Made on Earth (14 page)

16 December 2007

“There!” Adrame calls out.

“There’s something there!” his neighbour says.

“No, there’s nothing there. No, no,” comes the gentle answer.

Everyone was warned that you start seeing land or high mountains, when they’re actually a couple of clouds or the crests of high waves. They’re in your imagination. The more exhausted you are, the more incredible the things you see become.

They sing for hours on end. Always the same lilting songs, “Houh-hohoho-houh – soon we will arrive. Houh-hohoho-houh – in beautiful Europe . . .”

Everyone laughs freely. Then some of them sing something more sombre. “Will we see our villages again? What will happen to my parents, who will care for my brothers and sisters? Allah – what have you got planned for us?”

The women begin to cry and the men stare out to sea.

The body warmer protects Adrame from the sea spray and the cold of the night, but it turns out it doesn’t stop you from sweating at all. He is extremely hot, and his face has started to burn.

17 December 2007

All night long fishing trawlers sail back and forth. One of them is the
Alhambra
from Spain. First mate Miguel follows large swarms of fish using the radar, but he cannot see small boats.
Those damn fish
, he thinks to himself,
one minute they’re here, the next they’re over there, then they dive out of reach or they’re in the shallows near the coast
.

Suddenly Miguel spots a huge swarm in his sights. They could be sardines! Miguel quickly changes course and in doing so heads straight towards Adrame’s refugee boat. The boat full of people appears in front of him as if from nowhere. Miguel looks up at the exact moment the first ray of sunlight hits the sea. He sees something red like a buoy in the distance. Watch out! Miguel turns the rudder. This tiny change in course means the trawler misses the refugee boat by just a few metres. As the trawler sails past the boat, Miguel can see that there’s no light on the front of the refugee boat’s hull.

“These damn Africans!” Miguel screams. Then he looks at the people crammed on board the tiny fishing boat. Oh, more poor people who’ve sold their souls! Miguel crosses himself and regrets cursing. He thanks the Holy Mary for being born a Spaniard. The Senegalese and Mauritian workers at the back of the trawler working the nets forget their work for a moment. There is silence as the Africans on board the trawler look at the Africans on board the refugee boat.

They don’t greet each other, no one says a word. Why would they? There’s nothing to say. The men working on the fishing trawler have already made the hardest journey of their lives, and they know all too well that many of the refugees will pay with their lives. In spite of this, there is no way that any of them would try to change the refugees’ minds.

The refugees look at their fellow countrymen working like slaves. They think to themselves:
If I make it through this journey, I will never step on a boat again, and definitely not a trawler working in all sorts of weather conditions
. The men on the trawler know that this is what the refugees are thinking. But they know better: when you’re actually in Europe, it’s completely different to how it’s talked about at home. You can’t get a proper job without papers. Maybe you’ll manage to find work on a farm during harvest time, but on a trawler you’ll have your own bunk and a secure job that brings you no trouble. As the men and women think these thoughts, the refugee boat is lost in the semi-darkness. The workers on the boat look at one another. Slowly, they start working again.

18 December 2007

For four days they’ve had virtually nothing to eat, and the drinking water was used up 48 hours ago. Adrame is so weak that he can barely see, and his bones have begun to hurt from sitting in one position for such a long time. The old man is the only one who doesn’t complain. “I worked for forty years. I did everything. There’s not a dirty job that I haven’t done, except be an executioner or a state president. Now I’m seeing the world – sitting down. Wonderful.”

Adrame has the sinking feeling that the boat driver has lost his way. He only lets the motor run for about an hour a day and tries to tell the direction the current is moving by hand.

Sometime later, the old man becomes contemplative too: “Adrame, you have to promise me two things in case my journey ends sooner than yours. Here is my lucky charm, an amulet I wear around my neck, take it. Perhaps you will find my children and you can give it to them. Or you can give it to your children. Inside this bag are my festive clothes. I want to wear them when you release me into the sea and I drift amongst the dolphins and the whales . . . Can you promise me that?”

“Yes,” Adrame whispers. He cannot say anything more.

Date Unknown, December 2007

Have they been travelling for four or six days? Adrame cannot be sure. He doesn’t care anymore. His bottom hurts terribly. He’s so squeezed into his spot on the boat that he cannot shift his weight from one side to the other. Strangely, he doesn’t feel hungry, but his throat is so dry it burns. There hasn’t been any drinking water for a very long time. Millions of litres of water slosh around them – saltwater. His mouth is so dry that he can’t feel his tongue anymore. At one point he came close to chewing it off. They should be there by now. The journey should only have lasted four days. The driver hasn’t used the motor since the night before. Presumably there’s no more petrol, but no one dares to ask. Every now and then, someone starts moaning or complaining but for the most part, the boat is silent.

21 December 2007

Finally, a holiday! Steve Miller from England lies back on his sun lounger on one of Tenerife’s glorious beaches. He doesn’t get to go on holiday very often. But once a year, he and his wife indulge in a couple of days of sun, sea and sand. As it’s just before Christmas there’s only one place in Europe that is warm enough for a beach holiday: the Canary Islands.

Last night’s quick trip to the hotel bar turned into a long one. At some point in the evening he managed to make his way back to his hotel room. His wife took no pity on him, and woke him up shortly after 9:00am. “Come on, get up, otherwise we’ll miss breakfast! You can sleep on the beach all day!”

“I’m going to bed early tonight,” he moans. That afternoon Steve sleeps for three long hours on his sun lounger on the beach.

