After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

  She watched them as they marched on, unable to move, unable to reach them, and it was only when they were gone that she realized Um Ibtihal’s arms were around her waist, restraining her, keeping her from running. She knew then she might have attacked the soldiers—she might have done anything. When Um Ibtihal released her hold on Hasna, the restraint became an embrace and Hasna sobbed onto her neighbor’s shoulder. Um Ibtihal’s hijab held the scent of smoke and the coppery, gamey smell Hasna would always associate with that night.

  Chapter 8

  MU NAW

  AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, MAY–AUGUST 2007

  Mu Naw and Saw Ku started English classes the following week. At 7:15 a.m., they packed the children out the door to take the 240 East/West bus along Rutland, followed by the 801 bus headed down North Lamar to the Central Presbyterian Church downtown, briskly walking the three blocks to the church for the 8:00 a.m. class. During rush hour, the bus ride could take over an hour, especially if any of the buses were running late, which they always seemed to be. Outside Central Pres, they joined refugees from all over the city walking up the steps on one side and the long cement ramp on the other. Most of the time they had to step over someone sleeping on the sidewalk. The pavement retained a pungent aroma of piss and accumulated body odor. The courtyard outside the church held scraggly plants and picnic tables under the large arms of a live oak. They walked past the strollers banked in the foyer, up two flights of stairs, dropped the children off at child care, and then up again to the third floor to the adult English classrooms. They sat down at the long tables as close to the board as they could get.

  Mu Naw loved English classes. They cheered and grounded her, gave her days rhythm. Saw Ku endured them and returned at the end of each day drained and frustrated. Many of their classmates were from Burundi and Somalia. Saw Ku and Mu Naw were the only Karen speakers in their entry-level class for the first three weeks. And then it felt as if every week or so, another family from Myanmar moved to Austin.

  It began with Saw Ku’s brother and sister-in-law, Jaw Jaw and Deh Deh. The brothers were close in age to each other and they had always done everything together. Some snag with the paperwork had given them departure times three weeks apart. But it was his brother’s arrival, rather than English classes, that grounded Saw Ku. Mu Naw had always gotten along well with Deh Deh, but here they forged a newly strong connection. Their apartments were only a few doors apart. Their girls were close to the same ages. Soon there were other families, several in their apartment complex, who went to English class together and shopped with one another when they needed. The six families from south Austin whom Mu Naw and Saw Ku had spent the night with also moved into the same apartment complex. Soon a sizable group waited for the 240 bus every morning, a tiny diaspora in the middle of the chaos.

  For the first few weeks, speaking Karen, sharing information, helping as she could, provided Mu Naw almost immediate relief from the oppressive loneliness. She found that arriving a few weeks earlier had made her the local expert on the culture, and she became determined to save the new women from her initial isolation.

  But the community and camaraderie did not eliminate the complexities of their daily lives. The surprises kept coming. It began with their first bills a month after they arrived. First, they received their rent bill, followed shortly by their electricity/water bill. Their caseworker came with a translator one day and explained to Saw Ku and Mu Naw how their bills worked—these were the papers they had signed on the day they ate their first hamburgers. The loss of $700 for rent and $70 for electricity and water was a steep blow. Their caseworker showed them the rent and then told them that, for four months, the resettlement agency was paying their rent, but the bills were supposed to come out of their $120 a month stipend. That left only $50 for them to pay for groceries and did not include their phone bill, which was $50 a month for a Cricket phone plan. The choice between phone and groceries was one that would come up every month for years; some months they chose food and were out of touch with relatives in Mae La camp or friends in Austin. Mu Naw’s fantasy of walking through the grocery store, buying faraway fruits and extra boxes of Pocky with a plastic card, faded immediately.

  They shifted their lives. They no longer used electricity at night; they lived in almost complete darkness—not a major change from the camp. They spread the word in the community that the electricity was something they would all have to pay for; it was summer, so she and the other women sat outside as long as they could stand the heat, soaking up the natural light before entering airless, dusky apartments and going to bed early.

  They learned that the building next door, the yawning parking lot with the large sign with a dove, was a church that gave out food on Monday nights. Those regular allotments of canned goods and fresh produce helped reduce the grocery bills Mu Naw worried about. Used to waiting in line for canned rations, Mu Naw felt no shame at receiving free food from the church. But she was confused about how to cook the stringy green beans and the overly starched corn that came in the cans. The rice and dark beans were not that different from what she had gotten in Thailand. And the fresh fruits and vegetables she occasionally received were very welcome. She tried some creative recipes with the free food; some were less successful than others. They all hated Spaghetti-Os and she passed those cans on to her neighbors.

  Some of the surprises were serendipitous. One day Mu Naw found a television set out by the big green Dumpster in the corner of the parking lot behind the apartment complex. She picked it up herself and lugged it into their apartment. She plugged it in and tried to turn it on; the screen lit up but all she could see was a gray scramble. Her across-the-courtyard neighbor only spoke Spanish, but she smiled and waved at Mu Naw every time they saw each other. Mu Naw saw her neighbor outside and pulled her into the apartment. They laughed and used hand gestures and managed to communicate that there was something missing from the TV. The neighbor left and returned a few minutes later with thin metal antennae that she hooked up to the top of the TV. That night, Saw Ku came home to an apartment filled with noise and light. Mu Naw kept the TV on during the day when she was home with the children. The crisp images buoyed her. Here was the America she had expected, contained in the neat borders of the small box.

