The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [134]
“I wanted to rescue my father.”
“Idiot,” Dogan said angrily, but in his eyes Sammy Nilsson also glimpsed something other than just anger. There was sadness and desperation.
“He’s in prison?”
Zero nodded.
“What do you do, Dogan? Do you have a job?”
“I’m training to become a bus driver,” he said.
“That’s great,” Sammy Nilsson said.
“Our dad is a bus driver,” Zero said.
The session ended just after ten in the evening. Before the brothers were allowed to leave the station, Sammy Nilsson drew the older brother aside.
“Dogan, you probably remember what I said. Zero is a sensitive boy. He loves his father and probably you too. Be a brother to him now. Help him! Your father is gone, you have to shoulder the responsibility. Don’t say anything to him tonight. Don’t scold, don’t do anything more than make him a cup of tea, or whatever you normally drink. Have tea together when you get home. Just you and him.”
Dogan said nothing but nodded. His dark eyes glittered momentarily.
“My mother makes the tea,” he said after a compact moment of silence.
Sammy Nilsson smiled.
“You’ll be fine,” he said and held his hand out.
“Thanks for the Fanta,” Dogan said, but he did not shake the officer’s hand.
“Dogan,” Sammy said, “what does kar mean? That thing you said to your brother.”
“Donkey,” Dogan said, and smiled for the first time.
Fifty-Four
It was early evening, dusk was falling over Uppsala. Thousands of black birds circled above the rooftops. The streets were becoming empty.
There was still life and movement, though, outside Dakar. Patricio Alavez had been standing behind a tree for the past several hours. Earlier in the day he had kept a lookout over the restaurant, but he had not seen a single person come or go. Finally, he had summoned his courage and gone up to the front door and seen that the restaurant only opened at five o’clock. He realized that a Mexican, even one who was well dressed and sober, would attract attention in the long run if he stood in the same spot for several hours at a time, so instead of hanging around the restaurant, Patricio found a park where he tried to get some sleep. But the excitement associated with the escape had not yet worn off, and he had trouble being able to relax.
Now he was hungry, tired, and anxious. He was worried that the fat one or tall one would not even turn up. He could of course walk into the restaurant and ask, but was worried about being recognized. Yet what would they do? Call the police?
In a way, he regretted having escaped, but everything happened so fast and he had not had time to think. The prison routine had been safe. Now he was a fugitive without friends, with Swedish money in his pocket but without the means to stay out of trouble in the long run. He would most likely receive a severe sentence for his escape, but that did not scare him. Eight or fifteen years in prison did not matter.
To him, his life had ended when he left the village and Oaxaca to fly to Europe. Many times he had cursed himself for his naïveté. How could he have believed that a gringo would help a Mexican get rich? Manuel used to say that it was the earth that was important, that to leave the earth was to leave one’s family and one’s origin.
What does it mean to be rich, he asked himself while he studied the people who went in and out of the door to Dakar, but he found no answer. He knew what having no wealth meant. What kind of life would it be to remain in a condemned village where almost everyone was getting poorer and poorer? Why did the young ones flee to Oaxaca, Mexico City, and the United States?
Not even Manuel made much noise about this. After Miguel’s assassination, he had been as if paralyzed for several weeks and had then undertaken a frenetic project to clear new ground for coffee bushes, and that on a mountain side that was so steep that no one had ever tried it before.
Manuel went there every morning and came back absolutely exhausted late at night. Nothing of the joy of new planting was in his eyes. Shredded by the thorns, his ripped hands, steaming with sweat,