The People Smuggler: : The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi by Robin de Crespigny

Author:Robin de Crespigny [Crespigny, Robin de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742534350
Publisher: e-penguin
Published: 2012-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

My Own Master

When Malik and I go to collect the money, some of them don’t have it. I have been in their situation myself so I understand, but I can’t send anyone if there is not sufficient to buy a boat.

‘So what are you going to do?’ I say, looking around at the fifteen or so who don’t have enough.

‘I have $US700 and my cousin in Germany will send me the rest,’ one says.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘give it to me and I put your name down, but you will have to pay the rest, otherwise you’re not going.’

Another has a brother in Iran, and so it goes.

We leave the hotel and walk trancelike onto the busy street. I am both terrified and exhilarated by taking control. I just have to keep my sights on why I am doing it, which at the moment is not hard. I am constantly worried about what is happening to my family. They have no phone, so to call them I have to contact their neighbour, and they get my mother to come.

Since things in Iran have been tightening up politically, the Iraqi community has been fragmenting, because everyone is leaving. My mother is terrified she will be left behind. Now that she has set her mind on Australia she just wants to get there. She doesn’t know how I am going to do it, but she is past being rational. Our phone calls are an unpleasant, guilt-ridden business as I try to reassure her I will get her there somehow, but her unhappiness always drags me down.

The small bag I carry is bulging with about eighteen or nineteen thousand American dollars. More cash than I have ever seen, let alone held in my own hands. Hands which are now sweating. Malik skips along beside me like a truanting kid.

‘Can you imagine what we could do with all that?’ he asks.

I nod and walk swiftly. With this kind of money I could purchase the necessary passports and paperwork for my whole family, fly them all out of Iran to Australia with ease and follow them, instead of the nightmare that lies ahead. Malik is a good reliable friend, yet I know he would consider keeping this money if he could think of a way to do it.

‘Where are you taking it?’ he asks when I don’t answer.

‘To a safety box in the hotel.’

Silence. I know what is coming.

‘Can we keep some of it?’

I look at him warily and laugh. ‘No.’

‘There’s so much. Why not just a bit?’

‘No,’ I say more firmly, already dizzy with the enormity of what we have done, and wishing he wasn’t making the job harder. ‘What if tomorrow they change their minds and want their money back, and we are the ones who took it?’

‘Okay,’ he conciliates, but I can tell it might be different if he was carrying it alone.

Forewarned, when I ask for a safety deposit box at the hotel I insist that under no circumstances is anyone other than me to open it.

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