As the light shifts and the afternoon slides toward
evening, a change ripples through the crowd. It seems
every person on the slopes takes a deep breath and
sits up. I turn to see. A family steps from the hordes
to speak to the border guards. The man is in front
of his wife and children. Three armed guards watch
him. This is new: nobody has dared to approach the
guards. The crowd is silent. Everyone stares. Every-
one waits. Everyone watches the scene unfold.
“He should be careful,” Baba says. “This is
not good.”
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The man indicates his family. He points toward Turkey. He holds out his papers. The guards gesture too. They glance at his papers. They thrust
them back at him. They point toward Syria. Their
mood carries to us on the lingering air. So do their
voices.
The man’s family stands behind him. A woman,
two boys, a teenage girl, bags and belongings piled
around their feet. I stare at the teenage girl. She wears a striped cotton tunic and long skirts, a bundle tied
across her back with a long scarf. She holds the hand
of a small skinny boy. Beneath her bright beaded
keffiyeh, her tangle of black matted hair sticks out.
I know that hair. The back of my neck prickles. My
skin tightens on my bones.
I hardly breathe. “Safaa? Amin?”
My voice is little more than a whisper but she’ll
hear anyway. My thoughts will reach her from
here. I wait for her to turn. To look at me with her
dark eyes.
“Sit down, Ghalib,” Baba says.
I didn’t even know I’d stood up. I whip around
to him. “It’s Safaa and Amin, Baba. Look!”
With their backs to me, Safaa and Amin watch
the man talk to the border guards. I don’t need to
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see their faces. I recognize them instantly. I know how she stands. How he clings to her. Who are these
people with them?
“I have her bag,” I say. “They don’t know
we’re here.”
“Sit down,” Baba says again.
His voice has a warning edge to it. That’s not
important right now. It’s more important to tell
Safaa and Amin we’re here. To get them away from
the border with its armed guards and that crazy man
with his documents and gestures and pointing.
“I’ll get them,” I say. “I’ll tell them we’re here.”
“No, Ghalib!” Baba says.
His fingers snatch at my shirt but he’s too slow.
I slip from his grasp. Step down the slope. I move
away from my family.
“Back in a minute,” I say.
“Ghalib!” Dayah says.
Heads turn toward me. I’m farther from my fam-
ily, nearer to Safaa and Amin.
“Come back, Ghalib,” Alan says.
My plastic sandals slip and slide over loose peb-
bles and water bottles. I slither down. Trip over piles
of belongings. People stare as I push past. I hear
whispers, a sharp intake of breath. In seconds I’m off
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the slope, moving on the level, closer to the border crossing. Closer to Safaa and Amin.
The border guards hear me, or perhaps they hear
the hush in the crowd. Dark suspicion fills their eyes.
They watch me. They hold still. Everything holds
still. Where before the air was full of talking and
shouting and movement, my world is now frozen. I
hear only the soft slap of my sandals as though I’m
the only person moving.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
I sweat under my shirt. Part of me regrets being
here, but a bigger part of me is happy to have found
Safaa. I get close to where she stands. I swing the car-
petbag off my shoulder to hand it over. The guards’
eyes lock on the bag. My world explodes.
Guards hurl themselves against the family, fling-
ing them to the dirt. They swing guns around. Point
them at my head. The crowd screams. The raw sound
drills into my skull. Amin and Safaa twist around to
stare at me. I see their faces. I realize I don’t know
them at all. The girl isn’t Safaa. Older, with pale flat eyes, she looks at me, terrified.
I search her face but can’t see any of Safaa’s wild-
cat stare. The boy is younger, with shorter hair than
Amin. He doesn’t have a comfort headscarf. He
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stares at me, at the carpetbag, with frightened eyes. I understand their fear. A moment ago, I was a curios-ity. Now I’m a possible suicide bomber with a bag of
explosives.
I fling the bag from me, toward the trench and
barbed wire. The guards track it with their muzzles.
The crack of gunfire splits the air. The explosion of
noise deafens me. In a blaze of smoke and bullets,
Safaa’s bag bursts into a million shreds of carpet and
torn clothing and scraps of cloth. The crowd screams
and stampedes. I run too, pelting toward the shel-
ter of the canopy. Turkish border guards burst into
the sunlight from beneath it, guns pointed, ready to
shoot. They catapult toward me, casting their eyes
around in search of the suicide bomber. I crash to the
dirt. Cover my head. Gasp for forgiveness. Guards
pound past me. I pull myself from the ground and
look after them. The guards are still running. Still
searching for the suicide bomber. They don’t realize
it was me.
Legs shaking, I take off again. I hammer beneath
the canopy. My footsteps echo and repeat in the
shadows. Behind me, something pops and whooshes.