At the same time, 60 kilometres away, the refugees are feeling dispirited. Their faces are burnt and they are too weak from thirst and hunger to moan or complain. For the last few hours Adrame has wondered if the old man is still alive. He hasn’t moved for some time. He hasn’t even sighed. Do old, exhausted people move in their sleep? He doesn’t want to disturb him. If he’s only sleeping he doesn’t want to wake him, and if he is dead, he can no longer help him. And then he sees something on the horizon. But he knows that they are only cursed waves and cursed clouds and cursed spirits leading him astray.

22 December 2007

Steve falls on to his sun lounger and lets out a sigh. Today he feels
much
better. The sea lies before him and his wife, his crime novel and his sun cream are next to him on the hot sand. He paddles in the waves for a little while and then lies back down. He doesn’t make it very far through his novel and falls asleep after one chapter. Later on he lays the book down next to him and looks out at the horizon. There is only dark blue water ahead of him: an endless expanse of sea, with rippling white-capped waves. Once again he goes for a swim, reads a page or two of his novel, dozes, and then has a look around. At some point in the afternoon he notices a dot on the horizon. It’s a boat.

He shakes his head, sits up and takes another look. The boat is still there – it’s coming slowly towards them, and seems to be being propelled by something. He can only make out that it’s a small, open fishing boat. Perhaps it’s a local fisherman returning with the day’s catch. A quarter of an hour passes and it’s now clear that there are many small dots hovering over the boat.

“You see that boat over there?” his wife says, interrupting his thoughts. “Do you think that it’s . . .”

“A boat full of refugees!” he finishes the sentence for her.

The closer the boat comes the more they can see. There’s 40, 50, perhaps 60 people sitting in a wooden African boat. In this little nutshell, they have managed to travel across the Atlantic from Africa. The motor has stalled on the boat, and those who still have enough strength are rowing towards the coast with planks of wood. In the meanwhile, everyone else on the beach has seen the boat too. No one’s reading or sunbathing anymore – everyone looks tense and anxious, wondering what will happen. Around 50 metres from the beach the surf starts getting heavy, and the boat shakes helplessly in the waves. Some of the refugees jump into the water and begin splashing with their arms, panicking. Maybe they can’t even swim!

A few people from the beach jump into the water to help save the choking refugees. Steve has his digital camera with him and, without any further thought, unzips his beach bag and pulls it out. But what he’s filming chills him to the bone.

Some of the people on the beach are strong swimmers and succeed in grabbing the panicking refugees under the arms and pulling them out of the water. The first refugees on the beach are huddled together. They haven’t even got the energy to celebrate. Their expressions are empty, but their eyes are full of fear: they cannot believe that they have survived. Most of them are shaking from head to toe. The camera zooms in on a very young refugee wearing a red body warmer. He is shaking all over. Nevertheless he kneels and tries to pray. He has his arms stretched partly in front of
him and is surely thanking Allah that he has survived.

Gradually, ambulances and the coastguard start to arrive, and the holidaymakers go back to the hotel deep in thought. No one feels like sunbathing or swimming anymore. That evening a man comes into the hotel bar and approaches Steve. “I’m from the BBC. Did you film the refugees this morning? What do you want for the footage?”

“What do I want?”

“Well, I can offer you five hundred pounds for the footage and the rights to show it.”

Steve thinks for a minute about what you could buy with £500 pounds, and then answers: “I don’t want any money. How about you just buy me a beer instead?”

“Just one? OK, drinks are on me tonight!” says the reporter.

The beer doesn’t taste quite right though. Steve wanted to leave the world behind him and relax on this holiday. But even in a place as isolated as the Canary Islands, the problems of the world can still find us.

10

How We Could Change the End of This Story Together

15 March 2008

This evening I have to send the rest of this story to my publisher. There’s just about enough time left to check the text for errors and check the layout, and then it will be sent  off to the printers. Most publishers don’t use local printers anymore. Often, books aren’t even printed in the same country, but in Italy, Slovenia, India or China.

So, what happened to Adrame and the red fleece? Before I answer this question, something has to be said – although most of the readers of this book will have already realised what I am about to say. This is a story and not a commentary on actual events. My body warmer did actually exist though. And the places that appear in this story are places I have got to know whilst working as a journalist. I have checked and verified every step of this journey, from the drilling of petroleum and the fabric manufacturing processes in Bangladesh, to the arrival methods of refugees on the Canary Islands. How deep is the entrance to the harbour in Dubai? What’s the name of the street in front of the station in Chittagong? How many breaks do workers get in the textile factories of Dhaka? How much is a space on a human trafficker’s boat?

In my opinion, this story really
could
have happened. Because I didn’t have the time or the money to follow my red fleece around the world for two and a half years, my
imagination had
to help me out a bit. While writing this story, I always tried to be realistic about each step of the journey and what might happen next.

Let’s return to Adrame. What could have happened to him after he reached Tenerife? The Spanish authorities have very little information about individual refugees who have made it to Europe. Even less is reported about them in newspapers and on television. In 2006, no less than 30,000 Africans succeeded in reaching Europe on small fishing boats. By 2011, this number had been reduced to 5,433 people due to the introduction of much tougher border patrols. Despite this, around 450 illegal immigrants enter Spanish territories every month. What happens to them?

Announcements made by the Spanish government and reports in the Spanish media tell us this much: the refugees that make it alive are either taken to internment camps on the islands, or shipped to camps on the Spanish mainland. They are released after 40 days by order of the Spanish government: they leave as free people in the free world.