In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [26]
To get back to Iran, we used another Toyota pickup truck. But this time the journey was more dangerous, because the road was one used by smugglers for transporting illegal merchandise. Including drugs. And there were drugs on the Toyota. In Iran, if they find you with more than a kilo of opium they hang you. Of course, many policemen along the border were corrupt, fortunately, and they let you pass because you paid them, but if you happened to run into an honest one (and they did exist) then you were dead.
That time everything went well, and we got back to Baharestan.
I went straight to the site to find kaka Hamid, but he hadn’t got back yet. My money was in its place, in the hole. The two workers who’d stayed behind had stood guard. But from that day on, everything changed. There were rumors going around that Isfahan wasn’t safe anymore, and nor was Baharestan, because the police had received orders to repatriate everyone. So I called Sufi at the stonecutting factory in Qom, and he told me that, for the moment, things were quiet there.
That was when I decided to join him. I waited for kaka Hamid to get back, said goodbye to him, collected my things and went to the bus station.
How can you just change your life like that, Enaiat? Just say goodbye one morning?
You do it, Fabio, and that’s it.
I read somewhere that the decision to emigrate comes from a need to breathe.
Yes, it’s like that. And the hope of a better life is stronger than any other feeling. My mother, for example, decided it was better to know I was in danger far from her, but on the way to a different future, than to know I was in danger near her, but stuck in the same old fear.
When I got on the bus, I sat down at the back, alone, holding my bag tight between my legs. I hadn’t made any arrangements with anyone—any trafficker, I mean—because I didn’t want to pay money again to someone to get me to a destination where there were no problems, and after all when I’d been to Qom before, to see Sufi, everything had gone smoothly.
It was a lovely day and I curled up in my seat, my head against the window, ready to doze off.
I had bought an Iranian newspaper. I thought that if we were stopped by the police and they saw me sleeping peacefully with an Iranian newspaper on my lap, they would think I was clean. Next to me was a girl in a veil, wearing a nice perfume. Three minutes later, we left.
We were almost halfway—two women were chatting to the girl next to me, talking about a wedding they had been to, and a man was reading a book while a little boy sitting next to him, who could have been his son, was quietly singing a little song, a kind of tongue twister—we were almost halfway, like I said, when the bus slowed down and came noisily to a halt.
I thought it must be sheep. What’s going on? I asked. I couldn’t see anything on my side.
A roadblock, the girl replied.
Telisia. Sang Safid.
The bus driver pressed a button and the doors opened wide with a hiss. Centuries passed, the air was still, nobody spoke, not even those who had nothing to fear because they were Iranians or because their papers were in order, then the first policeman got on. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He had one arm of his sunglasses in his hand, the other in his mouth.
When the police get on a bus, they don’t ask everyone for their papers: they know perfectly well who’s Iranian and who isn’t. They’re trained to recognize Afghans, illegals, and so on, and as soon as they see one they go straight to him and demand to see his papers even though they know perfectly well he doesn’t have any.
I had to become invisible. But that wasn’t one of my powers. I pretended to be asleep, because when you sleep it’s as if you aren’t there, and also because pretending to sleep is like pretending everything’s all right and that things will work out. But this policeman was a smart one, and he saw me even though I was asleep. He tugged at my sleeve. I kept pretending to sleep and even shifted a bit in my sleep, which I tend to do during the night. The policeman kicked me in