Adel Salim and I had arrived three days after the others. They gave us a quick interrogation at the army post on the border and in the morning they sent us to a refugee reception centre in a border town. I don’t know where they took the corpse of the Afghan. They told us that after the medical tests the police and the immigration department would question us again on the details of how he died. They put us in the quarantine section of the reception centre, a small building attached to the main centre where the rest of the inmates were staying. The Hungarians call it the ‘karanten’, similar to the Iraqi version of the word — ‘karantina’. It was dirty and crowded with Afghans, Arabs, Kurds, Pakistanis, Sudanese, Bangladeshis, Africans and some Albanians. The tests went on for a month. The frightening aspect of the quarantine section was the results of the medical tests, because some of the refugees had tuberculosis or scabies. Those ones were transferred from the quarantine section to the isolation hospital on the outskirts of the town. They would stay there until they were cured. That is what most of the new inmates feared most: not the disease but the time they would need to stay for treatment, which could be more than a year and a half. The Iraqis and Iranians made fun of tuberculosis and scabies because they thought they only infected Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Africans. In fact the test results seemed to confirm this, and the diseases of the Iraqis, the Iranians and the Kurds proved to be exclusively venereal, in particular gonorrhoea, which could be treated within the reception centre.
We had crossed the Romanian-Hungarian border with a professional trafficker. At dawn he’d told us that the fog had started to thicken and we would have to stick together to reach the river and then cross the river into Hungarian territory. The trafficker said he had no obligation to wait for anyone who stopped walking and we would keep going until the fog lifted. We did our best to keep up with the trafficker. We swore to the interrogators that the Afghan died crossing the river. He had been very ill, and he soon drowned and we couldn’t save him, but the medical reports showed he had died of strangulation. I told them honestly and faithfully what had happened that foggy morning. The trafficker had lost his way (that’s what he told us), so he said we had to spend the night in the forest. We got into our sleeping bags, shivering from the cold — you can ask James the Nigerian, the Moroccan or the old Kurd, because they crossed before us and they explained what happened next when we met them in the quarantine centre. It was a shabby trick. The trafficker knew that the river was one kilometre from the forest, but the boat that one of his assistants from the Romanian border villages had left for us would only hold five people, so the trafficker would have to abandon three of us. I’m sure he was aware of the boat problem in advance, before the journey even began in Bucharest. The trafficker waited till about half an hour after we had got into our sleeping bags, then started going round the group, kicking each one gently, in the expectation that only some would wake up. This selection method of his succeeded. Adel Salim, the Afghan and I were fast asleep, while the others were dozing or couldn’t sleep at all for the cold. So they left us in the forest, dead to the world. When we woke up we realised we’d been tricked. We started looking for the river so we could cross into Hungary ourselves. God started making the fog even thicker. He seemed to be doing it deliberately. Hours later we reached the river. The cold had exhausted the Afghan and he no longer had the strength to walk. He had a raging fever. Adel very much liked the Afghan, and the two of us carried him. The poor man had stuck with us and become a companion and a brother since we met him crossing the mountains on the Iranian-Turkish border. Adel asked me to cross the river first, to try out the crossing, and then call them from the other bank to explain to them how to cross without getting lost in the fog. Adel said he would help the Afghan by himself. Shivering from the intense cold, I shouted out to Adel from the far bank. Then I heard him jump into the water with the Afghan. I shouted out to show them the way and after a while I heard them splashing around in the water. Adel shouted that the Afghan had started to drown. I shouted out again, begging him not to abandon him. The sound of them splashing in the water quickly grew louder, then suddenly everything was quiet. I was about to jump back into the water to help them when I saw Adel emerging from the fog, pulling the Afghan after him, dead. Adel burst out crying and I decided not to leave the Afghan’s body, although Adel objected at first.
It’s been three years since this incident took place. I’m now working in the refugee camp in place of Anisa the Albanian, who has returned to her own country. I work as a translator for the immigration department, and I escort the new quarantine inmates to the hospital every morning. There’s nothing exciting in my life, the same shit and urine problems, the usual refusals to strip off in front of a woman doctor. I wanted to forget my countrymen, and match the rhythm of my life to the slow pace of this border town. I visit the Afghan’s grave from time to time, because he was buried in the town cemetery close to the refugee reception centre. His grave is the only one without a cross. People who visit the cemetery take a look at it out of curiosity, to see the Quranic verse engraved on the headstone. I drink in the bar every evening. I sleep with a woman who works in the flower shop, who loves me very much. I read the newspaper on the internet. Sometimes I cry all night. But for the last few years I haven’t dared visit the prison where Adel Salim lives in the capital, Budapest. Then one day I made up my mind to go and visit him.
The encounter only lasted a matter of minutes.
‘Okay, I don’t understand, Adel,’ I said. ‘What were you thinking? Why did you strangle him? What I’m saying may be mad, but why didn’t you let him drown by himself?’
After a short while, he answered hatefully from behind the bars. ‘You’re an arsehole and a fraud. Your name’s Hassan Blasim and you claim to be Salem Hussein. You come here and lecture me. Go fuck yourself, you prick.’
He blew out a lungful of cigarette smoke and went back to his cell.
On the train back I was bewildered and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. I wanted to sleep but my mind was seething. I tried to put the events of my life in order, but many of them had faded into oblivion: my first meeting with Adel Salim in the south of the country, our plan to escape from the military lock-up, the Iranian border guards who arrested us, the electric-shock torture, meeting the Afghan, the river, Hassan Blasim, the border. The train stopped at a station. I went to the bathroom and when I came back a fat man had taken a seat in the compartment. Next to him he had a small cage with a white mouse inside. He looked up from his newspaper. I greeted him. He nodded and went back to his newspaper.
The train set off and the man put out his hand.
‘My name’s Saro,’ he said. ‘My wife gave me this beautiful mouse. It’s my birthday. Fifty years old.’
‘Salem Hussein,’ I said and shook his hand.
‘That’s strange,’ said the man, examining my face. ‘I’ve read many of your stories. You’re a writer!’