When we left Paris we didn’t apply for any permits. It happened quite quickly. Papa came home from the bank one day and told Maman to pack as much as she could. The Nazis had entered France and it was time for us to leave. It was all such a rush that I scarcely had the time to feel anxious.
We went on the train to Marseille and I quite liked that part of the journey. I held on tight to my book, and it was comforting reading the words of those familiar stories. After a while, I put La Fontaine away safely in my bag, and watched the French countryside rolling past outside the window. I pretended we were going on our summer holiday to the C?te d’Azur, just like we’d done the year before. I ignored Annette, who was sniffling into Maman’s shoulder because she didn’t want to leave édouard. And I ignored the people crowded into the corridor outside our compartment, because that side of things made me feel a bit scared and I knew I had to be brave. But I also knew that sulking and moping, like some people I could mention, wasn’t going to help.
Even Annette pulled herself together a little when we reached Marseille. It was pandemonium. Everyone was scrambling to try to get to the port. Papa paid two men to find us a taxi and bring our luggage. That’s where I think the trunk went missing, even though the men assured us they’d delivered everything to the correct ship so that Papa would give them a tip.
We were some of the lucky ones because Papa had enough money to pay for things like porters and taxis and tickets and even to give certain officials a tip to make sure we got a cabin. There were crowds and crowds of people at the station and at the port and most of them seemed to be very frightened and angry. And some of them didn’t have the money to make sure they could get on the ship. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they just stayed in Marseille. Or maybe they decided to go somewhere else instead, like Italy or Spain. There was a family with a girl about my age – she looked friendly and we’d smiled at each other when we were in the queue waiting to have our passports stamped – but they didn’t get on the boat. I looked back when we were going up the gangway and there she was, standing on the quay, watching me go. Even though I never really knew her, I still see her face in my dreams sometimes and I wonder where she is now. Perhaps her family managed to get on another ship and one of these days I’ll bump into her in the Place de France here in Casablanca. That would be nice.
Our ship finally departed in the middle of the night. It was so late Maman was starting to panic that it wasn’t going to leave at all. It was too hot in the cabin, and it smelled of engine oil and vomit, so Papa and I went up on deck. We found a little corner near the back of the ship – there were people sleeping everywhere – and I leaned against him as we watched the lights of Marseille disappear. It was comforting to have Papa’s arm around me and to breathe in his smell of cigars and soap, even if we were all a bit dirty and dishevelled by then. The sea was as dark as Maman’s black velvet evening gown, but the night sky was full of millions of stars – way more than I’d ever seen in Paris. I touched the little gold star that hangs around my neck and somehow it was reassuring to feel that it connected me to all those stars above us.
Papa told me to try and get some sleep because we’d still have some long days of travelling ahead of us when we got to Algeria. But I think he and I both just stayed awake watching those millions of stars and wondering what lay in store for us when we reached Africa. A whole new continent!
What did lie in store for us was the A?n Chok refugee camp. But I’m jumping ahead.
First we disembarked from the ship at Oran and had to stand in line for hours and hours in the customs house, which was a bit like being put in an oven to be cooked like a rotisserie chicken. At the start people were quite noisy, complaining and calling out to the officials who were checking papers and reorganising the queues into different lines for reasons that must have been clear to them but seemed quite confusing to the rest of us. But as the day wore on and it got hotter and hotter, a thick, heavy silence fell over us all. Occasionally a baby would whimper, and a woman behind us made a strange noise like a balloon deflating when she fainted and had to be revived with smelling salts and a cup of water, but otherwise there was no noise at all. We just quietly waited and cooked.
At last we reached the front of the queue and had our papers checked. Then we were told to stand in another line for a few more hours. At long last we were allowed to get on a bus. Soldiers from the French Foreign Legion stood alongside it and made sure everyone did as they’d been told by the officials in the customs house. One of the soldiers looked at Annette in a way that made her stand up a bit straighter and smooth her hair back into place. When we got on the bus, two more of the soldiers got on too and sat at the front with their guns. I noticed that Annette opened her purse and put a bit of powder on her nose when she thought no one was looking. That was an improvement, actually, because it was very red and shiny from all her crying.