Winter in Paris Part 2 (a translator joins us)

Visiting Mehrab and Imran as December and then Christmas loomed on the horizon started becoming incredibly emotional for me. Yes, we would have fun and Imran would tease me for not being a strong Afghan that can take the cold….or I’d sip hot milky coffee, chatting away as all the faces I know heartily ate food handed to all the homeless by volunteers from Resto De Coeur but afterwards I’d go home incredibly upset. Walking away from a homeless teen as it snows? Not easy.

I delivered sleeping bags and jumpers collected from friends to them. They showed me the tents given to them by Les Enfants de Don Quichotte (www.lesenfantsdedonquichotte.com) who tirelessly campaign for the homeless each year. When the snow came Mehrab showed me a card that held credits for five nights in lodgings provided by the charity Emmaus. He said he was saving these stays for when it got really cold. Others told me that if it was really cold then they would club together for a hotel room and nine would sneak in for one warm nights sleep but that that was rare because of the expense. Mehrab told me of another sheltered place where twenty or more guys including Pad would sleep (a tunnel? a derelict building? It wasn’t clear) but said he preferred to stick to his own tent because he had a healthy fear of scabies or other skin infections that arrive when humans living in such shared conditions can catch. A small fact about Mehrab, homeless or not, raining or not, his trainers, jeans , everything, are spotlessly clean.

For a period Imran was in a mood with me because once I didn’t visit them for three weeks. “Why you didn’t come?” he demanded after forty minutes of saying very little. Mostly though Imran kept himself busy and out of the cold so wasn’t around. I’d arrive and Mehrab would say “Imran, computer” meaning that he was at a public library reading the news, watching his favourite Bollywood star Salman Khan, pouring over cricket scores or watching his ultimate favourite: wrestling. (Imran – bless this teenager – believes that all wrestling, even the theatrical type where orange-skinned, costumed beef-cakes smash chairs over eachother’s heads is 100% real). Or he would be “visiting friend” or “drinking tea” or “computer, mosque then visit friend and drink tea.”

Besides the fact that Imran is the go-between for Mehrab and I as we learn French and Pashto (so by default he is learning something) Imran says that he refuses to learn French because he will go to England where his uncle and cousins live so what is the point? Conversely however it’s clear that he’s terrified of the journey that this entails, with good reason as many regularly die trying to cross the English channel. And so this boy is stuck. The clock is ticking towards his eighteenth birthday when his asylum application will be judged by all Europeans countries in a different light. One day I make sure he knows his options but at the same time it’s of utmost importance to me that I don’t influence any life decisions he makes. Sometimes he’s insensed by news of drones dropping bombs in his home region, fired up by chatter on the internet. Listen, I say finishing this particular conversation, nobody can decide what road you must take, including the views of those that you read on the internet. He nods his head. Such a world of worry sits on this kids shoulders. Mehrab is his leveller, his friend that lightens the load and I suspect the truth is, after completing their journey from Afghanistan to Europe together – the eight-hour walk across mountains, hold-ups by armed bandits at multiple borders, detention in Iran (thirty people in one room with one toilet), dodging the wrath of the Kurdish mafia, the “colourful” voyage into Greece and Italy – they conquered all of this together and I suspect that the truth is, now they’re at their last destination Imran does not want to make the final leg of his journey to England alone. Mehrab has chosen to stay in France and under the pan-European Dublin II regulations has surrendered his fingerprints and provided his birth certificate at the Paris prefecture so his fate is tied to her. For Imran, I guess the phrase is watch this space.

So, how do I know the story of their journey together? One evening I ask a guy who was a translator in Afghanistan to join us as, after four months of friendship, I want to hear 24 year old Mehrab express himself freely! Wow, after four months I find out that Imran and Mehrab’s lives have been intertwined since Imran was a young boy. After four months I learn that Mehrab’s father was an assistant to a commander who fought the Soviets and Taliban and this is the second time he has been displaced by war, the first being when he was a toddler during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I also learn that, on account of a sick relative the family moved to the Af-pak border where Mehrab became Imran’s neighbour. The pair decided to take the journey to Europe after Imran’s grand-father was a victim of mistaken identity: arrested by Americans but let go that same night when the mistake was realised. Too late however as following the arrest of the true culprit the Taliban sought revenge and punishment for the arrest of what was considered a key member and blew up the grand-father’s house. It was the final straw in a succession of events that led the families of both to conclude that it was no longer safe for their sons to remain, secret good-byes were said and the pair slipped away.

