Refugee

by Alan Gratz

  The boy led them to an empty yogurt shop on the third floor, next to a former music store that was home to a Syrian family of six. They looked like they had been there a while. They had a tattered old couch and a hot plate, and sheets hung from ropes to quarter the space into little rooms.

  The yogurt shop had no furniture and a broken linoleum floor. Something skittered away in the darkness when they went inside.

  “It’s just for the night,” Mahmoud’s father said.

  “You leave tomorrow?” the boy said. “On a boat? Then you need life vests. Most definitely. Or else you drown when your boat flips.”

  Mahmoud’s eyes went wide, and he shivered in his soaking-wet clothes. He didn’t like any part of this plan.

  His father raised his hands to his family. “The boat isn’t going to flip,” he told them.

  “Or run out of gas. Or wreck on the rocks,” the boy said. “Then you drown.”

  Dad sighed. “All right. All right. Where do we buy life vests?”

  Josef’s mother grabbed for his father’s flailing arms, but Aaron Landau was too strong for her, thin as he was.

  “No. No! They’re coming for us,” he said, his eyes frantic. “The ship is slowing down. Can’t you feel it? We’re slowing so they can turn us around, take us back to Germany!”

  Josef’s father pulled his arm away and knocked over a lamp. It fell to the floor with a crash, and the light went out.

  “Josef, help me,” his mother begged.

  Josef pulled himself away from the wall and tried to grab one of his father’s arms while his mother went for the other. In the corner of her bed, Ruthie buried her face in Bitsy’s ears and cried.

  “No!” Josef’s father cried. “We have to hide, do you hear me? We can’t stay here. We have to get off this ship!”

  Josef grabbed his father’s arm and held on tight. “No, Papa. We’re not turning around,” Josef said. “We’re slowing for a funeral. A funeral at sea.”

  Josef’s father stopped dead, but Josef kept a tight hold on him. He hadn’t wanted to tell his father about the funeral, but now it seemed the only way to calm him down.

  Aaron Landau’s bulging, haunted eyes swept to his son. “A funeral? Who’s died? A passenger? It was the Nazis who did it! I knew they were on board! They’re after us all!” He began to thrash again, more panicked than before.

  “No, Papa, no!” Josef said. He fought to hold on to his father. “It was an old man. Professor Weiler. He was sick when he came aboard. It’s not the Nazis, Papa.”

  Josef knew all about it. Ruthie had begged him to go swimming in the pool with her and Renata and Evelyne that afternoon. But Josef was a man now, not a boy. He was too old for kids’ stuff. He’d been walking the outside boardwalk on B-deck instead, keeping an eye out for the man from the engine room, Schiendick, and his friends, when he’d heard a cry from one of the cabin portholes. Peeking inside, he saw a woman with long, curly black hair and a white dress sobbing as she lay across the body of an old man. Captain Schroeder and the ship’s doctor were there too. The man in the bed was perfectly still, his mouth open and his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

  He was dead. Josef had never seen a dead body so close up before.

  “You there! Boy!”

  Josef had jumped. A woman walking her little dog on the boardwalk on B-deck had caught him peeping. He had sprinted away as the little dog barked at him, but not before Josef heard the ship’s doctor say that Professor Weiler had died of cancer.

  In his family’s cabin now a few hours later, Josef still clung to his father’s arm, trying to calm him down.

  “He was an old man, and he’d been sick for a long time already!” Josef told his father. “They’re burying him at sea because we’re too far away from Cuba.”

  Josef and his mother hung on to his father until Josef’s words finally got through. Papa stopped struggling against them and sagged, and suddenly they were holding him up off the floor.

  “He was sick already?” Papa asked.

  “Yes. It was the cancer,” Josef said.

  Josef’s father let them guide him to his bed, where he sat down. Mama went to Ruthie to comfort her.

  “When is the funeral?” Papa asked.

  “Late tonight,” Josef told him.

  “I want to go,” his father said.

  Josef couldn’t believe it. Papa hadn’t left the cabin in eleven days, and now he wanted to go to the funeral of someone he’d never met? In his condition? Josef looked worriedly to his mother, who held Ruthie in her lap.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Mama said, echoing Josef’s thoughts.

  “I saw too many men die without funerals at Dachau,” Papa said. “I will go to this one.”

  It was the first time his father had even spoken the name of the place he’d been, and it was like a winter frost covered everything in the room. It ended the conversation as quickly as it had begun.

  “Take Josef with you, then,” Mama said. “Ruthie and I will stay here.”

  That night, Josef led his father to A-deck aft, where the captain and his first officer waited with a few other passengers. The passengers’ clothes looked shabby, and it was only when he heard his father tearing his shirt that Josef understood—ripping your garments was a Jewish tradition at funerals, and they had torn theirs in sympathy with Mrs. Weiler. Josef pulled on his own collar until the seam ripped. His father nodded, then led him to the sandbox by the pool and had him take a handful of sand. Josef didn’t understand, but he did as he was told.

