Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
A staggeringly powerful story of migration, struggle and sisterhood, weaving together the stories of three women with very different backgrounds but one shared goal: to reach safety in Europe Dima fled war in Syria. Semhar is running from conscription in Eritrea. Shoshana was driven from Nigeria by climate change and drought. Their stories are three modern-day odysseys; three journeys through unimaginable pain and hardship in the hope of reaching safety; three tales of struggle and bravery that reach a dramatic and deadly climax on a crowded migrant boat in the middle of a stormy sea. Louis-Philippe Dalembert is an award-winning Haitian poet and novelist, who writes in both French and Haitian Creole. His works have been translated into several languages. The Mediterranean Wall was longlisted for the Goncourt Prize and is the first of his novels to be translated into English. He now divides his home between Berlin, Paris and Port-au-Prince.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 416
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
3
5
To the friends of Lampedusa, who fight to give dignity back to the living as well as the dead.
6
7
I do not know what world exists on the other side of this sea, but each sea has another shore, and I will get there.
cesare pavese,
The Business of Living
Yo vann tout sa yo genyen lakay
Pou yo vin chache on mèyè vi
Lè yo rive se nan prizon yo mete yo.
[…]
Gen nan yo k pa menm rive
Reken manje yo depi nan wout
Move tan bare yo sou dlo.
They sold everything they had
To come to find a new life.
Upon arrival they were thrown in prison.
[…]
And some never did arrive.
Sharks devoured them on their way.
And storms at sea took them by surprise.
from the song liberté by magnum band
8
CONTENTS
12
CAST OFF!
night had just fallen on Sabratha when one of the jailers entered the warehouse. The sun had suddenly retreated, giving way to an ink-black sky in which a rather pale crescent moon and the first stars of the bordering desert were beginning to appear. The man was holding a flashlight, which he directed at the pile of bodies tangled in a heartrending mess right on the rough concrete floor or, for the luckiest among them, on some mattresses that lay scattered around. At the first sound of the key in the lock the girls had moved very close to each other, the scorching heat inside the building notwithstanding. As if to protect themselves from a danger that could only come from outside. The nauseating smell of the supervisor’s cologne came rushing in to mix with the musty odors inside. He inspected the faces contorted from daily bullying and deprivations before focusing the light 14on one of them, immobilizing it with terror. The building resonated with a ‘You. Out!’ accompanied by a commanding motion of his index finger. The girl he’d pointed to hurried to comply, gathering herself and the bag with her measly belongings together, as she’d been told to, at the risk of being forced to rise by boots kicking at her sides.
Normally the jailer, the same or a different one, would choose three or four, bringing them back a few hours later, or sometimes at the end of the day, shoving them like bags of shit amid the others lying huddled on the floor. Most of them would find refuge in a corner of the room, enclosed inside their pain or nestled in the arms of someone who still had a little compassion left to give. Some let out a stifled sob but not for long. Out of modesty or dignity. They all knew the hell the ‘returnees’ had been through from the moment they’d been dragged from the warehouse until they came back to the group. Even the most recent arrivals knew, since the older ones had clued them in. If need be, the state of their companions in misfortune, holding their underbelly with one hand, their buttocks with the other, their face sometimes swollen, was enough to give them a sense of what was awaiting them the next time the key turned in the lock.
That night, the prison guard pointed at many more than usual, shouting at them, manhandling them to get them up and out faster. ‘Move! Move! Bring your stuff. Go on, move your ass.’ God only knows what criteria they had for their selection, the evacuation happened in such a rush. As luck would have it Semhar and Shoshana were part of the group. The two had become inseparable except to go to the toilet, 15 or on the day the captor decided to take away one and not the other. Were it not for the difference in physical appearance and origin—Semhar was a small sharp Eritrean while Shoshana was a stoutly built Nigerian—one would have said they were like a baby koala attached to its mother. They slept glued to each other, shared what little they were given to eat, exchanged words of solace and hope in English, in which Semhar was quite fluent although it wasn’t her mother tongue. They each prayed in a language unfamiliar to the other. And would hum songs the other didn’t know. ‘Whatever happens,’ Semhar thought, ‘at least we’ll be together.’
All in all, there were almost sixty of them, now outside, clustered together in the dark waiting for the Cerberus’s orders. They knew, whether from experience or from hearsay, that trying to flee would be of no use. And even if they’d manage to escape the vigilance of their tormentors, where would they go? The depot in which they were held was at some distance from the nearest town; a long walk on a clay road where it seemed only the prison guards’ 4 x 4’s and the pick-up trucks that had transported them to this wreckage of a building ventured, forgotten by heaven and men. These were the only engine sounds they’d heard until then. No chance of running into a charitable soul that might take the risk of helping them.
