Refugee

by Alan Gratz

  “Well, if it isn’t Hurricane Isabel,” Señor Castillo said. He had white hair that he wore swept back on his head, and even though there was no food, he had a middle-aged paunch to his belly.

  “You have to take us with you!” Isabel said.

  “No, we don’t,” Señor Castillo said. “Iván, nail.”

  “People are rioting in Havana!” Isabel said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Señor Castillo said. “Iván, nail.”

  Iván handed him another nail.

  “My father was almost arrested,” Isabel said. “If you don’t take us with you, they’ll throw him in prison.”

  Señor Castillo paused his hammering for a moment, then shook his head. “There’s no room. And we don’t need a fugitive on board.”

  Iván looked at him funny, but only Isabel saw it.

  “Please,” Isabel begged.

  “We don’t have any gasoline anyway,” Iván said. He put a hand to the motorcycle motor they’d mounted inside the boat. “We’re not going anywhere soon.”

  “I can fix that!” Isabel said.

  She ran home again. Her father and grandfather were still arguing in the kitchen, so she slipped in the back way. She grabbed her trumpet, gave it one long, sad look, and ran out the back door. She was already in the street when she stopped, ran to her backyard, and snatched up the little mewling kitten too. With the trumpet in one arm and the kitten in the other, she ran the few blocks to the beach, where she banged on the door of a fisherman her grandfather knew. His gas-powered fishing boat rocked gently at a little pier nearby.

  The fisherman came to his door, licking his fingers and frowning. Isabel had caught him at dinner. Fried fish, it smelled like. The kitten’s nose sniffed eagerly at the air, and it meowed. Isabel’s stomach growled.

  “You’re Mariano Padron’s granddaughter, aren’t you?” the fisherman said. “What do you want?”

  “I need gasoline!” Isabel told him.

  “Izzat so? Well, I need money.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Isabel said. “But I have this.” She held out the trumpet. Isabel regretted that its brass was a little tarnished, but it was the most valuable thing she owned. The fisherman had to take it in trade.

  “What am I going to do with that?” he asked.

  “Sell it,” Isabel told him. “It’s French, and old, and plays like a dream.”

  The fisherman sighed. “And why do you need gasoline so badly?”

  “To leave Cuba before my father is arrested.”

  The fisherman wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Isabel stood for what seemed like hours, her insides churning like a waterspout. At last, he reached out and took the trumpet.

  “Wait here,” he told her.

  Isabel held her breath, and soon the fisherman came back with two enormous plastic jugs of gasoline. Each one came up to Isabel’s chest.

  “Is it enough?” Isabel asked.

  “To get you to Miami? Yes. And back again.”

  Isabel’s heart soared, and she hopped up and down.

  “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!” Isabel told him. “Oh, and you have to take the kitten too.” She held the wiggling creature out to him, but the old fisherman just stared at it.

  “Izzat so?” the fisherman said.

  “Please,” Isabel said. “Or else someone will catch her and eat her. But you have fish to eat. She can eat the scraps.”

  The fisherman eyed the cat suspiciously. “Izzit a good mouser?”

  “Yes!” Isabel said, though she was sure that even a mouse would give the scrawny thing trouble. “Her name is Leona.”

  The old fisherman sighed and took the squirming kitten from her.

  Isabel smiled, then noticed how big and heavy the gas cans were.

  “Oh, and I also need you to help me carry these back.”

  Through the huge hole that used to be the wall of his apartment, Mahmoud saw gray-white clouds from missile strikes blooming all around. He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing, and spied his little brother. Waleed was sitting right where he had been before the attack, on the floor in front of the TV.

  Only the TV wasn’t there anymore. It had fallen five stories to the ground below, along with the outside wall. And Waleed was centimeters from joining them both.

  “Waleed! Don’t move!” Mahmoud cried. He hurried across the room, his ankles turning painfully on broken bits of wall. Waleed sat still as a statue, and he looked like one too. He was covered with a fine gray powder from head to foot, like he’d taken a bath in dry concrete mix. Mahmoud finally reached him, snatching him up and away from the cliff’s edge that used to be their wall.

