by Samira Ahmed
I stomp down the stairs. I reach into my pocket, an instinct to grab the phone that isn’t there. I clench my empty hand into a fist, and a tear plops onto my knuckle. What would I text to David if I even had a chance? Good-bye? I love you? Find me?
I meet my parents in the foyer.
There are a million shards in my heart, but the one that really stabs is having my damn phone taken away. Maybe it’s dumb to think of it this way, but it’s not only my phone. It’s all my pictures, every memory of school and tennis team and David. I stifle my sobs. Dread clutches me, but so does anger. They didn’t merely take my phone; they took my voice, my choice.
An invisible hand pushes us outside the door. The nights are so quiet here. That’s one thing I always liked about our little town. The crickets in summer, the trees whispering on the breeze. You can actually see stars. But not tonight. Tonight, there is only dark sky.
I take a last look inside. A guard has his hand on our doorknob. On our door. He’s going to pull it closed. But… the dishes. Are there still dishes in the sink? I can’t remember if we loaded the dinner plates into the dishwasher. Will someone do the dishes? My mom hates leaving dishes overnight.
The door slams behind us. My parents don’t even look.
I swing my head around. There are cars at the curb, the van we saw earlier, and more Exclusion Guards. The Suits. The Suits are conferring with the chief of police. There is talking around me, I hear words, but the words don’t make sense. Like everyone is speaking in tongues. My parents shuffle me into the backseat of the chief of police’s car and shut the door. There’s no air. I try to open the door, but apparently you can’t open the backseat doors from the inside of a police car. So I watch as my parents exchange words with Suit #1, who hands them some papers. Then they turn to the chief, who also has something to say, but seems to be having a hard time looking my parents in the eye. We know the chief. We’ve known him since his daughter, Ivy, and I were in kindergarten together. My dad nods. My mom stares at him blankly. Then the chief opens the back door for them, and they slide in next to me. I move over to make space for them. We don’t look at one another. We don’t say anything. It’s like we’re all in mourning, but for different things, in our own way.
The chief starts up the car. I see something, someone running toward us. I squint into the darkness. I can’t see.
David? Could it be David? Does he know? Did he see me?
The chief pulls the car away from the curb.
I yell David’s name, but the chief doesn’t respond. It’s like no one can hear me. I strain to see, but the chief has the light on inside the car, and all I can see is the reflection of a girl who doesn’t really look like me. I try to roll the window down, but it won’t roll down. I look at the girl in the window; her face is puffy and red, and her watery reflection looks like a ghost. I look at my parents; they’re ghosts, too. The world has shattered, and all that’s left is this alternate universe full of broken people with nothing to hold on to.
We are silent for a long time as we pass through the town center to head onto the highway to Los Angeles. Car lights whiz by us. Even in the middle of the night, there’s traffic in LA. The chief is in the right lane, driving impossibly slow, like he’s trying to prolong the ride to scare us more. But he doesn’t really need to bother. There’s so much anxiety in this car that it feels like the backseat is shrinking, crushing us into a small cube of vinyl and sweat and fear.
The chief clears his throat. “Now, you all know I’m sorry about this, um, formality. Doing my job, following orders that come from above my pay grade. I’m sure you folks will be cleared in no time. The bigwigs need to see you’re not a threat.”
He’s trying to fill the silence because he’s uncomfortable, but all he’s done is make it worse. My dad continues to stare at his own feet. My mom takes his hand. Say something, I want to tell them. Call him out. He knows us. Ask him how he can do this. I watch my parents, but they don’t say a word.
I look at my palms, tracing the remnants of the tiny crescent marks that I pressed into my own skin. Words rise from my gut to my throat, and they taste bitter.
“How’s Ivy?” I ask the chief.
My parents both swing their heads in my direction. My mom grabs my hand and squeezes it, an indication I should stop talking—but fear and anger are waging a war inside me right now, and I can’t stop myself. If I can’t leave this car, if I have to hear the chief’s “following orders” excuse, the least I can do, the one thing I can do, is remind him that he knows us. He’s “escorting” us away from our whole life, and I don’t think it’s my job to make him feel comfortable about that, even if my mom is giving me the death stare to silence me.
