Excerpt of No Safe Place by Deborah Ellis
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Excerpted from Chapter One
“How much?”
“Does it matter? It’s more than you’ve got.”
“You don’t know how much I’ve got.”
“I can smell you. Your stink tells the whole story.”
Abdul clenched his toes inside his torn sneakers. It
helped him control his temper.
At least my stink is honest, he thought, from months of
hard travel and living rough. He wondered what the smuggler’s
excuse was.
“I’ll owe you the rest,” Abdul said.
The smuggler scratched himself in places that weren’t
supposed to be scratched in public. He exhaled cigarette
smoke into Abdul’s face.
“Don’t like dirty Arabs.”
“I’m Kurdish,” Abdul said, then wanted to snatch the
words back. He’d just played into the man’s prejudice.
Should he say that he was part Arab, his mother’s family
from Baghdad? Why bother.
“I’m sixteen,” he said instead, lying just a little. “I’m
strong. I’ll find work in England and pay you what I owe
you.” He spoke in English, which was better than his
French. He knew the smuggler knew both.
“You’ll work. You’ll pay. You’ll do as you’re told.”
My grandmother carried a gun in the mountains fighting
for a Kurdish homeland, Abdul thought, and here I am
in a back alley of Calais, negotiating with a fool.
“Just tell me how much,” he said. “I’m too tired for
games.”
The smuggler spat on the ground, then held out his slab
of a hand, wiggling his fingers.
Abdul dug down into his right front trouser pocket, the
one with the pouch sewn inside it. He took out a roll of
British pounds that had, until recently, been wrapped in
plastic and shoved up his rectum. Not even that place was
secure. He’d come across bodies with the bellies sliced open.
He took off the elastic band and put the bills in the
smuggler’s hand.
“Count it,” Abdul said, “and give me a receipt.”
The smuggler sneered and made Abdul’s money disappear
into his own pocket. He was a big man. He used to
be muscled but had gone to flab, every meal he’d eaten
attaching itself to his belly and his arms.
“You want a receipt, you little Kurd-turd? Ask the CRS.
Get your receipt from them. And when you’re finished,
meet me tonight, two o’clock, where the campers park, back
of the Au Côte d’Argent hotel. Do you know the place?”
Abdul knew it. It was by the pedestrian pier, where
tourists stood to watch the ferries passing.
“Don’t be late. I’d be happy to leave without you.” The
smuggler started to walk away. “You’ll be eating lousy
English food for breakfast.”
Abdul was thin from too many months of being on the
road, but strong from too many fights with other migrants.
He flung himself at the smuggler’s back, wrapping his arm
so tightly around the bigger man’s throat that the smuggler
began to die, right there on his feet.
“Count it and give me a receipt,” Abdul said.
The smuggler tried to shake him off, but his bloated
body didn’t function well without oxygen. He reached into
his pocket and threw the wad of pound notes to the
ground. Abdul released him and went after his money.
The smuggler’s boot smashed into Abdul’s head, sending
him spinning into the gutter.
“Keep your money, Kurd-turd,” he said as he stomped
away. “I don’t want you on my boat.”
For a moment Abdul was too stunned to move. The
kick, then his skull crashing into the curb put his brain on
temporary lockdown. But he could feel his fingers, curled
tightly around his money.
Excerpted from No Safe Place
by Deborah Ellis. Copyright © 2010 by Deborah Ellis.
Excerpted by permission of Groundwood Books. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