The most intrepid ones had paid a high price, perhaps even with their lives. No one had any further news of those daredevils. Unless they’d reached their goal at last. Who knows! God is great. Elohim HaGadol. Or maybe they’d reached their final destination and found a land where milk 16 and honey flowed. After wandering for months, no years, on the roads of the continent. Braving wind and high water, forests, deserts, and a whole range of calamities. All of it to end up in this bloody land they hadn’t chosen, held hostage in this nameless penal colony subjected to all kinds of hard labor. Despite their own compliance in the ransom from their loved ones who’d stayed behind. As they waited for a crossing that depended solely on the whim of the smugglers.
The women remained quiet, grouped together, barely daring to breathe until other flashlights cut through the darkness, showing three armed men surrounding them. A few more minutes of waiting and then from the mouth of the overseer came the order to advance:
‘Move!’ Still in that English as sharp as a cudgel on the back of a slave, followed by a command shouted in Arabic: ‘Yallah! Yallah!’ A hundred yards further on they were ordered to get into the back of one of two pick-up trucks. The rear panel already open to expedite boarding. Despite the mad scramble, Shoshana and Semhar managed to get into the same vehicle. They hadn’t even settled down when a loud explosion paralyzed the group, making them think an escapee had been fired on. Actually, one of the smugglers had only shut the tailgate behind them with a loud crash. Once the women were loaded onto the truck, crammed so tightly they could barely move a muscle, the jailer sat down in front next to the turbaned driver and an armed man, while the other two traffickers slipped into the second pick-up. Signaling departure, he moved his hand across the window and hit the side of the truck. Flooring it, headlights off, they 17 drove for half an hour before reaching the sea, whose presence Semhar and Shoshana guessed at first from the smell, then from the rolling sound of the surf. They had no concept of time or day.
Earlier that day, in the old Italian quarter of Tripoli about sixty kilometers away, air-conditioned minibuses, with about twenty seats each, were waiting in front of the entrance to a three-star hotel, watched over by a charming porter in uniform. Loud voices preceded the arrival of a group of whirling children mocking each other in an Arabic dialect quite unlike that of Libya. Elegantly dressed adults followed closely behind them. They were pulling suitcases on wheels that they left close to the vehicle to which they were assigned so the porter could put them in the trunk. The men led the way, iPhones stuck to their ear. The women flaunted brand-name handbags, taking out a small mirror to replace a lock of hair or a lipstick, unless they were busy on their phones, tapping them with carefully manicured hands. Every now and then they’d take out a piece of candy or a cookie, handing it to a child who’d rushed over for a snack, before they were called to board one of the tinted-window minibuses.
Dima, her husband Hakim, and their two daughters were among the first to get settled in the bus. Their contact had alerted them the previous evening that the grand departure would happen the next day. ‘Are you sure this time? Not another lie?’ Dima had asked. ‘On the Koran of Mecca,’ the guy had answered confidently. It was 16 July 2014. They’d 18 been waiting for a month. The girls wouldn’t stop asking her when they were leaving for Europe, but Dima was no longer able to give them a convincing response. She’d used up every credible answer to the point of returning to basic formulas like: ‘In two days, Inshallah, rouhi,’ in the hope that they’d forget by then. One day her older one, a furious Hana, told her that Allah obviously wanted the family to stay confined to the hotel, all four sleeping in the same room; she, without any of her friends, having to share a bed with her younger sister Shayma while at home they each had their own room. ‘Stop blaspheming!’ Dima had yelled. ‘Don’t let me hear you like that again, or else watch your backside.’ And added: ‘The ways of Allah are unfathomable. Only He knows what it is He wants for us mortals.’ She was aware that she’d masked her own helplessness with anger. What choice did she have? Besides, when the guy had come to tell them they should be ready because they were leaving the next day, she was unable to hide her joy or to hold back her tears when he left.
She couldn’t bear hiding any longer in this single room, just eighteen square meters. After the first week she was fed up playing at being a tourist in Tripoli and its surroundings. It was not the reason for her presence in the Libyan capital. Sick of the Saint-Gilles Citadel, the Clock Tower, the Al-Harajb souk, the Ezzedine Hammam, the city’s thousand and one mosques (may Allah forgive her). She was sick of forcing pretend smiles, of spending time with people whom she wouldn’t even have greeted in Aleppo, of having tea or dinner with them. ‘We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?’ Hakim would say to ease the pain. ‘And besides, they are our compatriots.’ 19 ‘So what?’ Sick of embraces on the sly while the children slept, she who loved getting laid the right way. This phase was supposed to last three days, a week at the very most. But it was a month now that they were moldering in this seedy room. Before long they’d be turning into mushrooms. She was within an inch of falling apart, of throwing in the towel and going home to Syria. Come what may! And then came the word of their departure. Finally.
