The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe (11 page)
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Authors: Romain Puertolas
“Where are those bags going?” Gustave interrupted him, pointing to the luggage that continued to move along the carousel.
The baggage handler went over to look at a
passing stroller and read on the green-and-white label attached to it:
“FCO.”
“FCO?” Gustave repeated, uncomprehending.
“Those bags are going to Fiumicino Airport, in Rome.”
As soon as the engines roared and the airplane took off, Ajatashatru realized that: 1) he was in an airplane; and 2) the suitcase in which he had hidden had not just arrived, as he had thought, but was about to depart.
For someone who had never traveled before this adventure, it seemed the fakir could now do nothing else. Travel broadens the mind, according to the famous saying. At his current rate of progress, Ajatashatru’s mind would soon be so broad that his head would no longer fit inside the wardrobes and trunks which had, so far, been his means of conveyance.
He had been in Europe for twenty-four hours, but it seemed like an eternity. He had already set foot in France, England and Spain. And by tonight, he would be somewhere else again. Was Buddha going to condemn him to being an accidental illegal alien for the rest of his life? Or would he finally be allowed to stay this time?
He had no idea. He just hoped the airplane wasn’t going to New Caledonia. He could not imagine spending the next thirty-two hours crammed inside a four-foot trunk with nothing but half an
ensaïmada
to eat.
At least he wasn’t upside down. That would be unbearable. The trunk lay on its side, which was conducive to getting some sleep, even if he had his knees in his mouth. He hoped that this trunk would not become his coffin. A beautiful Vuitton coffin.
Because, while it was true that he wished to be buried—unlike other Hindu fakirs who continued the age-old tradition of cremation—he would prefer his death to be postponed as long as possible. He had told Marie, during their meal, about his wish to be buried. You never knew. If a terrorist carrying a bomb had blown the Ikea cafeteria to smithereens and Marie had survived, at least she would have been able to grant the poor Indian’s last wish.
“I would rather be cremated, personally,” the Frenchwoman had told him. “I’m too afraid of waking up inside a coffin.”
“And waking up in an urn wouldn’t scare you?” the fakir had retorted.
The idea that he might die without ever seeing Marie again haunted Ajatashatru’s mind. He
remembered her smile, her beautiful hands, her face like a porcelain doll’s. He promised himself that he would call her as soon as he arrived at his destination, wherever that might be.
Let me survive, he prayed, and I will become a good, generous and honest man, just as she imagined me.
At that very moment, Buddha replied with a sleepy bark.
There was a dog in the baggage hold. And to judge from its plaintive whining, it was not a frequent flyer.
With his agile fingers, Ajatashatru searched blindly for the little mechanism that he had engaged when he closed the trunk after getting inside. If he had been able to close it from the inside, then he ought to be able to open it in the same way.
A few seconds later, he burst from the suitcase like an overripe banana escaping its skin. As luck would have it, there were not so many bags in the hold that his exit was blocked. Finally free, he stretched his legs for a while, massaging his lower back and his calves. One Indian airline used the slogan “Travel with us and we’ll treat you like a (holy) cow.” After traveling in the baggage hold of an airplane, locked inside a trunk, the fakir understood that the concept of a cow might not have the same meaning in every country.
The Indian stood up, but the ceiling of the hold was far too low for someone of his size, and he was obliged to double over. So he decided to crab-walk in the direction of the whining. Crab-walking toward a dog struck him as rather original.
As it was pitch black in the hold, Ajatashatru felt his way forward. Each time he came upon an obstacle—one of those UOs (unidentified objects)—he pushed it out of the way or moved around it, depending on how heavy it was.
Soon he arrived in front of two glistening eyes, which looked at him unblinking through the darkness. He liked animals. He was not afraid of them. No one who spent his early childhood cuddled up to a pet cobra is likely to be afraid of any other animal, and certainly not a dog, man’s best friend.
Ajatashatru held out what was left of the
ensaïmada
toward the cage.
“Nice doggy, nice doggy,” he said, just in case the animal preferred the taste of human flesh to that of brioche.
He felt a large, cold, wet tongue, with a texture like veal escalope, greedily licking his fingers.
