The smuggler peered at me. ‘Are you injured?’
‘What?’
‘Fuck, you’re bleeding! They got you.’
I hadn’t noticed, nor could I feel any pain. But I had been hit — twice. One bullet through my right hand. The other deep in my left calf.
The smuggler examined me more closely. ‘These aren’t real bullets. They’re for animals. That means those guys weren’t policemen!’
We waited another two hours before returning to our camp. That’s what all smugglers did — after two or three hours, they went back to the starting point. When we arrived, our whole group was already there. They told us the men wanted money. And they got it. There were seven of them, all armed and masked. No one knew if they were policemen or bandits. The smuggler decided to stay with us and sleep here. He hoped to find a solution the next day. That night, though, my leg began to hurt. An intense throbbing pain. In the morning, the smuggler turned to me, ‘You’ll have to travel on your own by train. It will take the lorries another three to five days to arrive. And you won’t last that long. Three days from now, at the latest, you’ll be dead. I’ll buy you a ticket. You can take the train to Athens. If you make it there, you’ll be saved. You’ll also be saved if the police arrest you — they’ll make sure you get to a hospital.’
I agreed. A Kurd called Imad said he’d had enough and wanted to accompany me. Shortly after midday, our smuggler arrived with a car driven by a Greek. The smuggler gave us tickets and said the Greek would take us to the station.
We shaved and put on the clean clothes that every refugee has in his rucksack for such occasions. Then we got into the car. The Greek didn’t say a word. Drove us through a small town before stopping outside a low building with a sign that read, ‘Xanthi Station’. He went off right away. Two minutes later, he was back — to accompany us to the platform. Five minutes later, we boarded the train and he said goodbye with a curt, ‘Yassu!’
The train pulled off. After a while, the ticket inspector came to check our tickets.
‘Passport.’
‘No.’
He took us right up to the front of the train, near the engine, and tried to tell us to wait there for him. He went into the driver’s cab and reached for the phone. Imad and I looked at each other but said nothing. Of course, we knew what this meant for us. The train began to slow down. Not far off, there seemed to be a small town. The ticket inspector came back out of the driver’s compartment and passed us on his way to the middle of the train. The train stopped, the doors opened and passengers got off. Imad looked at me and whispered, ‘No police!’ We jumped out of the train and ran down the street. It was dark. No one followed us.
We ran towards a big park. Lots of people were sitting around, eating or chatting.
‘Man, that was just like an action film!’ Imad grinned.
‘You’re right — one based on a true story.’ Fortunately, I was in no pain at all. You wouldn’t have thought there was a bullet in my body. In the park, we spent our time watching people in the street, marvelling at the gorgeous Greek women. Time was passing quickly and we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. I spoke to a young lad. He had a beer and some peanuts on the ground beside him.
‘Hello, can you help me?’ I asked in English. ‘I’d like a ticket to Athens. I have money. Will you buy it for me?’
Where we were, exactly — the name of the town — interested us very little, if at all, at this point. I’d always thought it was Kavala. Kavala, though, has no trains and, so, no station, as I’d learn years later. We were, in fact, in Drama. A more appropriate name you couldn’t have asked for, given our predicament.
My English was nothing special but the young Greek’s English was no better. He nonetheless gave the impression that he was enjoying our conversation. And so, it seemed that our tragic drama in Drama had been resolved. I told the Greek we were Iraqis and didn’t want to buy the tickets ourselves. He took us to a small park outside the station. Then went into the station alone. A short while later, he returned to explain that a ticket to Athens cost twenty dollars and the train left at one in the morning. Imad gave him fifty. The boy bought the tickets. He’d changed the rest of the dollars into drachma. Imad said he could keep it. He looked at us, smiled and put the money in his pocket. Finally, he pointed at the clock above the main entrance. ‘You have only thirty minutes.’ He took his leave and we thanked him.
We waited. It was a very long half hour. Imad thought every person round the station was a policeman. I tried to calm him, though I had the same feeling. He, however, swore — on all his prophets — that they all looked like policemen. We moved slowly in the direction of the station concourse. Just before we got there, a bus stopped at the entrance and a group of Africans accompanied by two blond Greeks got out. In no time at all, the station was reverberating with the sounds of a Turkish bazaar. Happy ‘Hello Africa’-s were being shouted everywhere. I quickly grabbed Imad by the arm and, as casually as possible, we got in among the Africans and boarded the train — without being stopped. Imad thought it better if, on the train, we separated. ‘If one of us is arrested, they might not look for the other one.’
So he turned right and I turned left. I sat down opposite an old lady. About seventy and very like my grandmother, who had died while I was in jail in Baghdad. I even thought I could see my grandmother’s smile on her face. I leant back on the headrest and closed my eyes.
Suddenly, I felt a soft hand on mine. Startled, I opened my eyes. The old lady was leaning over me, looking at me, worried and a little apprehensive. She was examining my wound, which had become inflamed during the day and was now pretty bad. She spoke to me in Greek. I answered, simply, ‘I am from Iraq.’
She knew only a few words of English. She said, ‘Ticket?’
I held it out and she took it from me. She whispered a soothing ‘Okay!’ and tried to gesture to me what she wanted to say. ‘Have a good sleep. I’ll deal with everything else.’
I think the word ‘Iraq’ was enough for her to understand my situation. She was my guardian angel for the rest of the journey. When the tickets were inspected, she showed ours together, and I’m almost certain she told the ticket inspector that I was with her. She bought me cheese, bread and a Coke. I slept like a baby. I woke up, briefly, a few times, but went straight back to sleep and slept until the next day when we arrived in Athens. She then took me to the Red Cross, where — with a friendly ‘Bye-bye!’—she left me in the care of a nurse.