“This is everyone Audrey asked about Israa before she disappeared.”
18
Douma, Syria
The sea was the enemy he’d thought about, the enemy he’d prepared himself to face, the enemy he’d convinced Israa was one they could overcome, fighting its remorselessness together. She hadn’t wanted to make the crossing; she’d said they should stay in Izmir, find work, find others who might bring word of her parents and brothers. Someone would know if they were trapped in Douma, or if they’d managed to escape.
Israa returned home to search for her parents. While the jets had flown past, she’d rushed from street to street, calling out their names. She’d searched hospitals, clinics, bomb shelters. She’d chased after ambulances, crying for her little brothers.
Sometimes the drivers answered her questions; other times, their sirens brought the echo of a storm in their wake—the double-tap carried out by helicopters and fighter jets: the first strike against the people, the second against the paramedics who raced to the people’s rescue.
“Go back, go back,” they shouted. Israa could only obey.
She was his next-door neighbor. He’d been in love with her since they were children. They had played together without disrupting the strict conventions of their culture, their mothers keeping an eye on them, the children of the two families so closely intertwined that Ali and Israa’s love affair had passed beneath their mothers’ notice.
Or so Ali had assumed. One morning he’d heard his mother decide his future across a cup of coffee. She promised there would be an engagement as soon as Ali enrolled in college. She told Israa’s mother not to worry, Ali was too deeply in love to look at another girl, even if he left for Damascus. If he tried, she’d straighten him out.
So plans had been made, comfortably and without fuss, neither he nor Israa consulted. Later that night, he’d told Israa the news—the two of them had giggled at their mothers’ presumption. At the end of the conversation, they’d smiled into each other’s eyes, knowing they’d make the promise good.
All this before the siege of Ghouta.
Before Ali had gone to study in Damascus, his family falling afoul of the regime. His father dead of “respiratory failure,” his oldest brothers conscripted into the army, the younger ones disappeared for joining in the protests. When they came for Ali, they forced him out of school, recruiting him to the kind of work he couldn’t wipe from his mind, in an effort to demonstrate his loyalty, and to keep them from Israa’s door.
The destruction of Douma escalated. Finally, the morning came. Ali’s uncle decided he had to get them out. He paid for transport to the border: Ali and the others had been allowed to transit through, but his uncle was detained, accused of being a spy. Ali had friends on the other side to receive him, friends who knew the importance of getting him out. They paid bribes to the guards to look the other way, but something about his uncle had flagged the guards’ attention.
Ali’s parting from his uncle was bitter, no words of consolation spoken, his tears a counterpoint to Israa’s despairing cries. He’d held her close and urged her to silence. She was wearing a niqab, her beautiful face hidden; he didn’t want to give the guards an excuse to demand a strip search. He’d seen perversity he couldn’t imagine on the long journey north. It had taught him to weigh the costs of each action he undertook.
He yanked on Aya’s and Israa’s hands and left his uncle with the guards.
* * *
In the camp on the other side, they found a moment of respite, pretending to be siblings. They’d made friends their own age, and heard all kinds of promises about a golden life in Europe: a life free of war, a life without Syria.
The pain of it struck him in new and vulnerable places. He was leaving his history behind. The city of jasmine, the country that desolated childhood. In Turkey, everything was different: a mixture of fear, loneliness, desperation, hunger, ridicule, and cruelty; exploitation leavened by occasional kindness.
People were no longer seeing the boy Ali, in love with the girl, Israa.
They saw a young man on the prowl, a predator who might strike, who needed to be contained. Kindness had become happenstance, too illusory to be prized. Except for the friends who had promised him safety. But they had promised it only to Ali, and not to the people he loved.
He wouldn’t give his newfound friends what they’d come for unless they made arrangements for the others. While they took their time deciding, he was running out of options. To get the others registered, he’d have to risk the crossing. He’d pay the smugglers to take them to Mytilene, where they’d catch the ferry to Athens. Once he had papers for the others, the friends who’d met him at the border would return. They’d get him across to the continent, in exchange for what he’d promised them. Nothing could go wrong. He’d told himself this every step of the journey: nothing could go wrong.
