The Shadow Girls

His eyes had been full of sorrow. They surprised her. Since she had grown to be a woman all she had seen in men’s eyes was a kind of hunger. But this thin man seemed not to have noticed her beauty nor her smile. This had frightened her. She could not stand the thought that men did not immediately desire her, nor that the long and desperate flight had been for nothing. She, like all the others who had been caught, lived in the hope that her ordeal would one day be over. Through some miracle someone would one day appear before her with a paper in his hand and a smile on his lips and say: Welcome.

In order not to drive herself insane she had to be very patient. She understood that. And patience could only arise if she did not allow herself any expectations. Sometimes people in the camp committed suicide, or at least made serious attempts. They were the ones who were not strong enough to stifle their own expectations and the burden of thinking that their dreams would one day be realised finally overcame them.

Therefore, every morning when she woke up, she told herself that the best she could do was to rid herself of hope. That and never mentioning her true country of origin. The camp was always a hotbed of rumours about which countries offered the best chances for asylum applicants. It was as if the camp were a marketplace of countries where the possibilities for entry were recorded on a kind of stock market. No investments were ever long-lasting or secure.

A short while after she arrived, Bangladesh had been highest on the list. For some reason that they never understood, Germany was granting immediate asylum to all people who could prove that they came from Bangladesh. During an intense few days people of all complexions and appearances waited in line in front of the exhausted Spanish bureaucrats and argued with great fervour that they had suddenly realised they were from Bangladesh. In this way at least fourteen Chinese refugees from the Hunan province made their way to Germany. A few days later Germany ‘closed’ Bangladesh, as they said in the camp. After three days of uncertainty a rumour was started that France was prepared to take a certain quota of Kurds.

She had been unsuccessful in her attempts to research where the Kurds actually came from or what they looked like. Nonetheless she stood in line with the others and when she at last stood in front of a red-eyed clerk with the name tag ‘Fernando’ she smiled her sweetest smile. Fernando simply shook his head.

‘Tell me what colour you are,’ he said.

She immediately sensed danger, but she had to say something. The Spanish didn’t like people who didn’t answer their questions. A lie was better than silence.

‘You are black,’ Fernando said in reply to his own question. ‘There are no black Kurds. Kurds look like me, not you.’

‘There are always exceptions. My father was not a Kurd, but my mother was.’

Fernando’s eyes seemed only to redden. She continued to smile. It was her strongest weapon, it always had been.

‘And what was your father doing in Kurdistan?’

‘Working.’

Fernando threw his pen down in triumph.

‘Ha! There is no Kurdistan. At least not in any official capacity. That is exactly the reason that Kurds are fleeing their country.’

‘How can they leave a country that doesn’t exist?’

But Fernando lost patience with her. He waved her away.

‘I should report the fact that you have been lying,’ he said.

‘I’m not lying.’

She thought she could suddenly see a spark of interest in his eyes.

‘You are speaking the truth?’

‘Kurds don’t lie.’

The spark in Fernando’s eyes died away.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘It is the best thing you can do. What is your name?’

She decided in that moment to give herself an entirely new name. She looked quickly around the room and her gaze fell on the teacup on Fernando’s table.

‘Tea-Bag,’ she replied.

‘Tea-Bag?’

‘Tea-Bag.’

‘Is that a Kurdish name?’

‘My mother liked English names.’

‘Is Tea-Bag even a name?’

‘It must be since that is what she called me.’

Fernando sighed and dismissed her with a tired wave. She left the room and did not let the smile leave her face until she was out in the yard and had found a place by the fence where she could be alone.

The rain continued to fall on the roof of the tent. She pushed away all thoughts of Fernando and her failure to impersonate a Kurd. Instead she tried to recall the uneasy and wild dreams that had rushed through her head all night. But the only impressions still left were like the ruins of a burned house, the blurry shadows that had surrounded her as she slept, shadows that seemed to creep out of her head, put on strange plays and then disappear again into the depths of her brain. She had seen her father curled up on the rooftop in their village. He had been cursing his imaginary enemies, threatening to kill the living and raise the dead, and he had stayed up there until he fainted from exhaustion and rolled off, landing in the dry sand where Tea-Bag’s distressed mother had tearily pleaded with him to return to his senses.