‘I see you’ve all met,’ he said, taking a seat beside us on the blanket, and he began to play, the soft sound washing through my mind, washing away the thoughts and worries, the melody warm, dipping lower and darker and becoming even more mesmerising. After an hour of music, Nadim put down his guitar and drifted away from us. I saw him head for the woods and decided to follow him, past a group of Greek men smoking by a bench, past two women loitering in the shadows. I followed him to a clearing with a fallen tree and as he sat down on the cracked log, he took something out of his rucksack: a small, sharp penknife. He placed its blade on his left wrist, paused for a second, then scanned his surroundings. I stepped back into the shadows to make sure that he wouldn’t see me. Then without any more hesitation he ran the knife along his forearm. I could see the creases of pain on his face, his eyes rolling backwards, so that for a brief moment there was only white. His arm was bleeding and he took some tissues out of his bag and held them over the fresh wounds. But it was the look on his face that I remember the most; he seemed angry. Was this punishment?
I moved slightly and a twig broke and Nadim looked up and his eyes settled on me, narrowing. I stepped back, further into the darkness, and not knowing what else to do I began to run through the woods and back to the campsite.
‘What happened?’ Afra said when I sat down beside her.
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘Because you’re breathing like a dog.’
‘No, I’m not, I’m perfectly calm.’
She shook her head slightly in resignation and in that moment Nadim emerged from the trees and sat down on the step of the statue. He suddenly appeared emaciated again just as he did the first day I saw him – his strength had been drained from him. I waited to see if he would approach me, but he didn’t even glance in my direction. He simply rolled one cigarette after another and sat there for an hour or more smoking.
The boys were on their blanket, playing a game on their phone and laughing. Sometimes Ali punched Ryad’s arm, and then Ryad got fed up and took the phone, sitting with his back to Ali so that he couldn’t see the screen.
Although Nadim seemed relaxed and preoccupied with his own thoughts, I could see that his mind was actually on the boys, his eyes constantly flicking towards them.
I lay down next to Afra and pretended to close my eyes, but I watched Nadim and the boys. At ten o’clock on the dot Nadim got up and went into the woods. Three minutes later the boys followed. I got up and followed them too, trying to keep enough distance between us so that they would not see me, while at the same time staying close enough so that I would not lose them.
They took sharp and unexpected turns, as if they were following an invisible path, and eventually reached a different clearing in the woods than before. Here, there was trash everywhere, piles and piles of it; a dried-up pond had become a rubbish dump. In the middle of a concrete well there was a stagnant fountain surrounded by the pipes of an ancient watering system. Just beyond this, all the bushes in a rose garden were dead. Drug addicts and dealers hovered around the well, syringes lay strewn on the ground. People sat on the roof of a maintenance building, and scattered around were mattresses and boxes – the remnants of a past life.
The boys stood by the well and they were soon approached by a man who slipped some money into Ryad’s hand. Then the boys split up. Ali took the path to the right of the fountain, and Ryad waited until another man came shortly after to collect him, and they went off together in the opposite direction. I stood there for a while, and people started to notice me. Nadim was nowhere to be seen, he must have slipped away. I couldn’t stay here too long. I had to leave this place, go back to the campsite.
So I began to make my way there, taking wrong turns and retracing my steps. When I heard the sound of children kicking a ball I knew I was close, and shortly after I saw the light of the campfire. I found Angeliki sitting by the tree again beside Afra. The notepad and colouring pencils were in her lap, her head pressed against the bark of the tree, fast asleep. Afra was also asleep, curled up on her side in a foetal position with her head resting on both hands. I could feel that someone was watching me, and when I turned around I saw that Nadim was back on the step of the statue, smoking and staring at me.
He raised a hand, signalling for me to come over, and I went and sat beside him on the step.
‘I have something to give you,’ he said.
‘I don’t need anything.’
‘Everybody needs something,’ he said, ‘especially here.’