They’d been stopped at a dozen checkpoints between Douma and the border. His uncle paid the bribes, while the girls huddled together, muffled to the eyes. A few times the car had been searched. A few times, Ali had been abused. A few times, the money had been enough to wave them on.
Then they were through and Ali’s uncle was on the other side of the barrier, in the hands of Assad’s men.
He knew the fate that awaited his uncle; its imprint had scoured his mind.
And implicated his body.
19
Mytilene, Lesvos
Esa and Rachel found a table in the bar of the Sirena Hotel, where they’d asked Ali Maydani to join them. He’d left Aya in Shukri Danner’s care, promising to return within the hour. The hotel was really a guesthouse, and its bar was pleasant and homey, the tables a warm, polished wood. There was no overemphasis on the Greek identity, no plastic flags in shot glasses, no framed photographs of Mykonos or Santorini. The proprietor had an air of benevolent goodwill, dispensing drinks behind the bar, including a bitter beverage known as raki, while his wife bustled comfortably between the tables, her face and figure soft and round. The apron she wore around her waist was patterned with a floral border; Khattak guessed that the lovely, feminine touches in the bar were due to her artistic eye. Pots of violets adorned the wooden tables.
They were using the hotel’s Wi-Fi to touch base with Sehr and Nate, both tasks Khattak had passed on to Rachel to give himself distance from the others. Rachel had introduced him to Ali; Khattak had felt an instant sense of connection to the boy. The depth of experience in the boy’s eyes, the sensitive cast to his mouth, made Khattak realize he was more fragile than the image he tried to project. He felt protective toward the boy, though he warned himself against it. He went through the list of names Ali had given them, making his own notes.
The bar served plain, hearty food, the flavors wholesome and savory. He didn’t think Rachel had eaten so many olives in one sitting before; the bread and goat cheese that rounded off their appetizers were just as flavorful. There were small seeds in the bread that gave it an enticing, earthy scent.
However hungry Rachel may have been, the boy was ten times hungrier. He was a charming, good-looking boy with a pleasant manner, but the waitress treated him with marked contempt, saving her smiles for Khattak, who was too preoccupied to notice. Disgruntled, she set down their main courses and flounced off.
Minutes later a loud and hearty group of men tumbled into the bar, bringing with them an atmosphere of friendly chaos. They chuffed each other in different languages; Khattak’s ear picked out Greek, Italian, German, and bits and pieces of the lingua franca—English—through which they all communicated.
Seeing Rachel at their table, the only guest in the bar who was a woman, the group of men stopped and took notice. A raffishly attractive man with speaking dark eyes doffed his hat and gave Rachel a smile of welcome. He and one of his friends wore navy jackets with the insignia Guardia Costiera on the breast. Members of the Italian Coast Guard. The older man’s jacket had a thick orange stripe on each shoulder, the same color as the jacket’s hood,
and a single star on the inner lapel. A commander or captain, Esa surmised, watching Rachel offer a smile of her own.
The men proceeded to a table close by, calling out greetings to the proprietor. Having struck out with Khattak, the waitress proceeded to try her sulky charm upon the men. In no time, she and a German medic named Hans had established a familiar rapport.
The men at the table noticed Ali and waved. He waved back, his face a little anxious. He called out something in Italian but the man who was a member of the Coast Guard shook his head, his easy smile dimming into sadness.
Ali pointed to a name on the list. Illario Benemerito.
“That’s him. He’s a commander with the Italian Coast Guard.”
Khattak nodded. “We’ll speak to him before he goes. Who else?”
“Eleni Latsoudi will be here soon. She took me across to Turkey a couple of times before the HRT made her stop.”
Rachel had used the intervening time to read up on her laptop. She leaned over her plate of eggplant moussaka to brief Khattak.
