After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

  The volunteer closed the door and locked it, showing Rana how to turn the deadbolt. Hasna watched dully. Before the war, she had never locked her door in Daraa. She thanked the woman who had picked them up at the airport. As the woman left, Hasna felt herself cratering.

  She focused on Rana, on giving her a shower and making sure her sheets were clean and that the bed was comfortable. She put Rana to sleep as she hadn’t since Rana was a little girl, stroking her hair until her breathing became deep and regular. Only then did Hasna take her own shower, dig through one of the suitcases until she found her pajamas, slide in beside Jebreel in bed with damp hair chilled by the air-conditioned air.

  After several minutes of trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep, she sat up on the edge of the bed, eased off the mattress so she wouldn’t wake Jebreel. She went to check on Rana again. They were not used to such chilly air-conditioned air. It would make Rana sick. She pulled the covers up around her. Rana stirred for a minute, her full lips parting.

  Hasna looked out the sliding glass door that led to the small back porch in the living room, pulling apart the blinds that hung from the top of the door. The blinds rattled gently, but Rana did not stir. Suddenly Hasna wished desperately to walk outside, to feel real air on her face instead of the tin can air whirring inside. But she did not want to wake up Rana or Jebreel.

  Streetlights outside illuminated a tennis court and a lawn between apartments, with sidewalks leading from one building to another. As they drove in from the airport, Hasna had noticed that the apartment buildings were centered on courtyards; she liked the inclusion of green space and trees within the buildings. She also liked that she could see out of the window and that there was no wall; the thought registered as a slight betrayal, having loved her walled home, but now that she had lived in homes with windows where she could see out, she recognized its charm. From the apartment window in Ramtha, she had watched the dogs in the field outside for hours. She wondered what she would see out of this window.

  She pictured what it would be like when her children arrived. She had counted the doors as she came down the long breezeway—four downstairs, including theirs, and four upstairs. That meant there were eight apartments per breezeway and she had noticed two breezeways per building. They had driven past multiple buildings on their way into the complex; there must have been a dozen at least. Surely people moved often—worst-case scenario, her children would be in a building on the opposite side of the complex for a while. But so much better if they could live across this courtyard—Laila’s boys would love to ride bikes on those sidewalks.

  They would buy small outdoor chairs, she thought, which they could leave set up in the breezeway as they had in the villa in Ramtha. They could line them along the wall. Perhaps there were bigger apartments in the complex, better than this small one, one with a separate bedroom for Rana. They would need at least three bedrooms when Yusef came. They could try to get all of the apartments on the bottom floor. Amal and Samir and their girls in one, Khassem’s family in another, Laila and her boys in the third. Yusef would need a wife, which would mean a fifth apartment, and a sixth when Rana was older. Hasna chuckled softly to herself. Of course she should begin looking for Yusef’s wife before she started worrying about a husband for Rana—her son was old enough to settle down and marry, something to look forward to once the whole family was here. What she needed was a piece of paper so she could write these ideas down.

  She was immediately buoyed by the idea of a to-do list, the ability to codify and prioritize all that needed to happen. First, the stools to sit outside in the breezeway—though that should probably wait until they had at least one more apartment to store things in. She would not write down a wife for Yusef, not yet, but she would start putting feelers out among the women around her. Surely there were other Syrians nearby; she looked forward already to connecting with them, to hearing Arabic in this unfamiliar place. On the list would go some matching dishes, more than three coffee cups, and pots and pans. She would need food as well, and spices to cook with. She hoped there would be women to help her find these things.

  She looked once more at the courtyard and felt a surge of affection for its possibilities. Laila and the boys were so exhausted; this place would give the children room to play, something they had not had in years. If her older children worked during the day, Rana could finish school and she and Jebreel could watch the grandchildren after school every day. Her grandchildren would run into her apartment just as her children ran into her gate in Daraa, laughing and bickering. They could clean and paint the apartment, save up for good wood furniture.

  She would have food simmering on the stove every afternoon. They would take turns eating dinner in one another’s houses; maybe there would even be room on the lawn to set up a table outside. She would hang fairy lights like the ones they had had in Daraa on the trees outside the window. She might invite her neighbors over; these Americans who had just the right number of dishes for the people who lived in their home would be hungry, would love the food she would make them. She pictured her family walking out of their apartments in time for dinner, everyone carrying a dish as they caught up with one another’s days, while she carried out a large pan of maftul, plates of hummus, platters of salad. They would gather in the courtyard and eat lingeringly. At night, the cousins would run barefoot on the grass.