  The elevator to A-deck arrived, and Mrs. Weiler emerged first, a candle in hand. Behind her came the rabbi and four sailors, who carried Professor Weiler’s body on a stretcher. He was bound up tight in a white sailcloth, like an Egyptian pharaoh.

  “Hold on there.” The man from below decks, Schiendick, pushed through the small crowd with two fellow crew members. “I’m Otto Schiendick, the Nazi Party leader on this ship,” he said, “and German law says that a body buried at sea must be covered with the national flag.” Schiendick unfurled the red-and-white Nazi flag with the black swastika in the middle, and the passengers gasped.

  Papa pushed his way forward. “Never! Do you hear me? Never! It’s a sacrilege!” He was shaking worse than ever. Josef had never seen his father this angry, and he was frightened for him. Schiendick wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to mess with.

  Josef grabbed his father’s arm and tried to pull him away.

  Papa spat at the feet of Schiendick. “That is what I think of you and your flag!”

  Schiendick and his men surged forward to avenge the insult, but Captain Schroeder quickly intervened.

  “Stop this! Stop this at once, Steward!” Captain Schroeder commanded.

  Schiendick addressed his captain but never took his eyes off Josef’s father. “It’s German law. And I see no reason for an exception to be made in this case.”

  “And I do,” Captain Schroeder said. “Now, take that flag and leave here, Mr. Schiendick, or I will relieve you of duty and have you confined to quarters.”

  The steward held Papa’s gaze a long moment more. His eyes shifted to Josef, giving him goose bumps, and then Schiendick turned and stormed away.

  Josef’s chest heaved like he’d been running a marathon. He was so wound up he was quivering worse than his father. Sand slipped from his shaking fist.

  The captain apologized profusely for the disturbance, and the funeral continued. The rabbi said a short prayer in Hebrew, and the sailors slid the body of Professor Weiler over the side of the ship.

  After a moment, there was a quiet splash, and the mourners said together, “Remember, God, that we are of dust.” One by one they stepped to the rail, where they released handfuls of sand—the sand Josef’s father had told him to take from the sandbox. Josef joined his father at the rail, and they scattered their sand in the sea.

  Captain Schroeder and his first officer put their caps back on and saluted. They touched the brims
of their hats, Josef noticed, instead of giving the Hitler salute.

  Without words, the funeral service broke up. Josef expected his father to return to their cabin right away, but instead he lingered at the rail, staring down into the dark waters of the Atlantic. What is he thinking? Josef wondered. What happened to him at Dachau that he’s now a ghost of the man he once was?

  “At least he didn’t have to be buried in the hell of the Third Reich,” his father said.

  The ship rumbled softly, and Josef knew the captain had restarted the engines. They were on their way to Cuba again. But how much time had they lost?

  The tanker emerged from the darkness like some giant leviathan come to swallow them. It stood at least seven stories tall out of the water and was so wide it filled the horizon. Its pointed bow sent huge waves sluicing away, and two massive anchors stood out from the sides like the horns on a monster. Isabel quailed in fear. It was straight out of a nightmare.

  “A ship!” Lito yelled. “We’ve drifted into the shipping lanes!”

  But by now everyone had seen it. The rumble of the ship’s massive engines had awakened Mami and Señora Castillo, and everyone was scrambling around in the boat in a panic, making it rock dangerously.

  “It’s coming right for us!” Amara screamed.

  Isabel climbed over Iván, trying to get as far away from the tanker as she could. She slipped and fell with a splash into the bottom of the boat.

  “Everybody settle down!” Señor Castillo cried, but no one was listening.

  “We have to get the engine started!” Papi cried. He yanked frantically on the starter chain, barely giving the engine time to cough and die before he yanked on it again.

  “Don’t! You’ll flood it and it’ll never start!” Luis said, trying to wrestle the chain from him.

  “Where are the matches?” Lito cried. “We have to start a fire! They can’t see us in the dark!”

  “Here!” said Iván. He lifted a matchbox from the Styrofoam carton that held the few emergency supplies they’d brought.

  “No!” Papi yelled. He lunged for Iván’s outstretched hand, and together they fell against the side of the boat, tipping it. Isabel’s mother fell into the pool of water on the bottom and slid into the side of the boat with a thump. Isabel crawled to help her.

  Lito grabbed Papi by the shirt. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  Papi held the matchbox out of Lito’s reach. “We don’t want to be seen, you old fool!” he yelled over the growing thunder of the tanker. “If they see us, they’ll have to rescue us! It’s maritime law! And if they ‘rescue’ us, they’ll send us back to Cuba!”

