The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe (7 page)

To the police, they were illegal aliens; to the Red Cross, they were people in need. It was unsettling to live with such a duality and with constant fear in the gut.

Last night, at about 2 a.m., they had sneaked aboard a cargo truck while it moved slowly in the line of vehicles waiting to enter the Channel Tunnel.

“You mean you jumped onto a moving truck?” exclaimed Ajatashatru, as if that were the only really important part of the story.

“Yes,” Assefa replied in his deep voice. “The trafficker opened the door with a crowbar and we jumped inside. The driver must never even have realized.”

“But that’s very dangerous!”

“It would have been more dangerous to stay in France. We had nothing to lose. I guess it’s the same thing for you.”

“Oh, but you’re completely wrong! I’m not an illegal alien, and I had no intention of going to England,” said the Indian. “I told you: I am a very honorable fakir, and I became trapped in this wardrobe while I was measuring its dimensions in a large furniture store. I had come to France to buy a new bed of nails, and—”

“Oh, give me a break,” the African interrupted, not believing the Indian’s preposterous story for a moment. “We’re in the same boat.”

“In the same truck,” the Indian corrected him under his breath.

An edifying conversation then took place between these two men, who seemed to be divided by everything, beginning with a wardrobe door, but whom fate had finally brought together. Perhaps it was easier for the illegal alien to open up to a door—a little confessional booth improvised amid the lurches of the truck—rather than having to look into the face of another man who might judge him with a frown or a blink. Whatever the reason, he began to tell the Indian everything he had felt in his heart since the day he had decided to undertake this long, uncertain journey. People like to confide in strangers.

Ajatashatru thus learned that when Assefa left his country it was not for a reason as trivial as buying a bed in a famous furniture store. The Sudanese had said goodbye to his loved ones in order to try his luck in the “good countries,” as he liked to call them. His only mistake was to have been born on the wrong side of the Mediterranean, where poverty and hunger had taken
seed one day like twin diseases, corrupting and destroying everything in their paths.

The political situation in Sudan had plunged the country into an economic stagnation that had led many men—the strongest—to risk the dangers of emigration. But away from home, even the sturdiest men become vulnerable: beaten animals with lifeless expressions, their eyes full of extinguished stars. Far from their houses, they all became frightened children, and the only thing that could console them was the success of their venture.

“To have your heart pounding in your chest,” Assefa said, hitting his thorax. And a powerful sound echoed even within Ajatashatru’s wardrobe. “To have your heart pounding in your chest each time the truck slows down, each time it stops. The fear of being found by the police, huddled behind a cardboard box, sitting in the dust surrounded by crates full of vegetables. The humiliation. Because even illegal aliens have a sense of honor. In fact, stripped of our belongings, our passports, our identities, it is perhaps the only thing we have left. Honor. That is why we leave on our own, without women or children. So that we are never seen this way. So that we can be remembered as big and strong. Always.

“And it is not the fear of being beaten that twists our guts. No, because on this side of the Mediterranean we do not suffer beatings. It is the fear of being sent back to the country from which we have come, or, worse, being sent to a country we don’t know, because the white people don’t care where they send you—what matters for them is getting you out of their country. A black man brings chaos, you see. And this rejection is more painful than being beaten, because that only destroys the body, not the soul. It is an invisible scar that never vanishes, a scar with which you must learn to live, to survive, day after day.”

Because their will was unshakable.

One day they would live in one of the “good countries,” no matter what it took. Even if the Europeans had no desire to share the cake with them. Assefa, Kougri, Basel, Mohammed, Nijam, Amsalu: six among the thousands who had tried their luck before them, or who would try it after them. Always the same men, the same hearts pounding inside those starving chests, and yet, in these lands where there was so much of everything—houses, cars, vegetables, meat and water—some considered them as people in need, and others as criminals. On one side the charities, and on the other the police. On one
side those who accepted them unconditionally, and on the other those who sent them home unceremoniously. There was something to suit all tastes in this world. As Assefa repeated, it was impossible to live with this duality and the fear in the gut of never knowing what was going to happen next.