“The Hellenic Rescue Team, sir. They’ve done phenomenal work during the crisis, stepping up when no one else would. I don’t mean the Coast Guard of the nations who are chiefly involved—Greece and Turkey. I mean the European continent. The places where walls went up.”
“You call it a crisis?” Ali turned his dark eyes on Rachel, his mild warmth erased.
Khattak guessed where this was going. “Sergeant Getty doesn’t mean anything by it, Ali. Where we’re from, this is how the conflict has been framed: the civil war in Syria is responsible for the refugee crisis. It’s accurate as far as it goes, which is not far enough, I know.”
The boy put his long head in his hands, his fingers buried in the curls. “I find it hard to think of myself as the victim of a crisis. I feel like a person—do you think the war erased that?”
Khattak looked at the boy with great compassion. These were thoughts he hadn’t wanted to own to; this wasn’t the first time he’d had them. The question of ummah was always with him; it was a question of community, of rootedness in a common history, and the sharing of a present moment of crisis and decline. It was why he’d chosen to go to Iran, why he followed the news in the time he had free from his work. It was instinctive to him as a man of his faith to be deeply concerned about the ummah. He thought of the cruelty that characterized the abuse of dissidents in Iran. He knew the situation in Syria was worse on a scale that defied imagination—of a nature to wring tears from a statue of the Madonna.
Assad was engaged in the wholesale slaughter of his people. Set aside for the moment the destruction of Syria’s cities: their colleges, hospitals, and schools, their mosques and ancient souks. Even if that wasn’t totted up in a column of unthinkable loss, there was the question of Syria’s people. Syria had been a nation of twenty-two million. Fully half that population was displaced: seven million internally, while five million had fled Assad’s incalculable violence. The abject misery of Syria’s prison system needed to be weighed on a separate scale of horrors.
He’d known this, he’d followed the escalation of the war closely, he’d supported his mother’s efforts with the family she sponsored, but for all that, he’d kept the distance and silence of a member of Canadian law enforcement. He was beginning to feel the strain of this compartmentalization, of not acting where he felt action was called for as he’d done as a student, when he’d imagined a different future for himself.
In the past, he’d shared his inner turmoil with Samina or his father. Often, he’d visited the mosque to find the devotional warmth of community, speaking to the imam when his heart was burdened most.
Now the touchstones of his life were gone, he was working his way back to the friendship he’d shared with Nate, and as much as he admired and respected Rachel, he didn’t believe she could understand. She couldn’t understand what it felt like to be in his skin, to be proud of who he was while despairing that perhaps there was no longer anything to be proud of—anything to claim except this sense of oppression.
Looking at Ali’s young face and imagining the desperation of his journey, Khattak experienced a familiar weight of shame at daring to think these thoughts. Here was this boy who hadn’t begun to speak of his losses, and he could set that aside to think of a girl he loved, a girl he feared for with all his heart.
Where was she? What had happened to the girl named Israa, the beautiful girl in the photograph?
Police officers with their government’s backing were searching for Audrey Clare, dispatched by the fame and resources of her brother. Ali was searching for a girl among thousands of refugees, a girl without money or family, a girl whose dismal fate Esa envisioned as only a police officer could: she had drowned at sea, she had fallen on prostitution in Izmir, she’d been snatched back across the border, or she’d disappeared in the hands of smugglers.
One life was sought with crushing urgency; the other had vanished unremarked.
These were scales Esa had been weighing all his life, an actuary of the dead and disposable. The boy would trade his life for Israa’s. But Esa could search only for Audrey.
Perhaps reading something in his face, Rachel palmed the list for herself. “The Hellenic Rescue Team took you on board? Why?”
“To take me back to Turkey. I’ve done the crossing a dozen times searching for Israa. I only found the smugglers who brought me across once.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows at Khattak, who caught her meaning.
“Movement into Europe is strictly controlled. Why would anyone agree to take you across and bring you back? How could you circumvent the authorities on either side?”
