In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [42]
We’d been told that by rowing fast we would land on the coast of Greece in two or three hours, but that was without taking into account the water coming into the dinghy. When the sea got rough and started pouring down on us as if it was raining, I took a water bottle, tore it in half with my teeth to make it into a bowl and said to Hussein Ali, Leave the patch and start throwing the water back in the sea.
How?
With this, I said, showing him the half bottle. At that moment a wave ripped it out of my hand, as if it had heard me and didn’t agree. I made another one. I took Hussein Ali’s hand and pressed the bowl into it. With this, I said again.
We were still rowing. But why then did we feel as if we weren’t moving? Or worse still, that we were going backward? And as if that wasn’t enough, the inflatable tubes got in the way, the inflatable tubes we’d been given to use as life preservers. We’d tied them to the dinghy with long ropes because we were afraid they’d bother us as we rowed, so unfortunately, when the wind blew hard, it lifted these inflatable tubes, turning them into balloons that made the dinghy rotate or swerve.
Every now and again, the current or the wind or the waves threw us back toward the coast of Turkey—or so we assumed, because when we were tossed about like that, we weren’t really sure which way was Turkey and which way was Greece—and little Hussein Ali, still collecting the water that was filling the dinghy, started whining. I know why we can’t get to Greece, he said. We can’t get to Greece because the sea goes uphill in that direction.
Our point of reference was a lighthouse on the Greek coast. But after a while we stopped seeing it. The waves were so high they covered it, and at that point Hussein Ali started screaming, We’re only as big as a whale’s tooth. And the whales will eat us. And if they don’t eat us the crocodiles will, even though you say there aren’t any. We have to turn back, we have to turn back.
I’m not turning back, I said. We’re near Greece, and if we aren’t near, at least we’re halfway by now. It’s the same distance, so it makes no difference if we go on or turn back, and I prefer to die in the sea rather than start this whole journey all over again.
We started arguing, right there in the middle of the sea, with the darkness and the waves all around, and with Rahmat and me saying, To Greece, to Greece. And Soltan and Liaqat saying, To Turkey, to Turkey. And Hussein Ali still bailing water and crying and saying, The mountain’s falling, the mountain’s falling, because the waves were so high—two or three meters or even more—that when they towered over us, when the dinghy was in the hollow between one wave and the next, it was as if they were about to collapse on top of us. But instead they lifted us right up and, when we were on the crest, let us down again with a bump, like the carousels I’ve been on here in Italy, at the amusement park. But, right then, it wasn’t amusing at all.
So the situation was this: Rahmat and me rowing like mad toward Greece (or in the direction we thought Greece was), while Soltan and Liaqat were rowing toward Turkey (or in the direction they thought Turkey was). The argument degenerated into name calling, and we started hitting and elbowing each other like complete idiots, in a dinghy that was just a little dot in the middle of nowhere, while Hussein Ali was crying and saying, What’s going on? I’m doing my job of throwing out the water and you’re hitting each other? Row. Please, just row.
I think it was then that the boat appeared. Or rather, not the boat, the ship. A very big ship, a ferry or something like that. I