  Still it felt to Mu Naw that not a day went by without her crying. It became a normal part of their routine, like brushing their teeth and bathing. Usually it was at night; after the children were in bed, while she was wiping down the kitchen, Mu Naw would succumb to her grief. Saw Ku’s stress manifested instead in irritation and anger. At first it was not directed at her; he would blow up over minor things or get frustrated at situations neither of them understood or could control. Saw Ku’s anger seemed to be focused mostly on English class. He was tired of learning the letters, of feeling like a child. He could still barely write his own name in the baffling English alphabet. Progress was too slow: their four-month support window was ending soon and rent and bills would all be his responsibility. Mu Naw was adding new vocabulary at a speed Saw Ku found dizzying. The cleverness he had always loved now grated on him—he could barely admit to himself that his wife was better than he was at languages.

  Their caseworker helped him fill out the papers that meant he could get a job on the cleaning crew at a hotel. He and Mu Naw strategized together: If he could start working before the end of their stipend ran out, they could get ahead just enough to build a buffer into their budget. When the caseworker called and told him he had been hired, he happily left English class.

  Things felt more comfortable for both of them when Saw Ku got a job; the idea of this small cushion brought them hope. A few weeks later, a volunteer at the church next door, an older white man with glasses and a slight paunch, knocked on their door. Mu Naw had seen him when she was picking up free food on Monday nights. He introduced himself as Bob and said that the church had asked him to help the refugees in any way he could. Paperwork, grocery shopping, English tutori
ng—he was semiretired and glad to be of assistance. His blue eyes behind the glasses were kind and Mu Naw invited him in. Soon he was coming most afternoons, helping her and her neighbors with the bills and with their English homework. She tried out new words with him and he explained some of the thornier grammar rules she felt stuck on. He was great with their children. And as every new family came—Mu Naw becoming the center of a loosely connected web of Karen people—she would tell their names to Bob. He would pull out a piece of paper he kept in the breast pocket of his shirt, lick the tip of his pencil and adjust his glasses, then add them to the ever-growing list.

  The families were relieved to have an American uncle they could rely on in these new lives full of traps waiting to ensnare them. The boon that Saw Ku and Mu Naw expected from having both a job and a stipend did not come. They had not understood that as soon as he got a job the stipend would end; the caseworker told them kindly—Saw Ku thought condescendingly—that she had already explained that part. Perhaps she had. Perhaps Mu Naw had misunderstood when Rita translated. Somewhere along the telephone game of communication between the caseworker in English, Rita in Burmese, and Mu Naw translating into Karen for Saw Ku, they had missed the fact that they would now be solely responsible for their rent.

  They couldn’t make the math add up. Saw Ku earned just over minimum wage: $8 an hour. Working forty hours a week, he earned around $1,200 a month. Their rent, bills, and groceries added up to just over $1,000 if they were careful, if they turned off all the lights, if they mostly ate rice and beans, if they went every Monday for free food. They talked to Deh Deh and Jaw Jaw, made plans for what would happen when the children started school in August. Jaw Jaw was waiting to get a job till after his stipend ran out, having learned from Saw Ku’s mistake. Deh Deh and Mu Naw would stay in ESL classes with the children through August, when Deh Deh’s older daughter and Pah Poe would be in school. Then they would try to find jobs and either share child care or one of them would pay the other to watch their younger children. Mu Naw left every morning for ESL class with renewed purpose—it was her one chance to learn English before starting work in a few months. She saw how exhausted Saw Ku was and knew she would lose the will to master the language when she had two small children and a job every day.

  Her nausea had become debilitating. She could barely function most days. Riding the bus sent her into a spiral of vomiting that she could barely push through to focus on vocabulary lessons. Her eyes had bags under them; her face looked hollow when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the strange bathroom where she undressed to bathe every day.

  One day her caseworker came to their house with a notice. She had brought Rita, but even so, Mu Naw did not understand—was it her fault? the caseworker’s? a bureaucratic snag they all missed? Mu Naw only grasped the most basic point: Their Medicaid application had not gone through and they would not be able to go to the doctor. She asked Bob to look over it later and he shook his head; there was nothing they could do but reapply and wait.

  Since they could rarely afford to pay for a Cricket phone once a month, Mu Naw knew she could not pay for the doctor. And she had already learned the hard way that the fact that she did not know how much it cost probably meant it was much more, not less, than she anticipated.

  * * *

  —

  One morning she woke up with a start and realized she could not remember the last time she had had her period—weeks earlier, if not a couple of months. The stress from her daily life had so absorbed her mind that it never occurred to her that she had missed it. She had assumed the increased nausea, the crying jags, the hollows under her eyes were a result of stress, but her body had responded this way when she had been pregnant with the girls, without buses and cars to exacerbate her morning sickness. She did not take a test; even if she could have afforded it, or found the package in the grocery store, she would not have needed it. She could feel the familiar return of her body to pregnancy.