That night Dima had trouble falling asleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything she’d left behind: her family, her friends, her country, a solid job. By leaving Tripoli, the second phase of their journey, she’d be putting even more distance between herself and her native land. It was as if there’d be no going back. All of it to pursue the most complete unknown. Without knowing whether they’d be welcome over there, whether they’d get the refugee status that would enable them to start a new life. She’d have to learn a new language, other lifestyles, other systems. Adapt to other landscapes, get her palate used to other foods that would never, she already knew that, never live up to Syrian gastronomy. If, after all these twists and turns, they’d manage to get to England, the potion would seem less bitter. It would also be a good opportunity for their daughters: ‘English is useful everywhere.’
For now the only thing they were certain of was that the boat would take them to Lampedusa. That bit of deserted sand three hundred kilometers away, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, which apparently was already Italy. Dima had checked Google Maps, saw that the island was located at the level of Tunisia, farther south than many North African 20 towns. According to the reference, the crossing wouldn’t take more than a night and part of the next day. Perhaps less if the weather forecast kept its promise. In one month she’d learned not to trust the words of their contact; she could only hope the Mediterranean would be more trustworthy than this con artist. She was born far from the sea, and had never been on a boat in her life. For their tenth wedding anniversary Hakim had promised her a week’s vacation at the golden sandy beaches of Latakia with a dinner-cruise every night.
But the war had broken out three months before and they had other priorities, among them the arduous education in daily survival. Then had come the decision to take refuge at her brother’s home in Damascus. And then, unimaginable until just recently, deciding to leave with her family for Europe, as illegal immigrants… She’d mulled it over for nights on end. Just in case, she’d slipped some seasickness pills into her handbag since she didn’t know how she or her girls would react. Then came the seemingly endless day, each hour feeling like a week. Until the long-awaited phone call asking them to come down and not to forget settling their accounts at the front desk: buses were waiting in front of the hotel.
Once they emerged from the unnerving ride and put their feet on the ground, Semhar and Shoshana actually understood. At first, they thought it was a change of location, it had happened before. Some of the women had stayed in 21 Tripoli, Zuwara, or some other Libyan town before eventually landing at the warehouse. Nor was it a bad joke of their tormentors. They were leaving for real. The big day had arrived, the day for which they’d paid so dearly, both literally and figuratively, endured so many atrocities, deprivations, gone through so many horrible experiences. They barely had any time to appreciate it before they were pushed into jam-packed dinghies that were waiting for the passengers who’d arrived on the minibuses to board and head for the open sea. Thirty to forty minutes later, the dinghy with the two friends pulled up against the side of another boat. In the darkness it seemed gigantic to them, and therefore safe. That was Shoshana’s first thought. Semhar’s was different: the smell of the Mediterranean seemed less pungent, more ethereal to her than that of the Red Sea.
When it was their turn to board, they were kept hanging on the rope ladder, blocked by an Arab lady who was unconcerned with the passenger flow behind her. Shoshana’s patience had its limits, but the fortuitous arrival of a smuggler put an end to the start of a clash that was threatening to develop. On the bridge, barely lit up by the glow from the sky, three big guys directed the two friends to the hold where they took a ladder down. Many people were already there, judging by the difficulty they had clearing a path and creating a small space for themselves amid the throng. ‘Welcome to the “bottleneck”,’ a voice in the dark joked in French. Throughout the entire operation Semhar and Shoshana hadn’t let go of each other’s hand, gripping it like shipwreck survivors clinging to a life vest. After a few minutes they heard other dinghies stop 22 near the hull, followed by the sound of steps on the bridge above their head.
Hana and Shayma were thrilled to finally embark on their adventure. The wait had seemed interminable to them. All excited they followed their parents who were looking for a place to settle down among the pile of passengers on the bridge. Hakim opened the way, Dima closed it. Their father found a not very comfortable space where they sat down on the deck near the guardrail. This would make it easier in case one of them felt like vomiting. It was anything but the cruise Dima had dreamed of. But it was the price to be paid to escape the war and its nightmares. And besides, the crossing wouldn’t take long. In any case, less long than the weeks they’d spent under the bombardments, stuck in the crossfire of opposing factions. Beneath her arms two suitcases containing their entire life. In the half-dark Dima had trouble seeing the faces of the other passengers. Provided they weren’t seated next to any weird people, like the two zenjiyat, those brazen Negresses with whom she’d run into trouble while boarding.
There was the sound of the engine, the strong smell of diesel, and then a deafening rumble ripping through the night that now enveloped everything around. A few minutes went by before they could feel the trawler actually moving. Down in the hold Shoshana and Semhar felt it, too. ‘Thank you, God’, ‘Baruch Hashem’, they echoed deep inside their heart. They squeezed each other’s hands until it hurt. Like children 23 looking for reassurance. Semhar made a quick, inconspicuous sign of the cross. As if anyone could see her in the dense obscurity of the hold.
