There was a tall, light-skinned man waiting at the end of the docks. He was from one of the Arab tribes in the north. Such men were common in town. They controlled most of its business and politics and had done so for centuries. They were traders, merchants, and sold anything or anyone. They held themselves at a slight remove from other men, gowned in spotless white or, on occasion, pastel-colored robes that somehow proved immune to the dust that covered every inch of the town.

“He’s arranged everything,” Abrahim said. “That man over there.”

My father tried to make out his face from where they were standing, but the man seemed to understand that they were talking about him and kept his head turned slightly away. The only feature that my father could make out was an abnormally long and narrow nose, a feature that seemed almost predatory.

Abrahim handed my father a slip of yellow legal paper on which he had written something in Arabic. He would have liked Abrahim to say something kind and reassuring to him. He wanted him to say, “Have a safe journey” or “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine,” but he knew that he could stand there for years and no such reassurances would come.

“Don’t keep him waiting,” Abrahim said. “Give him the note and your money. And do whatever he tells you.”

When my father was halfway between Abrahim and the man, Abrahim called out to him, “I’ll be waiting to hear from you soon,” and my father knew that was the last time he would ever hear Abrahim’s voice.

My father handed over the slip of paper Abrahim had given him. He couldn’t read what was written on it and was worried that it might say any of a thousand different things, from “Treat this man well” to “Take his money and do whatever you want with him.”

The man pointed to a group of small storage slots at the stern of the boat that were used for holding the more delicate cargo. These crates were usually unloaded last, and he had often seen people waiting at the docks for hours to receive them. They always bore the stamp of a Western country and carried their instructions in a foreign language—“Cuidado,” “Fragile.” He had unloaded several such crates himself recently, and while he had never known their actual contents he had tried to guess what was inside: cartons of powdered milk, a television or stereo, vodka, Scotch, Ethiopian coffee, soft blankets, clean water, hundreds of new shoes and shirts and underwear. Anything that he was missing or knew he would never have he imagined arriving in those boxes.

There was a square hole just large enough for my father to fit into if he pulled his knees up to his chest. He understood that this was where he was supposed to go and yet naturally he hesitated, sizing up the dimensions just as he had once sized up the crates he had helped unload.

My father felt the man’s hand around the back of his neck, pushing him toward the ground. He wanted to tell the man that he was prepared to enter on his own, and had in fact been preparing to do so for months now, but he wouldn’t have been understood, so my father let himself be led. He crawled into the space on his knees, which was not how he would have liked to enter. Head first was the way to go, but it was too late now. In a final humiliating gesture, the man shoved him with his foot, stuffing him inside so quickly that his legs and arms collapsed around him. He had just enough time to arrange himself before the man sealed the entrance with a wooden door that was resting nearby.

Before getting on the boat, my father had made a list of things to think about in order to get through the journey. They were filed away under topic headings such as The Place Where I Was Born, Plans for the Future, and Important Words in English. He wasn’t sure if he should turn to them now or wait until the boat was out of the harbor. The darkness inside the box was alarming, but it wasn’t yet complete. Light still filtered in through the entrance, and continued to do so until the hull was closed and the boat began to pull away from the shore. He remembered that as a child he had often been afraid of the dark, a foolish, almost impossible thing for a country boy, but there it was. Of the vast extended family that lived around him, his mother was the only one who never mocked him for this, and even though he would have liked to save her image for later in the journey, at a point when he was far off at sea, he let himself think about her now. He saw her as she looked shortly before she died. She had been a large woman, but at that point there wasn’t much left of her. Her hair hadn’t gone gray yet, but it had been cut short on the advice of a cousin who had dreamed that the illness attacking her body was buried somewhere in her head and needed a way out. Desperate, she had had almost all her hair cut off, which had made her look even younger than her thirty-something years. This was the image he had, of his mother in an almost doll-like state, just two months before she died, and while he would have liked to have a better memory of her, he settled for the one he’d been given and closed his eyes to concentrate on it. It would be some minutes before he noticed the engine churning as the ship pulled up its anchors and slowly headed out to sea.

When I reached this point, I knew that it was the last thing I was going to say to my class. Soon, the dean would call me back to his office to tell me that, as interesting as my father’s story was, it had gone on long enough, and it was time to return my class to normal, or risk my place at the Academy. The bell rang, and, as when I had begun this story, there were a good ten to fifteen seconds when no one in the classroom moved. My students, for all their considerable wealth and privilege, were still at an age where they believed that the world was a fascinating, remarkable place, worthy of curious inquiry and close scrutiny, and I’d like to think that I had reminded them of that. Soon enough they would grow out of that and concern themselves with the things that were most immediately relevant to their own lives. Eventually one bag was picked up off the floor, and then twenty-eight others joined it. Most of my students waved or nodded their heads as they left the room, and there was a part of me that wanted to call them back to their seats and tell them that the story wasn’t quite finished yet. Getting out of Sudan was only the beginning; there was still much more ahead. Sometimes, in my imagination, that is exactly what I tell them. I pick up where I left off, and go on to describe to them how, despite all appearances, my father did not actually make it off that boat alive. He arrived in Europe just as Abrahim had promised he would, but an important part of him had died during the journey, somewhere in the final three days, when he was reduced to drinking his urine for water and could no longer feel his hands or feet.