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| 1000m in France inaccessible to some people. Many attempt to cross the precarious clifftop paths by night |
After the gallant Italian Regionale races through the darkening evening
to
make up for lost time
(and
finds nine miraculous minutes)
we
have six minutes spare to subway and change platforms
for
the French TER border crossing Ventimiglia to Menton service
but
departure
time comes
and
goes
we
sit
and
sit,
sit,
peer out the dirty rain-streaked windows
and
wonder
about
the several women standing alongside the train
and
their young kids sitting on the ground
crane
our necks up the carriage
and
down
get
up to peek out the door to look left and right along the platform
and
wait for an announcement that doesn’t come
we
have our suspicions
at
least
I
have mine
confirmed
when
the tidily-dressed young man accompanied by a large, respectable,
pale grey-blue suitcase
enters
our carriage
via
the door at our backs
which
duly closes – let’s go!
No.
it
re-opens
admitting
various shirt-sleeved French border police
while
another strides on board via the door to our fronts
and
they swiftly close around him
not
an embrace
a
cuffing
having
switched on my journalist I’ve been mentally eyeing the location of
the camera
but
as the innocent saxe luggage is portered past by the country’s
gatekeepers
followed
by the man, his neat, strong arms pinned behind his back
elbows
bent in, wrists held in, wearing hard, cold steel
under
the cheap flicker of shitty fluorescents
– “I
have passport, what’s problem?” he says,
removed
from us fellow migrants on the train –
it
feels wrong
he
may not but we – 13 minutes after scheduled departure – may,
pass
into France
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