But it was worth it.

They had abandoned everything to go to a country where they believed they would be able to work and earn money. That was all they asked: to find some honest work so they could send money to their families, to their people, so that their children no longer had those big, heavy bellies like basketballs that were at the same time utterly empty, so that they could all survive under the sun without those flies that sat on their lips after first sitting on cows’ arses.

Why are some people born here and others there? Why do some have everything and others nothing? Why do some live while others—always the same ones—have the right only to shut up and die?

“We have come too far now,” continued the cavernous voice. “Our families have put their trust in us, they have helped us to pay for this journey, and now they are waiting for us to help them in return. There is no shame in traveling
inside a wardrobe, Ajatashatru. Because you, you understand the helplessness of a father when he cannot even put bread in his children’s mouths. That is why we are all here, in this truck.”

There was silence.

This was the second electric shock that the fakir received to his heart during this adventure. He did not say anything. Because there was nothing to say. Ashamed by his own base motives, he thanked Buddha that he was on this side of the wardrobe door so he did not have to look the man in his eyes.

“I understand,” the Indian, deeply moved, managed to stammer.

“Now it is your turn, Aja. But first, we are going to take you out of there so you can drink some water and eat some food. Judging by your muffled voice, it must be a thick crate.”

“It’s not because of the crate,” the Indian whispered to himself, swallowing a sob.

The fakir did not cry his eyes out, but he still felt a heavy weight descend upon his frail shoulders. It was as if he no longer lay inside the wardrobe but underneath it, crushed by the weight of revelations and remorse, of the hardness and injustice of life. In the time it took for him to be freed from his metal prison, Ajatashatru came to realize that he had been blind up to this point in his life, and that there existed a much darker and more deceitful world than the one he had seen for himself.

Life had not been a walk in the park for him. Strictly speaking, he had not had what most Westerners would call a very happy childhood or a model upbringing. First of all, his mother had died and his father had abandoned him, and then he had suffered the abuse and violence that a somewhat boisterous child can unwittingly attract in environments where only the fittest survive. He had been propelled into the ugliest and hardest kind of adult life without enjoying
a real childhood. But when it came down to it, he had had a place to live and people who loved him: his cousins, and the woman next door who had raised him like her own son. He didn’t know if he should include his followers in this category. In reality, perhaps, those people feared him more than they loved him. It was because of all this that he had never before felt the desire to leave his native country. He had sometimes been hungry, it was true, and he had paid dearly for that—in his case, with his mustache, because he had always managed to save his hands from amputation. But, after all, a fakir’s life was supposed to be painful, wasn’t it? So what was he complaining about?

As the wooden crate cracked under blows from the crowbar, Ajatashatru imagined the Africans leaping, catlike, out of the night, and landing in the moving trucks that had brought them here. Assefa had admitted that they would slip inside the trailer of a truck while it was stopped in a turnout at night, preferably when it was raining so that the sound of the rain would cover the sound of their movements. Ajatashatru imagined them hiding behind containers, chilled to the bone, out of breath, desperately hungry. But all journeys have an end, even the hardest and most grueling, and they were about
to arrive at a safe harbor. They had succeeded in their mission. They were going to be able to find work and send money to their families. And he was glad to be with them as they reached the finish line, to witness the happy ending to their courageous adventure.

“You’ve got to the heart of the matter, Assefa. When they don’t give you what you deserve, you have to take it yourself. That is a principle which has always governed my life,” he added, without making it clear that this noble principle included theft.

The Indian had just come to the realization that he was surrounded by the true adventurers of the twenty-first century. Not those white yachtsmen in their €100,000 boats, taking part in races and solo round-the-world trips that no one but their sponsors cared about. Those people had nothing left to discover.

