In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [53]
Of course, I replied. Do you know where he lives?
In Turin.
I wrote down the mobile number on a piece of paper and dialed it without even leaving the booth.
Hello?
Yes. Hello. I’d like to talk to Payam.
Payam speaking. Who’s that?
Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.
Silence.
Hello? I said.
Yes, I can hear you.
This is Enaiatollah Akbari. From Nava.
Silence.
Is that you, Payam?
Yes, this is Payam. Are you really Enaiatollah? Where are you calling from?
Rome.
That’s not possible.
Why not?
What are you doing in Italy?
What are you doing in Italy?
Payam really couldn’t believe it was me. He asked me trick questions about our village and my relatives and his. I answered everything correctly. In the end he said, What are you planning to do?
I don’t know.
Then come to Turin.
We said goodbye and I went to Termini station to catch the train. On that occasion, I remember, I learned my first word of Italian. I got an Afghan to go with me, someone who had been in Italy for a while and spoke the language quite well, to buy the ticket and make sure I got on the right train. He came into the carriage with me, looked around, chose a kind-looking lady and spoke to her. This boy has to get off in Turin, he said. The word he used was scendere. As it happens, shin is an Iranian word meaning “stone.” It stuck in my mind, and I found I could get my mouth around the words shindere Turin, shindere Turin. If I said that, I’d avoid mix-ups, like when I’d come to Rome.
During the journey the lady asked me if I had the number of someone who could come and pick me up from Porta Nuova station. I gave her Payam’s number and she called him to make arrangements. She told him what time we’d be arriving and where. Everything went well. In Turin, surrounded by trolleys and bags and a party of children coming back from a trip, Payam and I barely recognized each other. We hadn’t seen each other since I was nine (maybe) and now I was fifteen (maybe) and he was two or three years older than me. Our language sounded strange to us the way it never had when we were children.
———
It was Payam who went with me to the Office for Foreign Minors, without even giving me time to get used to the shapes of the houses or the coolness of the air (it was the middle of September). He had immediately asked me—I still felt the warmth of his embrace on my chest—what my intentions were, because I couldn’t stay undecided for too long: indecisiveness wasn’t healthy for someone who didn’t have asylum. He knew this because, when he arrived, he didn’t have asylum, but he was lucky and some people had helped him. I looked outside the window of the café we’d gone into for a cappuccino—I know a place where they make the best cappuccinos in the city, he’d said—and I thought of the boy in Venice and the lady on the train to Turin. I’d liked both of them so much, they made me want to live in the same country where they lived. If all Italians are like that, I thought, then this might be a place where I could settle. To tell the truth, I was tired. Tired of traveling all the time. So I said to Payam, I want to stay in Italy. And he said, All right. He smiled, paid for the cappuccino, waved to the barman, who he seemed to know, and we set off on foot for the Office for Foreign Minors.
The sun was setting and there was a strong wind sweeping the streets. By the time we got there it was late and the office was closing. Payam spoke on my behalf, and when the lady told him there wasn’t a place for me in any of the social housing, and that for a week I’d have to fend for myself, he asked the lady to wait a moment, turned and repeated every word to me. I shrugged my shoulders. We thanked her and left.
He was living in social housing and couldn’t put me up.
I can sleep in a park, I said.
I don’t want you to sleep in a park, Enaiat. I have a friend in a village just outside Turin, I’ll ask him to put you up. So Payam called this friend of his, who immediately agreed. We went to the bus station together and Payam told me I shouldn’t get off until I saw someone stick their