Mehrab continues his account, facts worsen, quite dramatically for him personally (he’s currently on a Taliban death list) but for now the details are his and must remain so until his dossier for asylum has been checked. These two young men left a town on the Afghan-Pakistan border situated in the whole area named the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA) which is the hottest danger spot, the epicentre of the global fight against extremism. These are the no-go terrains and un-governable hidey-holes of the most wanted extremists alive: 29 year old Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud (who appeared sitting next the CIA bomber in the video communiqué to the world), the training camps, the elusive Osama Bin Laden or finally, foreigners arriving to join the Jihad. These characters bring the following into citizens daily lives: spies, informants, suspicion, blood thirsty public executions, night-raids and ariel attacks from the dreaded drones. As Allied forces and the Taliban fight over this strategic territory, if ordinary citizens don’t get out of the way then they’re in the way.

“I came to survive, I didn’t come here because I was poor or to destroy or demolish this country but to save my life,” says Mehrab before moving onto his feelings about his seven month long homeless situation while the French government processes his claim. “I am a human being too. In Afghanistan I didn’t live in such conditions, I had a house, I had hand-made blankets on my bed. I want to live like people do in France. I feel ashamed. The place where I live is horrible, (in a tent under a bridge) I hope they can give me a house and school so that I can learn the language and work like normal people. I have deep wrinkles and dark marks on my face from the worry and the stress, I’m only twenty-four! I like France and gave my fingerprints, I’m not allowed to work but I cannot go home, I am at the mercy of the government, they have a noose around my neck and I must suffer”.

I ask if his religion gives him comfort. “I don’t feel happy in my heart, God can see me so since I came to France I haven’t prayed because I don’t want to pray in such dirty clothes. Once I am clean and happy I will pray. I want to live like Europeans, I don’t want to fight, I hate fighting, I’ve been here for seven months living on the streets and I have never been arrested. Now we have snow, when the police wake me up in the morning they shake my tent and say “hey are you alive?” I’m not the sort of Afghan who will die from the cold, I am strong. What more can I do to stay in this country? I don’t have permission to work, I wish I did then I could work and get my own house.”

I ask what he thinks about the position of his country. “As the world can see there are troubles in Afghanistan, so many people fighting. The USA went to Afghanistan searching for Osama but it is we the Afghan people who are facing the most casualties. Osama did not come from Afghanistan yet we are being attacked. There are so many troops from so many countries in my country, the government tells me that there are no problems in Afghanistan and I could return. If there are no problems then why are the troops there, you can’t have it both ways.”

I look up from my note-book and see Mehrab wiping tears from his eyes. The translator and I are fighting the same urge. The Afghan translator adds, “I can say, for the mistake that Mehrab made (details not included in this blog for reasons already given), if he stayed in his town he would be killed or beaten and given the choice by extremists to join them. The problem is that if you say no then you have to give something in return, for example, used as a shield or shot” I ask what he means by being used as a shield. “They will attack the Allies or whoever is the target then hide behind you and your family or you will be asked to blow yourself up, you have to give something, that is the choice. Now that he has left they are saying that the responsibility must be taken by his brother, that’s how it works.” I look at the hands of my translator, fingers on both are scarred from torture by the Taliban who would have killed him or done the same had he not done the same. His sin? Translating for the Allied forces. These extremists only accept clear absolutes: you’re either with them or against them.

(Read about the Resto de Coeur charity at Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurants_du_Cœur)

Winter in Paris part 1

It’s been a long while since I updated this blog, a lot has happened. First there was a bit of to’ing and fro’ing. One of the boys, Jahandar, who’d arrived to Paris, exhausted and dirty from the razing of the Pashtun camp in Calais finally decided to return to Northern France. During his brief stay in Paris however he’d become attached to Mehrab, the pint-sized guy with a lion heart, easy humour and sharp sense for his coterie’s safety from the dangers that sleeping on the streets of any city can bring.

Jahandar spent weeks trying to persuade Mehrab to take the journey to Calais with him. In a quiet moment I asked Mehrab what his thoughts were on the subject. Knowing no English he explained by way of pointing at items and play acting (like charades) that the press covering Calais frightened him and that since his dossier of application for residency is in Paris he should stay put. The vibe of his thinking was, since he had already spent seven months in Paris and had taken great care not to do anything to jeopardize his application he was worried about rocking the boat. Regardless, Jahandar raised his campaign of persuasion almost hourly, trying each and every way to get Mehrab to agree. “It is just for you that you want him to be in Calais, it is not for the good of him,” reasoned 17 year old Imran in English.

Jahandar left Paris and returned a couple of times but finally left for Calais without Mehrab. As this process happened winter began approaching fast and it became apparent that continuing our French lessons on a park bench was going to tricky. Citizen groups local to the area in which these boys sleep plus charities started holding frequent meetings in anticipation of the cold, it felt like a race against the forces of nature. Shelter had to be organised for these boys, estimated to be around just 150 in Paris and found fast.