The dog’s whining ceased. It seemed just
as soothed by the piece of
ensaïmada
as by this unexpected company.
“Do you happen to know where we’re going? Because I have no idea. I don’t even know if we’re going south, north, east or west, if we’re flying over sea or mountains. And I’m also slightly illegal. Although I doubt whether I’ll feel that fear in my gut when the airplane slows down and comes to a halt. The European police don’t actually stop and search planes midflight, do they?”
The dog, apparently clueless on this subject, did not reply.
In the darkness of the hold, the power of the Indian’s senses had increased tenfold, just as they had when he was trapped inside the wardrobe during the journey on the truck to England. To his great displeasure, one of those heightened senses was his sense of smell. The filthy animal stench made his nostrils quiver, but he then realized that it was not coming from the cage in front of him. He was the one who stank. Although he was not resistant to tiredness, hunger or thirst, our fakir was highly resistant to showers. Sometimes he would go several weeks without taking one. While it was true that, for the last two days, washing himself had been impossible, he could
easily have done so on any of the five days preceding his trip. But he had not even wiped his face clean. The last time he had felt water on his head, it had been rainwater. And it doesn’t rain very often in the Tharthar Desert!
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, had meditated under the bodhi tree for seven weeks. Had
he
taken showers?
As he had time, and as no one was going to disturb him here, Ajatashatru crouched on the metal floor of the hold in the lotus position, facing the dog’s glistening eyes, and began to meditate on his new life—the life of a good, generous and honest man which awaited him at his next port of call. He had given the dog some
ensaïmada
, but that in itself was not enough to constitute a complete change. So, who could he help? And how?
The fakir had often wanted to write.
He did not lack for ideas. He had a very active imagination, and his eventful life probably helped too. In any case, that unbounded imagination had served him well when it came to inventing magic tricks that made the unreal real and the impossible possible.
He had never set his stories down on paper, though. Perhaps the act of writing was more complicated than he thought, as he had always put off attempting it.
But maybe that time was now at hand? Maybe the honest and lucrative activity he was seeking in order to kick-start his new life was that of a writer? Not a public writer … No, he could not imagine himself sitting on the pavement, a typewriter strapped to his chest, waiting for a passerby to commission him to write a love letter. No, he was more ambitious than that. He wanted to write best sellers. Well, it was a more
reasonable expectation than dancing the foxtrot or being a jockey. And if it didn’t work out, he could always sell Eiffel Towers in Paris.
“What do you think, my friend? Should I try to become a writer?”
The dog barked three times.
Ajatashatru took that as meaning: “I think that’s a great idea, mate. Go for it!”
On the cover there would be an old-fashioned yellow car with the word
TAXI
painted on the side, speeding through the streets of New Delhi. There would be two people. The driver: a big, bearded man with unkempt hair. And a young man on crutches, running in front of the taxi, and running very fast in spite of his handicap.
Ajatashatru smiled in the darkness.
The mad taxi driver was clearly a fictionalized version of the Parisian gypsy with his cooler, while he himself was the cripple crossing the street.
The title would be something like
God Takes a Taxi
. Now that he had the cover and the title, the fakir was ready to begin his novel. Wasn’t that the usual procedure?
So he took off his shirt, picked up his wooden Ikea pencil and, there in the darkness, began writing on the fabric the story that was being born in his mind.
CHAPTER ONE
He did not understand why it was forbidden to travel on an airplane with a fork when it was perfectly possible to kill someone with a pen. He did not understand why it was forbidden to travel with a knife in one’s hand luggage when all the passengers in business class were given one—a metal one, too—so they could eat their in-flight meals with distinction. In fact, he did not understand any of these security measures when it was so easy to kill someone with one’s bare hands. If this logic were pursued, shouldn’t everyone have their hands—those dangerous weapons—amputated before boarding the plane? Either that, or they should be made to travel in the plane’s baggage hold, like the animals, a safe distance from the cockpit.
(Like this dog who is listening to this story right now, and whose glistening eyes are my only landmarks in this blackness?