  Saw Ku came home that night from a long shift and found his wife waiting for him on their brown couch. She sat with only the lamp on, her knees pulled up to her chin. The TV was off. The silence was oppressive.

  When she spoke, her voice was a monotone: “I’m pregnant.”

  “No, you can’t be.”

  “I am.” She looked up at him and it was as if they were strangers. She remembered, incongruously, that at their wedding he had curled his fingers around her elbow.

  “What . . . what can we do?” He sat down heavily. They began to lay out the costs—medical bills they could not afford, delaying her starting a job by months or even years, adding another mouth to feed. They could not make the money stretch any further than it already did.

  Deciding that night to end the pregnancy felt like the only option. It was the first time in a few weeks that they felt completely united. Despite the fact that they were Christians, they did not debate the morality of it at all. All she felt was the crushing pressure of her everyday life. There was no space, not even the tiniest crack, for a new life. She could not imagine giving birth alone in this hostile new place, much less parenting three children. They went to bed and she slept hard. The nausea would be over. They would wait for a year or two, when they could pay their rent and bills, then have another child. It would be sad but okay. She worried that she should feel more angst, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  She took the children on the bus to the refugee agency the next day rather than to Central Presbyterian for English classes. She waited over an hour to see Rita, her feet scuffing the concrete floor while the girls played with the other children from Iraq and Somalia in the waiting area. When they finally sat down in Rita’s cubicle, Mu Naw burst into tears. Annoyed at herself, she hastily wiped them away with the heel of her palm. Rita said nothing.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “How many months?”

  “It can’t be more than two. I need to go to the doctor.”

  Rita put her hand on Mu Naw’s and held it there for a moment. Mu Naw could not bring herself to say what she had planned. Rita called a number and wrote down an address for Mu Naw, noting the bus transfers she would need to take to get there. When Mu Naw left, Rita hugged her in the cubicle, out of sight of the other clients.

  Mu Naw knew she needed someone to go with her whose English was better than hers. She went to the Karen-speaking man who had met them at the airport; he now lived a few buildings over. She nervously explained her situation and asked him to accompany her to the doctor. She was clear with him about the intention she had hidden from to Rita. His face was pained but kind.

  “Sister, I cannot do this with you. I’m sorry. I wish you would change your mind. You know that’s not what God would want of you.”

  “I know, but how can we do this? My husband has a job and we can’t pay the rent, I need a job, we already have two children. What choice do we have?”

  His tone was gentle but still he refused. Mu Naw felt ashamed to tell Deh Deh and the other women, afraid they would talk her out of it or judge her for it. She went back to her apartment and cried for the rest of the day, for once not hiding her tears.

  Saw Ku had to work. There was no one else who could go with her. She would ask Deh Deh to watch her girls and tell her she had an appointment. She would go alone.

  A few months ago, she had wondered if she had lost some essential part of herself, but she did not wonder now. Not even when the Tatmadaw came and burned down her camp, when she had lost both father and mother at once, had she ever felt this alone.

  Chapter 9

  HASNA

  DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH 2011

  The soldiers took Malek, too. Laila flew to their house with baby Hamad in her arms, her sobs so hysterical that Hasna took her into the courtyard to calm her down, putting aside her own grief and terror. She closed the gate and took off Laila’s hijab, giving her room to breathe. Hamad, distressed at seeing h
is mother cry, began his own wailing. Rana came over and hugged her mother’s waist while Hasna put cool hands on Laila’s crumpled face, held her for a moment. But it did not work. Hasna felt something malicious pulling at her core, as if she and everything she loved were being uprooted.

  Women wailed in the streets. All over the city, a cry rose out as the soldiers moved through. It was a guttural, primal response. All the male citizens between the ages of twelve and sixty were taken.

  The women eventually joined one another in clumps on the streets. Rumors tore through like foul wind—soldiers were going to gun down all of the men in rows, they were going to pick out just the young men, they would shoot only the leaders of the demonstrations, they would bomb all of them in one fell swoop. Hasna prayed for Amal and Samir; she assumed Amal had stayed with her mother-in-law but did not want to leave her home to find out.

  Finally, in the afternoon, some of the men began to come home. The older men were first. Jebreel was part of the first clump of men that rounded the corner from the main road; Hasna saw him and rushed to him, black dress rushing around her legs as she ran. Laila and Rana were behind her and they clung to him. Hasna looked wildly around him for Yusef.

  “They’re not here. They’re not here!” And stoic Jebreel was crying in her arms. His face had aged in the handful of hours they were apart. “Samir they let go, but Malek and Yusef are still there. They shot those boys, Hasna. They shot them right there. Someone told them who the protesters were and there was no trial, they just held a gun to their head and shot them.”

  “Do they know that Yusef and Malek did not demonstrate?”

  “They know that Malek was there at the Al-Abbas mosque when the protest began. I heard someone point him out to the soldiers.”