“Did she decide on a college yet?” I don’t have the energy or acting skills to make my voice sound chirpy, like I want to, so my delivery is totally deadpan, which I suppose fits with how I feel.
I see the chief glance into his rearview mirror, and I make eye contact with him for a second before he looks away. “She’s fine. Thanks for asking. Not quite settled on a school, though.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know the feeling.”
Maybe my mom is right when she says I’m sometimes stubborn for no reason. I imagine they aren’t saying anything because they’re afraid something worse could happen. I’m not sure what else we can lose, but if I’m being honest, I’m terrified that we’ll find out.
Union Station in Los Angeles is an art deco–mission revival mash-up wonder of inlaid marble tile, vaulted wood ceilings, and light fixtures that would make Frank Lloyd Wright proud. We’ve been here before. Normally, I’d close my eyes, ignoring the gum wrappers and wadded-up tissues that litter the sticky floor, to wonder at this echo of a time when people dressed up for dinner on trains with names like the Sunset Limited and the Pacific Sunrise, when train travel was romantic and featured in black-and-white movies. But now, as I stand outside in the broken quiet of the night, my synapses are firing with a million questions at once. I wrap my arms around my body, literally trying to hold myself still because my fight-or-flight adrenaline is in overdrive and I don’t know which way it’s going to lead me. Both, I think.
There are guards here, too. Same as the ones who were at my house, but more. Dozens more. This time, under the glare of extra lights that have been set up outside, I focus so I see them more clearly. There’s been increased security in public places—airports, train stations, even shopping malls. Somehow, seeing soldiers with giant guns strapped across their chests always makes me feel more scared and less safe. Maybe scaring people is part of the plan. But the soldiers here, the Exclusion Guards—their sandstone-colored uniforms look crisp, new. Jacket, pants, cap, boots, and bulletproof vest, like the kind the police have, but more heavy-duty and with shiny black plates across the front, like something Batman might wear. Our military is diverse, but not this shiny, new branch. They’re all white, it seems. A victory for nostalgic racists longing for the “good old days” of segregated units and separate bathrooms.
A gauntlet of guards lines the sidewalks to the entrance, some at the curb, others with their backs to the stone building. Their eyes alert. Their fingers aren’t on the triggers, but the air is so charged, it feels that way. I notice an American flag patch on each soldier’s sleeve, and below that a black rectangle with EXCLUSION AUTHORITY embroidered in white.
Outside the main entrance of the train station is the first checkpoint—a series of desks. That’s what the chief calls it. There are a couple dozen other people lined up, each with a bag in hand. Some other desis, an African American family, a few people who look like they might be from the Middle East. It’s after midnight, and everyone looks exhausted, almost jet-lagged. And it’s quiet—so quiet you can hear the buzz of the makeshift lighting that has been set up outside.
“This is where I leave you,” the chief says, as if he’s dropping us off for vacation instead of pointing us toward a sign that shows people where to line up according to last name. Which
is next to a sign with enumerated instructions of what to do. This is Los Angeles; I’m used to seeing signs in public places with instructions in multiple languages. But not here. English only. And the chief gestures us toward a damn desk, so casually. As if men with giant guns meant to keep us quiet and herded in is normal. It’s not normal. So why are people acting like it is?
The chief extends his hand toward my dad, who takes it in his own—but when I see my dad’s face, he seems almost as surprised as I am that’s he’s acquiesced to this handshake. Maybe it’s a reflex he couldn’t help.
“Good luck, Ali,” the chief says, then quickly darts away, as if he’s the one who is afraid of us. The irony is not lost on me.
“Thanks for your service, Chief.” I don’t hide my sarcasm. My mom shushes me even though the chief is probably no longer in earshot.
“Layla, you really need to watch your tone,” she whispers. “You’re far too sarcastic for your own good. There might be a time for it, but it’s certainly not right now.”
