After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

These slow parts of her day were torturous. Amal would be back soon; it was her turn to make lunch that day. If Hasna went downstairs now, she knew she would just fight with Amal or Laila. It suddenly seemed a miracle that they could have lived all of those years so peacefully when the girls were at home—they bickered, of course, and she was angry when they misbehaved as children, but she had always gotten along with her kids. Now the grandchildren were whiny, her daughters petulant, and she was tense. She looked again at the horizon, searching for some measure of peace in the dusty hills and low trees surrounding her.

  A bird hopped curiously on the wall a few meters from her elbow. Utterly still, Hasna watched out of the corner of her eye as another bird joined her. The first was the female and the second the male. They were hoopoes, small birds with brownish bodies, distinctive black-and-white striped wings, a peaked orange crest that looked as if it had been dipped in black; the birds could fan out or flatten their crest at will. Now they were flattened into a pointy spike that balanced out their long, thin beaks. While she watched, the male flared his crest at the female, displayed his wings, and called out. The noise sounded like someone blowing on the lower register of a flute: two notes and then another two notes. The female played coy and flew off a few minutes later. The male, determined, flew after her.

  Longing for her home overwhelmed Hasna. She questioned, as she did every day, if she had made a mistake in leaving Syria. She was glad Rana could continue her schooling in Jordan; she did not want her children and grandchildren in danger. But to set up a new life in this new country felt like a betrayal. Grief and guilt stalked her, and she could not evade them the way she did the dogs or snakes outside her home. On the rooftop, she cried where her daughters and grandchildren could not see.

  * * *

  —

  When she went to pick Rana up from school, the teacher pulled her aside and asked if she had registered as a refugee yet.

  “Of course not! We’re going home as soon as this is over.”

  His face was sympathetic. “I understand. But we cannot allow Rana to continue to go to school until she has paperwork saying that she is a refugee.” He said he had allowed Rana to stay as long as possible, but the Jordanian government was beginning to check in on all of the children. They received funding only for educating refugee children, not for Syrian children who did not have refugee status.

  Hasna walked back to the house with Rana and left her downstairs playing with some of the children in the apartment next to theirs. She returned to the roof.

  To register as a refugee would be to admit that things in Syria might not change. If she filed, would the Syrian government let her back in her country? She could barely breathe when she thought of being gone so long from Daraa.

  And it also felt like begging. They were proudly self-reliant. Samir, Yusef, and Khassem were working construction day jobs in Mafraq, a nearby city; the boys had moved their small apartment there and Samir stayed with them during the week, coming to be with Amal and his daughters on Fridays. Jebreel sent money from Daraa sometimes with the van driver. If they ever needed it, Hasna had her cache of gold with her, hidden in the apartment; with that alone, they would be secure for months. They did not need government assistance—their family unit was a well-oiled machine, with each of them doing their part.

  During the evenings in the breezeway, the Syrian neighbors in the four apartments that made up the bottom floors of the villa pooled their knowledge, sifting through the rumors to discover the kernels of truth. They could speak openly here in Jordan as they never could in Syria, though a lifetime of wariness made it difficult for many to voice their opinions. One neighbor with relatives from Aleppo said that the Free Syria Army had successfully defeated government troops several months before and that they were receiving outside support from the United States and Israel and France. One of the younger men seemed positive that Jordan, backed by the US, would rise up against Syria. The older people were more hesitant, but Hasna couldn’t help hoping he was right.

  The conflict in Hama when Hafez al-Assad razed the Muslim Brotherhood and wiped out any political opposition had lasted eighteen months, from 1982 to 1983. It had been almost two years since the first protests had started in Daraa. Of course, the conflict in Hama had remained relatively isolated and this conflict had now spread throughout the country. The neighbors debated whether that meant it was more likely to end swiftly or not, and whether the rumors about outside interference meant that Assad would remain in power. If he stayed, they all grimly agreed, Assad would never let refugees come back unpunished.

  Hasna, who had spent her entire life remaining as apolitical as she could in Syria, now found herself hanging on every word, weighing sides, taking in sources, strategizing her next moves. The decision that she made next could have dire consequences on either side—a daughter who stopped her education in the fifth grade, or the door shut to her country, to everything and everyone she loved in it.

  During the day, she spent more and more time on the roof watching the hoopoe couple build a nest together. Evidently the male had won the female over. They worked quickly, finding choice bits of grass and constructing a nest in a hollow in the stones in the corner of the wall. One day when she came up, the mother was in the nest. Hasna did not disturb her as she incubated her eggs.

  * * *

  —

  Hasna counted each precious day that Rana missed school while she deliberated. She called the number the schoolteacher had given her, learned where in the neighboring city of Irbed she needed to go to fill out the refugee paperwork. Rana loved her days at home—what child would rather go to school than play? Hasna found herself criticizing Rana more often and tried to stop; it was not her daughter’s fault that Hasna couldn’t decide.

  One day, five young heads appeared above the edge of the hoopoe nest, mouths open, vociferously demanding to be fed. She laughed conspiratorially when the exhausted mother glanced at Hasna once and then decided to ignore her. Seeing the hoopoe babies was one of her few purely happy moments in Jordan.