On the bridge, wedged between her family, other travelers, and the railing, Dima muttered: ‘Shukran ya Rabbi’. A slight breeze came at her. Misting her eyes with tears of both solace and hope. 24
PART ONE
SHOSHANA
Where a terrible drought struck Shoshana’s native village, like the ten plagues Hashem inflicted on Egypt that forced the Pharaoh to set the children of Israel free. It dried up the river, rendered the earth barren, decimated the herds before flinging the young onto every road to the Mediterranean.
26
27
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
proverbs iii–6
28
DEPARTURE
shoshana would remember it for as long as she lived. It was a Saturday evening after the Sabbath. She’d prepared everything the night before. In a manner of speaking, that is. ‘Everything’ referred to a backpack, holding only the most urgent necessities: a pair of pants, two tops, three panties. Food for three days, a liter-and-a-half bottle of water that she would certainly be able to refill on the road, if needed. Some money, which she’d hidden in every nook and cranny of her backpack, the heels of her shoes, in the pockets and the inside of her jeans belt. ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, a five-year old could tell you that.’ In case a robber should catch her on the road. And then her fetish, the hamsa with the Star of David in its center, to keep the evil eye at bay and bring her good luck on difficult days. Displaying it as a pendant around her neck, as she did in the village, would surely get her killed 30 were she to fall into the hands of the raging madmen of Boko Haram. She’d put it away in her backpack beneath some tiny objects at the bottom of a double pocket that had a zipper. She felt reassured knowing it was there within easy reach wherever she’d go. She had refused to slip a copy of the Torah in the bag, as her mother suggested. Basically her mom was right: two precautions are better than one. But that was just too much.
That’s what Shoshana had prepared the night before her departure. She’d already planned the rest for months, if not for years, down to the smallest detail. Ever since she’d accepted the idea that her native land offered no future for the youth of her age, and that she had to give up her law studies, which had been her father’s dream for her. He could already see her as a star lawyer, taking the loudmouths in Lagos and Abuja down a peg or two. Eventually she’d begun to believe it as well. Until the drought hit their village. Interminable and cruel, like an eleventh plague on Egypt. She wasn’t the kind of person who made decisions on a whim. She’d taken her time checking things out, absorbing the experience of others, their successes as well as their failures. Listening to the elders of the community whose words were worth their weight in gold as a code of conduct. In their opinion, times had changed and portended nothing good. Quite the contrary, in fact.
‘You have to expect many more disastrous times,’ one of them had predicted, hiding behind his bushy white patriarch’s beard.
There was a time before this dark era when you’d put a seed in the ground, and it would grow all by itself. You didn’t have 31 to do anything else. Sometimes, you’d throw out wastewater with some tomato seeds in it and a few weeks later there’d be beautiful tomato plants all around the house. The rain came down copiously, like the manna Hashem sent from heaven to feed the Jews when they wandered in the desert for forty years. Crops were abundant and would feed the families for an entire season, with surplus for export to the big cities. Often it rained more than profusely, and the water collected enhanced the reserves meant for the fields and animals. When harvest time arrived, all you had to do was bend down and reap what the earth supplied. There were never enough hands in one family. Friends and the friends of friends had to be called to the rescue or else the crops would rot away. For days on end, for weeks actually, everyone worked as hard as they could. Men and women shared the tasks, some in the field, some in the kitchen, depending on their abilities and their good will. Children, too, gave it their all with their clumsy little hands. At the same time they were learning for tomorrow. It was one grand party. When the work was done, the conversations, the singing and dancing would go on until deep into the night despite their weary bones, until every star was shining while some had already vanished. And at the break of dawn all these good people would get up and start all over again. The harvesting would go on for days on end, except for families like Shoshana’s who observed the Sabbath, stopping from Friday before sunset until Saturday evening or Sunday morning.
According to the elders, they wanted for nothing, and Shoshana was quite willing to believe them. Her family had 32 owned more animals than they could count. Truly as far as the eye could see, she’d tell Semhar many years later. Sheep, goats, even a few cows, whose milking she liked to watch. When she was a child she’d even tried it herself a few times, with that delicious feeling of the creamy, tepid liquid trickling between her fingers. One day her father surprised her as she was squatting on her heels, her hand on the goat’s udder. He’d scolded her, quite gently, for her daddy adored her, had had her quite late in life with a younger woman. Hence this exaggerated love that her mother never stopped criticizing.
‘It verges on idolatry, Hiram. Idolatry.’ That was the day her father added that this was no work for his daughter, his Compass Rose. His plans for her were more ambitious.