I hear it again. I look back. The air fills with clouds
of white smoke. People gasp. Cough and splutter.
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Run from the slopes. They cover their mouths. Two drivers stand at their trucks, staring at the screaming
crowds, at the bedlam and the white smoke.
“Tear gas!” one of them says. They clamber into
their cabs. Shut the doors.
I run. I leave behind gunfire and screams and
stampeding crowds. I leave behind choking white
smoke, but even so, it stings my throat, my eyes, my
breathing. My lungs burn like fire. I keep running.
I burst from the shadows and into the open air and
hard sunshine. My feet scald me. I think only of get-
ting away.
Behind me is more gunfire. More screaming.
More running. I hear footsteps now. They’re after
me! Guards are chasing me.
I don’t stop. I don’t look around. I keep running.
My damaged feet pound the road, every step slicing
pain through me. The road slopes upward, climbing
the flank of a hill. At the top is a rocky outcrop of
boulders and loose stones with shrubs and straggling
bushes. If I can reach that without a bullet in my
back, I might survive. I’ll hide. Catch my breath.
Footsteps gain on me, hammering along the road.
Closer all the time. Any second I expect a hand to
grab me. To drag me to the ground. More than one
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guard chases me. I hear their gasping breaths, their grunts as th
ey climb the hill. They move fast, but I
don’t slow down. I keep going, my eyes fixed on the
rocks. I can’t run much farther. My heart leaps in my
chest. My hurt lungs burn. My feet feel as though
I’m running on blades. I stumble. Almost fall, but
recover.
“Come on, boy,” a voice says. “Keep going.”
A man is almost alongside me. He’s not a guard.
He speaks Arabic like a Syrian.
“You’ve made it this far,” he says. “You can reach
the rocks.” He runs past me.
I glance back. Other people are strung along the
length of the road. Nobody is in uniform. Nobody is
a border guard. Men. A boy. A woman at the rear. I
face forward. My head spins but I run as fast as I can.
The rocky outcrop is closer now. I’m nearly there.
I duck between massive boulders. I stop running
at last. Lean over, hands on my knees. I throw up,
gulping for air. Shuddering retches shake my whole
body. My breath rips through my chest.
“Breathe,” the man says. “Breathe.”
My face and shirt are soaked with tears, or sweat,
or vomit. I can’t even lift my head. Who is this man?
What happened?
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“You’re through,” the man says. He’s out of breath too, gasping his words. He smiles. “We’re all
through. We’re safe. They won’t chase us this far.”
I pull myself upright. Stare at him.
“I don’t know what you did,” he says, “but
you opened a chance for us. We ran on your heels.
Through the border. Out of Syria. Into Turkey.”
I’ve crossed the border. I’m in Turkey.
This is where I wanted to go, except I’m not
with my family. I’m alone. I have nothing except the
clothes on my back.
I scan the sweating faces around me. Everyone
smiles. Laughs even. They pant. They wipe hot
brows. The woman hugs a man and a teenage boy:
she is with family. Giddy relief seems to pass through
everyone but me. I didn’t plan this. These people are
not my family. I know none of them.
“I thought it was Safaa and Amin,” I say to the
man. It’s a stupid thing to say. It makes no sense to
anyone but me.
“I said to Ali you didn’t look like a suicide
bomber,” the man says.
He slaps the back of another man propped against
the rock, who squints at me in the brightness of the
dropping sun.
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“You don’t look like much at all,” says the other man, Ali.
“You know they could have shot you?” the first
man says.
I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to do any-
thing. I just wanted to give Safaa her bag. To tell her
where we were. Except it wasn’t Safaa or Amin. My
eyes wanted to see them so much that I believed it was
them. My eyes told me lies. Now my heart is break-
ing because I’m alone on the wrong side of the border.
“Why are you crying?” Ali says. “You’re safe now.”
“I’m on my own.” My voice cracks.
“You’re not on your own,” he says. “We’re
here. What’s your name?” He puts his hand on my
shoulder.
I pull away. Ali and the man with him look per-
haps in their twenties. They wear jeans and imitation
leather jackets, like the ones in the market in Kobani.
“This is my brother Musab,” Ali says. “We’re
from Aleppo.”
“I’m Ghalib,” I say at last. I’m a little wary. I wish
I wasn’t alone. “From Kobani. My family is on the
other side of the border.”
The border is now empty of people and traf-
fic, but crawling with Turkish guards in gas masks.
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The tear gas lingers and drifts like smoke. Buses and trucks move back from the crossing. Horns blare.
Engines rev. People shout.
“We need to move,” Ali says. He looks at the
group. “Backup will arrive any moment from
Reyhanli. This place will be crawling with soldiers.”
