Refugee

by Alan Gratz

  Papi had to leave Cuba.

  Tonight.

  The afternoon adhan from a nearby mosque echoed through the bombed-out streets of Aleppo, the melodious, ethereal voice of the mu’adhdhin praising Allah and calling everyone to prayer. Mahmoud had been doing his math homework at the kitchen table, but he automatically put his pencil down and went to the sink to wash up. The water wasn’t working again, so he had to pour water over his hands using the plastic jugs his mother had hauled from the neighborhood well. Across the room, Waleed sat like a zombie in front of the television, watching a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon dubbed into Syrian Arabic.

  Mahmoud’s mother came out of the bedroom, where she’d been folding clothes, and turned off the TV. “Time to pray, Waleed. Get washed up.”

  Mahmoud’s mother, Fatima Bishara, held her pink iPhone in one hand, and in her free arm she carried Mahmoud’s baby sister, Hana. Fatima had long, dark hair she wore up on her head, and intense brown eyes. Today she was wearing her usual around-the-house attire: jeans and a pink nurse’s shirt she used to wear to work. She’d quit the hospital when Hana was born, but not before the war had begun. Not before coming home every day with horror stories about the people she’d helped put back together. Not soldiers—regular people. Men with gunshot wounds. Women with burns. Children with missing limbs. She hadn’t gone nearly catatonic like Waleed, but at some point it had gotten bad enough that she just stopped talking about it.

  When he was finished washing up, Mahmoud went to the corner of the living room that faced Mecca. He rolled out two mats—one for him and the other for Waleed. Their mother would pray by herself in her bedroom.

  Mahmoud began without Waleed. He raised his hands to his ears and said, “Allahu Akbar.” God is the greatest. Then he folded his hands over his stomach and said a brief prayer before reciting the first chapter of the Qur’an, the most holy book in Islam. He bowed and praised Allah again three times, stood and praised Allah again, then got down on his hands and knees and put his head to the floor, praising Allah three times more. When he was finished, Mahmoud sat back up on his knees and ended his prayers by turning his head right, and then left, recognizing the angels who recorded his good and bad deeds.

  The whole prayer took Mahmoud about seven minutes. While he’d been praying, Waleed joined him. Mahmoud waited for his brother to finish, then rolled up their mats and went back to his homework. Waleed went back to watching cartoons.

  Mahmoud was just starting a new equation when he heard a sound over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. A roar like a hot wind rising outside. In the second it took for the sound to grow from a breeze to a tornado, Mahmoud dropped his pencil, put his hands to his ears, and threw himself under the kitchen table.

  By now he knew what an incoming missile sounded like.

  ShhhhhHHHHHH—THOOOOOOM!

  The wall of his apartment exploded, blasting broken bits of concrete and glass through the room. The floor lurched up under Mahmoud and threw him and the table and chairs back against the wall of the kitchen. The world was a whirlwind of bricks and broken dishes and table legs and heat, and Mahmoud slammed into a cabinet. His breath left him all at once, and he fell to the floor with a heavy thud in a heap of metal and mortar.

  Mahmoud’s ears rang with a high-pitched whine, like the TV when the satellite was searching for a signal. Above him, what was left of the ceiling light threw sparks. Nothing else mattered in that moment but air. Mahmoud couldn’t draw a breath. It was like somebody was sitting on his chest. He thrashed in the rubble, panicking. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe! He flailed wildly at the debris, digging and scratching at the wreckage like he could somehow claw his way back to a place where there was air.

  And then his lungs were working again, raking in great gulps. The air was full of dust, and it scratched and tore at his throat as it went down, but Mahmoud had never tasted anything so sweet. His ears still rang, but through the buzz he could hear more thuds and booms. It wasn’t just his building that had been hit, he realized. It was his whole neighborhood.

  Mahmoud’s head was hot and wet. He put a hand to it and came away with blood. His shoulder ached and his chest still seared with every hard, desperate breath, but the only thing that mattered now was getting to his mother. His sister. His brother.

