"Simon Ings - The Wedding Party" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ings Simon)

The Wedding Party
Simon Ings

THE RISK IS in standing still.

It can come at you quickly. A gas lamp sets a tent alight and six
Somalian refugees die in the flames—Ta-da!

Or it can be subtle. Last year, a great many Somalian refugees gave
up their flight altogether, boarded boats in Aden, and headed home—and
why? Maybe because the Yemeni authorities let on how many Palestinian
refugees had already died in the camp they were bound for—the camp at
Al Ghanaian.

The point, either way, is this—the risk is in standing still.

I’ve said to my wife: “Aiden’s dead. Mocha’s closed out.”

I said to her: “Lebanon to Syria to Cyprus. Come on.”

I said, “He hasn’t any choice.”

This is her brother we are talking about. My lover—which is a joke.
Rather, he is the other side of that coin I once coveted—Redson and
Hope, that long-wished-for alchemical wedding.

Slip through Europe, that’s the ticket. If you can call it slipping. Slump
through Europe. Slouch through Europe. Squat, squeeze, shimmy through
Europe, to the Red Cross camp at Sangatte, just a short walk away from
the Channel Tunnel.

Kurdish gangs patrol the camp, which isn’t even a real camp—just a
converted railway warehouse. The Kurds organize the escapees; they
arrange transit attempts through the Tunnel; they know what’s what.
Whether you’re a single man from Iraq or Iran, or a family from Afghanistan,
Koso-vo, or Albania—it’s all the same to them. You don’t get through
without you paying the fee.

And you pay the fee. Of course you do. The risk is in standing still.
The risk is in standing up— standing up, I mean, to them. There are riots in
Sangatte, as you would expect from eight hundred and fifty refugees
crammed into quarters meant for two hundred. All of them trying somehow,
any-how, to scrape together that fee.

I’ve said to Hope—that’s my wife’s name, Hope—”Get Redson to
Cyprus and I’ll do the rest.” And I’m already promising more than I should.
The Snakeheads have much of this route I’m suggesting sewn up—from
the Balkans to San-gatte, some say.

She says nothing. She looks out the window at the poisoned