Chapter 5

We waited for the doors to open at any moment. There was no food and all that remained in abundance was water from the pipe, pouring into a concrete basin on the floor before running outside along a drain. During the scorching midday heat, we would dip our heads under its powerful stream and the children would splash noisily beneath it.

One of the women had also fallen ill. She had barely moved for a whole day and her strength was dwindling rapidly. Beads of sweat shone on her forehead. I went to sit with her and the other women sharing her room, and exchanged a few snatches of conversation with them. Most were from West Africa and spoke French not English. As we didn’t speak any of the same African languages either – my Amharic and Tigré as foreign to them as their Wolof and Hausa to me – we basically resorted to mime. The ailing woman, however, was an Iraqi Kurd, and we spoke to each other in Arabic. As we sat chatting quietly, I perceived terrible doubt and fear in her dull eyes, clearly the result of the last few tense hours. She was not alone either. A short time later, an East African named John suffered what appeared to be a nervous breakdown, throwing his clothes off wildly in the courtyard. The strength needed to force them back on him was almost beyond us, in our weakened state. And at that moment, the three men entered the building at last.

‘Cover up man! Have you no shame?’ the boss shook his head, watching as we struggled to restrain John.

The Iraqi woman, meanwhile, told me that her husband had ordered her to set off ahead of him, promising to join her at the end of that summer or the next, as soon as he had raised enough funds. He had insisted that they had money only for one of them to travel. But for some time, she told me, she had been experiencing terrible pains all across her body which had grown steadily worse over the last two days.

‘You will soon be better, Madam!’ one of the Senegalese girls chipped in in broken Arabic. ‘The ground will soon swallow your pain,’ she exclaimed, tapping her fingers against the tiled floor. The woman smiled and grasped the girl’s outstretched hands in her own. I left them to console one another in the universal language of human emotion, hoping that my presence had somehow helped shake them from their silence.

But the woman’s state continued to worry me as she grew thinner and more alarmed. If, God forbid, her condition deteriorated, I had no idea how we would get her to a hospital. And even if we did manage to get her there, doing so would no doubt alert the police to our presence and we would soon find ourselves behind bars, our wretched dreams frustrated. I resolved to tell the smugglers about her when they next visited. They must have experienced similar problems before and would surely look after her. People always get sick, after all.

The sun was blazing and the tiled courtyard floor was red hot, as though laid on a bed of burning embers. And yet, in such wretched circumstances, my desire for Terhas grew inexplicably intense. I resisted my stubborn urges, however, and didn’t even try to steal a kiss. I simply couldn’t understand this sudden rush of desire. Was it a natural instinct, driving me to seize what was within my grasp before I embarked on a journey that might prove to be my last? Was I one of those single men who are suddenly overcome by the need to preserve their line when they sense that the end is nigh? As death draws near, it is said, their penis swells, and remains erect even after death.

There is one evening that I remember with particular longing. I had been searching the dog-eared pages of my dictionary for a word in a line of Shelley, when I felt Terhas settle next to me, helping me locate the word. Some years later, I wrote down what happened next in a notebook which I have open before me now: ‘He felt her settle next to him and a shiver passed through him as their bodies touched. “I must calm this madman down!” she whispered to herself, feeling her own body pulse with desire. Then, his fingers began to travel across her, like keys searching for their locks. In a single moment, their souls lit up with passion.’

When I eventually dragged my body from Terhas’s side, dripping with sweat, she gazed after me in astonishment, as though I had unexpectedly reminded her of her dormant sensuality.

I could hardly believe how little I knew of her life and family. Her father remained a particular mystery. She had met him for the first time when she was seventeen and I had heard completely conflicting accounts of his life from Terhas and Assgedom. Assgedom had told me about him during our desert journey, including many unpleasant details that were strangely absent from Terhas’s version. I can’t be certain which was closer to the truth. How could a father who embraced his daughter so lovingly on their first meeting, tears flowing like autumn rivers down his regretful face, be the same person as the hard man who had abandoned her pregnant mother, hoping to gain riches through a life of banditry which, according to Assgedom, had brought him nothing but misery?

‘Mr Asmelash began his life trading salt between Eritrea and the Ethiopian Highlands,’ Assgedom had told me. ‘He was moderately successful, but the filthy rich criminals he encountered in the area enticed him to try his luck at that line of work instead. He soon joined one of the gangs of cattle thieves working in the Eritrean Lowlands, in Gash-Barka. Thieves aren’t always prosperous though, particularly when they encounter herders who’d rather lose their life than their cattle. So after years of marauding, he returned with nothing to show but several bad injuries.’

On the whole, I am inclined to disregard Assgedom’s cynical account and accept Terhas’s instead. Assgedom’s narrative was clearly clouded by the blame which all societies lay at the feet of men who disappear when their wives are pregnant.

The men finally arrived just before midnight, delivering a vast quantity of bread, tuna, cheese, fizzy drinks and red harissa in a small pickup truck. They ordered us to unload it quickly, before the next group arrived. As we did so, I tentatively approached the tall gangly one, asking when we might expect to leave. He remained reticent.

‘I don’t know, no one knows,’ was his only answer.

Roughly an hour after we had finished unloading, I heard what sounded like a large coach pulling up in front of the building. A key turned on the outside and a flood of people poured into the courtyard. What I had initially thought was a single vehicle turned out to be three busloads, depositing a total of one hundred and fifteen people. Men and women of numerous nationalities thronged together: Africans and Arabs from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt (among whom was a pharmacist known to his compatriots as ‘Doctor Arafat’) as well as Iraqi Kurds and Bangladeshis, who had fled their places of work by night. As before, the smugglers set up camp in a lighted room, recording the newcomers’ names and taking their money.

I woke early the following day, a terrible habit I seemed unable to shake. Waking early and finding no tea or coffee seemed somehow worse than all our other predicaments. I had a nagging sense of deprivation, compounded by the real knowledge that my cigarettes would soon run out. The absence of such pleasures – despite their simplicity – caused me silently to curse myself and the whole world.

I went out into the courtyard where the new arrivals were stretched out asleep, some using bags as pillows and others balanced awkwardly on the bare bedsteads. We spent the third day cooped up inside. The men paid a brief visit at midday and I urged them to help my Kurdish friend. I also suggested they might consider bringing some tea and coffee.

‘We don’t offer luxury items here,’ one of them replied, ‘This isn’t a five star hotel! Our only responsibility is to put you on a boat.’

I handed him a twenty dinar bill, ‘I’ve run out of cigarettes. Just bring me a carton of smokes.’

‘That I can probably manage,’ he said, as he took the note and prepared to leave.