“Here we go.” Jessica stuffed the file back in her bag and took the lead in moving toward the interviewer.
Amina rested her hand on Jessica’s arm, halting her. “Thank you.” Amina pressed a small envelope into Jessica’s hand.
“Save your thanks. We haven’t won yet.”
“I know. But thank you for everything.” Amina smiled then turned toward the fidgeting teen. “Thank you, too, Conor. I don’t think I would be in this office without your help and support.”
The color rising in Conor’s cheeks betrayed his youth despite the pressed shirt and shined shoes.
The officer repeated Amina’s name. Jessica shoved the envelope into her jacket pocket and felt Gramps’s coin, which she’d grabbed from her jewelry box that morning in a last-minute moment of anxiety. “I don’t need this.” She held it out to Conor.
Conor stopped tapping his thigh and took the coin, turning it over and back.
“You were my lucky charm, hon.”
Amina took a deep breath. “Jessica? Let’s go.” She grabbed Jessica’s hand, and they followed the officer into the interview room.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
AMINA
The officer leading them into a small office wasn’t wearing a uniform like the guard in the entryway or the one at the security checkpoint, but that almost made him more ominous to Amina. It was harder to read his purpose when he was wearing a white button-down shirt, geometric tie, and gray pants.
Jessica placed her hand on Amina’s arm, guiding her into the chair directly facing the officer’s own behind the desk. Jessica moved one of four empty chairs and sat against the wall, a reminder that the officer would be interviewing Amina, not her lawyer.
Jessica had been so understanding at the restaurant when she’d shown Amina Mohammed’s picture. Never had Amina felt so exposed, not when she’d submitted to the USCIS’s fingerprinting and background checks, not when facing the questions from Jessica, not even when those men on the sidewalk had torn away her hijab.
The tears, the sobs, and the intimate stories about her life with Mohammed had exposed her, showing her weakness of love and loss. She and Jessica had talked for over an hour at the restaurant. Actually, she had talked for over an hour. Jessica had hardly said a word while Amina poured out all of the memories of Mohammed she had kept hidden since she’d left Syria.
But the exposure, so raw, had surprised her. Shame, guilt, and embarrassment had been absent. Instead, a sense of openness had filled her, reminding her that people were resilient and there was space for her to be close to those who wanted to help her. Having Jessica with her at the interview, even if all she did was sit in a plastic chair under a photo of the US president, made Amina feel wanted.
“Ms. Hamid,” the officer said, squinting with a tight smile. “We will take our time and go through your paperwork. If you need a break, just let me know.” He patted both hands on a small stack of folders and a blank pad of paper, indicating the work ahead of them. “I’ll start with your I-589 form.”
He reached, almost with ceremony, to the black pen in his shirt pocket. The click with his thumb, simply engaging a small bit of plastic with another small bit of plastic, resonated like a starting gun.
Who she was—Amina Hamid, accountant from Aleppo, Syria—was spelled out on the form, and the officer quizzed her on her own biography. They were easy questions, but she felt relieved that she had reviewed the document the day before.
She had also pulled together updated country condition documentation. Human Rights Watch reports and US State Department reports on Syria read like demented caricatures of her home, but everything was true, an accurate portrait. When the officer paused to turn over a page, she asked her own question. “I provided updated country reports. Can I tell you about them?” She could demonstrate her knowledge and show her seriousness.
“I don’t need to hear from you about Syria,” he said curtly, as if he were the expert on her country. “I want to hear about your experiences.”
Of course. His rebuke sent her heart galloping, and she willed it, unsuccessfully, to slow. He tapped the black pen on her open file. She found herself distracted, trying to read the writing on the pen, but his fingers blocked her view.
The tapping stopped. “Why did you come to the US?”
She blinked her eyes away from the pen. “Pardon me?”
“When you arrived. When you left Syria, why did you leave?” The officer leaned back in his chair.
“I came to attend a conference on international accounting. I am an accountant.”
“Yes. We already established that you are an accountant. Did you attend?”
“The conference? Yes. Yes.” She exhaled in relief over having the right answer.
“Do you have proof?”
Amina’s head swiveled toward Jessica, whose expression of guilt shattered Amina’s confidence. “No, but—”
He raised his hand, telling her to stop, then leaned forward and wrote something on his paper, but she couldn’t read it from her seat. He moved on before she could decide how to rectify the error or figure out what the error had been.
“Your husband is an architect, right? You say here on the form you don’t know where he is. You haven’t seen or talked with him?”
“No. I have seen his photo. He may be in Greece.”
“Wait, so you do know where he is?” His squint didn’t come with a smile this time.
“No.” She glanced at Jessica again but didn’t receive anything beyond a hesitant shrug in response. “I don’t. We found a picture on the Internet of him at a refugee camp in Greece, but we are unable to locate him.”
The officer scribbled a note and circled it, pushing down hard enough with his pen that she could hear the scrape of the ballpoint against paper.
After listening to Amina detail her father’s detention and torture at the hands of the regime and her brother’s murder, the officer paged through photos that depicted her father’s injuries. “Regarding your father, I didn’t see any paperwork. Do you have any official documentation or other corroboration?”
