‘Somalia, if you must know.’
‘Why didn’t you want to tell me?’
She untied her headwrap, readjusted it and tightened it again.
‘I don’t like to talk about it because it hurt my heart.’
I was quiet. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to me because I was a man, maybe it was a man who had done something to her. I didn’t want to force her story, but perhaps she sensed my acceptance and it helped her to relax, for she said, ‘There was very little food. Bad famine. I had to leave and so I went to Kenya. I was pregnant, I didn’t want my baby to be born at home, to suffer like I did.’ She paused and I remained silent. ‘In Kenya I was in a big camp called Dadaab but they were saying this camp was going to close. They thought al-Shabaab fighters from Somalia were using the camp for smuggling weapons. And there were so many of us. They wanted to get rid of us, to dump us. So I leave there and I make a long journey to here.’
She stopped and I saw that she was searching her bag for something. Eventually she pulled out a little pouch.
‘They took my baby when I got to Athens. In here is a small lock of her hair. One night when I was sleeping in this park, somebody is take her from my arms. I know that they put drugs in my water, poison it so that I will not wake up, because usually I wake to every tiny movement and every tiny sound she make. How did they take her without me knowing? They poison me, I know it.’
Her voice cracked and I didn’t ask any more questions, but I could tell that she was thinking about it now, that memories of both Somalia and her baby were filling her mind and her senses, in the way the memory of the heat and the sand of the Syrian Desert came back and engulfed me and filled my heart. The fire was bright now and her face was beautiful and sculpted in its light, but the talcum powder gave her a pallid complexion.
‘You know, sometimes I remember that my country is so beautiful – there is the Indian Ocean and it sparkles blue and looks like heaven. There is golden sand and beach, rocks and some houses like white palaces. The city is busy with cafés and shops. But the situation there is so bad.’ She looked at me now for the first time. ‘I can’t go back, because when I am in Somalia there is nothing forward, nothing goes forward. Now, in this place, there is forward.’
‘There is? I thought you said there isn’t?’
She considered for a few moments, and then said, ‘This is what I believed.’
She was silent for a while and then she said, ‘I want to find job, but nobody want me. English is no good here. People here don’t like me. Even Greek people can’t get job. They sell tissues on the street. How many tissues will people need to buy? Maybe this is a city of crying?’ She laughed now, and I was reminded suddenly of the laughter I had heard through the window back at the school.
The following morning, Angeliki had gone and Afra was drawing. She was sitting cross-legged on the blanket, using both hands to create an image. In her right hand she held the pencil, and with the fingertips of her left hand she followed the grooves of the marks on the page. An image was emerging and it looked like a place from a dream, a desert meeting a city, the lines and dimensions distorted, the colours mixed up, but I could see Afra’s soul in the lines on the paper, the way they appeared to move with light and life.
‘This is for Angeliki,’ she said, and when she’d finished she asked me to put it under the blanket so that it wouldn’t blow away.
We made our way to the Hope Centre. I left Afra there and headed to the square, hoping I would see the man from yesterday. I sat on the same bench and waited. At one point the man with the worry beads passed through, heading towards the Metro. He saluted me by lifting the beads.
‘You find Elpidos?’ he called.
‘I did, thank you.’
‘Elpida mean hope,’ he said again, as he had last time, throwing a stale bit of bread on the ground for the dog, but the dog didn’t move.
About an hour later I spotted the man I was looking for standing by the statue on the square with a group of other young men and women. They were smoking and laughing and there were two female NGO workers among them, wearing green T-shirts and carrying rucksacks. I waited until most of the group had dispersed and the young man was sitting on a low wall; he had the notepad open now and was writing. He looked more relaxed than he had the previous day.
I got up and sat down beside him. The man was occupied with his writing for a long time but eventually glanced up to see who was sitting beside him.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said.