December. Freezing. One day, in a big coat and hat, Mehrab was the only guy waiting for me which would prove interesting as not only does he not know any English but his first language is neither Pashtun nor Dari but a language that is indiginous to a tribe of just 500,000 Afghans in the East of Afghanistan. “You’re teaching him French?” a wise-guy had joked while Mehrab pretended to playfight him, “he can hardly speak and write our language let alone English or French, this guy knows nothing,” he laughed slapping the bench, “you will be sitting here for years!” Secondly we are usually with Imran who speaks English but he was away emailing his family. Well, I know the Pashtu word for tea so we went for some black tea and to mull things over.

There is a tiny place where all the guys congregate to eat cheap Halal food and drink the sour yoghurt-like drink, the name of which eludes me. This no-frills eaterie feels like a pit-stop for an infinite number of road movies starring the fascinating variation of faces that come from Afghanistan. The quiet Hazara with their Asian features and neat rucksacks; the cheeky team of teenagers who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan (“I have never been to Afghanistan but I am Afghan!” one told me proudly). The twenty-somethings (from Jalalabad, Kandahar, the Waziristan borders…towns, villages, valleys, mountains…) of which is a huge handsome giant of a guy named Pad who, they say, has a brother who does body building in Pakistan; stand behind him when a biting gust of wind hits and you’re protected from the cold sting by his huge frame!

Then there are the tall thin youngsters with light brown hair, green eyes, perfect posture and (I don’t know why this seems to be unique only to them) brightly coloured ski jackets. These young boys yet too young to shave are hypnotic to watch as they sit eating their food silently like boy princes, incredibly poised in comparison to the other teens who need no excuse to begin playing MP3’s from their mobile phones and ping around like jumping beans until Pad rises from his seat like a giant, using only his height to demand calm. “Hey!” answers one such jumping bean to Pad one day, “you can’t tell me what to do!” An instantaneous chorus breaks out as every twenty-something in the room looks up from his food to protest this behavour, shooing him out of the room by motioning their hands. “Who can eat with your noise?” asks one. “Get back to the street refugee!” quips another and the whole room laughs. The teenager leaves full of bravado and comical back-chat. The Hazara resume their quiet, private conversations and the little princes continue to survey this and all passing scenes in regal silence.

So, back to our cup of tea and what to do? Hmm. Mehrab says, “beer?” Ah, I say and I write down on a piece of paper “gauche, droite, aller tout droit, arrete, aller” and we spend some time working it all out. It’s bloody freezing outside, impossible to stand still so the game is that Mehrab directs me in French to various spots that we know then I direct him in Pashto. After twenty minutes we’re freezing so I get him to direct me to the warm bar to get a beer. Amazing how fast the human brain can learn new words when your toes and fingers are turning to icicles and there’s a nice pint waiting in a warm bar at the end of the days lesson.

Lesson 4 – jokes, cricket, dinner and faux pas

Tuesday.

I arrive to the park, find Mehrab and the boys. Who pops up but Jahandar, the lad I had taken to the hospital. Hey look at you, I joked as the young man who stood before me had almost completely transformed! The old Jahandar, dirty, exhausted, stinky, limping and emotionally burnt out from his days sleeping in the make-shift tents in Calais had turned into a new person in fresh clothes (from the local charitiable associations in the area) all clean and all smiles. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “my foot it’s good, it’s good. I spent the last three days with this guy (points to Mehrab) and I’m telling you, this guy is funny.” As he continues I note that this is the second person to tell me, when they arrived to the streets in Paris, pint-sized Mehrab (24yrs) took them under his wing, shared blankets and information but perhaps more importantly lifted their spirits with his chilled demeanour, quick sense of humour and ability to keep his group safe and away from the dangers that can lie on the streets.

I learn that Mehrab and the teenager from the Pakistan/Afghanistan border (Imran, 17yrs) had travelled together across Turkey and Iran. Mehrab tells me in Pashto their story of crossing mountains for days in the snow, being held up by bandits in Turkey who fired kalashnikovs over their heads and of being moved back and forth between Turkey and Iran as neither country wanted to deal with them. Most if not all of my Afghan friends have the same story to tell. “Say this line is the border yeah cos at the end of the day that’s what it looks like” says Jahandar drawing a line in the dirt with his trainer highlighting some of the comical yet scary situations people experience. “The soldiers are screaming at you with guns to cross the border so you do it but there’s nothing there! You don’t know where to go! So people just sit down on a bank ten metres away from this line looking at the soldiers.”