  Perhaps the neighborhood was not unsafe, just unfamiliar. With her children around her, she would not worry about locking her doors. She walked back to her bed, lay down, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  —

  The first knock on her door the next morning was a Syrian woman who lived a few buildings over. Hasna was so grateful to see her and hear her Arabic with its thick Aleppo accent, she nearly cried. The woman was short with gray eyes and a sharp set to her mouth that reminded Hasna a bit of one of the small dogs she had watched in Ramtha—a small, determined terrier. They greeted each other, kissing cheeks briefly, and the woman introduced herself as Um Khalid. She told Hasna she had come to make sure that she had everything she needed. Hasna told her all about the three-cup debacle of a kitchen and Um Khalid laughed grimly: “It is like they follow the exact instructions but do not think. Did they not assume that you would ever have other people to eat? Or that you might sometimes want more than one plate per person?” She rolled her eyes and Hasna felt cheered immediately.

  Some of the other women dropped by later in the day, kissing cheeks and clucking sympathetically when Um Khalid told them that Hasna had only received three of everything in the kitchen and no pots or pans. Within hours, the women had organized a meal for them. In the afternoon, one of the women who could drive took Hasna to the local halal market to buy what she needed; she had been given cash by the IOM representative who helped them and she used almost two hundred dollars buying a cheap tin pot-and-pan set and a full set of glasses and plates for their home and food for the next few days. She worried about spending so much money so quickly, before she found out where the rest of the money was going to come from, but truly, there was no choice. The other women agreed with her—she could not live in a home in which she could not cook.

  Her Syrian neighbors eased Hasna’s first day considerably. That night, they were invited over for dinner at one of the Syrian families’ apartments. The women who had taken her to the store brought their children and they talked late into the night, answering all of Hasna and Jebreel’s questions. There, Hasna finally learned the full scope of what they had taken on.

  They would have to pay back the US government the full amount of their plane tickets, a debt that already felt daunting to Hasna. Whatever they had been told in the orientation or in the months leading up to their resettlement, it didn’t matter. In fact, when Hasna named some of the things, they only laughed: A year’s worth of financial support? They would not be able to afford rent past the first month and they were in a six-month lease contract. Free medical care? They w
ould be eligible for Medicaid but they would need to stay on top of their paperwork or they would lose their coverage. Disability payments? They would come in a few months, but they should expect some snafu that would delay payments.

  An older man, balding but with a ring of thick black hair, ranted for long minutes about the United States. He told Jebreel and Hasna that the United States did not care for them, but his tirade only made Hasna feel that he was asking too much of this new country. Why should anyone give them free health care and money without their working for it? Those were not things that she wanted. His beginning premise—“sure, they let our children go to school and they help us bring our families over”—were the beginning and end of what she hoped for. If she had her children and Rana could be educated, that would be enough.

  Many in the group readily acknowledged that the US system did help their families stay together. Some of them had already welcomed relatives. Hasna could see that many of the most bitter people were also the most vocal. She suspected that several of the others did not feel as strongly as the loudest voices in the room.

  She sensed, even through her despair and worry, that there was a great kindness in this new country. The system was not perfect, but Americans did not cause the war in Syria and were not responsible for fixing it. And yet, they had paid for these people to come from Jordan all the way over to Austin, Texas; there were thousands more refugees from Syria all over the country. What kind of people built into their laws and culture an infrastructure to care for refugees from all over the world? Good people. Every country had people they were not proud of, who caused problems—Syrians, of all people, could understand that. But this was a country that took responsibility to provide a new home for people who had lost theirs to war. By the time the man’s wife succeeded in her not-so-subtle campaign to get her ranting husband to stop and go home, Hasna was convinced of the goodness of the people of the United States.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, they sat in a room full of people from all over the world at Refugee Services of Texas as one of the caseworkers—a tall former Iraqi refugee with a square jaw and milk-chocolate brown eyes—explained to them some of the things they had already been told by their neighbors. She was grateful she had had a chance to process the information first. He leveled with them that yes, their expectations and reality in the United States would not always match up, but the people at RST truly did want to help them. He told them as much as he could about what they could now expect in the weeks to come.

  A Syrian-American man who introduced himself as Natheir Ali came over that evening, entering their home deferentially, and spent more than an hour asking Hasna and Jebreel about their home, their life in Daraa, their children and grandchildren, their jobs and educations, what they were hoping to find here. They clicked with him immediately; he held himself with the quiet containment Hasna associated with the people who had served in the military in Syria, a kind of power that could spring forth at any time but that usually did not. But there was no violence in his power; it was a coiled energy and sense of purpose. He was tall and almost too thin, charismatic, but in a self-deprecating way—he used his sense of humor to put them at ease. When he laughed, his deep voice lightened into a high-pitched giggle which Hasna found endearing. He knew all of their neighbors and told them everything he could about the Syrian refugee population in Austin. There were more than a hundred people from various parts of Syria in Austin; most of them were children. They were concentrated in a few of the apartment complexes, including this one, and their children attended a handful of schools. He teased Rana mercilessly and she scolded him back and they all laughed. Hasna fed him dinner and he accepted, praising her cooking till she blushed. He told them about his own family and his friends who were there to help with whatever they needed.