  Jebreel came to visit that weekend; Hasna did not show him the hoopoe nest. His brother-in-law watched their house while he was gone. Looters had been roaming through the neighborhoods, taking whatever they wanted out of abandoned houses. Jebreel had carefully hidden their family’s motorcycles. Hasna asked him about her Persian rugs and dishes and he snapped at her. The tension only grew from there. She told him she was thinking of registering as a refugee because of Rana’s school and he exploded—he worked even in the middle of war, their boys were scouring the country for jobs, and she was thinking of signing them up for government assistance? They did not need it. They would not be burdens in Jordan.

  She tried to lay out her thinking—that school was critical at Rana’s age, that there was a good chance from everything she had heard that Assad would be defeated, that maybe being a refugee wouldn’t affect them at all. He railed that he was on the ground in Syria and if she thought Assad was going to be defeated, she had already been living in Jordan too long. She yelled back that she would love to return home but that they had both agreed that she should stay with their daughters. Their voices reached a fever pitch; a string of spittle formed in the corner of his mouth and Hasna felt a visceral revulsion toward him. She lived on her own with the girls for weeks at a time, strategizing and scheming and protecting them all, and he came in for the weekend and upended all of it.

  She did what she had never done before: She screamed at him to leave, aware of the way her voice echoed shrilly from the tile walls, to go to Mafraq with their sons. Gone was his look of warm approval and affection from that day she proudly showed him the well-stocked refrigerator and freezer to keep him fed through the siege. His face now wore the haunted look of a man who had lived the last several weeks through a hellscape of war. She felt that he did not even see her, that he had become nothing but wrath and spit. She hated him then, and she hated hers
elf more, this vile shrieking woman.

  The minute he left to go to Mafraq, she regretted it. But it was too late. Even if she wanted to call him and tell him to come back to Ramtha, she knew he would not.

  She thought the girls would be angry with her, but instead they were solicitous and gracious. Hasna wished that she could have been a strong pillar for them to rely on. Instead, she was pitifully grateful that they fed her dinner and took over all of the household chores for the next few days. Seeing that she was weak only served to make them stronger; seeing their competence allowed her to rely on them rather than always trying to protect them. Her daughters were extraordinary. Hasna prayed that they would soon be in safe places where they could thrive, Malek and Laila in Egypt, Samir and Amal home in Daraa. She prayed Jebreel could forgive her, that she could forgive him—that she could forgive herself.

  * * *

  —

  A week after Jebreel left, Rana got into a fight with the boys who ruled their end of the street like one of the dog packs. They did not hurt her—one of the boys pulled her hair and she kicked him before the older boys intervened—but when she came home there was dirt on her face, her knees were skinned, and her hair was disheveled.

  The next day, Hasna left Rana with Amal and took the bus two hours away to the refugee office in Irbed. She waited in a concrete room with vinyl couches for a woman to call her name. She received a packet of paperwork in a manila envelope from a woman with short hair, a white shirt, and a gray pencil skirt. She walked back to the bus stop and took the two-hour bus trip home, holding the paperwork in her lap without looking at it.

  That night, she meticulously filled out the papers with a black ballpoint pen and wrote the address on the envelope. She took it to the post office in Ramtha. She held the papers for a moment before sliding them into the post office slot. The envelope disappeared with a metallic snick. Walking back through the scrubby forest, she wept. The dogs left her alone. She did not see any snakes.

  * * *

  —

  Word came through the van driver: Malek and his large family would be arriving in Ramtha in a few days. It had been three months, longer than any of them expected—the apartments Laila had found for them had been let, so they found others. Laila, whose mood had been somber, was overjoyed. It was as if they had opened the windows to let in spring air.

  Hasna felt that Malek’s family coming to Ramtha only confirmed her decision—if Malek’s conservative, traditional family felt it was time to leave, then she would not be going back to Daraa any time soon. The paperwork officially granting her and Rana refugee status arrived a few weeks later in the mail. Hasna took it to Rana’s schoolteacher. Rana went back to school the next day.

  That afternoon, waiting to get Rana from school, she sat on the tile bench on the roof. The hoopoe babies were now at the awkward, squawky stage where they were into everything but could not fly yet. Their demanding voices made her laugh out loud.

  * * *

  —

  At 1:00 a.m. on the night he was scheduled to arrive, Malek called—the first phone call he had been able to make for months, which meant he was in Jordanian space. Hasna had gone to bed, but Laila had stayed awake on the couch, searching through social media—a novelty none of them had had in Syria and now the most reliable source of their news—and texting over WhatsApp with Malek’s parents and siblings. They texted as soon as they arrived; all of their families had made it past the border, thanks be to Allah, but the guards had stopped Malek—only him. He should have been a few minutes behind them. Their group text had gone quiet after a while and they did not reply to her repeated questions.

  They had crossed at Zataari camp, two hours away from Ramtha, where officials were now rerouting all refugees trying to enter Jordan.