  “Waleed—Waleed, are you okay?” Mahmoud asked, turning him around.

  Waleed’s eyes were alive, but empty.

  “Waleed, talk to me. Are you all right?”

  Waleed finally looked up at him. “You’re bleeding” was all he said.

  “Mahmoud? Waleed?” their mother cried. She staggered to the door of her bedroom, Hana crying in her arms. “Oh, thank God you’re alive!” their mom said. She dropped to her knees and pulled them both into a hug. Mahmoud’s heart was racing, his ears still buzzed, and his shoulder burned, but they were alive. They were all alive! He felt tears come to his eyes and wiped them away.

  The floor beneath their feet groaned and shifted.

  “We have to get out of here!” Mahmoud’s mother said, putting Hana in Mahmoud’s arms. “Go, go. Take your brother and your sister. I’ll be right behind you. I just have to grab a few things.”

  “Mom, no!”

  “Go,” she told Mahmoud, pushing them all toward the door.

  Mahmoud clutched Hana with one arm and took his brother’s hand. He dragged Waleed with him toward the front door, but Waleed pulled back.

  “What about my action figures?” Waleed asked. He looked over his shoulder like he wanted to go back for them.

  “We’ll buy new ones!” Mahmoud told him. “We have to get out of here!”

  Across the hall, the Sarraf family filled the corridor—mother, father, and twin daughters, both younger than Waleed.

  “What’s happened?” Mr. Sarraf asked Mahmoud, and then he saw the missing wall and his eyes went wide.

  “The building’s been hit!” Mahmoud said. “We have to get out!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Sarraf hurried back into their apartment, and Mahmoud carried Hana down the stairs, pulling Waleed behind them. Halfway to the ground, the building shifted again and the concrete stairs broke away from the wall, leaving a five-centimeter crack. Mahmoud grabbed the railing to steady himself and waited a long, breathless moment to see if the stairs were going to collapse. When they didn’t, he ran the rest of the way down and burst out onto the street, Hana still in his arms and his brother right behind them.

  Rubble was strewn everywhere. Missiles and bombs thudded nearby, close enough to shake loose parts of walls. A building shuddered and collapsed, smoke and debris avalanching out into the street. Mahmoud jumped when it fell, but Waleed stood still, like this kind of thing happened every day.

  With a jolt of surprise, Mahmoud realized this kind of thing did happen every day. Just not to them. Until now.

  Everywhere around them, people fled into the streets, covered in gray dust and blood. No sirens rang. No ambulances came to help the wounded. No police cars or emergency crews hurried to the scene.

  There weren’t any left.

  Mahmoud stared up at their building. The whole front had collapsed, and Mahmoud felt like he was looking into a giant dollhouse. Each floor had a living room and a kitchen just like theirs, all decorated differently.

  The building groaned again, and a kitchen on the top floor began to tip toward the street. It collapsed onto the sixth floor, and then into Mahmoud’s apartment, and on down like dominos. Mahmoud barely had time to yell “Run!” and drag Waleed and his sister away before the whole building came crashing down into the street, thundering like a jet fighter
.

  Safe on the sidewalk across the street, clutching Hana and Waleed, Mahmoud suddenly realized his mother had still been in the building. “Mom! Mom!” Mahmoud yelled.

  “Mahmoud? Waleed?” he heard his mother cry, and she came out from behind the pile of rubble with the Sarraf family, all of them covered in gray dust. She ran toward Mahmoud and embraced him, Waleed, and Hana.

  “We went out the back stairs,” she told them. “And just in time.”

  Mahmoud looked up at where his apartment had been. It wasn’t there anymore. His home was totally destroyed. What would they do now? Where would they go?

  Mahmoud’s mother was carrying their school backpacks, and she traded them for Hana. Mahmoud couldn’t understand why his mother had bothered to save their backpacks until he saw that they were stuffed with clothes and diapers. She had gone back for whatever she could take from the apartment.

  Everything they owned was in these two backpacks.

  “I can’t reach your father,” Mahmoud’s mother said, thumbing her phone. “There’s no service again.”