Sometimes at night, jackals or hyenas managed to elude the guard dogs, approach the herds, and carry off some inexperienced young animals that hadn’t caught the predators’ scent nor heard the muffled sound of their steps. The shepherds didn’t realize it until weeks later, when they’d discover a torn-up carcass, its teeth yellowed by the sun. In any event, the elders would say, it was just part of the natural food chain. There had to be enough for everyone. It served no purpose to stand in their way unless you wanted some species to completely disappear. But it wasn’t up to us humans to make that decision. Everyone played their part, everyone got something out of it, and life went on. As long as the results weren’t too harmful to humankind, of course.
Then the town grew larger, because of the high birthrate and the mass arrival of people from other parts of the country 33 who were fleeing bad weather, natural disasters, and plagues that humanity itself had caused. This influx led to slapdash makeshift building, stripped of any refinement. Suddenly the village changed. At her bat mitzvah Shoshana ran into people she didn’t know from Adam. In addition to having lost its charm, the place had lost its soul. Then the rain began to come more infrequently, the earth began to dry up, and the animals began to languish without anyone knowing why. Some said it was because of the arrival of the ‘outsiders’. The earth might well be bountiful, but it couldn’t feed all those mouths. Others said that the newcomers, whose ancestors hadn’t watered the soil with their own sweat and blood, were practicing animist rituals, invoking violent spirits like Shango or Ogun-the-dog-eater. And this displeased God. The One and Only. The True God.
One morning they got up and found six, seven rigid animals with swollen bellies, as if they’d been grazing poisonous plants. Flies were busy rummaging about inside the cadavers before the arrival of the scavengers, all of which ended up as part of the landscape. From then on, they stayed around; they knew they’d find easy feasting. They were everywhere, on the ground and in the sky. Shoshana could watch them whirl above her head for hours on end, before they folded in their interminable wings and sank their hooked beaks into the prey that was rotting in place, motionless, already stiff or in the process of getting there. It wasn’t unusual to see jackals, hyenas, and vultures fight among themselves for the choice pieces, under the helpless gaze of people who no longer even tried to chase them away. At least it spared them the trouble 34 of having to dig a pit in which to bury the bodies and avoid the spread of some epidemic. Wings flapping, a pack of scavengers would swoop down and clean up.
The earth itself seemed cursed, had become as sterile as the womb of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, before in His immense compassion, Hashem decided to bless her and grant her to procreate. The soil was as hard as stale bread, crisscrossed with striations as wide as two adult hands. It scorched the heels of the shoeless crowds. Water reserves had run dry at the same time the rain stopped, contrasting with the tears that filled the people’s eyes. Just like other children her age, Shoshana would cover several kilometers to carry one bucket of potable water on her head back to the house. The wells dug in the surrounding area were unable to meet everyone’s needs. Nobody knew how to explain the why and wherefore of these calamities, which might have helped in fighting the evil and starting anew, as in those hallowed times the elders would talk about. The agronomists dispatched by Abuja and Lagos, those from the NGO’s who came rushing in from the far corners of the world, they all blamed global warming. But no one had a solution for managing the climate, for helping parents fulfill the dreams they’d nurtured for their children, for preventing the latter from seeing their fathers complain and weep like oversensitive old women and thinking they were just rambling, that the hallowed times of which they spoke were coming straight from their half-crazed brain.
Shoshana couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, but it seemed to her that was when people had begun to leave the village. 35 Even the newcomers were heading elsewhere. More than one tried their luck in Lagos before returning, having lost all hope, paralyzed by disillusionment. With its twenty-one million inhabitants, Lagos was a hellhole. Endless promises at first, endless nothing in the end. Besides, all that was most unwholesome was fermenting there. In comparison, Sodom and Gomorrah were nothing. The villagers told each other that perhaps they should push on farther and so they went abroad. Anywhere they might find some semblance of life. In the Gulf countries, so rumor had it, they were treated like slaves, where men were beasts of burden and women were made to do anything and everything. But submissive, they clenched their teeth, they were not where they belonged. In Libya construction was in full swing, manual labor was needed, hard workers who, ideally, were compliant. At first the men went there by the thousands, while the women would follow later.
Europe was the most sought-after destination. The United States, so far away, was a pipe dream. Unless one were to win in the annual immigration lottery, whose entry ticket cost several hundred dollars. Too unpredictable, Shoshana told herself when she, too, began to think seriously about leaving. After the years of suffering, neighbors and childhood friends of hers had managed to gain a foothold in Italy and Germany. And in England as well, that former metropolitan area where a significant diaspora now lived. She’d stayed in touch with two of them. According to them, Europe was a fortress, as impregnable as the wall of ice in Game of Thrones, a series to which she was madly addicted. Getting there would take 36 years, getting in even longer. As if that continent was located on a different planet, lightyears away from the Earth. Perhaps it was out of egotism, Shoshana wondered, that those in the diaspora spread such rumors. The type that thought there wasn’t enough for everyone. The last one in shuts the door, it’s as old as the hills, she told herself.
