Giuseppe Catozzella - Don't Tell Me You're Afraid

That night around midnight, one day early, we were told we had arrived.

We were just outside a town and could see some lights in the distance. The men stopped the jeep and ordered us to remain on board. Some people immediately started celebrating, making a racket, thinking we’d made it. They were mistaken.

A man quickly called for silence. We’d better try to understand what the two traffickers were telling us in a language that wasn’t ours: a mixture of Arabic and Sudanese. Luckily someone in the group understood Arabic and acted as interpreter.

“We are not in Khartoum,” the trafficker said. “We are two kilometers from Al Qadarif, which is just across the border in Sudan. Anyone who doesn’t like it can continue on foot.”

Without giving us time to react, the two men got back in the jeep and restarted the engine. Al Qadarif is a small town in the desert. The bad news was that we were not where we had paid to go. The good news was that we were no longer in Ethiopia.

They took us to a garage again and, without a word, handed us over to another group of traffickers, who were already there waiting for us. When we went in, we found ourselves facing the same scene as in Addis Ababa. An off-road vehicle and six men who appeared nervous. They smoked and spat on the ground, swearing in a language that none of us understood.

We’d been swindled.

Getting out of the jeep was even more difficult than it had been the day before.

Our bodies were getting used to not responding to commands, to being forced into unnatural, painful positions and to constant, rapid motion.

A couple of men, two Ethiopians, tried to say something. They raised their voices. One was alone; the other was traveling with his wife and three small children. They’d been sitting side by side for hours. Now they were beating their breasts and their heads with their hands, saying things I didn’t understand but that didn’t seem friendly toward the first traffickers. The latter, ignoring them, restarted the motor and said that anyone who was unhappy was welcome to go back with them.

Immediately. They would even return their money, they said. I couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not. In any case, no one budged.

In an instant they were gone, along with the jeep that had been our home for two whole days.

We were left staring at one another, not knowing what to do. I would soon realize that, more than anything else, this is the one thing about the Journey that changes you forever: No one, at any time, can ever know what will happen a moment later.

While we were still standing there, I tried to strike up a conversation with a Somali girl who was traveling with her sister, to have the comfort of a voice. A voice that spoke my language. Everything had happened so fast. In two days I had forgotten who I was.

“Where are you from?” I asked. “Are you from Mogadishu?” She didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on her younger sister, still hunched over on the ground, uncramping her knees and throwing up.

“Are you Somali?” I tried again.

The girl turned around; her face was powdered with white dust up to the hairline, even under the hijab. She looked like a ghost, a white mask with lifeless eyes.

“Yes,” she replied in a faint voice. Then she bent over her sister and stroked her head.

We soon learned that we needed another two hundred dollars to get to Khartoum.

Another rusty old Land Rover.

We would leave Al Qadarif in a week.

Those who had the money could pay immediately; the others had to find a job or have relatives send the funds to a nearby money-transfer location that they showed us. The traffickers had a satellite phone that could be used to call home. But for those who didn’t have the money right then, the two hundred dollars would become two hundred and fifty.

I didn’t give it a second’s thought; I paid.

For a week I slept in that room on a mattress that was damp from dog or goat piss.

Outside there were hordes of goats, bleating as though possessed at all hours of the day or night: thirsty, starving, crazed like us. May a thousand liters of putrid, stinking water fall on their heads.

AFTER A WEEK I set out again. Meanwhile, during those days everything had changed. From that fetid mattress, like a plant that suddenly bears fruit, the seed of self-interest had sprouted. I had begun thinking only of myself. Everything was secondary to my survival. I had become more unsociable, a loner. My only objective was to reach the end of the Journey. I alone had put myself in that situation, and the situation had transformed me. Forever. In just a few days. There was no way I could get out of it, unless I went back on foot. I could only continue. And accept my transformation. I had to make it at all costs. It was no longer about the ultimate goal. It was about survival.

There were fewer of us this time: forty-eight. We were a little less packed; I didn’t have the feeling I would pass out each time we hit a pothole.

We all knew that the worst of the Journey was yet to come: crossing the Sahara. Everyone had heard dozens of stories in his lifetime; we knew that the Sahara was the toughest test. For this reason we made every effort not to think about it. In addition, we had rested for a week and we had a little more space. This made us feel foolishly euphoric.

We sang! During that second leg we sang. To pass the time, to mark the hours. The terrain around us didn’t help much. There was nothing to see. An endless ocher-colored expanse of nothing. Earth and more earth, everywhere you looked; fine dust that swirled up and got in your throat if you didn’t cover your mouth with your veil. Earth and dry brush. And a track, the road we were on, straight as a plumb line, headed north.

We took turns singing the songs of our countries. An Ethiopian woman with her eleven-month-old son in her arms started it off. Her fellow countrymen immediately joined her. Then we Somalis did the same, and finally the Sudanese.

Anything we could, just to avoid thinking. If Hodan had been there, she would have been happy. Who knows, maybe she sang too on her Journey. Maybe she’d been a big hit. Someday she would tell me about it. Not now. It makes no sense to think further than what you see in front of you. The future doesn’t exist.

After driving for twenty hours we stopped again, in front of a brick building surrounded only by dusty desert. All around us, nothing. It was night, but it had been at least six hours since we’d seen anything but earth and rocks. Rocks and earth. Then, abruptly, the low brush merged with the soil, and soon everything turned to sand. Actual fine sand. Without realizing it we had crossed into the Sahara.

It was the singing. That’s what it had done for us.

We soon learned that once again we were not in Khartoum but in a village that we were told was called Sharif al Amin. This driver and his backup also spoke only Sudanese and a little Arabic. Again several among us acted as interpreters.

They told us that the jeep had broken down and that we’d been forced to stop.

You catch on quickly enough on the Journey.

The truth is irrelevant to those who have fled and are in need of refuge. That jeep hadn’t broken down; that jeep was running just fine. But we wanted to believe it, simply because we wanted to get out and stretch our legs, straighten our backs. The truth is traded for survival. For a trifle. For naught.

Only one Somali man got angry. He was thin and looked like an intellectual: He wore wire-rimmed glasses, the lenses coated with a layer of dust, which he must have been used to.

“You’re all a bunch of filthy crooks,” he said in Arabic. “Thieves and bastards! Two-bit swindlers,” he ranted, foaming at the mouth.