  Mahmoud pulled himself up out of the rubble and saw the building across the street in raw daylight, like he was standing in midair beside it. He blinked, still dazed, and then he understood.

  The entire outside wall of Mahmoud’s apartment was gone.

  The Hitler Youth led Josef down the narrow corridor of the German passenger car. Tears sprang to Josef’s eyes. The Brownshirt who’d taken his father away on Kristallnacht had said, “We’ll come for you soon enough,” but Josef hadn’t waited. He’d gone to them with this stupid stunt.

  They came to a compartment with a man in the uniform of the Gestapo, the Nazis’ Secret State Police, and Josef stumbled. The Gestapo man looked up at them through the window in his door.

  No. Not here. Not now. Not like this, Josef prayed—

  —and the Hitler Youth boy pushed Josef on past.

  They came to the door of the Jewish train car, and the Hitler Youth spun Josef around. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening.

  “What were you thinking?” the boy whispered.

  Josef couldn’t speak.

  The boy thrust the armband at Josef’s chest.

  “Put that on. And don’t ever do that again,” the Hitler Youth told Josef. “Do you understand?”

  “I— Yes,” Josef stammered. “Thank you. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.”

  The Hitler Youth breathed hard, his face red like he was the one in trouble. He spotted the piece of candy Josef had bought for Ruth and took it. He stood taller, tugged at the bottom of his brown shirt to straighten it, then turned and marched away.

  Josef slipped back into his compartment, still shaking, and collapsed onto his bench. He stayed there the rest of the trip, his armband securely in place and as visible as possible. He didn’t even leave to go to the bathroom.

  Hours later, the train pulled in to Hamburg Central Railway Station. Josef’s mother led him and his sister through the crowds to the Hamburg docks, where their ship waited for them.

  Josef had never seen anything so big. If you stood the ship on end, it would have been taller than any building in Berlin. Two giant tan smokestacks stuck up from the middle of the ship, one of them belching gray-black diesel engine smoke. A steep ramp ran to the top of the tall black hull, and hundreds of people were already on board, milling around under colorful fluttering pennants and waving to friends and family down on the docks. Flying highest above them all, as if to remind everyone who was in charge, was the red-and-white Nazi flag with the black swastika in the middle.

  The ship was called the MS St. Louis. St. Louis was the name of a city in America, Josef had learned. That seemed like a good omen to him. A sign that they would eventually get to America. Maybe one day visit the real St. Louis.

  A shabby-looking man stumbled out from behind the crates and luggage piled up on the dock, and Ruthie screamed. Josef jumped, and his mother took a frightened step back.

  The man reached out for them. “You made it! At last!”

  That voice, thought Josef. Could it really be—?

  The man threw his arms around Mama. She let him hug her, even though she still held her hands across her chest as if to ward him off.

  He stepped back and held her at arm’s length.

  “My dearest Rachel!” he said. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

  It was. It was him. The shabby man who had lurched from the shadows like an escapee from a mental asylum was Josef’s father, Aaron Landau.

  Josef shuddered. His papa looked nothing like the man who’d been dragged away from their home six months ago. His thick brown hair and beard had been shaved off, and his head and face were covered with scraggly stubble. He w
as thinner too. Too thin. A skeleton in a threadbare suit three sizes too big for him.

  Aaron Landau’s eyes bulged from his gaunt face as he turned to look at his children. Josef’s breath caught in his throat and Ruthie cried out and buried her face in Josef’s stomach as their papa pulled the two of them into a hug. He smelled so ripe—like the alley behind a butcher shop—that Josef had to turn his head away.

  “Josef! Ruth! My darlings!” He kissed the tops of their heads again and again, then jumped back. He looked around manically, like there were spies everywhere. “We have to go. We can’t stay here. We have to get on board before they stop us.”

  “But I have tickets,” Mama said. “Visas.”

  Papa shook his head too quickly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. His eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. “They’ll stop us. Take me back.”

