In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [44]
The supermarket. The supermarket was paradise. The supermarket was my target. All I had to do was go in, take some food, nothing too difficult, fruit would do, and clothes, maybe bathing trunks, if they had any. Young boys walking around in bathing trunks in a seaside resort is one thing, but young boys walking around in their underpants, well, that’s another matter entirely.
A police car passed. I hid behind (more inside than behind) a flowerbed. I squatted there for a few minutes watching the movements at the front of the supermarket, to see if I could get in without attracting attention, and came to the conclusion that there was no way I could go in through the front. But I could always go around the back. So I flattened myself against the walls of the houses like a lizard, slid under a gate, getting a couple of nasty scratches on the stomach in the process, and finally climbed a metal fence. I entered the supermarket like a ghost, taking advantage of the fact that the assistant unloading boxes of snacks was too busy to notice me. As I placed my bare foot on the cold, slippery tiles of the section of the supermarket selling household goods, I heard voices I recognized coming from behind a shelf. I poked my head around.
Rahmat, Hussein Ali and Soltan were strolling along the aisles, watched from a distance by a bewildered young blond assistant.
They’d disobeyed. I had no idea how they’d managed to get there before me. I stepped out, signaling to them to act normally and pretend we didn’t know each other.
Each of us took something for himself: food but no clothes, because they didn’t sell them. People were looking at us in astonishment, wide-eyed. We had to hurry. But, when we tried to leave, we found the door of the storeroom at the back was blocked. There was still the main door, but to get out that way we’d have to make a run for it. As we sped down the fruit and vegetable aisle, then the toiletries aisle, then some other aisle I can’t remember, I wondered if the person yelling in Greek was the manager, and if the manager who was hurling insults at us in Greek had picked up his Greek telephone to call the Greek police. Oh, if only those three idiots had waited for me! I would have done everything differently, much more discreetly. Instead of which, we hurtled out through the glass door—without crashing into anyone, thank God—but no sooner had we taken a few steps along the pavement, surrounded by children with ice cream running down over their fingers and little old ladies in silvery sandals and people with scared looks on their faces (although I doubt young boys in their underpants could really scare anyone), than a police car slammed on the brakes—just like in the films, I swear—and three huge policemen got out.
I hardly had time to even be aware of this police car before I was inside it. With Hussein Ali. In the backseat. Just the two of us.
The others had apparently managed to get away.
———
Pakistanis?
No.
Afghans?
No.
I know you’re Afghans. Don’t mess me around.
No Afghans, no.
Oh, no Afghans no? Afghans yes, you little rats. Afghans. I can recognize you from the smell.
They dragged us to the police station, and shut us up in a little room. We could hear steps in the corridor and voices saying things we didn’t understand, and I remember that what I was afraid of more than anything else, more than being beaten or put in prison, was being fingerprinted. I had heard all about this fingerprinting business from some boys who worked at the stonecutting factory in Iran. They’d told me that in Greece, as soon as they caught you, they took your fingerprints, and if you were illegal you were screwed, because after that you couldn’t ask for political asylum in any other country in Europe.
So Hussein