  When she heard Laila’s voice, Hasna came out of her bedroom, pulling her hair back with a scrunchy and tugging her housecoat closed around her. Yusef was visiting from Mafraq for a few days and he was asleep on the floor of Hasna’s bedroom. Hasna could hear the rough timbre of Malek’s voice. Laila clutched at the phone, her tone rising with each response.

  “What?”

  “What do they want?”

  “Now? It’s two hours away—can you wait?”

  “Make them wait. We are coming. I love you, habibi. Hold on, we are coming.”

  Laila hung up and Hasna was already moving. Laila was still dressed. She did not keep her voice down: “Mama, they’ve detained him. Get Yusef. I’m getting Hamad. They have to let him stay.” Her voice at the end of the sentence was a squeak.

  Yusef awoke immediately, pulled on his clothes, and splashed water on his face. Amal came out of her room as well and they walked down together. Yusef pulled the motorcycle he shared with Khassem out of the shed on the side of the villa where he had locked it away. Laila straddled the back of the bike, took Hamad from her mother, and tucked him between her body and her brother’s back. Hamad held on to Yusef’s coat with his tiny fists. Hasna kissed them all. The motorcycle roared away into the night.

  Amal and Hasna went to their prayer rugs and began to pray. They did not stop until the sky was graying into morning and the children woke up.

  * * *

  —

  Yusef told his mother later what happened. They had found Malek’s family first, and they pointed to the guard’s station a few meters from the border. Laila walked over to the guards, holding Hamad.

  Malek had all of his paperwork in order; he had left legally, there were no concerns against him. What was the reason that he could not enter? she demanded of the guards. They shrugged. No one was sure—it was someone else’s decision. She tried to reason with them, but none of the guards would listen. They were obdurate. They pointed to a bus idling nearby, where she could see Malek’s face pressed against the window. The bus faced toward Syria.

  “He’s right there! Please, let me at least say something to him! Can I at least see him? Can he hold his son?” The soldier began to look away. Her begging only made things worse, but she couldn’t help herself. Hamad began crying for Malek, who held his hand on the glass as if the window might dissolve and allow him to join his son and wife in safety.

  Everything welling up in Laila burst.

  Her voice ringing out over the guards, she cursed every inch of the country of Jordan. She began with the soldier in front of her, cursing his mother and his sons and every one of his brothers. She cursed the officers of the Jordanian army, who could look at a devout woman and tell her that her son’s father could not be with them. She cursed the land around them, this godforsaken desert that would never enjoy the verdant landscape of her beloved Syria, she cursed it that it might never produce fruit of any kind. She cursed the camp they had set up to keep the people of Syria out of cities and away from the help they needed. She cursed the government that did not intervene when Bashar al-Assad began bombing Daraa and Homs and Aleppo and Damascus. And she cursed the Jordanian king, the fucker of too many wives who sat in his palace doing nothing, surrounded by his fat lazy sons, while these soldiers were taking her son’s father away, were watching with their hands on their copious bellies while her country was destroyed.

  By then, Yusef’s hands were on her shoulders. The bus was starting up and the acrid smell of diesel fuel mixed hotly with the snot pouring out of her nose. Tears tracked through the dust on her face. She let out a primal scream as the bus pulled away. Malek was right here in front of her. And then he was gone. The bus rolled back toward Syria.

  * * *

  —

  No one was surprised when Laila announced that she was going back to Daraa. It would be easier to negotiate peace with Assad than convince Laila to stay away from her husband. Hasna was not sure it was the right decision, but she knew it was not hers to make.

  Hasna spent almost every moment of the next two weeks near Laila and Hamad, soaking them in. She held Hamad whil
e he napped. She toyed with his dark curls. His eyelashes against his cheeks were long and thick. The hair at the base of his neck was damp with sweat and he breathed with his mouth open slightly. She prayed ceaselessly that Allah would protect this little man, that his feet would be swift if he needed to run, that his mouth would be quiet when he was in danger, that his eyes would not see anything that would hurt him, that his hands would pass kindness to the people he met, that his heart might remain pure no matter what happened.

  She did not fight with Laila in their last days together. She helped them pack, bought her the clothes and shoes she and Hamad would need for the next several months. She gave Laila a few ounces of gold, some insurance for the months to come.

  When the morning came for them to leave, Hasna and Laila hugged each other tightly before she clambered onto the van. Amal openly sobbed; she had never lived more than a few blocks away from her sister. Noor and Maria wailed—their cousin had felt more like a brother for the last year and they could not understand his leaving. Hasna told Laila over and over again that this was not the last time they were seeing each other, that they would find a new way to come back, even if it wasn’t through the legal channels—she and Malek were two of the savviest, strongest people she knew. They would find a way.

  The words were hollow in her mouth. As Laila pulled away in the van, Hasna felt guilt stab her heart. She had promised Malek she would keep Laila safe and she had already broken that promise.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, one of the boys who lived in another apartment in the villa knocked on her door. His hands cupped around something held against his shirt: “Auntie, we are sorry. We have hurt your bird.” He opened his hands and she saw the mother hoopoe blinking dazedly. Her legs dangled at impossible angles.