In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [33]
We set off for Tabriz (I know because I asked). We were on our way to the border, and once past Tabriz we drove along the shores of Lake Urmia which, for those who don’t know, is in the middle of Iranian Azerbaijan, just to give you some idea, and is the largest lake in the country: at its fullest, about a hundred and forty kilometers long and fifty-five wide.
I’d almost dozed off when one of my traveling companions nudged me with his elbow and said, Look.
What? I said, without opening my eyes.
The lake. Look at the lake.
I turned my head and slowly opened one eyelid, with my hands between my legs. I looked out of the window. It was sunset and the sun was low over the water. We could see dozens and dozens of rocky little islands against the light and, all over the islands, both on the ground and in the air, dots. Thousands of dots.
What are they?
Birds. Birds?
Migrating birds, the man sitting in front told me.
Is it true they are birds, agha sahib? I asked the man, tapping him on the shoulder.
Flamingos, pelicans and lots of other species, the man said. Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and conqueror of Baghdad, is buried on one of those islands. So there are birds and ghosts. That may be why there are no fish in the lake.
No fish?
Not a single one. Bad waters. Only good for rheumatism.
It was dark by the time we got to Salmas, the last city in Iran and the closest to the mountains. They made us get out, told us to stay close together and keep quiet, and we started walking, without torches or anything.
Early in the morning, in the silence and the pale light of dawn, we came to a little village.
There was a little house that we went into as if it belonged to us, though it didn’t, it belonged to a family. It was a kind of collection point for illegals who wanted to cross the mountains. A small group was already there, and soon afterward more arrived. Afghans. In the end there were thirty of us. We were scared. We wondered how so many of us would be able to cross the mountains without being seen. We asked, but didn’t get an answer, and when we insisted they made it clear it was best to stop right there with our questions. We stayed in that house for two days, waiting.
Then, at sunset on the evening of the second day, they told us to get ready. We set off under a starry sky and a big moon, so we didn’t need lights or torches or eyes like an owl’s. We could see very well. We walked for half an hour between the fields along little paths invisible to those who didn’t know them. As we reached the top of the first slope, a group of people emerged from behind a big rock. We took fright, and some yelled that they were soldiers. But they weren’t, they were thirty more illegals. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Now there were sixty of us, sixty in a line on the mountain paths. But it wasn’t over. Half an hour later, another group appeared. They had been squatting on the ground waiting for our arrival. By the time we were finally able to make a head count, during a brief stop in the middle of the night, there were seventy-seven of us.
They split us into ethnic groups.
Apart from the Afghans, who were the youngest, there were Kurds, Pakistanis, Iraqis and a few Bengalis.
They split us up to avoid problems, insofar as that was possible, given that we were walking all day shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, with different strides, but at the same speed, and when you’re in a situation like that, making a lot of effort in uncomfortable circumstances, with not much food and not much water and nowhere to rest and it’s very, very cold, then squabbles and brawls and even knife fights are always in the cards, so it’s best to keep the hostile ethnic groups apart.
After an hour spent walking along a very rough dirt path, we were stopped halfway up a hill by a shepherd accompanied by a dog madly chasing his own tail—the dog, not the shepherd.