Free More: A Novel by Hakan Günday Page B

human nature to do everything! Anyway …
    The costs of illegal manufacture were lower even than exportation costs out of China. Because of this, in fact, so much profit was expected of the exchanges to be made in the target country that transportation, and in some cases even accommodation, were basically free, and illegal transportation services, also symbolically priced, were in the ascent. From Kabul to Marseille or Islamabad to Napoli, the free worker shuttles took off, shuttling back and forth between continents. This meant even more broken-nosed profiles passing through our shed. Those harboring dreams of freedom in the country they were headed to were replaced by those who had acquiesced to being put to work for years so they could save just enough for a cow per year and send it to their families. Of these half were aware of all this as they embarked on the journey, while the other half, oblivious to what was to come, imagined themselves to be on their way to get a piece of the pie. Illegal immigrant transportation had become indistinguishable from slave trade. When one examined the eminent techniques of the industry, violence came forward like the sun. Still, as it was too difficult to uphold the old, exhausting, and time-consuming traditions of receiving slaves in return for won battles or setting up markets for human auctions, the contemporary world had channeled its energies into that miraculous device, willpower. Though establishments that used traditional methods of violence and provided capital for the sex industry did still endure, the most powerful means of human trafficking was persuasion. This was of course also a type of violence, but at least when all was said and done, it didn’t leave as much of a mess.
    Ultimately, the general behavior of those who came in and out of the shed suggested, besides the fear brought on by ambiguity and illegality, a docility loaded with dreams of cows—the average weight of which, by the way, is five hundred kilos. This entailed the emergence of a new breed of immigrants with even more of a slump to their shoulders, heads even more bowed in compliance, and in a positive correlation of poverty/compressibility, took up even less space in the shed, who carried their own rations for fear of having to pay for food, no longer talked to one another as much, and lastly, constantly made sly little plans. As a result, they weren’t much distinguishable from the slaves in ancient Egypt. We’d collectively gone back in time! After seeing that new breed, in fact, I never once again believed that the pyramids had been built by extraterrestrials. It didn’t take me long to realize that the pyramids had been built not by humans, but from humans. Long story short, and thanks to the support of the macroeconomy policies of G-8 and G-20 member nations, I was now G-1 and pharaoh of that seventy-two-square-meter shed. The only difference between me and the child pharaoh Tutankhamen was that I didn’t wear stupid makeup. Or a skirt … As a pharaoh, all I needed was money. Enough money to help build my pyramid! I was at the age, no, past the age to be stealing from my father! But there was no possible way I could make alterations to the shed without his knowledge. Therefore, first of all, I needed to persuade Ahad. He was on the phone in the arbor. With Aruz, of course. I waited patiently for them to shut up. Two months had passed since I’d gotten the news of Harmin’s demise at the hand of the parasites on the back of the hippopotamus he’d gone out to hunt. June, which I’d hated, since much like insects, the immigrants increased in number in the summer, had come around again, but this time I wasn’t so upset that school was out. I had my heart set on supremacy after all.
    Finally father hung up and, fixing his customary unseeing gaze on my face, asked: “What is it?”
    “The shed,” I said.
    “What about the shed?”
    “I made a list. Take a look …”
    He picked up the paper