After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

  At one point, the men and women were separated and Hasna went with Rana and some other women to a room where women officers asked them probing questions in a group. Hasna felt uncomfortable; the questions seemed designed by their very nature to get a rise out of the women. She quieted the lioness in her. She understood she was unknown to them, that they only meant to protect their own citizens.

  “Are you intending to go to the United States to sell yourself as a sex worker?” The translator stumbled a bit over the question that the woman officer asked unblinkingly. They were looking at Rana; Rana looked at her mother. Hasna held her hand out, telling Rana she should respond; she smiled at her daughter so she would know this was fine, that it was all part of the process.

  “No, of course not!”

  “You are an unmarried woman, but have you ever had sex?”

  “No!” Rana’s voice squeaked and her eyebrows shot up.

  “Do you intend to go to the United States in order to participate in any way in any activity that involves sex trafficking?” The translator’s phrase felt awkward and it took Rana a minute to understand.

  “No, I just want to get married someday, but that’s it! I have to go to school first!”

  Rana’s response got a nervous titter out of a few of the women around them.

  The officer turned to Hasna. “And do you plan to sell your daughter to anyone in the United States or participate yourself in any sex trafficking activity?”

  “Absolutely not.” Hasna kept her face neutral and her tone level to show Rana that she was not afraid or upset.

  The officer moved on, asking similar questions of the women sitting next to Hasna. Rana grabbed her hand and held it as the group interrogation wore on.

  * * *

  —

  Fifteen days after their last phone call, while she was walking home from dropping Rana off at school, Hasna’s phone started pinging. She read the first few messages from Laila, typed out over WhatsApp from a new Turkish number. After seven or eight messages, she stopped walking and stood with her back against a wall, her face shaded by the awning of a store that sold vegetables.

  Ping after ping, Laila told her story in short bursts.

  Hello, my mother. How are you? I pray that you are well, that Allah is blessing you and my family in Jordan.

  There are many things to tell you and I can only say a few.

  Malek died.

  After, we left Daraa and we got into an area that belonged to the government.

  We passed many checkpoints. We paid a smuggler and he used bribes to get us through.

  We waited for a full day until the sun went down, and then many people got into big Honda trucks.

  We were on top of each other in the back.

  Hamad threw up all over me.

  Tawfiq peed, and the pee was all over me too, and it made me colder than I had been. The stench was unbelievable.

  The road was on rocks and it bounced dangerously.

  A pregnant woman miscarried because of how bad the ride was.

  We spent three days on that truck.

  We entered an area way up north and ISIS grabbed us.

  They hit the men.

  ISIS kept me with them for seven days.

  I left there in a really, really hard way. I will not talk about it.

  We found a Bedouin smuggler.

  I paid him almost all of my money and we walked through the desert for two days. We were trying to get from that territory to the one right next to it that was controlled by the Free Syria Army.

  The bombing was going on top of us. There were airplanes going through, bombing the area where we were headed.

  Before the war, it would have taken us a few minutes to drive this distance, but now, to get from Aleppo to Azaz took two days of hard walking.

  On the second day, we arrived at the place held by the Free Syria Army. We were so happy; we knew we had made it.

  But when we got close, we realized the Free Syria Army thought perhaps we were from ISIS or from the government forces. They could not see us well enough to tell that it was mostly women and children, we thought. That is why they shot at us.

  Hamad was on my shoulders and Tawfiq was tied to my belly. I had carried them on my body all of those days in the desert. I also carried our bag with everything in it on my back.

  When the soldiers started shooting at us, I threw myself on the ground. I put the children underneath me and I crawled until I found a hole in the ground.

  Three people who were with me died that day.

  We waited until the sun went down. And then we had to go back the way we came, back through the desert for two days to Aleppo. Each step was agony.

  We stayed in a deserted house for two days until another group of people came. They were from a village outside of Daraa. We knew many of the same people.

  The group from Daraa told us that the road we had taken was wrong, that what we thought was the Free Syria Army was really ISIS. Then we were glad that we had not made it through, though we were sad for the three people who died.

  That group of people had better information than we had from the Bedouin smuggler, so we joined with them. I was sad I paid so much money to the Bedouin smuggler for nothing.

  We kept going again, back for two days through the desert, until we got to Azaz. I carried my children and my bag. I could not feel my feet, I could not feel my back.

  When we got to Azaz, my pain was so serious, I went to the hospital.

  I left my children with the new friends who had known the right route.

  While we were on our way to the city, Azaz had been hit by clusterbombs.

  I limped into the hospital, but it was already full.

  I uncovered the face of one of the bodies with a sheet over it.

  It was a man whose face had been cut in half.

  I put the sheet back.

  The room was full of little children whose hands were cut off.

