why did you leave Kabul?”

“Brother.”

“Your brother?”

“No. An Englishman. We called him Brother.”

“Who is he?”

“A saint.”

Using her forefinger she traces the outline of a cross on her neck. I think of Donavon’s tattoo. Is it possible?

“This Englishman, was he a soldier?”

“He said he was on a mission from God.”

She describes how he visited the orphanage, bringing food and blankets. There were sixty children aged between two and sixteen, who slept in dormitories, huddling together in winter, surviving on scraps and charity.

When the Taliban were in control they took boys from the orphanage to fill their guns with bullets and the girls were taken as wives. The orphans cheered when the Northern Alliance and the Americans liberated Kabul, but the new order proved to be little different. Soldiers came to the orphanage looking for girls. The first time Samira hid under blankets. The second time she crawled into the latrine. Another girl threw herself off the roof rather than be taken.

I’m amazed at how ambivalent she sounds. Fateful decisions, issues of life and death, are related with the matter-of-factness of a shopping list. I can’t tell if she’s inured to shock or overcome by it.

“Brother” paid off the soldiers with medicine and money. He told Samira that she should leave Afghanistan because it wasn’t safe. He said he would find her a job in London.

“What about Hassan?”

“Brother said he had to stay behind. I said I would not go without him.”

They were introduced to a trafficker called Mahmoud, who arranged their passage. Zala had to stay behind because no country would accept a deaf girl, Mahmoud told them.

Hassan and Samira were taken overland to Pakistan by bus and smuggled south through Quetta and west into Iran until they reached Tabriz near the Turkish border. In the first week of spring they walked across the Ararat mountain range and almost succumbed to the freezing nights and the wolves.

On the Turkish side of the mountains, sheep farmers smuggled them between villages and arranged their passage to Istanbul in the back of a truck. For two months brother and sister worked in a sweatshop in the garment districts of Zeytinburnu, sewing sheepskin waistcoats.