“No.” She didn’t have any more words to talk about her family. She certainly didn’t have documents.
“Your brother Samir. Do you know who murdered him?”
She felt herself sinking into her plastic chair. “No.”
He made another note then thumbed through the remaining papers from her file.
Panic welled in Amina’s core. The pile of paper was too short. How many pages do those other people from the waiting room have? How many do I need? She turned to Jessica to see if the lawyer was also worried about the thickness of the folder but only saw kind eyes promising that she was doing fine. Amina didn’t believe her.
“Let’s move to the women’s support group.” The man’s slow cadence only heightened her anxiety. “You called it”—he flipped some pages—“a study group when you initially filed, but in your amendment, you call it something different.”
Is he implying I lied? Was Jessica right to focus on this? The fear of being exposed as a liar when she wasn’t a liar threatened to burst her chest. She pressed her palms together to harness energy and told him everything she had told Jessica, measuring her tone in an attempt to maximize believability.
“Do you have any support for this story?” he asked. “I assume from your earlier answers and the files here you don’t—”
“Yes,” she almost barked. “I have this.” She opened her bag, pulled out a yellow folder, and thrust it at the officer while avoiding Jessica’s puzzled expression. The papers had only just arrived the day before, and she’d been too nervous to talk about anything since. “One woman we helped escape, Najlaa Mustafa, she is the doctor I mentioned in the amendment. She is in Lebanon now. She runs a mobile medical clinic for World Relief Group. She provided an affidavit.” Amina opened the folder and pressed her finger on the top page. “There is also an affidavit from another woman, Rasha, also in Lebanon, who was part of our grou
p.” Amina slid the top document over and pointed to the second affidavit. “She was in Aleppo when the men came to punish the group. They only cut her face, leaving her scars as a warning to others not to subvert the regime.”
When Najlaa had told Amina that Rasha, the one who’d betrayed the group, had arrived in Lebanon, her husband having died in the conflicts, Amina cried tears of joy that Rasha had survived. Rasha had insisted on sending her own statement before she’d even learned Amina had forgiven her.
The officer stared intently at the stamped documents. He made another notation on his pad, the pen moving across the paper and leaving marks that would affect her future.
Amina took a deep breath, emboldened by her sisters in Lebanon and those that remained in Syria. She wouldn’t let that pen dictate her future. She would give it all the words it needed to ensure she could stay here and lay the path for Mohammed to join her in safety.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jessica emerged from the interview room, feeling as if she had newly witnessed Amina’s harrowing last years in Syria.
In the waiting room, Conor stood out like a well-dressed junkie in need of a fix, fidgeting and rubbing the coin between his fingers. “Well? How did it go? Did she pass?” His eyes skipped back and forth from his mom to Amina.
Jessica smiled. It wasn’t quite pass-fail, but then again, it kind of was. “She did great.” She nodded reassuringly at Amina, who maintained a calm exterior but whose eyes showed an understandable anxiety. She didn’t need to hear anything other than that she did great.
A pit in Jessica’s gut grew heavy with her failure to get information about the conference and to ensure the officer knew about the recent location of Mohammed. She was responsible for putting Amina in a defensive position and could only pray it hadn’t killed her chances.
She hadn’t been able to get a read on the officer—whether he’d found Amina credible, whether he’d thought her fear was well-founded, whether he’d thought the women’s group satisfied the law’s requirement regarding social groups or political opposition, or whether he was a jaded employee who had seen too many fraudulent claims to be generous in his approvals.
“Now we wait.” Amina didn’t have to say “Again,” but she had to be thinking it.
“Okay, so what now?” Conor stared intently at his mom. “Did he say anything? Will it still be up to sixty days before we hear?”
“No, he didn’t say anything about timing, and yes, up to sixty days. But if he refers the case to the immigration court, we’re looking at maybe another six months or more.”
“But that would be better than a ‘no,’ right?”
“Right. But we want an outright ‘yes.’”
“With a ‘yes,’ it would be done? Like done done?” It was as though Conor was trying to find the question that would trigger an automatic “yes,” and asylum would be granted immediately.
“Pretty much, yes.” She squeezed Amina’s hand. “Done done sounds good, right?”
Amina worked up a smile.
“Amina, do you remember the first time we met? At the IAP offices?”
“Of course,” Amina said. “I walked out. I’m sorry about that.” Amusement pulled at the edges of her smile.
“That’s not why I mention it. I don’t blame you. You asked me why I volunteered to take your case. I gave you some BS answer about giving you the help you deserved or something like that. But really, I didn’t know myself.”
Jessica had long been myopic to believe she’d been so independent in achieving the life she had. She now recognized that there were postmen and embroiderers and would-be astronauts—some of whom never knew her but who would live on through her—who had opened paths she could travel. She was merely an extension of them, a bridge to those who would follow. Amina was a part of that now, even more so as an extension of Amina’s own family. But the reason for taking on Amina’s case didn’t need to be profound or even enlightened.