I shake my head. “Mom, I think tone policing is the least of our problems.”
“Maybe,” my dad adds. “But your mom is right. Don’t draw attention to yourself. We need to blend in if we’re going to get through this.”
This? I don’t suppose any of us know what to call the experience yet. Like World War I wasn’t called that when people were fighting it. How could it have been, when they didn’t know what would come after? Anyway, probably no one is thinking about an appropriately weighty yet catchy phrase to call our quagmire right now. We’re all too busy looking away and trying to believe it’s a collective nightmare we will eventually wake up from. I guess it’s pretty bad when a nightmare feels like a privilege.
We approach the station for A–E. It’s essentially a small desk with a Black Suit behind it.
“Reassignment documents,” he demands.
An Exclusion Guard at his side looks up and away, not making eye contact. Like everyone else. I wonder if it’s in their regulations: no eye contact with the Muslims.
My dad hands him the documents we were given back at home. Home. It’s disconcerting to even think about what’s happening there. Are the Suits ransacking it? Destroying our things?
The Black Suit takes our cards from my dad and places each one over a reader—the kind the TSA uses to scan your passport when you come back from a trip abroad. He hands them back to us. “Go inside. Report to Window Three for your IDs. It will be on your right as you enter the building.”
We shuffle inside Union Station along with nameless others. There are at least a hundred people in line at the old ticket windows, struggling to find a place to look that isn’t a painful reminder of what our collective reality is. All of them with a bag in hand and a stunned look on their faces. Someone cries out, breaking the silence; then there’s sobbing from one group, and then another. The clacking of computer keys continues, neither machine nor operator moved by tears. A couple of little kids—toddlers—run around, ignorant of what is happening. A baby screams. My mom once told me that she always knew what my cries meant, each one a little different: hungry, a wet diaper, tired, wanting attention. But a scream? My throat swells, and tears reach my eyes. Those kids, that baby—they have no idea what they are about to lose. I guess I don’t, either. Who even knows what’s happening, exactly, except that we were taken from our homes, and now we’re about to board a train to… somewhere. I tap my heel hard against the marble mosaic floor. Then harder. I shiver. This place is a tomb.
The Authority Suit at Window 3 reels us in with a beckoning finger. My dad hands over our cards with the QR codes. The Suit grabs my left hand and tries to pull it forward, but I snatch it back, a natural reaction to his unwelcome touch. The man raises his eyes to meet mine, his jaw set. He turns to my dad and then looks like he’s going to call a guard over. My dad grabs my hand and offers it to the Suit.
“She’ll comply.” That’s what he says. My jaw drops. Those words. She’ll comply. We will do what we’re told. We’ll go along. We won’t cause trouble. Don’t hurt us. That’s what my dad means.
The man clears his throat and nods. “We need to stamp the inside of your wrist with your ID number.”
I snap my mouth shut. I turn my hand over, palm facing up. What else am I supposed to do? He grabs it and places it in a black machine that looks like it could make espresso.
“Hold still,” he says as a two-inch rectangular metal bar descends and presses into the soft flesh on the inside of my wrist for a few seconds. When the bar rises up, I see nothing on my skin. It’s UV. Ultraviolet. Invisible ink. Permanent, the man explains, like an automaton.
He doesn’t look me in the eye, either. No one does. He stamps my parents’ wrists and then gives us seat assignments on the train and warns us not to sit elsewhere. As we head to the platform, I grip my wrist like someone has cut me with a knife. I hold it close to my face, then farther away, squinting, holding my wrist up to the fluorescent slants of light that pass through the hall. I can’t feel the mark; I can’t see it. But it’s there. Forever. I rub at the thin skin on the underside of my wrist until it turns red.
The platform is full, but there’s no jostling. The Authority has frightened all the fidgeting out of us. A loud monotone voice over the intercom instructs us: “Go directly to the train car you have been assigned. Present your left wrist for scanning as you enter the car. Sit in your assigned seat. The Exclusion Authority thanks you for your cooperation.”