Why did you leave Afghanistan, I ask Jahandar. “So my step-brother is high up in the Taliban,” he begins, “if I ever needed money when I was a kid he’d give it to me. One day he comes to our house, I was maybe fourteen or less and he stays for two days bringing with him two armed guards who stand outside our house while he’s there. He’s saying to me, you should join us, you’ll get money, food, training, this is what we’re doing you should join us”. When he left I spoke with my mother and she said, Jahandar you’ve got to get out of here. Secretly we went to my uncle and he agreed, it was time for me to leave and leave fast so that was it, gone.” If you had stayed in Afghanistan I asked, what would have happened to you? Jahandar’s humour is similar to mine so a comical grimace that doesn’t signify good things is enough for me. I see.

I’m alone with young Imran for a short time and he tells me that he had argued with Mehrab a day ago. Imran says bombs had exploded in his village days before it hit the media. His family house had been hit but nobody had died. He was angry, frightened for his family and so frustrated that he had shouted at Mehrab to give him five euros so that he could go home. Mehrab had scoffed and scolded the skinny seventeen year old and said, “What can you do? You’ll be taken by you don’t know who and made to fight for you don’t know what, how will that help?” Imran shook his head as we walked. We reach our destination, he digs his hands into his jean pockets and shakes his head with a grin that says, my world is a joke. I say nothing but I know that Mehrab was protecting Imran from his own hotheadedness. And the reality is, at 17, he cannot join the Pakistan army and so would be conscripted into the Taliban, no negotiation. The subject turns to cricket. Imran is a big fan and it’s one bright light in his life. “There is no cricket in Paris, we’ve played just one time this year.” Funnily enough, I say talking about my ex-pat friends, we’ve been looking for cricket pitches in Paris too. I’ll see if I can find some pitches and get something going for the spring when we can play.

Sunday.

I have arranged to meet another Afghan who worked as a translator for the Allied forces so his English is better than most. I meet him because I know that he knows Mahreb and after four language lessons together I’m curious to know what level of schooling Mahreb may have had so that I can teach him French more effectively. Bahar lays it down in black and white. Mahreb is from a village where there’s little to no education, he’s barely literate, he doesn’t even know real Pashto. OK I say, so I need to take a language pit-stop with Mahreb and go back to really nailing the French alphabet. This guy who looks after his gang of friends is conversely the guy who needs language skills the most. Bahar tells me that it’s his dinner time and we both walk towards the metro station.

It’s 7pm and suddenly I get what Bahar means by dinner time. At the entrance of the park are five long makeshift tables on trestles full of French volunteers giving hot food and drink to the poor (when the trestles are packed away clothes are distributed) There are about 300 people in the queues, the majority clearly Afghan. I’m a little taken aback as I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. Of course I know that these things happen across the globe but because I’ve never sought out anything like this before I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. I see my friends queueing for food. Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that my friends are homeless because they’re so clean and upbeat but as they queued for food that facade fell away. I saw Imran. You’re not eating? I ask. “I ate already, we eat at one of the other places where food is given out.” What did you eat? “Grapes, apples, cornflakes.” Is that it, I ask, no soup? “There was soup and food but it has meat which is not Halal so we can’t eat it.”

Thursday

Mahreb and I spend two hours going over and drawing the French and Pashto alphabet under the watchful eye of Imran and Jahandar who translate and correct because Mahreb can’t speak English, I can’t yet speak Pashto and his Pashto alphabet isn’t so good either. Imran and Jahandar find the pair of us comical. Afterwards we go to eat. Jahandar is joined by two guys who say that they are on their way back to Calais. “France is a bad place,” one says, “there’s no need for me to stay in France because I can already speak English, I’m ready to work and build my life now!” This twenty-two year old guy had an incredibly frustrated and angry edge to his personality compared to my Pashto friends who are always chilled and humourous. He and his friend didn’t look Afghan but it made no difference to me so I didn’t ask. I asked him about living in La Jungle and he told me how they had made cookers from metal bins to make bread. His phone rings and he talks in Farsi as we eat. Five minutes later he apologises. “That was my family, they call to see how I am, they’re worried about me but also they don’t understand how come I haven’t made it to England yet. My father is saying, what’s the problem? Why are you in France? They don’t understand Calais, they can’t imagine what the reality is.” He asks why I left the UK. I answer, because I didn’t agree with going to war in Iraq. This guy laughs. “So let me get this straight, me and him,” he motions to himself and his friend with his fork, “we are from Iraq. So you left England cos of the war in Iraq and here I am trying to get into England cos of the war in Iraq.” He fell silent, his fork repeatedly jabbing his food with increased force, the pressure in his jaw building so much so that when I meet eyes with Jahandar and Marheb we can’t stop ourselves from laughing at him. He laughed at himself too, looking at all of us and shaking his head, “I’m telling you, it’s a total joke”.