  I do not know what happened—before I came into the hospital, I could barely walk. My body felt like it was coming apart with the pain.

  But when I saw those children, covered in blood, with their arms ripped off, some crying for their parents, some completely silent, I forgot all about my body.

  I helped. I washed their faces and helped the nurses tie tourniquets. I stayed as long as I could, and then I left.

  No one was able to treat me.

  I was still in pain, but my children were safe.

  I walked back to the hotel. My clothes were covered in the blood of dozens of children. I took a shower, and then I went out again and bought food for my boys. Their hands were still on their bodies; they were still alive. I kissed them and then I slept.

  The pain stayed with me, but I did not want my boys to end up like those children.

  Two days later, we left with the family from Daraa to go to Afrin, north of Azaz.

  We were driving in two different minivans, going as quickly as we could so we would not be caught.

  A heat missile came from nowhere and destroyed the minivan right behind us.

  In that minivan, the family from Daraa had been all together. They were the ones who had saved us and told us how to get out. With no warning, all of them were killed by that missile.

  We opened the doors and jumped out of our minivan. We got out just in time.

  We were a few yards away when the next missile hit our minivan. I could feel the heat when it landed.

  We walked to Afrin, but Afrin was not safe.

  A few days later, we left and walked to Idlib. It took many days to walk a short distance.

  We found a smuggler who seemed kind and who would work with us—by then, we were almost out of money and we had no way to get more.

  We
stayed in a small village outside of Idlib and we slept during the day because we were going to leave at night.

  We were dying from how cold it was.

  The Turks were using flares to see if any Syrian refugees were trying to cross the border. When we crossed, the Turkish police grabbed us, but we hit them and ran away.

  I walked in Turkey for a long time. Finally, I was able to speak with Yusef’s friend who was waiting for us.

  That friend came and took us to a house, where I have been for fifteen days.

  If you ask me how many people are in this house, I cannot tell you. For fifteen days, I have wanted to do nothing but sleep.

  Now I am lying here in bed, texting you.

  I need help, Mama. I need you to come, or Yusef to come, or someone.

  I cannot do this alone.

  * * *

  —

  They all knew the answer was for Yusef to go. Jebreel could not help because of his injuries, and Amal had to take care of her children. Khassem jumped in to say he would go, too, but his mother told him to stop being ridiculous—their new daughter needed him. His young wife shot Hasna a grateful look.

  She bought new clothes for Laila and the boys, guessing by the sizes of Amal’s daughters at what might best fit her grandsons. Laila sent pictures over WhatsApp and Hasna stared at the pictures for hours, reintroducing herself to Hamad’s features, scouring Tawfiq’s for some familiar glimpse of his father or mother or brother. Did they look sad? Were they happy? Did they eat? There were too many questions to ask Laila all day so Hasna sent them with Yusef—make sure they have enough vegetables. Make sure they do not forget us. Tell her that, if Allah wills it, we will find a safe home for all of us soon.

  It was agony to send Yusef away. As she watched his bus pull out, Hasna was split in two. She would not be whole again until her children were under her roof. She knew then, even before it became official, that they would accept resettlement if it was offered because it was the only option she could see that ended with her children together. Better to be replanted in strange soil than to die uprooted in the desert.

  * * *

  —

  Days later, Hasna received a call from a US immigration official. Her hands shook while she steeped her tea, tapping the spoon against the cup in this last second before she knew the full extent of how her life would change.

  They would be going to a place called Austin, Texas. She had no idea what that meant, whether it was a good city, if there would be jobs enough for all of them.

  A few weeks later, US State Department officials gathered a dozen families who would be traveling to different parts of the US at the same time in a nondescript conference room on the military base and told them what to expect. Hasna understood that Jebreel would have access to the medical care he needed as well as rehabilitation. She would have to work, at least until her sons arrived. She could do anything for six months, she told herself, even working at a job for the first time in her life. Their apartment would not be as nice as they were expecting; whatever they had seen in movies or on the internet was not likely to take place. They were not going to have a lot of money, at least not at first, and there were poor places in the United States as there were in every country. There would be many kind people who would help them there, people who would give them furniture, teach them English, help them take the buses and go to the doctor. There would also be people who would not welcome them, who would be rude or even hostile to the women wearing hijabs. Here the translator’s voice lowered a bit, taking on a compassionate tone—things had been changing in the US for the last several months.

  Hostility was something that Hasna expected. She read the news, heard the reports from her friends and neighbors about their relatives all over the world. She understood that Muslim women in hijabs were not always welcomed in the West. She could handle it, she told herself. They would be fine.

