In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [55]
The one problem was language, but when I realized that Danila and Marco liked to hear me tell my story, I started talking and talking and talking, in English and in Afghan, with my mouth and with my hands, with my eyes and with objects. Do they understand or not? I asked myself. Be patient, I answered myself, and carried on talking.
Until the day when a bed became free in a hostel for migrants.
I went there by myself, on foot.
There’ll be an Iranian lady there who can act as your interpreter, they said.
Good. Thanks.
It’s a place where you can have a quiet life, they said.
Good. Thanks.
Do you want to know anything else?
Study. Work.
Just go there first, then we’ll see.
Good. Thanks.
But there wasn’t any Iranian lady. They’d told me I could have a quiet life there, which was true, I could. But the place itself wasn’t quiet at all. There was constant shouting and quarreling. And besides, it was more like a prison than a home. As soon as I arrived, they confiscated my belt and wallet with the little money I had. The doors were closed from the outside, and sealed. You couldn’t go out (and you can imagine how accustomed I was to freedom, after all those years spent going all over the place by myself). I mean, I appreciated everything, it was still a clean, warm place, and there was pasta and things like that for dinner, but I wanted to work or study—preferably study—instead of which two months went by, under me, like water flowing under a transparent sheet of glass, and for two months I didn’t do anything, didn’t even speak, because I still didn’t know the language, although I tried to learn it from the books I’d been given by Marco and Danila. The only distractions were watching television, in silence, and sleeping and eating. In silence.
Doing nothing wasn’t what I’d planned, and I couldn’t receive visits, not even from the family who’d looked after me. But after two months Danila and Marco started to worry and arranged for a youth worker named Sergio, who wasn’t only a youth worker but also a friend of theirs and someone who was known to the home, to pick me up on Saturday afternoons and take me to spend some of my free time (and I had plenty of that) with the boys from a youth group.
Sergio came to fetch me, and that first Saturday was a wonderful day. When I got to the youth group, I found Payam there. He took me by the hand and introduced me to everyone. Danila was also there. So I got a chance to talk to Danila, and tell her, thank you thank you, but I wasn’t really very happy in that place, for these reasons, that I hadn’t come all this way just to eat, sleep and watch television. I wanted to study and work. At that point Danila made a face like someone who’s thinking about something, and the thing they’re thinking about is important, but at that moment, even though it seemed as if she had something to say to me, she didn’t say anything. The following week, though, when I went back to the youth group, she came up to me, took me aside and in a low voice, as if the words weighed on her, asked me if I’d like to go and stay with them, because they wanted to do something to help me, and they had plenty of room, as I’d seen, and if I liked that room they could give it to me. Not only would I like to, I replied, but it was a really fantastic idea.
So Danila and Marco sent off the request. A few days later, the time it took to get through the paperwork, they came and fetched me from the home. They told me I was being fostered. They explained what that meant, that I had a house and a family, three dogs, my own room, and even a wardrobe where I could put my clothes. They explained