  Mahmoud’s father was an engineer with a mobile phone company. If the phones were out, he was probably working on trying to fix them. But what if his father had been hit by one of the bombs? Mahmoud’s stomach twisted into knots just thinking about it.

  But then there his dad was, running down the street toward them, and Mahmoud felt like he could fly.

  “Fatima! Mahmoud! Waleed! Hana!” his father cried. He wrapped them all in a hug and kissed little Hana on the forehead. “Thank God you’re all alive!” he cried.

  “Dad, our house is gone!” Mahmoud told him. “What do we do?”

  “What we should have done a long time ago. We’re leaving Aleppo. Now. I parked the car nearby. We can be in Turkey by tomorrow. We can sell the car there and make our way north, to Germany.”

  Everyone stopped while Mahmoud’s father walked ahead.

  “Germany?” Mahmoud’s mother said.

  Mahmoud felt as stunned as his mother sounded. Germany? He remembered the map of the world that hung in his classroom. Germany was somewhere up north, in the heart of Europe. He couldn’t imagine traveling that far.

  “Just for a little while,” Mahmoud’s father said. “I saw on the TV they’re accepting refugees. We can stay there until all this is over. Until we can come back home.”

  “It’s cold in Germany,” Mahmoud said.

  “Do you want to build a snowman?” his father sang. They had seen Frozen in a movie theater—back when they could get to the now-government-controlled side of the city that had theaters.

  “Youssef—” Mahmoud’s mom warned.

  Mahmoud’s dad looked sheepish. “It doesn’t have to be a snowman.”

  “This is serious,” Mom said. “I know we’ve been talking about leaving. But now? Like this? We were going to pack. Plan. Buy tickets. Book hotel rooms. All we have now are two backpacks and our phones. Germany is a long way away. How will we get there?”

  “By car first.” Mahmoud’s father shrugged. “Then by boat? By train? By bus? On foot? I don’t know. What choice do we have? Our home is destroyed! Were you able to get the cash we’ve put away?”

  Mahmoud’s mother nodded, but she was clearly still worried.

  “So we have money! We will buy tickets as we go. More importantly, we have our lives. But if we stay in Aleppo a day longer, we may not even have that.” Mahmoud’s father looked from his wife to Hana to Mahmoud to Waleed. “We’ve spent too much time talking about it and not doing anything. It’s not safe here. It hasn’t been for months. Years. We should have gone long ago. Ready or not, if we want to live, we have to leave Syria.”

  Ruthie skipped ahead of Josef along the sunny Promenade deck, happier than he’d ever seen her before. And why not? The MS St. Louis was a paradise. Banned from movie theaters in Germany because she was a Jew, Ruthie had seen her first cartoon on board during movie night and loved it—even if it was followed by a newsreel with Hitler yelling about Jews. Three times a day they ate delicious meals in a dining room laid out with white linen tablecloths, crystal glasses, and shining silverware, and stewards waited on them hand and foot. They had played shuffleboard and badminton, and the crew was putting up a swimming pool, which they promised to fill with seawater once the St. Louis hit the warm Gulf Stream.

  Everyone on the crew had treated Josef and his family with kindness and respect, despite his father’s repeated warnings that all Germans were out to get them. (In five days, Papa hadn’t come out of their cabin once, not even for meals, and Josef’s mother had barely left his side.) And the crew wasn’t just being nice because they didn’t know Josef and his family were Jews. No one wore their Jewish armbands on the ship, and there were no Js above any of the passenger compartments, because all the passengers were Jews. All nine hundred and eight of them! They were all going to Cuba to escape the Nazis, and now that they were finally away from the threats and violence that followed them everywhere in Germany, there was singing and dancing and laughter.

  Two girls around Ruthie’s age wearing matching flowery dresses were leaning over the railing and giggling. Josef and Ruthie went over to see what they were doing. One of the girls had found a long piece of string and was dangling it over the side, tickling the noses of passengers who were sleeping in chairs down on A-deck. Their current victim kept batting at his nose like there was a fly on it. He bopped his nose hard enough to jerk awake, and Ruthie laughed hysterically. The girls yanked up the string, and they all dropped to the deck behind the rail where the man couldn’t see them laughing.