Ajatashatru smiled in the darkness. He, too, wanted, for once in his life, to do something for someone else.

Mohammed, the smallest of the Africans, had found, on the floor, the crowbar that the trafficker had used to open the truck’s doors. In the rush, the man must have dropped it and forgotten it there, before he had jumped out of the truck.

So Nijam and Basel, the two strongest, used it to smash the hinges of the big wooden crate in which the Indian—an illegal alien, whether he liked it or not—was enclosed. Fifteen minutes later, they had dispensed with the crate and were down to the blue metal wardrobe, which looked similar to a locker in an airport or a football team’s changing rooms.

“I don’t know how you can still be breathing,” said Assefa, quickly stripping away the layer of bubble wrap that covered the wardrobe.

Finally the wardrobe door opened and Ajatashatru appeared, magnificent amid the fragrance of his urine.

“You look just the way I imagined you!”
exclaimed the Indian, seeing his traveling companions for the first time.

“You don’t,” the leader replied bluntly, perhaps expecting to see the Rajasthani in a sari with a large knife on his belt, riding a small-eared elephant.

For a moment, Assefa contemplated the fakir who stood in front of him: a tall man, thin and gnarled like a tree. He was wearing a slightly soiled white turban on his head, a crumpled white shirt and shiny gray trousers. On his feet were a pair of white sports socks. He looked like a government minister who’d been stapled repeatedly in the face and then shoved, fully clothed, in the washing machine. Basically, nothing like Assefa might have imagined an illegal Rajasthani migrant would look, had he ever taken the time to imagine what an illegal Rajasthani migrant might look like.

Nevertheless, the African took him in his arms and hugged him tightly before offering him a large, half-empty bottle of Evian and some chocolate bars bought in boxes of twelve at the Lidl supermarket in Calais.

Ajatashatru, panicking at the idea of dying of dehydration, grabbed the bottle and downed it as the others watched in amazement.

“You must have been locked in there for a long time,” said Kougri.

“I don’t know. What day is it?”

“Tuesday,” replied the leader, the only one who knew what day it was.

“What time?”

“Two thirty in the morning,” replied Basel, the only one with a watch.

“In that case, I may have been panicking for nothing,” said Aja, giving the empty bottle back to Assefa.

Then he grabbed a chocolate bar. Just in case …

“All right,” said the leader. “Now that you’re here with us, and now that you’ve had something to eat and drink, and given that we have a good two hours, in the likely scenario that this truck is heading toward London, it’s time for you to tell us your story, Aja. From the beginning. I want to know what drove you to make this journey, even if your reasons are not very different from ours.”

His voice had softened, as if confiding in the Indian had created an invisible bond between them, the beginning of a friendship that nothing now could weaken. Chewing his upper lip, the Indian wondered what he could tell his new friend … apart from the truth. His people, too,
had banded together to pay for his trip, but only because he had duped them and stolen from them for years. How could he admit to Assefa that his last trick had been to feign rheumatism and a slipped disc so that they would cough up for his plane ticket so he could buy the bed of nails, which he planned to resell at a higher price in his home village? How could he admit that to a man who had suffered during every second of his grueling and uncertain journey?

To his surprise, Ajatashatru began to pray. Buddha, help me! he begged in his head, while the huge black man waited. It was roughly at that moment that the truck braked suddenly and the doors opened.

The first thing Ajatashatru saw in England was a blanket of white snow in the black night. There was something unreal about the scene, particularly given that it was summer. So what he had heard was true: it really was cold in this country. The North Pole was only a few degrees of latitude away, after all.

As he got closer to the open doors, however, the Indian noticed that the temperature was actually quite warm for a summer night in the Arctic, and that what he had initially taken to be snowflakes were, in fact, just polystyrene beads blown from the packaging of his wardrobe by the draft of air.

The fakir shaded his eyes with his hand. Blinding stars, which soon turned into car headlights, were pointed at him.