Copenhagen Noir

Taghi didn’t answer, he was gazing at the darkness in the doorway while he considered the situation. The truth was that he felt exactly the same way as Farshad. He wanted to get out. He felt sticky underneath the down jacket Laleh had found for him in Føtex-løsning, the discount grocery. He heard a faint scraping sound and possibly a sigh from inside the apartment. He felt unsure, but he was the oldest, after all, and he had to decide what they should do.

“It’s not a ghost,” he said, in a voice as strong and steady as he could make it.

The others hesitated behind him when he pushed the door open and entered the apartment, the beam from the flashlight bouncing in front of him like a disco ball out of whack. There was an open living room and kitchen, bathed in a pale orange light from the plate-glass window facing the canal. Taghi knew instinctively that this wasn’t where to look. It was too open, no place to hide. An empty space at the opposite end of the living room led into what must be the guest bathroom. If there had been any doors in the apartment they were gone now. Maybe someone else had gotten here before them, Taghi thought. Something dark was moving in there. Rocking back and forth on the floor still covered by clear plastic from the painters. He heard Farshad gasping behind him. He had followed, while Djo Djo hung back at the newly plastered island in the kitchen.

Taghi pointed the beam of light directly at the black shadow, and before the figure even turned its head toward him, he knew he’d been right.

It was a woman.

She sat stooped over the toilet seat. Her skirt hung sloppily around her hips and thin legs. Her arms arched like taut bows over the toilet bowl. Like someone throwing up, Taghi thought. But he knew what the woman was doing. First it was as if she didn’t know they were there, not really, anyway. But when he stepped closer she turned her head, and her eyes, completely naked and black, met his.

They had been so close. So close that she could see the bridge, see the long rows of lights leading to Sweden. After the nightmarish days on the open deck of the ship, after months of overcrowded rooms that smelled of fear, with nervous men who always wanted more money than agreed upon, with uncertainty and despair about her belly that kept growing and growing… after all that, only one thing was left: get over the bridge. When she got there she was supposed to call Jacob, and he would come and take care of everything, the rest of her life, he had promised, with her and the baby… She felt an overwhelming yearning in her gut, almost as fierce as the contractions, and her lips formed the words he had taught her to say, the magic words that would open the gate so she could be with Jacob forever: Jag söker asyl-I seek asylum. But don’t say it before she got to Sweden, he had said. And for God’s sake, she must not be discovered before she was inside Sweden, otherwise the gate to her life with Jacob would close. If she wasn’t sent back-a terrible, horrifying thought-she would end up in some sort of refugee camp, someplace he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t be with her. It would be like prison, he said, and it could be for several years.

That was why Chaltu hadn’t said anything about the jolts of pain shooting through her body. She had tried, tried

, but eventually she couldn’t hold it back. The sounds were coming out no matter what, just like the baby. And then it happened, the one terrible thing she couldn’t let happen. Her water broke, came rushing from between her legs and out over the seat beneath her.

The driver stopped the car. This is no good, he said. He cursed about the seat that was wet now, but even worse was how she couldn’t sit upright and keep quiet when the contractions came. They would be stopped, and he wasn’t going to prison because of her, he said.

She screamed and wailed and begged, and they had to drag her out of the car by force. She even tried to run after them, but of course that was hopeless. The driver floored it and a shower of slushy gray snow sprayed up in her face, and then the car was gone.

I will die, Chaltu thought. The baby will kill me and neither of us will ever see Jacob. She slugged her stomach with both hands, punches of helpless rage, and she had to bite her cheek not to say out loud the curse that was on her lips. I must not curse my own child, she thought. God will punish me for that. Holy Virgin, what have I done? But she knew well enough. Her sin was love. Love for Jacob, a love that had no future in Adis Ababa, but maybe in Blekinge, where he had lived since he was seven and was now studying, in Blekinge College and Yrkeshögskolan, to become an agronomist.