My mother takes my hand as we enter our train car. I try to pull it away, but she only squeezes it tighter. Looking around, I shake my head, like I need a double take. The car is a normal train car. I don’t know what I was expecting. I look down the aisle: A rubber mat runs along the center, with rows of three navy-blue cloth-covered seats on either side. Foggy, scuffed-up windows offer limited views onto the dim platform. A chemically vanilla smell wafts around the car—the kind you spray to mask pet or unpleasant cooking odors. A regular, nondescript conventional train that has probably been decommissioned, since California rail has gone high-speed. There are seats on these trains; they’re not cattle cars—like the kind I’ve seen in my history textbooks—carrying people to their deaths. But we’re being forced onto them with no real idea of where we’re going or what to expect at the end of the line. I feel pressed. Like when we read The Crucible last year. I couldn’t wrap my mind around Giles Corey being pressed to death—stones being laid upon his chest, one after another, to make him admit to witchcraft, and he refused to speak except to say “More weight” when they urged him to confess. That’s what the air feels like in this car, why it feels hard to breathe. We’re being pressed by fear and hatred and the law.
The dozen or so people in this car are all like me, going through the motions, stepping forward, trying not to run screaming from the train into the arms of Exclusion Guards with large guns. No one speaks. My tongue is wood.
We find our seats: 18A, B, and C. I slide toward the window, my mother in the middle, and my father in the aisle seat. My parents put their bags on the luggage rack, and mine fits under the seat in front of me.
Remembering a poem, I lean over to my dad: “‘There was a man with tongue of wood / Who essayed to sing—’” I pause, waiting for my dad to finish the Stephen Crane verse, but he pats me on the arm and turns away. This is our little game—one of us quotes a line of a poem, and the other quotes a line in response. It’s a variation of an Urdu game, bait bazi, where one person quotes a line from a poem and the other has to quote another line of poetry that begins with the last letter of the verse used by the previous player. That seemed impossible to me, so Dad eased the rules. But he doesn’t feel like playing, and I don’t know what I was thinking—that a line of poetry could make any of this better? But I whisper the lines to myself anyway:
There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
And knew what the man
Wished to sing
And with that the singer was content.
Perhaps my dad was right to brush this poem off. I always think of David as the person who knows what I wish to sing, and now all I imagine is him showing up at my house, ringing the doorbell over and over and hearing it echo in the empty rooms. I wrap my arms around my middle and stare out the train window, into the dark. My own reflection stares back at me, but I barely recognize myself.
The train jerks forward as we pull away from the station. My mom puts her face in her hands, and muffled sobs rise from seats around the car. My dad envelops my mother in his arms, kisses the top of her head, and whispers “I’m sorry” over and over.
I put my hand on the dirty glass and watch the city disappear in a haze. As we move past Santa Monica, I catch a last tiny glimpse of the ocean while a thread of dawn inches its way into the darkness before we track inland, north and east and north again. The last overly watered lush golf course gives way to rock and scrub and desert brush. We race by Vasquez Rocks, and my heart seizes for a moment as I think of David and our many hikes there amid the ancient stones, the slabs jutting into the air, sweeping into sharp peaks against azure sky. Once we took a lesser-traveled path off the Pacific Coast Trail and followed it to the top of a ridge, where we discovered a golden plateau of desert sunflowers. We passed the afternoon in delicious solitude and hiked back down in the fading light, a withering crown of yellow blooms encircling my black hair. It was perfect. I didn’t know then how the memory would be a gift.
The train jolts and slows, recapturing my attention, before gaining speed again. My mom’s head rests on my dad’s shoulder. I watch as his heavy eyelids droop and then close. We haven’t slept since yesterday. Probably no one on this train has. It’s only been hours since we were taken from our homes, but each excruciating moment since has felt stretched, elongated beyond what it should be. It’s like all of us on this train are part of an Einstein relativity experiment—every American has been hurtling through space at the speed of light except us. We’ve been left behind to age, harnessed by earth’s unyielding gravity.