“It was the right thing to do. Thanks for letting me”—she grabbed Conor’s hand—“us be a part of it.”
BELTWAY TRAFFIC HAD fed on already-frayed nerves, and Jessica’s mind and body were depleted as if she’d done a couple of all-nighters in a row by the time she dropped off Amina and arrived with Conor to a darkened home. Danny had said he would pick up Cricket from swim practice. He must have taken Mikey with him.
Jessica threw her briefcase on the kitchen table and collapsed onto the couch. Gracie leapt up next to her and started licking her cheek.
“Thanks, girl. I needed that.” Jessica could hear the crinkle of paper as Gracie stepped on her jacket. She had forgotten about the envelope from Amina.
Jessica removed the contents and set the envelope on the trunk. In her hand was an index card enclosed in a note.
“To Jessica Donnelly. Thank you for helping us, and thank you for helping Amina. Peace be upon you, Fayiz and Sama. PS, I wish you could try my mother’s. She used bitter oranges from her own tree. I have never been able to make it like her.”
And on the index card was the recipe for kibbeh arnabieh.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
AMINA
The smell of sweet cinnamon and smoky firewood snuffed out the cold that accompanied Amina into the Donnellys’ entryway. Conor closed the door and took her heavy jacket.
It seemed like a year since she had visited the home as an outsider on Thanksgiving, yet it hadn’t even been three months. The slow drag of the three weeks since the interview magnified the time warp.
Jessica offered to let her use Danny’s office for the call so she could have a level of privacy she wouldn’t have been able to have at the Darbis’ home.
While searching for Mohammed, Jessica had communicated with the aid agency in Greece and even the man who’d taken the photo. But it wasn’t until she’d contacted an architect in the town near the camp that she had found Mohammed. Amina’s attorney was clever. Of course, Mohammed would have sought out a Greek architect to tell him about the structures in the area.
Finding her husband and knowing she would soon talk with him had kept Amina’s mind off the constant worry about words she had not said in the interview and words that she had said but could have said differently. Since the interview, she had been searching for accounting positions to force optimism about the asylum decision that hadn’t arrived yet, but job hunting hadn’t suppressed the anxiety. Today pulled her out of her loop of anxiety, if only momentarily.
Jessica and Conor smiled and sneaked wordless glances at each other like nervous schoolchildren. Amina almost wished for the loud and the busy from back in November.
Left alone in Danny’s office, Amina swiveled slowly in the chair. She hadn’t paid attention to the items on the wall the last time she was in this room. Photos showed sailboats crashing through waves and tanned men grinning and holding up large trophies. What looked like half of a sailboat named “Wild Goose” was mounted on brown wood. Anchoring the array of boat prints, dead center on the wall, was a large photo in a dark wood frame. It was Jessica, beaming as a white veil whipped in the wind around her face, and a handsome Danny kissing her on the cheek.
Amina swiveled back and faced a blue-and-white screen. She waited.
The call was set for 10:00 a.m. She checked the time. It was 9:59.
Staring at the clock in the corner of the computer seemed to make the time go by even more slowly. But the seconds could not hold off forever. The screen lit up, begging Amina to accept the call.
Mohammed said nothing, but his smile told her he could see her face.
She traced a scar on his face that hadn’t been there before. “My love. It is you.” She pulled back her hand so she could see all of him.
“My heart. I have been waiting for this day. You brought me through. You brought me here.”
His eyes spoke words she had not allowed herself to dream.
Their silence sent the minutes flying past, and there was so much to say.
EPILOGUE
; The Smoky Mountain twang in Annapolis’s new fair-trade coffee shop turned more heads than just Jessica’s.
Jessica covered the microphone on her phone. “Bronwyn!” She waved her friend over from the server she’d been questioning. The law partner was in her civilians today—charcoal linen slacks, a silk turquoise blouse, and a fantastic necklace. Bronwyn still rocked the power heels, though. You can take the girl out of the high-powered law office...
“Gotta go, Mom. We’ll see you in two weeks. I promised Mikey I’d take him fishing. Hopefully, Kenny has the old poles. I didn’t catch anything with them last time, so they owe me.” Jessica clicked off the phone just as Bronwyn walked up to her.
After the obligatory hugs, Bronwyn cut to the chase. “Grab your coffee, and let’s go. I need to see what was so great that you passed up the opportunity to come back to Highland & Cross. I’ve got ninety, and then I have to get to a soccer game. Damn travel teams. But at least I had an excuse to see you while I was in the area.”
Jessica eyed the Louboutins. “You always wear kick-ass heels to the soccer pitch?”
“Honey, I ain’t no soccer mom. Now show me what you got.”
“Right next door, my dear.” Jessica found herself somehow following Bronwyn as she led her out of the globally eclectic shop to a locally dull building just down the block. It didn’t look like much. In fact, it looked like a candidate for demolition. The aged sideboards reluctantly showed ghosts of white paint that had lost its fight against the elements ages ago, and high, cloudy windows didn’t let in much light, even from the blazing summer sun.
Unbroken Threads Page 29
