No Place of Refuge

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Watching her face, Nate sighed. ‘It’s Esa, isn’t it? He’s the one you want. I can’t say I blame you.’

  She heard the bitterness beneath the words – the echo of an estrangement that had nothing to do with her. She could see why he’d misunderstood. Her relationship with Khattak was complex, they hadn’t unraveled its complexities themselves; she doubted others would understand what bound them.

  But she hadn’t fallen prey to Khattak’s attraction, as she’d worried. In his dark shirt, with his tasbih wrapped over his wrist, he looked handsomer than ever. Rachel had ceased to notice. She’d come to understand the nature of her feelings. She was close to Khattak because of the way he’d treated her when she’d sought refuge from her boss’s harassment. Khattak had delivered her from MacInerney by putting her on his team.

  She hadn’t known then that he’d asked for her, chosen her… valued her.

  He’d treated her with kindness and continual respect. So she’d struggled with the idea that maybe his actions added up to love.

  The part of herself that she hid from the world – the girl who’d grown up bullied by Don Getty, whose mother had loved her brother instead of her – that girl knew it did. And only because Esa had been so careful was she able to see that for herself.

  She wasn’t in love with Khattak. She didn’t want to be his lover. What she wanted was what he’d given her: the sense that she belonged, that she was good and brave and valuable. That she mattered to someone like him.

  Tears blurred Rachel’s vision. There was no way on God’s green earth she could say any of this to Nate. He wanted her to wait, but they’d never be at this place again, reaching for each other, trying to soldier through.

  ‘Esa is a good person.’ She used his name without constraint, wiping a hand across her eyes. ‘I haven’t had much of that, you know? That’s really all it is.’

  To Rachel that was everything.

  Amélie Roux joined them in the garden. Only Khattak and Sehr abstained from taking a glass of ouzo as they gathered together around an outdoor brazier that lent a shimmering warmth to the night. Audrey was at the center of the group, triangular shadows under her eyes and in the hollows of her temples. She gave them the briefest summary of her ordeal, though Khattak guessed that she and Ruksh would speak of it for days and weeks to come.

  He asked the question on everyone’s minds. ‘What happened that night in the tent?’

  Audrey shrank down in her chair. Nate took her hand and held it. When she’d gained a measure of calm, Audrey began to speak.

  ‘I’d spoken to the girl in the camp – the girl Benny tried to grab, the one who got away. From her description, I thought it was Benny, but I’d begun to suspect him long before. There was something about his reaction when I mentioned the counterfeit life vests. All I did was pass on a tip, but he seemed to suspect me of more. He was watching me. And then I began to wonder why a commander of the Italian Coast Guard was on the Greek islands so often. At the beach would have made sense, but why was he in the camps?’ She took a moment to collect her thoughts, guilt shadowing her voice. ‘I told Inspecteur Roux I was close to confirming the identity of the ringleaders of the gang, but I needed to be sure. She sent Agent Bertin to Lesvos to help me. Aude wanted to meet Sami but he was waiting for a boat, just in case Israa was on it. He sent Ali with me instead. Benny must have gotten wind of Aude Bertin’s arrival.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘He followed us, he must have eavesdropped on us. When he threatened Agent Bertin, I pulled out my gun.’ She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to use it. He got the gun away from me. The rest I think you know.’

  She confirmed Khattak’s guess that Aude Bertin had tried to protect Ali. And that Audrey had escaped, to be chased and captured at the beach. Since then, she’d been in the store house, where she’d also found Israa. Benemerito had delayed moving them until he was out of options. Roux’s appearance on Lesvos had triggered his need to act. He’d been following Khattak, ascertaining his actions. He’d used the attack on Souda to break into the Woman to Woman tent and steal the life vests.

  ‘There are many, many men involved in this operation,’ Roux told them. ‘On the Turkish side, in Greece. And throughout the continent – Germany, France, the UK. If we break Benemerito, we’ll make significant progress in shutting down this ring.’

  ‘He hasn’t confessed?’ Khattak asked.

  He knew Roux was thinking of Aude Bertin when she promised, ‘He will.’

  When Benemerito had spat at Rachel, rage had swamped Khattak’s thoughts. And knowing Benemerito had struck Sehr – he had some sense of what Amélie was feeling.

  Roux summoned the waiter for another glass of ouzo. She took a sip before she turned to Sehr.

  ‘The trouble you experienced, the obstruction on the islands and in Athens.’

  Sehr raised her eyebrows and waited.

  ‘Yannis Andreadis, Nikos Papadakis at the Athena, the German medic, Hans. The Golden Dawn ringleaders who raided Souda camp. They’re all members of the ring. We think Benemerito was the one in charge, though we can’t say for sure.’

  ‘What about Captain Nicolaides? Or Peter Conroy? Or Eleni?’ Khattak had wondered about each one.

  Roux shook her head. ‘They have been vetted. They are not involved.’

  ‘And Vincenzo?’ Rachel asked Audrey. ‘What part did he play in all this? Did he get cold feet at the end?’