  After years of being in limbo, there was suddenly no more time: they had a week to pack everything up and leave. Hasna’s first thought was of the six large gas canisters for the oven she had just refilled, now wasted money. All of their furniture—the new beds, the couches, the pillows, the table—everything she bought to return to her home in Daraa had to be sold. They gave the TV to Amal and divided up what furniture Khassem and Amal wanted. The rest they sold in a rush to their neighbors. Hasna made back a fraction of what they had spent on the household. She looked at the meager lira that they would exchange for American dollars and hoped it would be enough for them to buy some more furniture in their new apartment.

  The week passed faster than she could have imagined. Noor and Maria clung to Hasna and she could not bear to put them down. She adjusted Maria’s thin, blond pigtails, which had a tendency to fall down as she ran. Noor’s legs had grown long and thin. She kissed the fuzzy top of Khassem’s daughter’s head. The thought of leaving her grandchildren until they could join her in Austin left her breathless with grief. And she thought, too, of Hamad, who was no longer the baby she had known so well, and of Tawfiq, whom she had only seen in pictures, and wept, wondering that she had any tears left. How could she leave not knowing that Laila and Yusef were already on their way? But then, how could she stay if by going she could ensure they would all be together again?

  She would anchor them. She would go ahead with Jebreel and Rana so her children could find their way out of war. It was what any mother would do. Her eyes were so swollen she could barely see out of them as they headed to the airport, the good-byes gutting her. She gulped back sobs as she took the slip of paper that would bring them all a new life and boarded the airplane that took her away from everything she had ever loved.

  PART 3

  Chapter 22

  MU NAW

  AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, AUGUST 2014, JANUARY 2015

  After the fight when he moved rooms, Saw Ku slept with his son for a few nights, and then they made up. Their marriage revived for weeks. Then they had another fight and Saw Ku moved into the children’s room again. Pah Poe, whose face was most like Saw Ku’s, shuttered her eyes like he did when she came home to find her bed shoved into her mother’s room again. Many days, Mu Naw felt a clawing sense of grief that her children, who came from so much love, should feel the same sort of disruptive stress that she had experienced for so many years, but what could she do? Born in war, raised in strife, she had only a vague sense that there was more to life than this constant turmoil.

  While her marriage ended and began again in a dizzying cycle, her mother began calling to ask Mu Naw for more money. She was sick, she said, but she was vague about the symptoms and Mu Naw couldn’t tell if her mother was trying to keep her from worrying or perhaps just needed the money for other things. They wired a few hundred dollars, leaving their lights off and eating mostly packaged noodles to make up the difference. She and the other women in the apartments commiserated with one another—their family members assumed because they lived in insulated apartments and drove cars that they had endless amounts of money to spare. Back in the camps, their relatives could not fathom how difficult it was to make ends meet in this new place.

  Mu Naw began to ask her American friends to help her find a new job. Someone heard that a church preschool was hiring a teacher’s assistant in the two-year-old classroom; she got the job on the day they interviewed. She could take Saw Doh with her and still be home in time to get the girls from school. That meant that she could work as a translator on Mondays for the adult ESL class and Wednesdays for the weaving cooperative and still have Friday mornings at home to clean and spend time with Saw Doh.

  She had thought that the extra paycheck might stabilize her marriage. But any peace they found never lasted longer than a few months. Two years passed that way, until Saw Doh was finally old enough for kindergarten and Mu Naw decided to find a full-time job.

  * * *

  —

  Mu Naw pulled into the parking lot
for the job interview at the fair-trade jewelry company. She smoothed her shirt down—the chiffonlike fabric, black with white polka dots, skimmed her torso. The hem of the black pants artfully cropped just above her ankles. Her white friends helped her pick the outfit out at the outlet mall; she kept the tags on till that morning, waiting until she had walked the children to their school bus to change into her new clothes. Everything—underwear, tank top, ballet shoes, lipstick, earrings—all of it was new. When she turned her head, she caught a whiff of citrus.

  The interview felt surreal. It was as if she were watching an American version of herself she had not known existed. It was that version of Mu Naw who pushed open the heavy door and said: “I am here to meet with Madelyn,” that Mu Naw who stretched into their conversation brilliantly, who was funny and charming to a stranger in English, who deftly steered the conversation around her language difficulties, who casually but kindly thanked Madelyn when the interview was over. And later that evening, when they called to offer her the job, the American version of herself was elated.

  Mu Naw had never felt the difference between her past and her present as acutely as she did that night. She made an enormous pan of vegetable noodles for dinner to celebrate. When he got home and she told him the news, Saw Ku wrapped her in a hug. She reveled in the pride in his eyes. And yet, a niggling part of her worried that the girl in the hand-woven skirt that she had been, the one who had loved Saw Ku so obsessively, was now just a part of her past. Perhaps this brief warming between them actually accentuated the intractable battle lines they had drawn in the last few years. Perhaps they were too far apart to ever find lasting peace together.