Without Refuge
Page 9
rotten food and other smells mingle together. Flies
buzz in the air, drawn by dirt and debris. It’s like a
bombsite in Kobani.
We come to a space between two families.
“Here,” Baba says. He swings his bag off his back.
Sweat stains his shirt.
I look at the little patch of ground in the middle
of so many families. To one side of us, two women
stare into space. They lean against their bags, shoes
kicked off, three small children lying beneath blan-
kets next to them. On our other side, a young woman
with a baby tied to her sits against her bedroll, gazing at us. Next to her, an old man lies on a blanket. Her
father or father-in-law, I think. When I smile, she
nods and shifts her dreaming elsewhere.
“Are we sleeping outside again?” Bushra’s lip curls
as she looks around. “This is worse than last night.”
I wonder how long we’ll stay here. We untie
bedrolls, blankets, bags and bundles. Dayah spreads
a blanket for Dapir, Alan, and Amin. The two small
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boys curl up immediately and will be asleep soon.
Dayah sweeps Alan’s hair from his hot face; Safaa
spreads the loose end of Amin’s grubby headscarf
across him for shade. Dapir sits quietly. Her face is pale and drawn. She stares at nothing in particular. Bushra
and Safaa hand out apples and crumbled cheese.
“Keep everything close,” Baba says. “Especially
water and food.”
“How long will we be here?” Bushra says.
“Until we cross over,” Baba says. “Ghalib, let’s
see what’s happening.”
“He’s walked far enough today,” Dayah says.
“His feet.”
My feet hurt, but I want to see more. “I’m fine,
Dayah. I’ll go with Baba.”
Safaa stands up. “I’ll come too.”
I’m surprised, but Baba nods. Safaa checks that
Amin is asleep, then follows us back to the highway.
As the crowds thicken, I grasp Baba’s shirt so I don’t
lose him. Behind me, I feel a light tug as Safaa holds
my shirt. Something about her touch brightens the
shadows dusking my blood. A smile pushes onto
my face.
A deep trench has been gouged into the soil
immediately in front of the double rows of barbed
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wire. A dry moat, several yards wide and equally deep. The bull-dozed earth is heaped in ridges and
slopes beyond the trench. On these artificial hills,
people hunker down to watch what’s happening.
Baba and I squat with them. Safaa stands next to us,
a light breeze blowing her wild hair from her face.
I watch her for a moment, then turn to the border.
Thick black and yellow columns support the con-
crete canopy of the Bab al-Hawa Crossing. Trucks
line up but don’t move forward. Half a dozen border
guards with guns and walkie-talkies move between
the buildings and the canopy, between waiting vehi-
cles and people standing around. They talk on their
walkie-talkies. They shout. They gesture and point.
There are Syrian guards too, but not so many. Who
wants to come to Syria anyway?
“Is it always as crazy as this?” Baba says to a man
beside us.
“Anti-Turkish rebels set off a car bomb in Ankara,
so the Turkish government shut the border,” the
man says. He spits on the ground. “They open it for
a couple of hours a day for commercial trucks.” He
looks at the crowds walking the highway, the endless
line of vehicles. “Everyone arrives in the afternoon.
Nobody gets through.”
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“How long have you been here?” Baba says.
“A week.” He wipes his beard. “Others are here
a lot longer.”
A week? How can anyone stay in this place for a
week? No shelter. No kitchens. No shops or market.
Just dry, empty land stretching as far as the horizon.
A handful of scrubby trees. And endless barbed wire.
We squat in silence, watching the activity.
Safaa drops to her haunches next to us. “What
happens if you get across?” she says. Her voice is soft.
The man points to a line of small vans in a lay-by
on the Turkish side. “They’ll take you into Rey-
hanli. If you pay them.”
“Reyhanli?” I say.
“Nearest Turkish town. Half an hour away,
I’m told.”
The heat leaks from the sun. The light softens
and turns the brown land golden. A quiet shift-
ing ripples through the crowd. People drift off the
slopes to return to their families. The surging crowd
relaxes its energy. There are still long lines of buses
and trucks, but drivers seem to have resigned them-
selves to spending the night in their vehicles. Engines
are turned off. Doors and windows are closed against
the coolness of night. As the sun drops behind the
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distant mountains, the light in the east takes on a blue haze. Shadows lengthen.
“Time to go back,” Baba says.
We pick our way through family groups, past
piles of bags and bundles. My feet burn when I start
walking again on the stones and dirt off the high-
way. Every time I see a bright green scarf, I think
it’s Dayah. Every time I spot a striped bag on the
ground, I think it’s ours. Every time, I’m wrong.