God Takes a Taxi
will recount the tribulations of a young, blind suicide bomber, an Afghan terrorist by the name of Walid Nadjib, a few minutes before
boarding an airplane to England. Why blind? Perhaps because I am in darkness at the moment. You only write what you know, after all. The scene will take place in Colombo Airport, in Sri Lanka. But, anyway, back to the story …)
The man felt increasingly nervous, repeatedly postponing his passage through the metal detector that separated him from the secure area by locking himself in the toilet. Hidden in the empty tube of his white cane were enough explosives to blow up the airplane on which he was about to travel. Nobody suspected blind people.
His plan was foolproof, but the man was now assailed by an unconquerable fear. It was not fear of death, because he was so convinced of the righteousness of his cause that it would be an honor to die in its defense. What worried him was the thought of being arrested before he was able to carry out his plan.
But he had thought of everything. He had spent six months fine-tuning every detail of his last journey. He had managed to get hold of a high-quality fake Sri Lankan passport and a real fake short-stay
British business visa. He was wearing a gray, tailor-made suit and carrying a briefcase in which he kept the documents relating to his fictitious company, a car-paint firm that he was going to present to the car manufacturer Vauxhall. He was also carrying samples of the latest colors offered by his company, including puma red and tortoise blue. A myriad of color tones … carried by a blind man! But he had learned his role by heart, so he would be able to answer any question they asked him. He had done everything in his power. The rest was up to the will of Allah.
Without removing his black glasses, the man splashed a little water on his face. Had he not been blind, he would have seen in the bathroom mirror an elegant, clean-shaven old man. Nothing about him suggested he was about to blow up an airplane somewhere over the Arabian Sea, just after takeoff.
After feeling around on the wall, Walid Nadjib pulled a few paper towels from a large metal box and used them to dry his hands. Then, walking without hesitation, he made his way to security.
He knew the route by heart. His cane had swept through every square inch. He had walked this way dozens of times, accompanied at first and then alone. Finally, he reached one of the two lines that led to the metal detectors, bumping into the person waiting in line in front of him, and then apologizing. He removed his belt. An airport employee came to his aid and helped him with the rest: his suit jacket and his briefcase.
A few seconds later, it was his turn to pass through the metal detector.
(All right, so I’ve made a start. Now to keep going. The dog barks three times to let me know that’s what he’s waiting for.)
CHAPTER TWO
The story now moved to a small Sri Lankan prison. Our blind terrorist had been arrested, and this was where he had ended up, without any kind of trial. He had not been sentenced to death, but a prison sentence in this hellhole amounted to the same thing.
Walid Nadjib had been provided with a
bhikkhu
that must once have been red but, after being washed so many times, had now faded to a Guantánamo orange.
The Afghan learned that it was the gown worn by monks in this country, and that it was given to prisoners in the hope that it would purify their souls. Anyway, it didn’t matter to him if the gown was a washed-out red because he would never see it.
In his welcome package, there was also a rough bath towel, a packet of ten little bars of soap (it was not advisable to attempt to pick up the soap if you ever dropped it in the shower) and a plastic comb.
So, that day, the man found himself in a twenty-square-foot cell. As he was old and blind, he was put with just one other prisoner. The other tenants slept four or even five to a room. There was not enough space for everyone here.
His cell mate was called Devanampiya.
“Like Devanampiya Tissa, the Sinhalese king, founder of Anuradhapura. Pleased to meet you, foreigner.”
The Sri Lankan held out his hand to the new arrival in a friendly fashion, but the man did not react. Then, noticing the man’s dark glasses, Devanampiya realized that he was blind.
The Afghan spoke a bit of Sinhala, that language in which the tongue strikes hard on the palate and emits little snapping and clicking noises. This helped with the first conversations. Afterward, Devanampiya decided to teach the blind man his language. They had time. And soon, they were able to have deep discussions about the world, God and the need to make God’s voice heard in the world.
The Sri Lankan, even if he was not in agreement with his companion’s more radical thinkings, did agree that people should be guided by faith and religion, and that the lack of spirituality in the West could only cause damage to the overall balance of things on Earth. There was no religion on other planets, and the results of that could be easily seen: no life beyond this planet. It just went to show.
