The following night was almost exactly the same, except one of the packages was collected by a man on a boat, who then set off into the dark sea towards one of the islands.
The days passed like this, sleeping next to Afra by day, with a view of the brick walls through the window and the sounds of the ventilation systems, and then travelling around Athens and its suburbs at night delivering packages to strange men.
Three weeks came and went. We lived like this for a month. It was taking much longer than Mr Fotakis had promised. He said he was trying to sort out our passports and flights. There were times when I didn’t believe him, when I thought that one day he’d throw us out and we would end up stuck forever in Athens, back in Pedion tou Areos, which for me was the equivalent of hell.
Then one day he knocked on the bedroom door. It was early afternoon and I’d been dozing next to Afra. When I got up and went into the living area, he had a plastic bag for me. Inside was peroxide hair dye for Afra and some scissors and clippers and good shaving foam for me. ‘I want you to sort yourselves ready for the passport photos,’ he announced.
In the bedroom, I took off Afra’s hijab, released her black hair from its bun and followed the instructions on the box, dividing her hair into sections and coating it in the foul-smelling mixture. We left it on for three-quarters of an hour before going into the bathroom and washing it off over the sink. I gave her a towel and waited for her in the living area. Mr Fotakis had made us all some fresh mint tea – he had some pots of herbs on the windowsill which seemed to thrive in the humid air – and we both sat there sipping the tea from small glasses.
When Afra came out of the bathroom she looked like a different woman. The blonde hair somehow made her look taller, her cheekbones rounder, and although the lighter hair should have made her skin look darker, it somehow created a paler complexion, so white it reminded me of ashes and snow. The grey of her eyes had deepened and there was a shimmer in them as she sat down beside us.
‘I smell mint,’ she said, and Mr Fotakis put a glass in her hand. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
‘You look so different!’ he said, laughing. ‘Amazing how one thing can change a person so much!’ But there was something else in his voice, the same tone that had made me uneasy from the first day we came here. It was the lust and greed that crackled through his phlegm when he spoke, almost hidden, but not quite.
I cut my hair and shaved well and then I put on a crisp white shirt that belonged to Mr Fotakis. The taller of the two brothers came to take the photos. He positioned us in the light of the window and clicked away until he was satisfied.
In the evenings I continued to make the deliveries. There were so many packages and as the days passed I would often meet the same people again; they got to know me and trust me, and sometimes they would offer me cigarettes. I was awake only at night, I no longer saw the sun. Afra and I existed in darkness.
About a week later the passports arrived. Our new names were Gloria and Bruno Baresi.
‘You’re Italian,’ Mr Fotakis said.
‘What if they ask us questions? We don’t know any Italian.’
‘I’m hopeful that won’t happen. You will be going from here to Madrid, then from Madrid to the UK. No one will know that you don’t speak Italian. Just don’t speak Arabic! Keep your mouths shut as much as you can!’
So the date was set and the tickets were booked. Mr Fotakis bought Afra a red dress made of the finest material and a grey scarf that had been hand-woven with tiny red flowers the same colour as the dress. It was beautiful but casual. He also gave her a jean jacket, a handbag and a new pair of shoes. I got a pair of jeans, a leather belt, a new white shirt and a brown jumper. He wanted us to put the clothes on to make sure that we looked authentic.
‘You are a beautiful couple,’ he said smiling. ‘You look like you have stepped out of a magazine.’
‘What do I look like?’ Afra said to me later as I was getting ready to make my deliveries.
‘You don’t look like you.’
‘Do I look horrible?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not. You are always beautiful.’
‘Nuri, now all the world can see my hair.’
‘Really they can’t,’ I say, ‘because it is a different colour.’
‘And they can see my legs.’
‘But they are the legs of Gloria Baresi, not yours.’
Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn’t.
We were due to leave the next day, and that night there were more packages than usual. I locked Afra in the room and I put the key down on the coffee table for a second to count the boxes and tick them off the list. At that moment Mr Fotakis came in to tell me about the travel arrangements to the airport. He then helped me to carry the boxes downstairs to the van. It wasn’t until I was halfway across Athens that I realised that I’d forgotten the key. I couldn’t turn back to get it – I had ten people to meet and they all had their designated time slots; if I was late for one, I’d be late for all of them. So I kept going and I tried not to think about Afra; I remembered her again only when I was heading back into the city in the early hours of the morning.