  “I’m Josef,” he told the other girls when they’d all gathered themselves together. “And this is Ruthie.”

  “Josef just turned thirteen!” Ruthie told the girls. “He’s going to have his bar mitzvah next Shabbos.”

  A bar mitzvah was the ceremony at which a boy officially became a man under Jewish law. It was usually held on the first Shabbos—the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest—after a boy’s thirteenth birthday. Josef couldn’t wait for his bar mitzvah.

  “If there’s enough people,” Josef reminded his sister.

  “I’m Renata Aber,” said the older of the two girls, “and this is Evelyne.” They were sisters, and, amazingly, they were traveling alone.

  “Our father is waiting for us in Cuba,” Renata told them.

  “Where’s your mama?” Ruthie asked.

  “She … wanted to stay in Germany,” Evelyne said.

  Josef could tell it wasn’t something they were comfortable talking about. “Hey, I know something funny we can do,” he told them. It was a trick he and Klaus had played on Herr Meier once upon a time. Thinking about Klaus made Josef think about other things, but he blinked away the bad memories. The MS St. Louis had left all that behind.

  “First,” Josef said, “we need some soap.”

  Once they had found a bar, Josef showed them how to soap up a door handle so that it was so slick it was impossible to turn. They used it on the door handles of cabins up and down the passageway on A-deck, then hid around the corner and waited. Soon enough, a steward balancing a large silver tray came down the hall from the other end and knocked on a door. Josef, Ruthie, Renata, and Evelyne had to swallow their snickers as the steward reached down with his free hand and tried and failed to open the door. The steward couldn’t see because of the big platter he held, and as he fumbled with the knob he lost his hold on the tray and the whole thing came crashing down with a great clatter.

  All four of them burst out laughing, and Josef and Renata pulled the two younger children away before they could be caught. They collapsed behind one of the lifeboats, panting and giggling. As Josef dried his eyes, he realized he hadn’t played like this, hadn’t laughed like this, for many years.

  Josef wished they could stay on board the St. Louis forever.

  The boat was heavy in Isabel’s arms, and she was afraid of dropping it, even though there were five other people carrying it with her. She and I
ván held the middle of the boat on either side, while Iván’s parents and Isabel’s father and grandfather carried the front and back.

  Señora Castillo, Iván’s mother, was dark-skinned and curvy, and wore a white kerchief over her dreadlocks. Isabel’s mother, almost nine months pregnant, was the only one not helping to carry the boat. It was big and heavy to begin with, and they had packed it with the gas cans, plastic soda bottles filled with fresh water, condensed milk, cheese and bread, and medicine. Everything else had to be left behind.

  Nothing was more important than making it to Florida.

  It was night, and a waning moon peeked out from behind scattered clouds. A warm breeze lifted Isabel’s short curly hair and raised goose bumps on her arms. Fidel Castro had said that anyone who wanted to leave was welcome to go, but that was hours ago. What if he had changed his mind? What if there was a line of police waiting to arrest them at the beach? Isabel hefted the boat to get a better grip and tried to pick up her pace.

  They left the village’s gravel road and hauled the boat over the dunes to the sea. All Isabel could see was the metal side of the boat in front of her face, but she heard a commotion behind her. There were people on the beach! Lots of them! She panicked, her worst fears come true, and suddenly a blinding light lit her up. Isabel cried out and let go of the boat.

  Ahead of her, Señora Castillo staggered and lost her grip too, and the front of the boat slammed into the sand.

  Isabel turned, holding a hand up in front of her eyes and expecting to see a police searchlight shining on her. What she saw instead was a television camera.

  “You’re on CNN,” a woman said in Spanish, her face nothing but a silhouette against the light. “Can you tell us what made you decide to leave?”

  “Quickly!” Señor Castillo called from the other side of the boat. “Pick it back up! We’re almost to the water!”

  “I—” Isabel said, frozen in the bright light of the camera.

  “Do you have any relatives back in Miami that you want to send a message to?” the reporter asked.