The Shadow Girls

Tea-Bag folded back the flap of the tent door. It had stopped raining. A damp mist clung to the camp, over the long row of barracks and the tents that looked like dirty fettered animals. People were slowly wandering around as if towards a goal that only existed inside of them. Guards were patrolling the fence with gleaming weapons and dogs that seemed relentlessly intent on picking out danger from the sea. Danger in the form of leaky ships with cargo holds filled to the brim with desperate people, or curiously crafted rafts and rowboats, even doors that some people used as floatation devices.

I am here, Tea-Bag thought. I am in the centre of things here, in the centre of my life. There is nothing behind me: there may not be anything ahead. I am here, that is all. I am here and I am not waiting for anything.

Another day had begun. Tea-Bag walked over to one of the barracks where the women’s showers were located. As usual there was a long line. She had to wait for about an hour until it was her turn. She closed the door behind her, took off her clothes and stepped into the spray of water. She was reminded of the night she almost drowned. The difference, she thought to herself as she soaped her body, the difference is something I’ll never understand. I survived without knowing why, but I also don’t know what it is like to be dead. Once she had dried herself off and put her clothes back on she stepped outside to let the next woman in line take her place, a fat girl with a black scarf wrapped over her head so that only two eyes looked out like dark holes. Tea-Bag wondered absently if the girl took off the scarf when she washed herself.

She walked on between the rows of barracks and tents. Whenever she met someone’s eye she smiled. In an open area under a hastily erected iron roof she received some food, doled out by two heavyset and sweaty Spanish women who maintained a ceaseless conversation with each other. Tea-Bag sat down at a plastic table, wiped away a few breadcrumbs and started to eat. Every morning she was afraid that she would lose the will to eat. Sometimes it seemed as if the ability to feel hunger was what kept her alive.

She ate slowly as a way to make the time go by. She thought about the watch that lay on the bottom of the sea. She wondered if it still worked or if it had stopped at that moment when she herself ought rightfully to have died alongside the others. She searched for the name of the Italian engineer whom she stole the watch from that lonely night when she had sold her body in order to get the money together for the trip. Cartini? Cavanini? She didn’t know if it was his first or last name. Not that it mattered.

She got up from the table and walked over to the women who were still doling out portions from their huge pots while they continued their endless conversation. Tea-Bag put her dish with the other dirty dishes on a trolley and walked down to the fence to look out at the sea. There was a ship far out towards the horizon.

‘Tea-Bag,’ she heard someone say.

She turned around. Fernando was looking at her with his red eyes.

‘There’s someone who wants to speak to you,’ he said.

She was immediately on guard.

‘Who?’

Fernando shrugged.

‘Someone who wants to talk to someone. Anyone. It might as well be you.’

‘No one wants to talk to me.’

She was even more suspicious now, using her big smile as a way to keep Fernando at bay.

‘If you don’t want to talk to him I’ll find someone else.’

‘Why would he want to speak to me?’

Tea-Bag sensed danger; she hoped an opening in the fence would suddenly appear so she could jump through. To ward off the threat she made her smile even wider.

‘A reporter. Someone who has taken it into his head to write a story on refugees.’

‘What kind of a story?’

‘I’m assuming he’s writing an article for the paper.’

‘And he’s going to write about me?’

Fernando made a face.

‘I’ll ask someone else if you don’t want to do it.’

He turned and started to walk away. Tea-Bag had the feeling she was about to make one of the most important decisions of her life.

‘I’ll talk to him, if he wants to talk to me.’

‘Just remember that it won’t be to your advantage if you criticise the camp.’

Tea-Bag tried to understand what he was getting at. The Spanish guards always spoke a language where the most important message lay beneath the surface.

‘What would be to my advantage?’

Fernando stopped and took out a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘I am pleased to say that the Spanish authorities treat us with the utmost compassion and humanity,’ he read aloud.

‘What is that, exactly?’

‘That’s what you should say. Everyone who works here has a copy of it. Someone in the Ministry of the Interior wrote it. That’s what you should say to the journalist. It could be to your advantage.’

‘My advantage? How?’

‘So you will continue to be treated with compassion.’

‘What exactly do you mean by “compassion”?’

‘To help you reach your goal.’

‘What goal?’

‘The goal you have set for yourself.’

Tea-Bag had the feeling she was walking around in a circle.