They’re flying.
Lionel’s up at the front of the bus beside Mahmoud, who’s doing the driving. One hand is holding onto Mahmoud’s seat and the other onto a pole. He looks through the window in front of him and sees the bus suck up the dusty track beneath. He glances at the speedometer. The needle isn’t working, but it could be forty kilometres. Per hour.
They’re flying.
This is without question the ugliest bus Lionel has ever seen. It might be the oldest bus he’s ever seen too, but he can’t be sure because it’s so ugly it defies all other classification. At the front it’s curved and notched, like a carrot. Its windscreen is made of two panes of glass, divided down the middle, so it must be older, from the sixties or maybe even the fifties. Beneath this, and just above the bumper, is a radiator grille so unusually small and narrow that the round headlights are perfect as the corners of a mouth. The undersized grille lends the vehicle the features of a surly caterpillar.
A violent judder shakes the bus. Whatever suspension it once had must have given up the ghost long ago. The judder is followed by a short, unpleasant crunching as parts of the undercarriage plane the tarmac, and the engine grumbles when Mahmoud shifts up a gear. As the bus pulls itself together and accelerates, Mahmoud adjusts his captain’s hat.
“Sorry about your job,” Lionel says to Mahmoud.
“What?”
The bus may be old, but it’s louder than it is old.
“I said, I’m sorry about your job,” Lionel shouts.
“Why?” Mahmoud shouts back.
“Well, you used to be an admiral.”
“I’m still an admiral,” Mahmoud shouts, pointing enthusiastically at his hat. The bus jolts and the hat slips down over his face.
Lionel looks through the side windows. They were kept small, as if glass were more expensive than metal. You wouldn’t need to do much to turn this into a prisoner transport vehicle. The Turkish countryside drifts past. It’s not so different from other landscapes they’ve passed through: hot and vast, rocky and dusty. There are more buildings here and the roads are better. They just seem shockingly bad when you’re in an ancient bus.
But at least they’re in a bus. They’re flying towards their destination. Who’d have believed it?
It was the Turks’ idea. They called him and asked whether he was the guy off the telly. Yes, he replied, he was the guy off the telly.
“Is it true what they’re saying?” A voice, neither young nor old, calm, composed, energetic. A man. He spoke the sort of English Lionel knew from British people.
“What are they saying?”
“They’re saying you’re planning on coming into Turkey with a mass of people.”
“We’re planning on passing through.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We’re planning on passing through. That is correct.”
“Then I’m afraid I have to inform you that we cannot allow this.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I do.”
“What does that mean?”
“I know that you can’t allow us to do it.”
“So what?”
“I’ve no experience in these matters. But we’ve been on the move for a long time now. We’ve crossed many countries. And nobody has actually given us permission to pass through, but then again nobody has really troubled us either. The same thing could happen with Turkey.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry, I might not have expressed myself very well. We know, of course, that we’re making a huge wish come true here, so it’s only fair if we make other people’s wishes come true in return. Just tell us what we can do for you, and what we can do for whoever else—”
“I don’t think you understand. This is the Republic of Turkey. What you’re talking about might work for planning consent. But not for hundreds of thousands of people. Let me spell it out: if you try to cross our border, no matter where, we will stop you. With all the means at the disposal of a sovereign state.”
“Yes,” he said, “then I suppose that’s what you’ll have to do.” He remembers how his temples were throbbing. Because he had always known this moment would come. The moment when money no longer helped. The moment for talking. “Then we will use our lives.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’ll keep marching. You see, for us it makes no difference. It’s the same as stepping into a tiny rubber dinghy. Putting one’s life at risk. For us your country is like the sea. We don’t expect the sea to let us pass either. We just keep going and see whether we die.” At this point he took an especially deep breath, even though he didn’t need to; it was merely for emphasis. “You would have to kill us.”
“Then we will kill you. Do you understand?”
“Then you will kill us. I do understand.”
The line went silent for a while.
“Then you will kill us like the sea kills us. But I’ll say it again: it makes no difference to us, it might even be quicker. It’s cheaper at any rate, because we don’t need life vests. It will only make a difference to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody blames the sea for its actions. The sea is the sea. With you it’s different. You are the Republic of Turkey. You have a choice.”
“You too. You could stop.”
“And grow old and die on your border? We won’t do that. We will keep marching and force you to make a decision. You will have to decide whether we live or die.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Lionel decided to go all out: “And just so there’s no misunderstanding, we’re going to make your decision as difficult as possible. We’re going to have the world’s cameras alongside us. And the first people you’ll have to kill will be our women and children.”
Then the voice on the other end said, “I’ll pass on this information and get back to you.”
“Hey!” The bus is filled with shrieks and laughter. Lionel grabs onto the strip of metal between the two windscreen panes. A few children have hit their heads and are crying. Mahmoud turns around and shouts, “Brakes really well, doesn’t it?”
He crowbars his way into first gear and accelerates.
It took them just under a week to call back.
“Let’s say you weren’t shot at when you tried to cross the border,” the ageless man said. “What would you do then?”