“They were closer to the fence,” I say.
“Not this close,” Baba says. “I would remember
the trench. They’re over this way.”
We never thought to note a landmark that would
be easy to find.
“I have no idea where they are,” Baba says.
Safaa looks at Baba and me with a withering
expression. I’ve seen the same expression many times
on Bushra’s face. Safaa points to the border fence.
High above the crowds, above the barbed wire,
above the trench, a single Turkish flag flutters in the
breeze.
“Follow it,” she says.
And with a faint smile, she leads us through tired
people and rubbish and empty water bottles, straight
to where our family waits. Smart Safaa, I think.
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“Where is Bushra?” Baba says.
“Gone to the sup-sup van,” Dayah says.
“The what?”
Dayah points through the darkening distance
to a white van that’s pulled off the road, hazard
lights flashing. Crowds mill around it. “Apparently
it comes every evening with food and essentials,”
Dayah says. “Bushra has gone to get water and find
out what they have.”
“On her own?” Baba says.
“She’ll be fine,” Dayah says.
Having seen Safaa lead us safely back here, I don’t
have any concern for Bushra. But Baba can’t settle.
The light has seeped from the sky by the time my
sister gets back with bottles of water and chocolate
bars. She hands over a little change.
Dayah looks at the few coins. “Is that all?”
“He’s charging crazy prices,
” Bushra says. She’s
furious. “Ripping people off.”
“What is he selling?” Baba says.
“Diapers, potato chips, pastries. Biscuits and
crackers,” Bushra says.
Darkness falls. Families light cooking fires across
the open air settlement. Soft firelight lifts the dense
blackness. The smells of food cooking and cigarette
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smoke mask the reek of waste. At the border, flood-lights blaze into the night, shining on the canopy,
the buildings, the endless barbed wire. Safaa and
Dayah settle with the boys on the rug. Dapir and
Bushra curl up, warm beneath blankets, and quickly
start snoring. Baba and I look across the masses sleep-
ing in the open air.
“Put a blanket around your shoulders,” Baba says.
“I won’t sleep,” I say.
“You’ll get cold. There’s no heat in the air.”
I pull a blanket over my shoulders and stare
through the darkness. It’s a clear night. A couple
of trucks and buses move through the border
checkpoint. Motors grind. Voices call out. A child
cries somewhere. Strangers make noise in sleep or
waking, every one of them dreaming of somewhere
other than this stony patch of ground among
strangers. They cough and whisper and snore, call
out and turn and sigh.
I gaze at the stars from the Syrian horizon on one
side to the Turkish horizon on the other. I think of
the new life we’ll have—a life of peace and happiness
on the far side of the barbed wire fence, away from
everything that is happening in Syria.
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11
In spite of what I expect, I fall asleep sometime dur-
ing the night. I wake shivering and pull my dew-
damp blanket closer around my shoulders. My neck
aches from lying crooked across the bags. Around
me, people cough and spit in the blue dawn. Some
pray, pressing foreheads and knees to the stony earth.
Others walk around to stretch and wake up. Moth-
ers comfort cold and crying children. A few sad fires
smoke damply.
Dayah and Baba are both awake. Sitting side
by side beneath the same rug, they talk quietly
and look around the settlement with sleep-swollen
eyes. Dapir, Alan and Bushra sleep on, barely visible
beneath their shared blanket.
“Where are Amin and Safaa?” My voice cracks
open the stillness of the morning like a broken egg.
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I gaze around, searching pale tired faces nearby. I don’t see Amin’s worried little face, nor Safaa’s wild
hair anywhere. Safaa’s main bundle is missing, but
her small carpetbag lies on the ground.
“Baba?” I say.
“They weren’t here when I woke up,” Baba says.
“How long have they been gone?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know where
they’ve gone either.”
“It’s early yet, Ghalib,” my mother says. “They
won’t have gone far.”
But her words don’t bring any comfort. Why
would they leave us? They stayed close and constant
since Safaa first shot at us. They have no one else.
Nowhere to go. Safaa doesn’t even have her gun.
“They might be back in a little while,” I say.
“Maybe they’re at the sup-sup van,” I say.
“Or maybe they needed to relieve themselves,”
I say.
“Stop going on about them,” Bushra says. She
pulls herself upright and looks around. “Good rid-
dance to the sniper, I say.”
While Bushra and Dapir stretch and rub their eyes,
Baba and I bring Alan to the trench in front of the
border fence where men and boys relieve themselves.
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“We’re peeing outside again,” Alan says. He laughs in the rising sun.