  Ruthie clung to her brother. Papa was scaring her. He scared Josef too.

  “Hurry!” Papa said. He pulled the family with him into the stacks of crates, and Josef tried to keep up with him as he darted from place to place, dodging imaginary enemies. Josef gave his mother a frightened glance that said, What’s wrong with Papa? Mama just shook her head, her eyes full of worry.

  When they got close to the ramp, Papa hunkered down behind the last of the crates.

  “On the count of three, we make a break for it,” he told his family. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop for anything. We have to get on that ship. Are you ready? One. Two. Three.”

  Josef wasn’t ready. None of them were. They watched as Aaron Landau ran for the ramp, where other passengers had already queued up to hand their tickets to a smiling man in a sailor’s uniform. Josef’s father threw himself past the sailor and stumbled into the ramp’s railing before righting himself and sprinting up the gangway.

  “Wait!” the sailor cried.

  “Quickly now, children,” Mama said. Together they hurried to the ramp as best they could, carrying all the suitcases. “I have his ticket,” she told the sailor. “I’m sorry. We can wait our turn.”

  The startled man at the front of the line motioned for them to go ahead, and Josef’s mother thanked him.

  “My husband is just … eager to leave,” she told the sailor.

  He smiled sadly and punched their tickets. “I understand. Oh—let me get someone to help you with those bags. Porter?”

  Josef stood in wonder as another sailor—a German man without a Star of David armband, a man who wasn’t a Jew—put a suitcase under each arm and one in each hand and led them up the gangway. He treated them like real passengers. Like real people. And he wasn’t the only one. Every sailor they met doffed his cap at them, and the steward who showed them to their cabin assured them that they could call upon him for anything they needed while on board. Anything at all. Their room was spotless, the bed linens were freshly laundered, and the hand towels were pressed and neatly stacked.

  “It’s a trick,” Papa said when the door was closed. He glanced around the little cabin like the walls were closing in. “They’ll come for us soon enough,” he said.

  It was just what the Brownshirt had told Josef.

  Mama put her hands on Josef’s and Ruthie’s heads. “Why don’t you two go on up to the promenade,” she said softly. “I’ll stay here with your father.”

  Josef and Ruth were only too glad to get away from Papa. A few hours later, they watched from the promenade as tugboats pushed the MS St. Louis away from the dock, and passengers threw confetti and celebrated and blew tearful kisses good-bye. Josef and his family were on their way to a new country. A new life.

  But all Josef could think about was what terrible things must have happened to his father to make him look so awful and act so scared.

  Isabel and her grandfather set her papi in a chair in their little kitchen, and Isabel’s mother, Teresa Padron de Fernandez, ran to the cabinet under the sink. Isabel hurried after her. Mami was very pregnant—she was due in a week’s time—so Isabel knelt down to find the iodine.

  Isabel’s father, Geraldo Fernandez, had always been a handsome man, but he didn’t look it now. There was blood in his hair, and the area around one of his eyes was already turning black. When they pulled his white linen shirt off him, his back was covered with welts.

  Isabel watched as Mami cleaned his cuts with a washcloth. Papi hissed as she disinfected them with the iodine.

  “What happened?” Isabel’s mother asked.

  An Industriales baseball game played on the television in the corner, and Isabel’s grandfather turned down the volume.

  “There was a riot on the Malecón,” Lito said. “They ran out of food too fast.”

  “I can’t stay here,” Papi said. His head was bent low, but his voice was loud and clear. “Not any longer. They’ll come for me.”

  Everyone was quiet at that. The only sound was the soft crack of a bat and the roar of the crowd on the television.

  Papi had already tried to flee Cuba twice. The first time, he and three other men had built a raft and tried to paddle their way to Florida, but a tropical storm turned them back. The second time, his boat had a motor, but he’d been caught by the Cuban navy and had ended up in jail.