  Wonderingly, Audrey shook her head. ‘He’s a member of the Coast Guard. Benny acting outside his purview made Vincenzo suspicious. When he confronted Benny, Benny threatened his family. Vincenzo came to me because he could see I was figuring it out. He told me we had to catch Benny in the act, or the members of the ring would go to ground. He knew Benny was watching him. He also knew he wouldn’t get another chance. Last night was his moment.’

  She didn’t discuss the toll the waiting had taken on her, and Khattak knew better than to ask.

  ‘I want to see Sami,’ Audrey said. ‘I want to see Sami and Israa.’

  ‘I’m here, Audrey,’ Sehr promised. ‘I won’t leave Lesvos without them.’

  Esa glanced over at her. He hadn’t known Sehr was planning to stay on Lesvos.

  When their party broke up, Esa asked Sehr to remain, conscious of her remoteness. Why she’d withdrawn, he didn’t know. It could have been the things he’d said to her on the hill, or his reference, obliquely, to Samina. Maybe she felt excluded from his thoughts. He couldn’t blame her if she did.

  Gently, he said, ‘I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. How are you feeling now?’

  The left side of her face was bruised. Ignoring the question, she asked, ‘Which part?’

  He hesitated, wondering if she was angry at his insistence that she remain behind. She couldn’t know what he’d thought when the car had come so close to clipping her. Or when he’d heard the sounds of her struggle in the shed. He never wanted to feel that kind of terror again.

  He could see the car burn. He could see his wife dying inside it. To face that with Sehr –

  Unsure of himself now, he said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  She looked away from him, her profile pensive. ‘Which part are you sorry for, Esa? That I didn’t leave you on your own, or that I got in the way of your attempt to save Rachel?’ She shook her head to herself. ‘I didn’t get in the way, though. You knew what mattered to you.’

  It took him a minute to understand. Then he was swamped by a sense of relief that opened his eyes to the truth. She didn’t know what she meant to him because he’d been too cowardly to speak. He rose to his feet, pulling her into his arms. She stood there without moving, without reaching for him in turn, resistance etched into her limbs.

  ‘Is that what you thought?’ he asked. ‘That I wouldn’t choose you, if I had a choice to make? I overheard Vincenzo’s plan, I knew he wasn’t going to h
urt you. That’s why I went after Rachel.’

  ‘Why should I believe you? You’ve never thought of me.’

  He muttered a protest against things he couldn’t deny – knowledge that had come too late.

  ‘God knows that’s been true, Sehr. It isn’t anymore. It won’t be from this day forward.’

  ‘What you said to me about Samina, what you did – I can’t face that over Rachel.’ The words were quiet, masking the effort it took to say them.

  But he knew what he’d done – he grasped the distance that stretched from Samina’s grave to this garden. He’d been given this moment to speak. He wouldn’t be granted another.

  Now he didn’t hesitate, starkly aware of his need.

  ‘I won’t deny that I care about Rachel, but she isn’t who I want, Sehr. I’m done pretending now.’

  Carefully, he traced her cheek. His fingers strayed to her lips. The brilliant light in her eyes pierced him all the way through. Did he imagine the call to prayer? Or was he simply reverent, grateful for this unforeseen moment? And for what they might one day be.

  ‘What were you pretending?’ she asked.

  ‘Not to love you,’ he answered.

  Author’s Note

  Though this is a novel that focuses on the Syrian refugee crisis, the crisis cannot be properly understood without situating it in the context of the ongoing war in Syria, begun in 2011. The war is often described as a complex conflict whose origins are unclear and whose peaceful resolution is unlikely in the near future. At the time of writing in fall 2017, the death toll of the war in Syria was 465,000, with 11 million Syrians displaced as a consequence of the war (5 million as refugees, another 6 million internally displaced). The refugee crisis is ongoing, with the Syrian diaspora mainly dispersed across the Middle East and Europe.

  The conflict has been driven by a specific set of social and political conditions, beginning with the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt. The Arab Spring reignited the aspirations of the Syrian people for political freedom and socioeconomic well-being. Until that moment, the House of Assad had ruled Syria with an iron fist for forty-one years: a rule synonymous with widespread political repression, crony capitalism and corruption, flagrant human rights violations, periods of mass killing and destruction, and a prison system comparable to the Russian gulags.

  A small spark lit the blaze in Syria: schoolboys in Daraa (Deraa) scrawled graffiti in support of the Arab Spring, and were arrested and tortured for doing so. Peaceful protests broke out in response, demanding the release of the boys, one of whom was killed in detention. The government responded to the unrest with force, killing and detaining hundreds, triggering nationwide protests calling for reform and the freeing of political prisoners. As the government’s repression increased, so did the demands of the protesters, leading to a call for the resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

  During the first year of the uprising, protests were overwhelmingly non-violent and non-sectarian in nature. One year later, all of the major human rights organizations – including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Special Commission of Inquiry on Syria – had charged the Assad regime with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The door to mass violence had been opened. When the conflict entered its second year, it became militarized and then increasingly radicalized as hundreds of rebel groups formed to fight the Assad regime. Many of these groups were backed by regional powers, each with an agenda of its own. Saudi Arabia and its allies were on one side of the conflict supporting various groups, while Iran and its allies backed the Syrian regime.

