In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [49]
Once the Olympics started, there wasn’t any more work, and we spent the mornings and afternoons walking around, without knowing where to go or what to do. That was when I started talking about leaving again.
London, they all said. You have to go to London. Or Norway, if you can. Or why not Italy? If you went to Italy you had to go to Rome and, once you were in Rome, you had to go to Ostiense, which apparently was a station. There was a park there with a pyramid where you could find Afghans. For me, the important thing about Italy was that a boy I knew, someone from my village, from Nava, had managed to get there. His name was Payam. I knew he was in Italy because someone had brought the news to our village. I didn’t know which city he was in and I didn’t have a phone number or anything, but if he was in Italy, maybe I could track him down. It would be difficult, but you never knew.
I’m leaving, I said to Jamal one day. We were with two other friends, having an ice cream. I have some money saved from the work I did for the Olympics, I said. I can buy a ticket and go as far as Corinth, or Patras, and there try to sneak onto a lorry.
I know a trafficker who might be able to help you, said one of the boys.
Really?
Of course, he said. But first, listen, you should still try asking the Greek authorities for political asylum for health reasons.
What do you mean, political asylum for health reasons?
Didn’t you know? There’s a place, a clinic, where they take care of you if you’re ill, and do tests on you if you think you are. And if they find out there’s something wrong with you, they give you asylum because of your illness.
Is there really a place like that? Why didn’t you tell me before?
Well, for instance, because they have to give you injections. Not everyone likes taking tests and being given injections. But if you’ve already made up your mind to leave, what difference does it make, right?
Do you know anyone who got a residence permit that way? Personally, I mean?
Yes, a Bengali boy. He was lucky. You may be, too.
All right.
All right what?
I’ll go, I said. Tell me where it is.
It was an old building with colored windows, nothing like the other clinics I’d seen. You had to buzz the third floor on the entryphone. Jamal and the others would wait for me outside, because it would take a couple of hours. I buzzed. They opened without a word, and I went upstairs.
The entrance certainly looked like the waiting room of a clinic. There wasn’t a counter or a nurse to ask for information, but there were four or five men sitting on chairs, two of them reading magazines, the others staring into space. I sat down, too, and waited my turn.
Suddenly a door opened, as if there’d been a gust of wind (there were four white doors) and a woman came out. She was naked. Stark naked. I opened my eyes wide, then lowered them, I would have liked to put those eyes of mine in my pocket, and put out the fire in my cheeks, but her appearance had caught me so off guard that any position I assumed, any move I made, any breath I took would have seemed awkward and out of place. I was petrified. The naked girl passed quite close to me, and I think she gave me a sidelong glance and smiled. Then she went through another door and disappeared. A man stood up and followed her. But then another woman appeared, and she was naked, too. All at once there were something like a dozen of them, coming in and out. In the end—
In the end, Enaiat?
I stood up and ran out. I ran down the stairs, six steps at a time, and opened the front door, still running, and almost got myself knocked over by a car—I heard a Greek horn and a Greek shout—and that was when I saw the others, including Jamal, on the other side of the street, laughing. Holding their stomachs. They were laughing so hard, they could hardly stand. I swear that was the