Abbas Khider - The Village Indian

‘God, save me from emptiness! God, save me from emptiness! God, save me from emptiness. .’

At the border between Libya and Tunisia, in Ras Ajdir, you encounter two different centuries simultaneously. On the Libyan side, you look into the eighteenth or nineteenth century; on the Tunisian, the twentieth. During the journey from Tripoli to Ras Ajdir, we looked out at the landscape through the window of our shared taxi — old cars, old houses, sand, the yellow colour of the country, the faces of sad men. Faceless women. Shrouded in garments, like walking mummies. The disorganized world, the government posters, the pictures of the president, the countless policemen and plastic bags, plastic bottles, tin cans, scraps of newspaper lying at the side of the road. Shortly before we reached Ras Ajdir, we noticed a poster that said ‘The yellow desert turned green.’

‘See anything green here?’ whispered Abu-Agela.

‘No.’

‘That’s Libyan logic for you. Lie, lie and lie again so that, in the end, the yellow desert starts looking green.’ The other side of the world, Tunisia, was completely different. The streets, clean. The women, with faces. And really green spots. Only a few pictures of the president, a few posters. ‘In Tunisia,’ the taxi-driver explained, ‘you can do anything you want except politics.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Abu-Agela.

‘Women, alcohol, whatever. But never criticize the government. You’ll get in real trouble if you do!’

‘Okay — thanks for the tip!’

In the capital city, we soon established how right the man was. A glance at the newspaper and you saw nothing but how wonderful the government was! A Tunisian in our old dirty one-dollar hotel told us that politicians or intellectuals who spoke out against the government were arrested in no time at all. ‘The same shit again!’ Abu-Agela groaned, ‘Just not in military uniform but in suit and tie.’

Well, the solution of these countries’ problems wasn’t the point of our trip. We had problems of our own. We were looking for just one way across the sea to Europe. Abu-Agela tried every day to get to the sea and find a people-smuggler. I stayed in town so as not to waste too much money on these trips. I spent my time on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, looking at women and trying to chat them up. Two weeks passed and we still hadn’t found a smuggler to take us to Europe. My visa, though, was valid for only two weeks and — as I was Iraqi — couldn’t be extended. Abu-Agela, being Libyan, had a permit for three months. Another two weeks and we still didn’t have a smuggler. One night, sitting with Abu-Agela in the hotel room, I heard them roaring. The police. The hotel owners must have tipped them off, told them my visa’d expired.

At the station, the police magistrate explained that I had two options — back to Iraq or back to Libya. Plus, a fine for being in Tunisia illegally. In my wallet, however, was only about sixty dollars. They did without the fine but I had to sign a document saying that I would never return to Tunisia. They wanted to send me back to Libya the next day. I spent the night in a small cell that was old and crawling with lice. My two cell-mates were refugees from Nigeria. We couldn’t understand a word of each other’s languages. They didn’t speak English either, only French. I didn’t know a word of French. So we were forced to use sign language. Clearly, they’d been in a boat when the police arrested them. They wanted to get to Italy too. That’s all I could understand. I slept and thought of my prayer but I had the feeling, somehow, that God couldn’t hear me. Or didn’t want to. ‘What’s wrong with Him?’

I prayed softly, nonetheless, ‘God, please, please save me! Save me from emptiness!’

The next day, we travelled with two policemen to Ras Ajdir. I got back only fifteen of my sixty dollars — the trip cost forty-five dollars for me and one of the policemen. The Africans had to pay for the other one as well as for the return journey of these two servants of the state.

They stamped ‘Entry Ban’ on my passport, loosened the fetters round my wrists and ordered me to ‘Disappear!’ I walked to the Libyan border post. The Africans were quicker and passed Libyan border control before me. I sat down between the two border posts. Looked to the left and to the right — into the twentieth and the eighteenth centuries. On both sides were a few pigeons. They were flying freely, now to the left, now to the right, wherever they wished. One always landed at the same place. Precisely where, on the left, the office was situated. There were children having fun too, travelling to the left or the right, with their families. The faces in the cars, both smiling and sad. I sat there for a long time. Thought about dancing and screaming but there were too many people. I got up and shuffled slowly over to the right, to the yellow desert that was supposed to be green.

‘God — for fuck’s sake — save me!’

Back in Libya, I heard no more from Abu-Agela. Later — several years and thousands of prayers later — I finally found a way, after all, to get into Turkey. The ship put to sea from the harbour in Tripoli and landed barely a week later in Izmir. For the first time in my life, I travelled by ship for seven days.

Up on deck, I lazed about with the other young men. The first few days, we stared at the vast Mediterranean. The last few days, we just waited, bored and desperate to reach the shore. There weren’t even any women to flirt with. The few on board were accompanied by men and out of our reach. No opportunity to re-enact a film scene, to spend a romantic night with a seductive woman. The only woman travelling alone was a Russian. She enjoyed the best business of her entire life, for sure. While she spent the whole day horizontal in her cabin, the Libyan men queued up outside her door to do it with her. One night, I saw her smoking, up on deck. She was so worn out she could barely walk.

I met a nice Kurdish boy called Hewe. We spent a large part of the journey together. He’d been working in Libya and wanted to visit his family in northern Iraq. Or in ‘Kurdistan’, as he proudly called it. We chatted and he told me a lot, including how the Iraqi soldiers had killed his brother right before his eyes. ‘That was 1991, in the resistance. The soldiers rounded up all the young men in our village, like cattle. Shot them all. In the end, only women, children and old men remained.’

Hewe had plans for later. ‘I want to go to Germany. I have a friend there. He says the Germans offer Iraqis asylum.’

He fell silent for a while, then looked up at the sky with his blue eyes and murmured, ‘I am a person who has nothing to do with politics. I just want to earn money in Germany and then return to Kurdistan when the situation has improved. I just want to live in peace with my mother and my sisters.’

After two days, the ship reached the harbour in Beirut. We were allowed to walk round the harbour area for a few hours but not beyond the walls. I looked out at Beirut — white houses, small mountains and countless posters. Not one of the president, though.

‘Beautiful!’ Hewe said, quickly interpreting my glances at the town. ‘No pictures of the president — that can only be a good sign, right?’

An answer to this rhetorical question would have been superfluous. I continued to look at the town without a word. I’d heard a lot about it. War, literature and art, mourning, pretty women, murderers and homeless gods from other countries — like the artists and poets and singers and whores who, in the seventies, wrote their common history on the streets of this wonderful town. I thought for a moment about leaping over the harbour wall and staying in Beirut. It would have been easy. The wall was low and the police were busy with the ships and their passengers. In the end, I chose not to. I’d heard that you couldn’t get a residence permit here without knowing someone in a political party. ‘And that’s not the right thing for me, is it?’