  Things were going to be hard, he told them, but there were good people, many originally from Syria and others who were not, who would be there to help them for the next several months. A family like theirs, with no adult children to work for them, was in one of the more difficult positions. Most of the other Syrian families in Austin had either two adults who could work or at least some adult children who could help. He couched it gently, so they would not take offense, but to Hasna, his assessment was a relief—she was not wrong that their life would be incredibly difficult, that what they were undertaking was harder than what most people would have to endure.

  When he left, Hasna looked at him with tears in her eyes: “I have been denied my sons for a time but look: Allah has brought us a son, and he has brought us a brother. Thank you.” Natheir’s eyes filled with tears too.

  The air shifted. She could feel that this room in the middle of America had also become Syria: a place where people clasped hands and refused to forget, to lose heart, to let go of their love for their country and for each other. It gave Hasna hope and it filled her with despair.

  Chapter 25

  MU NAW

  AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, MAY 2015

  Saw Ku’s sister, Soe Paw, tried to call Mu Naw several times. Assuming she wanted to give Mu Naw advice about her marriage with Saw Ku—it would not be the first time—Mu Naw ignored the calls. Her life was so busy with work and home that several days passed without her finding a minute to call Soe Paw back. Finally, on a Friday afternoon as she was picking up the house and thinking about dinner, her sister-in-law in Austin, Deh Deh, called.

  “Why have you not answered your phone? Soe Paw has been calling you for days!” Mu Naw was surprised at Deh Deh’s sharp tone. Her voice sounded raspy.

  “Because Soe Paw just wants to tell me what to do and you know how she is. I didn’t want to hear it.” Saw Ku had been gone again the night before—Mu Naw hoped at Jaw Jaw’s house—and she was glad to talk to Deh Deh, who was always on Mu Naw’s side. “Did she call you first? Was she full of advice again?”

  The pause at the other end of the line was too long. Finally, Mu Naw stopped picking up the children’s toys and turned the television down.

  “What? What is it?”

  Her sister-in-law’s voice caught while she spoke. “It’s your mother. She’s gone.”

  Mu Naw sat down on the couch.

  * * *

  —

  The children found her later in her closet, her body shaking with sobs. She would not answer them when they asked what was wrong; she could not form the words. She waved them away, too overcome to worry about the scared looks on their faces.

  In the dark, small space of the closet, Mu Naw could see her mother’s face, could almost feel her presence. A few weeks ago, her mother had asked for money again and Mu Naw had wired as much money as they could afford to her in Mae La camp. Though her mother did not accuse her of being stingy, of not caring, of forgetting who they were and where they had come from, Mu Naw knew that other relatives did—Soe Paw had told her that more than once. It was not true that she was stingy—they did everything they could—but the accusations stewed in her, layered onto the guilt she already carried for leaving her mother behind.

  Before, when she felt guilty, it was easy to put off all thoughts of her mother. She had taken comfort in her long-term plan: When she saved up enough for herself and was on her feet, when the children were older, when they could buy a home, she would call her mother and beg her to come. She would finally convince her, do everything in her power to help them set up a new life.

  That plan lay in pieces on the closet floor. It was hepatitis C, Deh Deh had told her. Mu Naw had not even known that her mother had hepatitis C. Her requests for money had always been for school or minor medical issues for Mu Naw’s younger half siblings. She broke down again at the realization that her mother had kept the news from her. Mu Naw would have bankrupted her family to save her mother.

  Her mother knew that. Of course she did.

  Mu Naw’s unholy wailing could be heard from the parking lot. Saw Ku
rushed home when Deh Deh called Jaw Jaw; his brother had promised to explain it to their manager at the hotel where they worked as housekeeping staff. Saw Ku flung the closet door open and pulled Mu Naw to him. She clung to him for a moment, her wails subsiding into hiccups, and then she crawled into the closet again.

  He left her there, went to hug the children hovering tearily in the hallway. He gave them baths and fixed them dinner, cleaned up the living room, and put them in front of the television before going back in to Mu Naw with a plate of food in his hand.

  * * *

  —

  Mu Naw was lost in a swirl of memory. Her mind drifted through images of her mother: Her face in the dim light spilling from the doorway of her hut on the night when Mu Naw showed up after years apart. Her mother’s hair coming out of her braid as she leaned over Mu Naw’s baby sister with a look of sheer joy. Laughing at a joke Mu Naw told her one day while they hung laundry out to dry on the line strung behind their hut at Mae La. She remembered her mother leaning out the window in their first hut in Nu Po camp—young, sharp-featured—calling Mu Naw in from playing. She watched her mother walk, shoulders hunched, away from her on that day she left Mu Naw with the grandmothers, right before the junta attacked Nu Po. She felt her mother’s hand caressing her cheek, tracing her jaw, when she was sick as a teenager.

  She caught at one of the memories and held it: the story of how her parents married. Her father loved to tell it, usually when he’d been drinking. Mu Naw had heard it dozens of times as a little girl. She could still hear her father’s resonant voice, slightly slurred. She had never heard her mother tell it.