The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2004, Blaðsíða 16

58
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 59 #2
back. Our friendship with Philippe also
effected our decision a great deal as we had
full confidence in him, and in fact we felt
that we could hardly turn back having gone
this far. So we decided to keep our part of
the agreement, even though circumstances
had changed completely.
After dinner we started preparing for
taking the ferry. Philippe had bought some
food that he kept in a Toyota jeep they had
there, including a box of eggs. In the bot-
tom of that box the oil pumps were hidden.
He now drove the jeep to the ship.
When he got to the ship he called the
guards and asked them for help bringing
the food on board. He told them he was
going to throw them a party the next day.
One of the guards carried the boxes on
board. Philippe now offered all three of
them refreshment in the dining room,
which had a television and a video. He
showed them movies and the guards sat
and watched without any suspicions.
Hiding in an Old Foxhole
While this was happening on the ferry,
we got a taxi and told the driver that we
were taking a ferry to Syria that night. That
way we managed to enter the harbour
without provoking any attention. The har-
bour is long and rather narrow. The har-
bourwall lies by the coast, but the mole on
the outside. The ferry lay close to the shore
by an old rust bucket and military pram,
since the war. Close by were barracks, with
guards outside. Further out was an old fox-
hole, around 1.5 meters high and big
enough for 5-6 men. It looked like an ideal
hiding place and we got in there without
being seen. Inside was completely dark and
the smell was awful. All sorts of creatures
were crawling on the floor and walls. We
had to wait there for a while before we
could move on. Sitting in there was horri-
ble and in addition we were having doubts
and regrets. What had we gotten ourselves
into? But there was no turning back now,
that was clear.
The plan was the Philippe would pick
us up on an oar boat, if we were not
onboard the ferry by 3.00hrs in the morn-
ing. We still had some time left. We got out
of the foxhole and started looking around
for a boat to get us to the seaside of the
ferry. We were lucky because soon Johan
found (confiscated) a Zodiac dinghy that
was tied close by. We didn't hesitate, but
"borrowed" the boat and pulled it across
the harbour towards the mole in order to
avoid the light.
When we had gotten about half way to
the mole we heard screams and shouts. We
were sure we had been spotted and now the
army troops would be sent for us. We
rowed as fast as we could, determined not
to get caught without resistance.
We cannot deny that at this time we
were getting quite frightened. We knew
very well that people around this area did-
n't value human life highly and used the
gun without asking questions. We soon
noticed that Allah's name was repeated reg-
ularly. Since this was at midnight we con-
cluded that the Turks were having their
time of worship. The fear changed to
embarrassment and we smiled awkwardly.
But we were still not safe. When we
were passing a ship's wreck lying in the
harbour we suddenly heard an engine
sound. We thought that now we had been
seen and a boat was approaching us in the
dark. We stopped and hardly dared to
breathe to avoid being heard. In a short
while we could breathe again when the
engine sound retreated.
Stranded
So far we had gotten along well in the
dinghy but suddenly we realized we were
stranded on a reef 70 -100 meters from the
harbourwall. We used the oars to get the
boat floating again. That didn't take long
and soon we started rowing again. We were
getting close to the barracks so we needed
to be silent. Soldiers were walking around
and we feared that they might see us any
minute. Nothing happened until we had
less that 100 meters left to the ferry. Then
we noticed that one of the soldiers seemed
to have seen us. Now we thought the
shooting would start and rowed as hard as
we could but nothing happened. The sol-
dier was obviously watching us until we
got to the pram and climbed on board. To