One morning, as they were coming
out of the showers, the blind man asked Devanampiya if there was a window in their cell. The Sri Lankan thought his cell mate was going to share an escape plan with him.
“I often hear sounds from the town—car engines and bicycle bells—and I smell the scent of sweet peppers from the market. You, who are lucky enough to have eyes and to see the world as it truly is, could you describe to me what you see through that window? That would be so soothing for me.”
Each morning, from that day on, Devanampiya would tell the blind man what was happening outside. He explained that the window had three thick bars, but that there was enough space between them to see the marketplace in front of the prison. In the middle of the square, there were stalls, covered by tarpaulins on rainy days or hot and sunny days. The merchants spread out their brightly colored food on large wooden trays. These stalls were constantly surrounded by a swarm of customers, and the atmosphere was so effervescent that it was easy to forget
that, a few yards away, behind thick stone walls, life had simply stopped for a hundred or so prisoners.
On the left-hand side of the square there was a large house, probably belonging to some rich man. If you stood on tiptoes, you could see the edge of a swimming pool, where sometimes a lady of European origin, her skin dazzlingly white, would swim, wearing very little. But she would disappear almost immediately behind tall trees that had undoubtedly been planted there in order to preserve the inhabitants’ privacy and tease the prisoners’ imagination.
On the right-hand side, there was a train station, from where you could often hear the metallic screech of the trains’ brakes on the rails.
Between the prison and the market, there was a wide street, where all kinds of vehicles circulated. Carts pulled by cattle, modern cars, rickshaws, lorries filled with merchandise, and buses packed with people—hanging from windows, lying on roofs, piled up on running boards. There were bicycles—lots of bicycles, with two or even three people on them—and very
old mopeds from England. And, everywhere you looked, people, people, yet more people, as far as the eye could see.
With a vocabulary that was impressively diverse for someone in his position, the Sri Lankan would describe, square inch by square inch, what he saw between the bars. When Walid asked him to explain a word, he would stop his story for a few minutes to become a teacher.
The Afghan remembered everything.
Each day, he would ask for news of the European lady.
“Isn’t she swimming today?”
“No. I haven’t seen her for several days.”
“And the third merchant from the right, the fat man whose ears are so big you can see them from here, has he sold out of pancakes?”
“Yes. His wife, who has long plaited hair, is cooking more in a frying pan on a camping stove. She needs to be careful she doesn’t set fire to her hair!”
“I can smell it from here (the odor of pancakes, not of burning hair). Mmm … that makes me want to take a bite.”
Then the blind man would take a deep breath of the foul potato gruel that he had been served, imagining that it was the long-haired lady’s sweet pepper pancakes.
That was how the two men spent their days. Walid became fluent in Sinhala, and Devanampiya was happy to reveal the view, and the life outside, to the blind eyes of his cell mate.
In this way, a great friendship was born between the two men.
Devanampiya’s precise, sparkling descriptions punctuated the lonely hours of life in prison. And on days when it rained, and the market was covered with colored tarpaulins, obstructing the view, or on Tuesdays, when there was no market, the blind man still encouraged his cell mate to describe the scene for him in as much detail as possible.
One day the Sri Lankan, raising himself up on tiptoes by holding tightly to the bars of the window, told Walid about a strange event that had just occurred outside.
“A man in his forties, with a mustache,
wearing a white shirt and beige trousers, and walking on crutches, was crossing the street (which was crazy, considering how much traffic there is!) when an old-fashioned yellow car—a sort of New York taxi—sped toward him. Seeing that the car was not going to be able to stop, the young cripple threw away his crutches and ran to the pavement on the other side, where the prison was, without being hit by the car. It was unbelievable!”
“God takes a taxi!” exclaimed Walid, who had been forbidden to call out the name of Allah. “It’s a miracle! So tell me what’s happening now …”
“I can see a crowd of people, but because it’s on our side of the street, it’s difficult to see much. My view is blocked by the guard tower. Anyway, there’s a huge commotion going on down there. Even the guards have come out into the street.”
“Good, good,” the blind man whispered.
Nothing else of interest happened that day.