Akbari Enaiatollah - In the sea there are crocodiles: based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari

Copyright 2010 Baldini Castoldi Dalai Editore/B.C. Dalai editore
Translation copyright 2011 by Howard Curtis

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Originally published in Italy as Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli by B.C. Dalai editore, Milan, in 2010. This translation first published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited, London.

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Jacket illustration by Edel Rodriquez

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geda, Fabio, 1973

[Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli. English]
In the sea there are crocodiles : based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari:
a novel / by Fabio Geda; translated by Howard Curtis. 1st ed.
p. cm.

1. Akbari, EnaiatollahChildhood and youth. 2. AfghanistanHistory19892001Biography. 3. Akbari, EnaiatollahTravel. 4. BoysAfghanistanBiography. 5. Political refugeesAfghanistanBiography. 6. AfghansItalyBiography. 7. Political refugeesItalyBiography. 8. ImmigrantsItalyBiography. I. Title.

DS371.33.A32G4313 2011
305.906914092dc22

[B] 2011012171

eISBN: 978-0-385-53474-1

v3.1

I met Enaiatollah Akbari at a book presentation where I was speaking about my first novel, the story of a Romanian boys life as an immigrant in Italy. Enaiatollah came up to me and said hed had a similar experience. We got talking. And we didnt stop. I never tired of listening to his experiences, and he didnt tire of dredging them from his memory. After wed known each other for a while, he asked me if I would write his story down, so that people who had suffered similar things could know they were not alone, and so that others might understand them better.

This book is therefore based on a true story. But, of course, Enaiatollah didnt remember it all perfectly. Together we painstakingly reconstructed his journey, looking at maps, consulting Google, trying to create a chronology for his fragmented memories. I have tried to be as true to his voice as possible, retelling the story exactly as he told it. But for all that, this book must be considered to be a work of fiction, since it is the re-creation of Enaiatollahs experiencea re-creation that has allowed him to take possession of his own story. At his request, the names of some of the people mentioned have been changed.

Fabio Geda, Turin 2010

Afghanistan

T he thing is, I really wasnt expecting her to go. Because when youre ten years old and getting ready for bed, on a night thats just like any other night, no darker or starrier or more silent or more full of smells than usual, with the familiar sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer from the tops of the minarets just like anywhere else no, when youre ten years oldI say ten, although Im not entirely sure when I was born, because theres no registry office or anything like that in Ghazni provincelike I said, when youre ten years old, and your mother, before putting you to bed, takes your head and holds it against her breast for a long time, longer than usual, and says, There are three things you must never do in life, Enaiat jan, for any reason The first is use drugs. Some of them taste good and smell good and they whisper in your ear that theyll make you feel better than you could ever feel without them. Dont believe them. Promise me you wont do it.

I promise.

The second is use weapons. Even if someone hurts your feelings or damages your memories, or insults God, the earth or men, promise me youll never pick up a gun, or a knife, or a stone, or even the wooden ladle we use for making qhorma palaw, if that ladle can be used to hurt someone. Promise.

I promise.

The third is cheat or steal. Whats yours belongs to you, what isnt doesnt. You can earn the money you need by working, even if the work is hard. You must never cheat anyone, Enaiat jan, all right? You must be hospitable and tolerant to everyone. Promise me youll do that.

I promise.

Anyway, even when your mother says things like that and then, still stroking your neck, looks up at the window and starts talking about dreams, dreams like the moon, which at night is so bright you can see to eat by it, and about wisheshow you must always have a wish in front of your eyes, like a donkey with a carrot, and how its in trying to satisfy our wishes that we find the strength to pick ourselves up, and if you hold a wish up high, any wish, just in front of your forehead, then life will always be worth livingwell, even when your mother, as she helps you get to sleep, says all these things in a strange, low voice as warming as embers, and fills the silence with words, this woman whos always been so sharp, so quick-witted in dealing with life even at a time like that, it doesnt occur to you that what shes really saying is, Khoda negahdar, goodbye.

Just like that.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, I had a good stretch to wake myself up, then reached over to my right, feeling for the comforting presence of my mothers body. The reassuring smell of her skin always said to me, Wake up, get out of bed, come on But my hand felt nothing, only the white cotton cover between my fingers. I pulled it toward me. I turned over, with my eyes wide open. I propped myself on my elbows and tried calling out, Mother. But she didnt reply and no one replied in her place. She wasnt on the mattress, she wasnt in the room where we had slept, which was still warm with bodies tossing and turning in the half-light, she wasnt in the doorway, she wasnt at the window looking out at the street filled with cars and carts and bikes, she wasnt next to the water jars or in the smokers corner talking to someone, as she had often been during those three days.

From outside came the din of Quetta, which is much, much noisier than my little village in Ghazni, that strip of land, houses and streams that I come from, the most beautiful place in the world (and Im not just boasting, its true).

Little or big.

It didnt occur to me that the reason for all that din might be because we were in a big city. I thought it was just one of the normal differences between countries, like different ways of seasoning meat. I thought the sound of Pakistan was simply different from the sound of Afghanistan, and that every country had its own sound, which depended on a whole lot of things, like what people ate and how they moved around.

Mother, I called.

No answer. So I got out from under the covers, put my shoes on, rubbed my eyes and went to find the owner of the place to ask if hed seen her, because three days earlier, as soon as we arrived, hed told us that no one went in or out without him noticing, which seemed odd to me, since I assumed that even he needed to sleep from time to time.

The sun cut the entrance of the samavat Qgazi in two. Samavat means hotel. In that part of the world, they actually call those places hotels, but theyre nothing like what you think of as a hotel, Fabio. The