  Now it was even harder to escape. For decades, the United States had rescued any Cuban refugees they found at sea and taken them to Florida. But the food shortages had driven more and more Cubans to el norte. Too many. The Americans had a new policy everyone called “Wet Foot, Dry Foot.” If Cuban refugees were caught at sea with “wet feet,” they were sent to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, at the southern end of Cuba. From there, they could choose to return to Cuba—and Castro—or languish in a refugee camp while the United States decided what to do with them. But if they managed to survive the trip across the Straits of Florida and evade the US Coast Guard and actually set foot on United States soil—be caught with “dry feet”—they were granted special refugee status and allowed to remain and become US citizens.

  Papi was going to run away again, and this time, whether he got caught with wet feet or dry feet, he wasn’t coming back.

  “There’s no reason to go throwing yourself onto a raft in the ocean,” Lito said. “You can just lie low for a while. I know a little shack in the cane fields. Things will get better. You’ll see.”

  Papi slammed a fist on the table. “And how exactly are they going to get better, Mariano? Do you think the Soviet Union is going to suddenly decide to get back together and start sending us food again? No one is coming to help us. And Castro’s only making things worse.”

  As if saying his name made him appear, the baseball game on television was interrupted by a special message from the Cuban president.

  Fidel Castro was an old man with liver spots on his forehead, gray hair, a big bushy gray beard, and bags under his eyes. He wore the same thing he did every time he was on television—a green military jacket and flat round cap—and sat behind a row of microphones.

  Everyone got quiet as Lito turned up the volume. Castro condemned the violence that had broken out on the Malecón, blaming it on US agents.

  Papi scoffed. “It wasn’t US agents. It was hungry Cubans.”

  Castro rambled on without a script, quoting novels and telling personal anecdotes about the Revolution.

  “Oh, turn it off,” Papi said. But before Mami had reached the set, Castro said something that made them all sit up and listen.

  “We cannot continue guarding the borders of the United States while they send their CIA to instigate riots in Havana. That is when incidents like this occur, and the world calls the Cuban government cruel and inhumane. And so, until there is a speedy and efficient solution, we are suspending all obstacles so that those who wish to leave Cuba may do so legally, once and for all. We will not stand in their way.”

  “What did he just say?” Mami asked.

  Papi’s eyes were wide as he stood from the kitchen table. “Castro just said anybody who wants to can leave!”

  Isabel fe
lt as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest. If Castro was letting anyone leave, her father would be gone before the sun rose the next day. She could see it in his wild look.

  “You can’t go now!” Lito told Papi. “You have a family to take care of. A wife! A daughter! A son on the way!”

  Isabel’s father and grandfather yelled at each other about dictators and freedom and families and responsibility. Lito was her mother’s father, and he and Papi had never gotten along. Isabel covered her ears and stepped away. She had to think of some answer to all this, some solution that would keep her family together.

  Then she had it.

  “We’ll all go!” Isabel cried.

  That shut everybody up. Even Castro stopped talking, and the TV went back to showing the baseball game.

  “No,” Papi and Lito said at the same time.

  “Why not?” Isabel said.

  “Your mother is pregnant, for one thing!” Lito said.

  “There’s no food to feed the baby here anyway,” Isabel said. “There’s no food for any of us, and no money to buy it with if there was. But there is food in the States. And freedom. And work.”

  And a place where her father wouldn’t be beaten or arrested. Or run away.

  “We’ll all go, while Castro is letting people out,” she went on. “Lito too.”

  “What? But, I— No,” Lito protested.

  They were all quiet a moment more, until her father said, “But I don’t even have a boat.”

  Isabel nodded. She could fix that too.

  Without saying anything, Isabel ran next door to the Castillos’s house. Luis, the older boy who’d saved her from the policeman’s nightstick, wasn’t home from work yet, and neither was his mother, Juaneta, who worked at the cooperative law office. But Isabel found Iván and his father, Rudi, right where she thought they’d be—working on their boat in the shed.

  It was an ugly blue thing cobbled together out of old metal advertisements and road signs and oil drums. It barely qualified as a boat, but it was big enough for the four Castillos—and maybe four more guests.