As time went by, some of the streets in the village had become deserted, like a ghost town from a Western, and been turned into a playground by the ingenuity of the kids, one of whom was Ariel, Shoshana’s little brother.
Although they’d been spared until then, the misfortune ended up touching the families in the community as well. One Saturday night after Sabbath, the elders, Shoshana’s father among them, held a meeting in the synagogue, which went on long into the night. When, after endless, ad nauseam deliberations they finally emerged at dawn, it was to consult the members of the community who might want to do Aliyah, in short, to emigrate to Israel rather than take untold risks on the world’s uncertain routes. Cross seas that all too often turned into graves, instead of opening before them as the Red Sea had opened before the Israelites when they were fleeing from the Pharaoh. As Igbo B’nei Israel—Igbo Children of Israel—the Law of Return gave them that right. There in the Holy Land, they would be welcomed among people of the same faith. Decades before, the Operations Moses and Solomon had united the Falasha of Ethiopia with the Land of Israel. Now it was their turn.
They sent an emissary to Abuja, the capital city, to speak with a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy and apprise him of 37 the situation. The latter explained that there was, indeed, a Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs. However, it would have to refer any request to the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem, which alone had the authority to approve, or refute, the Jewishness of an individual. Even more so since it concerned an entire community. If they were recognized as Jews then, of course, they would be eligible under the Law of Return. From that point on, they would be able to take the steps that led to the Land of Israel. They could rest assured that he would take their steps very much to heart. As would the government. Consequently, the interview, which the messenger reported in great detail, filled their hearts with hope. For the elders it was a matter of time. They’d been Children of Israel forever.
After a long year of waiting, the emissary was summoned to the Israeli Embassy. ‘Better to discuss it face to face’, mistrustful to the point of paranoia of the new technologies, ‘one cannot control everything, you understand?’ the civil servant said. Once there, the special envoy was told that the investigation of the Chief Rabbinate would take more time than expected. For now, they hadn’t yet found any tangible proof of their Jewishness, nor of their being descendants from one of the ten lost tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. But they should feel confident that their case was under serious deliberation in a high place. When the messenger returned, the elders told themselves that it must be yet another Talmudic story. And, as with all Talmudic stories, it could go on for centuries. With one question leading to another, each time there was something over which hairs would be split. 38
While waiting, they suggested that the young who could afford it should go and find refuge elsewhere. The oldest ones would stay where they were, it was too late for them.
‘“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,” as Ecclesiastes already wrote,’ old Hiram pronounced. In any event, eyes were certainly needed to watch over the synagogue. In these troubled times with Boko Haram, this was not the moment to leave and receive a message while abroad announcing the destruction of the synagogue, like Solomon’s First Temple. Furthermore, in case the response from Jerusalem would not take forever to get to them, there would be someone present to receive it and alert the others. What was of utmost importance was for the community to stay connected, no matter where in the world they landed. And to remain who they were.
‘We are what we are and have been for centuries, Black and Jewish, and we will continue to be so. May it please Jerusalem,’ Shoshana’s father railed, as he desisted cursing all the bearded ones in the holy city.
ON THE ROAD
the day shoshana decided it was time to leave, after analyzing the ins and outs of the situation, weighing the pros and cons, going over every possible, imaginable circumstance, she received the joint blessing of the elders and of her parents. Although with some reluctance on her mother’s part, the latter had agreed that she take Ariel, her seventeen-year old younger sibling, along with her on the journey. ‘He has no future here at all,’ Shoshana had pleaded. She listed the arguments accumulated during the long time that her decision had been developing, arousing the admiration of her old father, who had abandoned his dream of her becoming an attorney. In any event, the two siblings were inseparable. Even as a little boy, Ariel would stick to her like a leech. He followed her everywhere, until he’d collapse with exhaustion and force his big sister to carry him on her back. And she’d 40 groan: ‘I’m not your donkey. You’ll find out, I’ll stop doing this when you’re big.’
But it didn’t change with time. Under duress but amused, Shoshana kept on dragging him in her wake. Just to kid around, she’d often accuse her brother of preventing her from finding a fiancé because he was hanging on to her coattails from morning to night. And with his quick wit, he’d respond: ‘You don’t get it do you, sis. Your sweetie is me.’
Then he’d run off, chased by Shoshana threatening, ‘as God is my witness,’ to spank him if she hadn’t found a fiancé worthy of the name by the time she was twenty-five. And Shulamite, her mother, whose ears were always picking up things, would play devil’s advocate by reminding her daughter of the second commandment: thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain. ‘Besides, you’re setting a bad example for your little brother.’ Already well-informed, Shoshana warned Ariel that it wasn’t going to be a picnic, or one of those adventure movies her younger sibling was so crazy about.