“We’re heading for Reyhanli Refugee Camp,”
says the man with the family. “We’ll follow the road.”
“Your decision,” says Ali. “But a dangerous one.
My brother and I will hide in the hills until dark and
then follow the road to town.”
The family listens. So does another man who ran
with us. He hasn’t spoken yet. An older man with
dark skin, he wears a traditional long robe, skinny
legs poking from it. He grips a small bundle and
doesn’t look strong enough to outrun border guards,
yet that’s exactly what he did.
A distant scream of sirens swells and fades with
the mood of the breeze. Backup is already on its way.
I don’t want to be on the road when the Turkish
army arrives.
“Hills,” says the old man to no one in particular.
His voice is gruff. Before anyone replies, he’s off
the highway, climbing the scrubby shale like a
skinny goat.
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“Come on, Ghalib,” says Musab.
I look at him like a fool. I don’t know what to
do. My chest hurts. My gut is loose. I look at the
border where my family is. I look up the steep hill-
side, where the old man is already well up its flanks.
I look along the road to Reyhanli.
“You’ll be safer in the hills,” says Musab. “You
can decide what to do tomorrow.”
I climb, grabbing handholds and scrambling over
boulders as I follow the two brothers, who clamber
ahead of me. In minutes, I emerge from the rocky
cluster to find myself already high above the road.
A fresh wind whips my hair and cools my cheeks.
The stony ground is loose, scattered with small spiky
shrubs. Breathless and sweating, I look at the nar-
row tracks rising steeply up the hillside: old goat
trails leading through the barren hills of Turkey. Far
ahead, the old man scurries over the trails.
I look back at Syria. Nobody is on the slopes
where I spent the whole day with my family. Peo-
ple have retreated from the gunfire and tear gas. I
turn my back on the border and follow two strangers
through the darkening hills deeper into Turkey.
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We stop climbing when it gets too dark to see.
“It’s dangerous to continue,” Musab says.
We crouch among the scrub and loose rocks in a
small fold among the fabric of the hills. I’m relieved
to stop. My feet burn in my sandals. The ragged ban-
dages Baba wrapped for me are shredded and filthy.
My chest gurgles and my throat stings from the tear
gas. I look at the sky as the last light leaks from it and the stillness of night settles around.
With a jolt of shock, I realize we’re not alone.
Loose stones scrape behind me. The crunch of foot-
fall. The rub of clothing. Someone is coming through
the dark. Someone who moves without speaking.
I peer through the blackness until my eyes ache.
It’s too
dark to see anything. Who is in these wild
hills? Soldiers searching for us?
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I see a shadow. I flinch. Ali lunges forward to grab someone in the dark. A boy screams. A woman
cries out.
“As-salamu alaykum! ” a man says. “Don’t hurt us!”
It’s the man who crossed the border with his
family.
Ali grips him around the neck. Holds him tight
until he is certain. “Why sneak up on us?” His voice
is cold and hard.
“We came up the hillside away from the road,”
the man says. His voice is tight. Frightened. “We
couldn’t catch up to you. We didn’t know you had
stopped.”
Ali releases the man. When we’ve all calmed
down and caught our breath, the six of us settle
overnight in this barren place. I feel even lonelier
now that there are more of us. The brothers and the
family chat among themselves, but I am silent. I’m
also cold. The breeze has a bite and my damp shirt
is chill against my skin. I haven’t had anything to eat
or drink since morning. I’m not hungry, but all I can
think of is water—clean and fresh and running. My
throat is dry, my mouth sticky. I long for a bottle of
water. Even a mouthful. But there’s none. This will
be a long night.
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The soft talk finally dies down. The night deepens and the others sleep. I alone remain awake.
I gaze at the stars, shouting their brightness from
the Turkish horizon on one side to the Syrian hori-
zon on the other. I think of Baba and wonder if
he’s watching the stars too. I think of my family,
waiting to cross. I wonder where Safaa and Amin
are now, and realize how stupid I was to see them
in two strangers. Darkness soaks into my blood
like a stain I’ll carry forever. I’m so cold, so thirsty, so scared.
Sleep doesn’t come. In the cold moonlight, I look
at the people around me. The family curls together in
a tight knot. Watching them hurts my heart. Musab
and Ali also lie close; one of them snores but I can’t
tell which. I envy their closeness. They’re brothers.
They have each other’s back. There’s strength in that.
I feel stronger when I’m with Alan and Hamza, and
wish more than anything they were with me now.
Family means everything. Family feeds my soul. I
turn from the group so their togetherness no longer
aches my heart.
“You need to watch out, boy,” a voice says.
I whip around. The woman watches me from
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