Ali made a familiar gesture with his hand, rubbing his thumb against his fingers.
“Money?” Khattak asked. “You bribed the volunteers?”
“We paid bribes on the Turkish side. On the Greek side, I had papers. The rest—the people who helped me—it was because of Audrey. They were helping her. She told them she needed a translator, she said what we were doing was important.” He glanced around, sounding surprised at his own words. “I don’t know why, but sometimes people are kind. Sometimes, they look the other way. And I think—I think Audrey is important, yes?” He looked directly at Esa, and for a moment Esa caught a glimpse of something troubling in the boy’s eyes.
A somber note in his voice, he answered, “Yes, Audrey is important.”
Rachel directed Ali back to his reason for risking the crossing. “You say you met the men who smuggled you across. What did they tell you about Israa?”
His voice broke over the words. “They told me she drowned the night we crossed.”
Rachel reached a hand across the table, patting Ali on the arm. She hated having to ask the boy something so callous, but they wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t focus. “I know it’s a hard thing to face, but how do you know Israa didn’t?”
“I’ve checked with all the volunteer organizations.” Ali nodded at the other table. “I’ve spoken to the Coast Guard—Commander Benemerito has become a friend. Between Eleni and Illario, I’ve had a lot of help, until they were told not to help me. I’ve checked the shoreline on both sides. Those who drown wash up on the beaches. Israa isn’t among the dead.”
Rachel wished she could believe the answer was as simple as that. Some of those fleeing Syria drowned without ever turning up. Ali couldn’t cover each place of landing or visit each morgue. Her trek between Moria and Kara Tepe had given her some sense of the scope of the problem. Ali didn’t have access, he didn’t have resources. If the Coast Guard and the HRT had shut him down, he didn’t have transportation.
An answer streaked through her mind.
“When was the last time you made the trip across?”
Ali named a date in early March. “They need each available spot on their boats. They can’t afford to keep helping me, because others need their help more.”
Two days after that date, Audrey had written to Nate asking for money for a boat.
Rachel studied Ali’s determined face. He wasn’t going to give up. She knew exactly what that felt like. She also knew emotional stress could precipitate a crisis. What she didn’t know was if Ali had broken under the strain, and done something he couldn’t confess.
“Did Audrey Clare buy a boat so she could take you across?”
Ali looked a little uncomfortable. “How did you know?”
“How many times?”
“Every day. Every day she was on the island. Sometimes she went by herself if there was no one who could watch over Aya.”
“And Hatay?” she persisted. “Did Audrey take you and Aya to Hatay?”
Ali shook his head. He pushed his plate away, moistening his lips. Rachel could see he was lying. She left it aside for now.
“When was the last time she took you across on the boat?”
Ali named the date.
Khattak and Rachel exchanged a glance. It was a few days before Audrey’s disappearance. They needed to pin the boy down.
“Did you hear the gunshots?”
Again, he shook his head. “I was on Chios that day. I came back to find out she was gone.”
“What were you doing on Chios?”
“Checking the beaches.”
Though he spoke the lie with assurance, Rachel caught the telltale glance away.
“I’ll go, if you don’t mind. I want to talk to Illario.”
He moved off to the other table. Rachel observed the line of his back, nervous and tight with tension.
“He knows more than he’s telling us. We need to talk to him again.” She pointed to the list. “What about these names, sir? Do we send them to Nate or what?”
Khattak scanned the list. “Yes. Send the list of everyone who’s off-island to Nate. I want you to talk to Benemerito—I have a feeling you might make some progress.” He talked over Rachel’s mild protest. “I’ll tackle Eleni Latsoudi. Then we should check out Audrey’s office on Chios.”
Rachel wanted to say something more about Ali, something about the pressures that were driving him. But if she did, she might have to explain a little more about herself, about the long, dark years without Zachary. She evaded Khattak’s questioning glance. Sometimes she had the feeling he knew her a little too well.
A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel Page 15
