This is a true story. But you can call it a  twenty-first century variation on Huckleberry Finn, if you like.

It’s the far-from finished story of a boy who wanted to travel far from home. His father said no. No way will I give you your papers and let you risk your life in the deserts and on the seas. Thousands like you dying or falling into slavery. No way. No. Way.

No way? Ah, but the boy had a friend. The friend didn’t want to travel – uh-uh, no way. He had papers though. Take mine, he said, what are friends for?

So the boy had his wish. Travelled. Reached North Africa. Crossed the sea. Escaped dying or falling into slavery (but saw many other things he didn’t much care to talk about). When he reached a border crossing, he showed his papers. He was fingerprinted, and travelled on. When he reached a place of shelter, more things happened he didn’t like to think about. They took him to the doctor’s. They made x-rays of his body – wrist, pelvis, teeth. They said: this is not a boy, this is a grown man. Out. Leave. We don’t want you here.

They sent him home. He got hell from his father (not from his mother, because she died a long time ago). But the boy still wanted to make his dream come true. Pestered his dad until the old man relented, gave him his papers and said something like: what can I say, I hope your luck holds out.

The boy made his way up through Africa again. Crossed the sea. Etc. At the border crossing into the country of his dreams:  he showed his papers, they took fingerprints. Oy. Oops…but not right away. He had the time to find a job first. With a man so happy to take him on, he prepared an honest-to-goodness contract for him.

Insert the oy-oops here. Bonk-bonk-bonk: fingerprint match on different sets of papers. Fraud, fraud. Court proceedings. Arrest, detention center prior to eviction. He’d kept the phone number of the man so happy to take him on. Who found a lawyer who got him out of detention. He was placed under house arrest in a youth center instead. Given an hour of French lessons every day (the law says youths are entitled to an education). Put back out on the street again when the clock struck  midnight on the official and recorded  birthday that designates him as an adult now.

The story’s not over, obviously, since it’s a true one. What happens next and in what order? A brave new exploration for the boy who wanted to travel, that much is a given.

Back I go to the revision of fictional lives.