Things i took with me on my journey to Europe
Things i took with me on my journey to Europe
The packs of cigarettes as sustenance
Panjiri, mixed nuts cooked in desi ghee that my mother lovingly made,
My friend made fun of me for carrying it so I promised he would not get a morsel,
Later at the Turkey border he begged me for a spoonful.
…….
New clothes, two suits that got lost in Libya,
There one doesn’t care about one’s clothes
Only one’s flesh,
It is due to the dreams that the agents sell and ones that I had bought that I had gotten the new clothes stitched,
Expensive dreams, unlikely ones also.
Of the two sets of clothes one is maroon,
one a light camel not brown, it helped me camouflage with all the dust.
Water
Water
Water
So that I won’t die of thirst as I cross oceans and don’t have a drop to drink,
Warm clothes,
Boots from the sunday bazaar,
My friends made fun of my patloon when I reached Italy, they had only seen me wear shalwar kameez and dhotis at home,
But we are not at home anymore.
“Don’t get expensive clothes” my friend’s brother had said,
They will be ruined on the way to Europe,
He had gone to Morocco and came back because he couldn’t get passage ahead
we trusted what he said,
He had seen more of the world than we knew.
Dates and chickpeas roasted enclosed in a tight packet,
So I won’t die of hunger
My broken english that I had learned at MAO college in Lahore
If I knew more perfect one I would have a future in my country
For Europe one doesn’t need English
Telephone numbers of friends and family who were already in Europe
I learned some
I wrote some down in Urdu
I didn’t want them to get caught if someone caught my luggage
In Europe no one understood the numbers that I wrote
Some I contacted and they never got in touch
Later some contacted my family back in Wazirabad asking for money that I hadn’t borrowed
My mother’s advice to never look back
Behind us were mountains and oceans behind which stood an ugly and chaotic home broken and crippled
Europe had pristine skies and roads made of glass.
I only looked ahead and never at what was left behind.
Travel cheques because I went in the 90s
The passage wasn’t as unsafe
Nowadays all money is taken away I am told,
New clothes, upon arrival one doesn’t want to look like a migrant,
You want to wash and wish the journey away.
Away
Away
Away
In the mountains and forests of Serbia,
I found abandoned clothes and shoes,
Clothes and shoes that had been soiled by the journey but didn’t make it to the final destination
The men who wore them possibly did.
Clothes and shoes that give the secret of your journey away
But so does your language, and your culture and your skin
Soon you’ll do away with those too, taking up new ones
Afterall you wouldn’t want to be seen as a migrant
Since there is no room for migrants in Europe.