It’s harder for women to find privacy. Dapir, Dayah,
and Bushra take one of the rugs and are gone for a long
time. When they return, each has her own grumbles.
“Some men don’t know how to behave or where
to look when women are in the open,” Dayah says.
“This place isn’t dignified or proper for women,”
Dapir says.
“Dapir and Dayah didn’t hold the blanket prop-
erly,” Bushra says.
“I’m hungry,” Alan says.
Dayah pulls open the bags. With Amin and Safaa
missing, we have more food to share, although I
would prefer they were with us and we had less to
eat. I miss them.
We finish the water, share the last apple. Dayah
hands around tiny pieces of chocolate. She gives
more to Dapir and Alan—the oldest and the young-
est. Safaa and Amin haven’t returned by the time
we’re ready to walk to the border.
“Bring everything,” Baba says. “We don’t know
if we’ll be back”
“What about Safaa and Amin?” I say. “How will
they find us?”
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Baba looks sad. Maybe he’s worried about them too. “Our family comes first, Ghalib. Safaa and
Amin can find us near the border. We can’t wait for
them when we don’t know where they are or when
they’ll be back.”
“What about their bag?” I say.
Baba takes up his own luggage, ties the blankets
over the empty water barrel, checks that nothing is
left. He looks at me. I see something in his eyes.
“Bring it if you want, Ghalib,” he says. “But we
can’t be responsible for their belongings when we
don’t know where they’ve gone.”
Baba is right, but his words make me miser-
able. I take up my bags and bundles. I add Safaa’s
carpetbag, take Alan’s hand and follow the others
through the sleepers and the daydreamers and the
half-awake. I peer down the highway where the ris-
ing sun flashes on the windows of the endless line of
trucks and buses and cars. It looks as long as it was
yesterday.
The crowds on the highway and sloping hills are
not so frenzied yet. We move easily past shuffling
people. Many families are still asleep but others must
have left or been allowed across the border.
“Maybe we’ll get across today,” I say.
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Bushra looks at me with Bushra-scorn in her eyes.
We find a viewing spot on the fake hillside to
watch the border. There aren’t so many families
and women crouching on the slopes. Not so many
mothers and grandmothers and sisters. For the most
part, women, children and old people wait off the
highway for their men to come back and tell them
what to do and where to go. But Kurdish women
stay next to their men. They don’t wait to be told
what to do and where to go. They work with their
husbands and sons, whether fighting in the army or
sitting quietly on stony slopes to watch the border. In
our family, Dapir and Dayah and Bushra watch with
Alan and Baba and me as the border guards walk
around with their guns and walkie-talkies, gesturing
/> and pointing, pulling vehicles aside. All morning we
sit. There’s not much talking. Dapir and Alan doze.
My own eyes get heavy as the heat of the sun warms
my back. I think of Safaa and Amin. Where have
they gone? What if little Amin gets sick again? Safaa
had started to talk a little more—might have been
beginning to trust us. And now she’s gone.
“What have you learned, Ghalib?” Baba says.
He startles me from my daydreams. I look at
him blankly.
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“There’s no point being at the border unless we learn something. Something to help us cross.”
Before I can speak, Bushra says, “Six Turkish
guards patrol the border. If one goes into the build-
ing, another comes out to cover him.”
I stare at her.
“And they never allow more than two vehicles
under the canopy at one time,” she says.
How did she learn so much so fast? I look at the
Syrian guards, who have little to do in comparison
to the Turks. Hardly any traffic comes from Turkey
into Syria: just the occasional truck bringing supplies
or making deliveries.
“Syrian guards aren’t interested in who comes to
the border from the Turkish side,” I say. It’s not much.
“Border guards send drivers into the building
while they search the truck,” Bushra says. “Then
they search the underside and the roof.”
I’m irritated with her now. She sees me look at
her and a smirk shades her face for an instant.
“They don’t search the inside of the truck until
the driver comes back out,” Bushra says.
I lock my eyes on the border to track activity. No
longer am I watching random movements of guards.
Now, I search for patterns, routines, behaviors.
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“The guards always have their backs to the fence nearest the highway,” I say. “They all carry guns. The
only route for people on foot is beneath the canopy.”
“Both of you have learned a lot,” Baba says.
As the day wears on, crowds thicken on the hills.
People come from the settlement; new arrivals move
slowly along the highway, weighed down with bags
and bundles. The man Baba and I spoke with on the
first evening was right: afternoons are the busiest.
I’m distracted by hunger and thirst: it’s been a long
time since we ate the apple and chocolate. We all
want food.
“I have nothing,” Dayah says.
“We’ll go to the sup-sup van later,” Baba says.