“Are you talking about me, or all of us not being shot at?”
“Just you.”
It was something Lionel had been obliged to reconcile himself to. Malaika, this kind-hearted sheep of a camel, would never let the two of them go on to Germany alone. “Well, I’d wait with the others until I was shot at too, something like that.” He rolled his eyes and then said, “I’m afraid I can’t abandon this undertaking.”
He wasn’t sure what was more difficult to accept: the realisation that, for better or worse, he was inextricably connected with this refugee trek; or the phlegmatic observation from the other side. “That’s what we thought. No, what would you do if you weren’t shot at, all of you?”
“Surely you’ve seen on T.V. what we do. We just keep walking.”
“And where do we, where do you get the assurance that you’ll be able enter the next country – Bulgaria, say – at the other end of Turkey?”
“Well, I think we’ll walk through Turkey and then do the same at the next border. That’s when we’ll find out if Bulgaria’s going to open fire on us.”
“And you think it’s going to work again?”
“I think it’ll work even better.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, we can tell the Bulgarians that not even the Turks shot at us.”
He heard a brief laugh on the other end of the line.
“I know letting foreigners into your country isn’t necessarily a popular move. But you’re not risking much. You’re not responsible for the Bulgarians. In the worst-case scenario you’ll have a heap of corpses lying around on your border. But we’ll make the burial easy for you because we’ve got our own diggers in tow.”
“They’re quite something, your diggers. In fact your entire organisation is remarkable. At the moment you’re covering fifteen kilometres a day. That’s going to take for ever. Turkey can’t let hundreds of thousands of people prowl unsupervised around the country for months on end.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s the structure of our march. That’s our food, our water. And fifteen kilometres per day is really pretty good.”
“Would you be prepared to board buses?” the voice said. Lionel told him he’d call back in a couple of days.
A man is tending a cow at the side of the road. Lionel’s surprised the man isn’t tending a second cow or at least a goat too. He’s seen several men like this, each with one cow. He wonders how this country can be so much better off than his own, but maybe two people could share a cow and live off it, so long as there’s no civil war, putsch or famine. Mahmoud hoots a greeting; the man gives a friendly but slightly apathetic wave. It almost looks as if the cow is minding the man.
He got together with Mahmoud and a few others to work out how they were going to allocate the tankers, but then the Turk said there was enough water in Turkey, provided they stayed on the move. Negotiations were carried out with “if” and “perhaps” prefixing most sentences. They would send buses with soldiers, to which Lionel replied that his people wouldn’t board them unless they could drive themselves. Then the Turk said that they’d have to seal off the route using the military, to which Lionel replied that this was fine in theory, but they’d check on their phones that it really was the way to Bulgaria, then the Turk said, or Greece, and Lionel said, or Greece.
If absolutely necessary, the Turk said, it might be possible for the refugees to do the driving, but then they might have to go past a few areas where there were other refugees, and Lionel said this was nothing new, but it was already hard enough keeping the payment system ticking over. And the Turk said it might not be necessary any longer because food, water, fuel and electricity could be provided, this was definitely a possibility if, in return, they were to drive past a few refugee camps. Lionel did some more calculations and realised they’d need more buses and some mechanics for repairs, if they wanted to be sure of a speedy transit. The Turk did some calculations of his own and said Lionel might be right, and in any case it was a good idea because they’d want the buses back afterwards. Then, without knowing why and off the top of his head, Lionel said, “Unless the Bulgarians need them too.”
He just came out with it, but the moment the words passed his lips he was thinking exactly the same thoughts as the Turk. That the Bulgarians – and anyone else for that matter – would be far happier to let someone into and through their country if they were going at forty or fifty kilometres per hour rather than just fifteen per day. That the Bulgarians would feel more comfortable if they were given refugees neatly packaged in buses rather than in an endless, confusing procession. And if, rather than having to rearrange everything, they were able to pass on what they’d been delivered.
“Or the Greeks,” the Turk said.
“Or the Greeks,” Lionel said.
And that was that. Until they got to Turkey, Lionel had not known what to expect. He planned their march to the border as if those calls had never taken place, but then, on the other side, the buses were actually waiting. As the first buses drove off he called the Turk to express his thanks. The telephone number no longer existed.
Mahmoud slows down. The bus in front is braking as it has to let a man and a cow across the road. The bus is the same model and just as ugly. Sticking out from its rear is an engine block, looking like an extra-long arse, but an arse of such rare hideousness and cropped vertically. Whoever designed this vehicle must have completely lost interest at this stage and decided “the bus ends here”. Then he stuck the name of the bus onto it and went home.
Mahmoud brings the bus to a halt behind the other one. “Let me out here,” Lionel says. He’s going to get onto the bus behind. He thinks it’s better if people don’t always know which bus he’s in. Mahmoud opens the door and gives him a wave as he gets out.
When Mahmoud pulls away Lionel looks at the writing on the cropped arse: ICARUS.
Of course, he thinks. The name of a boy who can fly.