Abbas Khider - The Village Indian

The ship sailed on. A few days later, we finally landed in Izmir. I didn’t want to stay so I left that same day for Istanbul. At the bus station in Izmir, I said goodbye to Hewe. ‘The world is small, my friend!’ he said, convinced we’d meet again.

We never did. That’s how it goes. On such a long journey, you get to know not only people and towns and a new life but also the mysteries of the world’s secret soundscape. Hewe, the Russian, her long queue could all well have been part of that soundscape.

In Istanbul, I knew neither the language nor the people. I just had to look for the smugglers on Taksim Square, the European centre of Istanbul. No problem.

Taksim Square and its surroundings were quite magnificent, as was the square round the Republic Monument, populated by countless pigeons and street musicians. I looked for a spot on a bench every day — to watch the pigeons and the people and listen to the music. Not far away it was from the narrow streets where there was no dearth of brothels, and where, behind shop windows, the most seductive ladies displayed their charm. There, I should never have wanted to walk alone at night. Gay men, waiting for custom, lined the edge of the road. They spoke to every man who passed and were sometimes so persistent that I’d preferred a detour to being felt up by them. At first I’d thought them women but a second, closer look made me realize the truth. Their deep voices apart, they were actually very pretty, trim ‘women’.

On Taksim Square, like all refugees, I had also to do with another kind of human being, the kind that certainly didn’t show a feminine side — the people-smugglers. Prepared to do anything for money. Sometimes, I called them ‘the extraterrestrials’. They had a special character, special qualities found in executioners, torturers, secret service agents and pimps.

One of them was called Azad. A Kurd from Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq. Along with more than thirty refugees, he transported me by lorry to Edirne, a town near the border of Turkey and Greece. From there, after a two-hour march through the forests, we reached the Ebrus. He and his helpers fixed up a rubber dinghy to convey us to the opposite bank. Once we landed on the Greek side, we marched across the country for another four to five hours and finally set up camp in a valley.

Azad was squatting a little apart from the refugees. I sat behind a stone with a Kurd called Hama. The one family in our troop of refugees — a father, mother and little daughter — had found a place about fifty metres away. Most of the travellers fell asleep while Hama told me about his plans for life in Europe. ‘I’ll work, save up. Then fetch my fiancée from Kurdistan and marry her.’

He told me a lot, even about the history of Kurdistan, after 1991. ‘We get out of one lot of shit and land in another. The Kurdish leaders have been fighting each other for years, all wanting to be the boss. They come to some arrangement for a while. Then they start fighting again. And it’s us poor bastards that get screwed. We suffered under Saddam and now we suffer under our own people. What a crap fate!’

‘There’ll have to be a solution at some point!’

‘At some point? In the next life, you mean!’

Suddenly, he looked up. ‘Azad’s still awake. And the woman in that family — look!’

We peeped out from behind our stone. She crept over to Azad and then crawled under his blanket, quietly. I watched her husband. He was lying on his stomach, his arm protectively round his daughter. His back was quivering, as if caressed by an icy wind. ‘He’s crying,’ Hama whispered.

‘But why is he letting her?’

‘That’s the price for the trip.’

‘What?’

‘One of Azad’s aides mentioned that the husband has no money. That Azad took them along for free. The payment is a few nights with the wife.’

Now, God no doubt needs my help to save Him! I thought. Why’s He not shifting His arse in Heaven? I felt a deep hatred against Him. That night, I felt the urge to kill someone rise in me. This feeling came upon me only rarely. And only in the case of certain people. I’d have liked most to tear the heart from the body of Azad, to barbecue it and serve it to the husband for dinner. Thereafter, on all such journeys, I carried a knife. On that journey, I even cherished the hope that the Greek police would track us down and arrest us. Then I could have turned Azad in. It was well known that smugglers, if caught, could expect especially harsh penalties. The police did indeed catch us and a significant part of the group was indeed arrested. But Azad managed to fuck off in time.

Every smuggler I’ve met always managed to fuck off in time. Hama believed that ‘They can smell the police! They disappear so quietly and quickly, it’s as if they’d never been there. No one knows how they do it.’ Some refugees even said the smugglers had an agreement with the border police. If one group makes it to Athens unhindered, the next is for the police. That was why the smugglers always managed to get out in time. Who knows? In the forgotten border region between Turkey and Greece, nothing is impossible.

I spent a few days in jail, then the Greek police brought us back to the Turkish border. There, we were arrested by the Turkish police and put in jail again.

‘God, save me from emptiness!’

I had the feeling that I’d never get out of Turkey. It was incredibly difficult to move round the border area between Greece and Turkey. Often, the police were lying in wait behind a hill or at the entrance to a valley. I was arrested several times and, again and again, spent days in a border police cell until I was freighted back by bus to Istanbul. Back then, there was an unwritten law about the destination of illegal refugees in Turkey. If you were arrested at the border, you were taken to Istanbul. But if you were arrested in Istanbul, you were deported to Iraq or Iran. So you had to keep your eyes especially open in Istanbul. There was always a way out. You could bribe a Turkish policeman with ten dollars.

I spent almost a week in the cell at the border. There was nothing to do but wait. Sometimes, the police took us to remote villages and made us clean the streets. Each time you ended up in a Turkish border prison, a policeman recorded your name. Then you were photographed and fingerprinted. Usually, a refugee never gives his real name. Each time he’s arrested, he thinks of a new name. If he’s found out, he could expect several months in jail. The Turkish police have a whole string of names for me, each with the same face and the same fingerprints.

Once, there were over a hundred of us, only Arabs and Iraqi Kurds. Sad, as if we were about to be sent to Hell. I decided to crack a joke — to make them smile for a moment, at least — and thought up a funny name for myself. Especially since I’d noticed that the policeman who was about to write down our names was the one who’d hit a few of us with great zeal when we’d been arrested. When he planted himself in front of me, in his ridiculous khaki rags and grinning like a child, and asked me for my name, I said, loudly and clearly, ‘Ana Maniuk!’ A while later, he came into our cell to send us for photographs and fingerprints. When he called my name—‘Ana Maniuk’—I stayed quiet. ‘Ana Maniuk,’ he shouted again. Still I said nothing. The third time, he was louder and more impatient: ‘Ana Maniuk!’ The other prisoners were laughing so hard that tears rolled down their cheeks. Only the fourth time did I identify myself. In Arabic, ‘ana maniuk’ means ‘I am an arsehole.’

After several failed attempts to cross the Turkey— Greece border, I wanted to find work. An invalid passport, no residence permit and no knowledge of the language — it wasn’t easy. I decided to go to Antakya, near the Turkey — Syria border. I’d heard that most people there spoke Arabic. They did, but that didn’t help me in any way. I stayed for a day, then returned to Istanbul. Asked round in a great many shops and businesses. With no luck. In a cafe called al-Salam — peace — I ordered a glass of tea. I had no idea what to do next. The paths were blocked, the emptiness stinking to high heaven.