Before making her final decision, Shoshana had conferred with Rachel, her best friend since kindergarten, who jumped at the opportunity. It had been forever since she’d been fretting over getting out of this godforsaken hole, she was fed up, so fed up you can’t imagine, with running after jobs and guys who refused to commit themselves under the pretext they couldn’t support a family. ‘They want to get laid for free, without getting involved, you follow me?’ Shoshana declared they’d need one or two other men. ‘Real ones, you mean? In addition to “Shoshana’s brat”,’ as Rachel had labeled 41 him. Shoshana had to admit that her brother was a little green behind the ears and too much of a mama’s boy. Nevertheless, there was no discussing it, he was part of the journey. As for the others, they’d be there to watch their backs, the risks were too great for women traveling alone. ‘Guys aren’t just made for that. It’s freezing in the desert at night, if you see what I mean,’ Rachel said laughing loudly. The question remained: whom should they bring along?
‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Guys are my department,’ Rachel added.
‘You’ll tell me who they are before you have any contact with them. Literally and figuratively,’ Shoshana replied. In the end they were five, including Ezekiel and Nathan whom Shoshana had known off and on, and to whom she now gave carte blanche after checking their background, their character references, and their family tree. Except for Ariel, they were all the same age and members of the same community. They’d known each other forever. They knew that if things got rough, they could count on each other.
It took Shoshana almost a year to make the right contacts, to make sure she wasn’t dealing with any crooks, of which there were plenty in Nigeria. Everybody was looking for a way to survive, which included finding an easy mark.
‘We’ve waited this long, we can wait a little longer. We’re not going to rush into anything only to get fleeced,’ Shoshana said, meticulous as usual, facing the others who were impatient to put some distance between their birthland and their hope for a better tomorrow. Thanks to the grapevine and to information gleaned on the Internet, she managed to avoid 42 the most conspicuous crooks. The first traffickers she contacted—those peddlers for networks of smugglers—tried in vain to direct her to a ring in Benin City. Shoshana flatly refused the offer.
Located at three hours’ driving from the port city of Onitsha, Benin City was reputed to be at the heart of a prostitution network that preyed on naïve Nigerian girls wanting to leave for Europe. First, they put you in touch with a ‘mama’, a mother madam, herself a former prostitute, who promises you a job in a beauty salon in Italy or France. ‘The only thing you have to do once you’re there is work in the salon until you’ve repaid the money you owe for the crossing.’ Before leaving, the mama hauls the girl off to a ceremony, the juju, allegedly to bring her luck. In reality, it concerns a submission ritual where, after swearing on the goddess Ayelala, the girl is brainwashed to obey the orders. Then she is linked for life to the mama who controls her, even from a distance. ‘If you break the bond,’ the officiant who’s in cahoots with the mama tells her, you’ll have to deal with Ayelala’s wrath. One after another the members of your family will die like locusts. Then it will be your turn, and it will come with atrocious suffering.’ Thereafter, it’s a tall order for the girl to break the spell.
Having evaded this trap, Shoshana managed to track down a contact who, for a pretty penny, offered to get the five of them to Agadez in Niger, then to Libya, from where they would embark for Europe. It would simply require paying cash before each leg. ‘I guarantee you,’ the trafficker told her, ‘you’ll be in Europe in at most three weeks.’ He also gave her 43 his word of honor that, from Abuja, the trip to Niger would be made via the western route in order to avoid the lawless gang of Boko Haram whose tentacles were spreading more and more to the north-eastern part of the country. Even the devil would stay away from those guys, the man said, who himself was a Muslim.
‘You see, we’re serious people. We’re concerned with your safety. I challenge you to find anyone better,’ he added, straight-faced.
At first, the talks hit a snag over the fee: one thousand two hundred dollars to Agadez. A tough businesswoman, Shoshana managed to bring him down to a thousand dollars. But that wasn’t the end of it. Having achieved this reduction, she launched into a new negotiation. It was her idea to reach the town of Sokoto on their own, located about a hundred kilometers from the Nigerian border. The caravan would pick them up on the way, at a meeting point to be decided upon together. Hence, six hundred dollars a person seemed a correct price to her. It would be a nice saving for them, she thought to herself. She argued as much as she could, but the guy defended his bit of meat like a starving jackal. However he didn’t know Shoshana, who refused to let go of her piece, too. She knew the guy was already hooked, it would be a pity not to take advantage of that.
‘That’s not how it works,’ the trafficker said, beginning to get annoyed. ‘Number one: we have our own transportation network. Otherwise we’d have no margin left at all. Number two: it’s much simpler for everyone. Once the departure has been set, there’s to be no stalling, right? It’s like a target 44 window. If you miss it, you’ll have to wait for ages more. So we’re not going to play games here looking for people left and right.’
