The Agażan camp was inhabited by Tatars, Germans, Poles and Ukrainians, but nationality did not play the greatest role in the face of shared misery and the difficult fate that gave rise to ordinary human solidarity and mutual assistance. There could be no resentment toward the local people: the Kazakhs tried to help the Poles, but what could anyone do in conditions of extreme wartime poverty? The grandfather who remained in Russia sent parcels of flour and lard (three times in all). Once, they shared this genuine treasure with the Kazakhs, who did not eat lard at all. The result was tragic—the children developed diarrhea. The Polish Karpal family had easier access to buttermilk and secretly supplied it; everyone helped one another survive the ordeal of hunger, wanting to survive at any cost in an inhuman land. They clung stubbornly to life, against hope and the laws of logic. After the haymaking, before the autumn plowing, they traveled to the taiga-tundra, about 60 km away, to cut wood and gather winter fuel supplies. They also formed lumps of kizyak (manure placed into wooden molds); everyone worked—adults and children. They now lived in old wooden barracks, whose unsealed interiors were swept by wind and ruled by bitter cold. A windmill ground flour measured in poods (16 kg of grain); it was here, too, that a letter from his father reached the boy. Its message was brief and joyful: “You are to get to Novosibirsk. Wrzyszcz is to be waiting there.” This was already the time of Sikorski’s agreement (“dogovor”) with Stalin, and thus of a political thaw for Polish deportees. It is difficult to describe the convicts’ joy... At the state farm, the authorities allowed them to leave. Pulled by a pair of oxen, their cart went to Dmytrywka to obtain official permission from the NKVD. Then came the journey to Pitukhova station, 200 km away, where state-farm vehicles went for fuel. The driver’s payment was a complete set of Gerlach cutlery. They sat on barrels placed on the platform of an open truck. They got off 10 km before the railway station. After many difficulties, the mother and son reached Novosibirsk and the Polish consular post. The boy had to travel illegally, hidden in a railway compartment storage space, to Petropavlovsk because only his mother had received permission. Their acquaintance Wrzyszcz was waiting as agreed; in Novosibirsk they received clothes from the Polish post, and finally traveled to Tashkent. There he met his father, whom he recognized only with difficulty. They spent their first night in an orchard, right under fruit trees (peaches and oranges), and he immediately developed an upset stomach and dysentery. He recovered in the settlement of Wrenskoje. Time brought new events: one after another, they left inhospitable Russia—the father first, then the mother. Finally, he himself left separately. His route led to Pahlavi in Iran. A primitive coal-fired vessel departed from Krasnovodsk, packed to the brim with young men. There was a long line for the ship’s toilet, and at last everyone ate their fill. He slept through the entire journey. They entered the port; crowds were everywhere—noise, shouting and jostling. He knew that his father served somewhere in the gendarmerie along the coast. By chance, a gendarme he met knew his father, so he climbed onto the man’s motorcycle and arrived at several tents set up by the sea for a dozen or so people. A shower and rest. He did not meet his mother; she had already left for Karachi (Pakistan), while his father later went to Libya and Baghdad. Such was the law of wartime. The camp was located on the outskirts of Pahlavi. Guard duty and good food—cocoa, pasta, bread and fruit—were a luxury compared with Russian poverty. He was already smoking cigarettes, mainly Turkish and Persian ones; he tried smoking a pipe containing drugs, but this ended in lung poisoning. On the last transport, he left for Tehran, where he entered a cadet school. Discipline and military drill. His fellow students were leaving from there for Africa, so he left the school and followed them by train to Auchac. A picturesque landscape of the Dark Continent, 200 tunnels and his name missing from the official list. He was outside the group, so a sea voyage to Karachi remained. Transport No. 21, a hammock on the ship, and a meeting with his future friend Władysław Sliz and his family. But the journey was not over. Now they sailed to Bombay (India) through ocean waters patrolled by German U-boats. From there, via the Red Sea, to East Africa. In Mombasa they transferred to a train and traveled to Nairobi. Along the way, his friend W. Sliz’s sister died of malaria, giving an idea of the hardships of the long odyssey. From Nairobi, the route led to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and to the temporary military camp in MASINDI. The heart of Africa, heat and utter exoticism. A story like one from the pages of a novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz. An order was issued: unpack! He left the tent and asked about his mother, who had departed earlier. The camp was enormous—nearly 12,000 people—and bore the next number, 3. Then something unbelievable happened: his mother was waiting for her son nearby. Tears of emotion and immense joy. Soon a Polish secondary school was established there—a school under a baobab tree. More on this next month.