“Why would he have your name?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”
She shakes her head.
“I am trying to find Samira.”
“Why?”
How do I answer this? I plunge straight in. “I think a friend of mine who couldn’t have children tried to buy a baby in Amsterdam. I think she met Samira.”
“Samira doesn’t have a baby.”
“No, but she has a womb.”
Mrs. Caspar looks at me incredulously. “A Muslim girl doesn’t rent her womb. You must be mistaken.”
The statement has the bluntness and certainty of fact or dogma. She crosses the office and opens a filing cabinet, taking out a folder. Sitting at her desk, she scans the contents.
“My government does not welcome asylum seekers. They have made it more and more difficult for them. We even have a minister of immigration who claims that only 20 percent of applicants are ‘real refugees’—the rest are liars and frauds.
“Unfortunately, legitimate asylum seekers are being demonized. They are treated like economic refugees, roaming between countries looking for someone to take them in.”
The bitterness in her voice vibrates her tiny frame.
“Samira and Hassan had no papers when they arrived. The IND claimed they destroyed them on purpose. They didn’t believe Samira was a minor. She looked closer to twelve than twenty, but they sent her for tests.”
“Tests?”
“An age evaluation test. They x-rayed her collarbone, which is supposed to establish if someone is older or younger than twenty. Hassan had his wrist x-rayed. A report was prepared by Harry van der Pas, a physical anthropologist at Tilburg University.
“It backfired on them. Samira appeared even younger. Poor diet and malnutrition had stunted her growth. They gave them both temporary visas. They could stay, but only until further checks were done.”
Mrs. Caspar turns a page in the folder.
“Nowadays the policy is to return underage asylum seekers to their own country. Hassan and Samira
She slides a page of notes toward me—a family history. “They were orphans. Both spoke English. Their mother was educated at Delhi University. She worked as a translator for a publishing company until the Taliban took over.”
I look at the notes. Samira was born in 1987 during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. She was two years old when the Soviets left and ten when the Taliban arrived.
“And their father?”
“A factory owner.”
I remember Hassan’s photograph.
“They made fireworks,” explains Mrs. Caspar. “The Taliban closed the factory down. Fireworks were forbidden. The family fled to Pakistan and lived in a refugee camp. Their mother died of dysentery. Hamid Khan struggled to raise his children. When he grew tired of living like a beggar in a foreign country, he took his family back to Kabul. He was dead within six months.”
“What happened?”
“Samira and Hassan witnessed his execution. A teenager with a Kalashnikov made him kneel on the floor of their apartment and shot him in the back of the head. They threw his body from a window into the street and wouldn’t let his children collect it for eight days, by which time the dogs had picked it over.”
Her voice is thick with sadness. “There is an Afghan proverb. I heard Samira say it: To an ant colony dew is a flood.”
It doesn’t need any further explanation.
“When did you last see her?”
“Mid-January. She surprised me on my birthday. She made me fireworks. I don’t know how she managed to buy the chemicals and powder. I had never seen anything so beautiful.”
“What about their application for asylum?”
The lawyer produces another letter. “Eighteen is a very important age for an asylum seeker in this country. Once you reach this age you are treated as an adult. Samira’s temporary residency was revoked. She was deemed to be old enough to look after Hassan, so his visa was also canceled. Both were denied asylum and told they had to leave.
“I lodged an appeal, of course, but I couldn’t prevent them being forced onto the street. They had to leave the campus at Deelen. Like a lot of young people denied asylum, they chose to run rather than wait to be deported.”
“Where?”
She opens her arms, palms upward.
“How can we find Samira?”
“You can’t.”
“I have to try. Did she have any friends at the campus?”
“She mentioned a Serbian girl. I don’t know her name.”
“Is she still there?”
“No. She was either deported or she ran away.”
Mrs. Caspar looks at Ruiz and back to me. The future is mapped out in the lines on her face. It is a difficult journey.
“I have a friend—a retired policeman like you, Mr. Ruiz. He has spent half his life working in the red light district. He knows everyone—the prostitutes, pimps, dealers and drug addicts. Walls have mice and mice have ears. He can hear what the mice are saying.”
She takes down the name of our hotel and promises to leave a message.
“If you find Samira, be careful with her. When she finds out about her brother she will hurt in places where it matters most.”
“You think we’ll find her?”
She kisses my cheeks. “There is always a way from heart to heart.”
Back at the Red Tulip I call DI Forbes. Straightaway he demands to know where I am. A quiet inner voice tells me to lie. It’s a voice I’ve been hearing a lot lately.
“Have you interviewed the truck driver?” I ask.
“Are you in Amsterdam?” he counters.
“What did he tell you?”
“You can’t just
“I wasn’t made aware of any restrictions.”
“Don’t give me that crap! If you’re running a parallel investigation I’ll have you up on disciplinary charges. You can forget about your career. You can forget about coming home.”
I can hear the annoying click in his voice. It must drive his wife mad—like living with a human metronome.
Eventually he calms down when I tell him about Hassan. We swap information. The truck driver has been charged with manslaughter, but there is a complication. U.K. immigration officers received a tip-off about a suspect vehicle before the roll-on, roll-off ferry docked in Harwich. They had the license number and were told to look for a group of illegal immigrants.
“Who provided the tip-off?”
“The Port Authority in Rotterdam received an anonymous phone call two hours after the ferry sailed. We think it came from the traffickers.”
“Why?”
“They were setting up a decoy.”
“I don’t understand.”