  As the level of violence in Syria intensified, culminating in the use of chemical weapons, extremist rebel groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda emerged, becoming key players in the conflict. It is in this context that ISIS, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, first evolved. Initially, ISIS fighters broke away from the major Al-Qaeda faction in Syria and established links with the remnants of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In time, they became a separate group that rapidly expanded its area of influence and control in eastern Syria, establishing a de facto capital in the city of Raqqa. One of the defining characteristics of ISIS has been its extreme brutality toward its perceived enemies, among them foreign journalists and aid workers. Especially heinous is ISIS’s treatment of Shia Muslims, Yazidis, Christians, ethnic minorities, and women. The ultimate goal of the group is the establishment of an ISIS-defined caliphate throughout the Islamic world. The rise of ISIS is a by-product of the war in Syria and has reinforced Assad’s narrative that the choice in Syria is between the continuation of his rule or that of radical extremist groups like ISIS.

  There is also an international dimension to the conflict, with the United States and Europe on one side, and Russia and China on the other. As a result of divisions among the international community, the United Nations Security Council has been paralyzed in terms of an effective response to the mass violence against civilians in Syria. Russia’s role has been significant. From 2011 to 2017, Russia cast its veto on the UN Security Council ten times to block an international resolution of the crisis. Then in 2015, Russia’s military directly intervened in the conflict, tilting the balance of power in Assad’s favor and deepening the humanitarian crisis on an unprecedented scale, as embodied by the destruction of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

  When the conflict began, President Obama called for Assad to step down; yet American policy has been largely non-interventionist, ceding Russia and Iran effective control of the war in Syria. With a new administration in the United States, there has been no change in US policy on Syria: the focus remains on defeating ISIS, without attempting to address the roots of the Syrian crisis or the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Assad regime.

  While there is no disputing that all parties have committed atrocities in Syria, in terms of scale and proportion, it is the Assad regime that is overwhelmingly responsible for crimes against civilians. According to the Violations Documentations Center in Syria, between March 2011 and September 2016, the Syrian government was responsible for 90 percent of civilian deaths during the conflict. Aided by Russia, the Syrian government has targeted hospitals, clinics, schools, and civilian population centers with a wide range of weaponry: barrel bombs, cluster munitions, mortars and artillery, and chemical weapons that have included chlorine and sarin gas. Beyond this, the opaque and labyrinthine prison system overseen by the Assad regime has been cited as carrying out killing and torture on an industrial scale that amounts to extermination. In Saydnaya (Sednaya), a prison near Damascus, thirteen thousand political detainees were executed in the period between 2011 and 2015.

  With the conflict in its seventh year, the tide of the war has turned in Assad’s favor. Some international players see this as a development that could lead to peace and stability in Syria. But in light of the regime’s devastating human rights record, Assad cannot be seen as a guarantor of the hopes and aspirations of the Syrian people for dignity and political freedom.

  Recommended Reading

  For background on the Syrian conflict, I recommend the following works: Syria by Samer N Abboud, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency by Charles Lister, and The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh.

  For more personal works, I suggest The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek; We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman; Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, edited by Malu Halasa, Zaher Omareen, and Nawara Mahfoud; and The Morning They Came for Us by Janine di Giovanni.

  Human rights reports on the Syrian conflict are also widely available. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic:

  www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/Independ
entInternationalCommission.aspx

  Violations Documentation Center in Syria: http://vdc-sy.net/en/

  Amnesty International, 2017. Human Slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria:

  https://www.amnestyusa.org/files/human_slaughterhouse.pdf

  Human Rights Watch, 2015. If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities:

  https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities

  Human Rights Watch, 2012. Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s Underground Prisons Since March 2011:

  https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/07/03/torture-archipelago/arbitrary-arrests-torture-and-enforced-disappearances-syrias

  Human Rights Watch, 2011. By All Means Necessary: Individual and Command Responsibility for Crimes Against Humanity in Syria:

  https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/syria1211 webwcover_0.pdf

  For updates on the Syrian refugee crisis, please visit the UNHCR’s Syria homepage at: http://www.unhcr.org/sy/.

  Acknowledgments

  In many ways, this book is a continuation of the themes of Among the Ruins, the previous book in the Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty series. Both books examine the impact of authoritarian rule on civil society and both interrogate the plight of political detainees, though the crisis in Syria is by every measure worse. To fully appreciate how, I interviewed people concerned with several different aspects of it: refugees from the war, government and NGO employees, resettlement workers, sponsorship agreement holders, Middle East analysts, journalists and lawyers, and those who traveled to the Greek islands to volunteer. Many of the people I consulted must remain fully or partially anonymous, but they have my unceasing gratitude for contributing so much to my understanding of the war and the critical plight of refugees.