After an endless exchange of words, Shoshana and the trafficker came to an agreement on the fee of seven hundred dollars. It would be their responsibility to get to Abuja by the appropriate day. If not, it was simple—everything was simple with the trafficker—they would leave without them. Thereafter they shouldn’t count on the organization reimbursing them the installment paid. It was a matter of give and take. Somebody, whose references he would give her when the time came, would pick them up at the bus station. They were to give the remainder of the agreed-upon money to this individual before getting into the 4 x 4.
In the interim, the five of them entered a race against the clock to gather the needed sum, which mounted with each stage. Thus the Nigeria/Niger leg cost less than the Niger/Libya one, which in turn was less expensive than the crossing to Europe. The last one was set at one thousand five hundred dollars per person; non-negotiable, the contact had announced. ‘We must also prepare for the unforeseen,’ Shoshana told the others. The five of them accepted every small job they could find. Ariel got it into his head to do a bit of fishing for the last fish in the river, which had now shrunk to a ridiculous trickle of water in the center of an immense bed of stones. He was convinced he could catch some tilapia, which he would sell at the village market. They called upon people close to them, family and friends of good will settled abroad, who advised Shoshana not to travel with large sums 45 of money and suggested that, if needed, they would serve as intermediaries.
Shoshana and her brother were able to count on their parents as well, who had put aside a small nest egg for when they could become active again, even if it had shrunk considerably because of the difficulties the family had recently been forced to confront. Once they arrived in Agadez, Niger, they would pay the second installment via Hawala, an informal payment system the smugglers preferred, as it left no trace. Before their departure, the young Nigerian bought sunglasses and balaclavas to brave the dust of the Sahel and the sand of the Sahara. One of the synagogue’s elders gave each of them a warm jacket in anticipation of the desert’s chilly nights. It was one thing less to pay for and wouldn’t land in the purse of those vultures.
To spare them any tears, the goodbyes, one Saturday after Sabbath, were brief. Shulamite might well accuse her husband of too much sentimentality regarding his daughter, but she didn’t show any less of it toward her son, flesh of her flesh, the apple of her eye. Shoshana felt a twinge in her heart, which she hastened to hide behind a bit of banter. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told her mother, ‘I’ll take care of your baby.’
‘Mazeltov,’ the father said as he clutched them both to his chest. “I’m sure you will arrive safe and sound, B’ezras Hashem—with God’s help.’ Then, flanked by her younger sibling, she left to join the other three at the meeting place she herself had suggested.
THE LEADER
before their departure, Shoshana insisted on setting things straight with the others. This had been her idea from the start. Besides, she’d studied the matter from every angle, more than any of them had. So, no two ways about it: she was the leader and they were to follow her instructions.
‘This is not some damn Talmudic meeting,’ she’d let go when her mother wasn’t around. ‘Democracy is all very good and well, but if we start discussing every decision, we’ll never make a go of it. Also, the ones we’ll have to contend with are no joke. I’m saying this especially for you, Rachel. Is that clear?’
‘Crystal clear, boss,’ Rachel said.
‘Clear as can be,’ Ezekiel and Nathan, the other traveling companions answered.
‘Yes, sir,’ Ariel added. 47
‘You, you stop your nonsense right now. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a guy. Boss is fine with me, but sir, no.’ And then added, while she was at it: ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
The self-appointed leader guided her group in the direction of the bus station to take a bush taxi to Abuja. These minibuses with about a dozen seats rarely left with fewer than sixteen passengers, one extra per row. Sometimes they’d add one or two more on the steps, and one up front next to the drivers, a more expensive seat. It would certainly have been more comfortable to make the trip by train, but the five of them couldn’t count on arriving by Sunday evening. In addition to moving at a snail’s pace, the train might stop in the open countryside without giving the passengers any explanation. This way, with the minibus and two drivers who relieved each other along the way, with time for a pitstop, they were at the Abuja bus station around ten-thirty the next morning.
Coming from all over Nigeria, people were milling about beneath the burning sun, bound for the four corners of the country and the continent. The countless pickpockets among them started their workday very early. Then there were the stranded cripples, holding out their begging bowls to the rest, having failed to find even a bit of sympathy elsewhere. In addition to being the administrative capital of the country, Abuja’s central location made it an obligatory crossing point. A constant coming-and-going of men, women, and children, colliding, loudly calling out at each other in pidgin English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and other minority dialects. The five of them, who must have only set foot once or twice in Onitsha, 48 the town closest to their village, seemed lost. Rachel grabbed the opportunity to proclaim once again: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’ The result was that they were obliged to ask repeatedly for directions. Shoshana took advantage of her childhood friend’s failed efforts to reestablish her authority over the group. She knew that if she allowed her pal to take the reins, Rachel would do whatever came into her head.