  “Would you rather they send us to the ocean floor?” Lito yelled.

  Isabel couldn’t help looking up as she pulled her mother out of the water. “It’s getting closer!” Isabel cried. The tanker was still hundreds of meters away, but it was so huge it felt like it was on top of them. They were never getting out of its way. Isabel’s heart thumped so hard she thought it was going to burst right out of her chest.

  “If we don’t want them to know we’re here, maybe we shouldn’t start the engine!” Amara yelled.

  “They’ll never hear us no matter what we do!” Señor Castillo said. The tanker was so loud now it sounded like a jet engine. He and Luis flipped a switch on their own engine and yanked the starter chain again. A puff of gray smoke poofed out from the engine, but it didn’t catch.

  The tanker loomed larger. Closer. Isabel cringed. It was going to hit them!

  Luis yanked on the chain. A cough. A sputter. Nothing.

  Cough. Sputter. Nothing.

  Cough. Sputter. Nothing.

  The sea swelled in front of the tanker, pushing them higher and away, and for a fleeting moment Isabel’s hopes rose with it. But then the swell passed, and they were pulled back in by the tanker’s massive draw. Their little blue boat spun sideways, and they zoomed toward the big ship’s prow.

  The tanker was going to tear them in half, right down the middle.

  Isabel looked up into the terrified eyes of Iván as he realized the same thing, and they screamed. Then suddenly they were both thrown to the bottom of the boat, and something buzzed like a mosquito underneath the howl of the tanker.

  Luis had gotten the engine to start!

  Their little boat shot forward in the water, darting out of the way of the tanker’s prow. But the waves thrown off by the big ship lifted up the back end of Isabel’s boat and dumped an ocean of seawater on top of them.

  Isabel swallowed a mouthful of salty water and tumbled across the boat. She slammed into something hard, and her shoulder exploded with pain. She came up spluttering. She was hip-deep in water and the engine had stopped again, but none of that mattered right now.

  Iván’s father had fallen overboard.

  Isabel saw his white-haired head rise up out of the water. Señor Castillo gulped for air, then disappeared as a wave from the massive tanker’s wake rolled over him.

  “Señor Castillo!” Isabel cried.

  “Papá!” Iván shouted. “Where is he? Do you see him?”

  Isabel and Iván frantically searched the dark water, watching for Señor Castillo to surface again. They had missed the huge ship’s prow by mere meters, but the waves the behemoth created as it passed were just as dangerous. The ocean heaved and sank, the little boat tipping over sideways as the waves caught it amidships.

  Everyone was just getting back up from the floor of the boat when they were sent tumbling again. Iván rolled to the other side of the boat, but Isabel hung on. There! She saw Señor Castillo’s head pop up from under the water, but only for a gasping second—too quick to get enough air.

  In a flash, Isabel remembered her grandmother disappearing under the waves just like that two years ago, and without another thought, Isabel dove in after Señor Castillo.

  Mahmoud screamed.

  He howled louder than a fighter jet, and his parents didn’t even tell him to hush. Lights came on in houses nearby, and curtains ruffled as people looked out at the noise. Mahmoud’s mother broke down in tears, and his father let the life jackets he carried drop to the ground.

  The smuggler had just told them their boat wasn’t leaving tonight.

  Again.

  “No boat today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow,” he’d told Mahmoud’s father.

  It was exactly the same thing he’d told Mahmoud’s father the day before. And the day before that. And every day for the last week. A text would come, telling them to hurry—hurry!—out to the beach, and every time they would pack up what few things they owned, grab the life jackets, and rush through the streets of Izmir to this parking lot, and every time there would be no boat waiting for them.

  First it was the weather, the smuggler said. Then another family that was supposed to go with them hadn’t arrived yet. Then it was the Turkish Coast Guard patrols. Or the boat wasn’t ready. There was always some reason they couldn’t leave. It was like some cruel school-yard game of keep away.

  Mahmoud and his family were at their wits’ end. This off-and-on-again business was tearing them apart. All except for Waleed. Lifeless Waleed, who didn’t flinch when bombs exploded.

  “I want to go back to Syria! I don’t care if we die,” Mahmoud said after he’d let out his scream. “I just want to get out of here!” Even as he said it, he heard the whine in his voice, the pathetic, toddler-like frustration. Part of him was embarrassed—he was older than that, more mature. He was almost a man. But another part of him just wanted to stomp his feet and pitch a fit, and that part of him was getting harder and harder to keep quiet.

  Little Hana started crying too, and Mahmoud’s mother tried to calm them both by pulling Mahmoud into a hug.

  “Look at it this way,” Dad said, “now we have more time to practice our Turkish.”

  No one laughed.

  “Let’s get back to the mall before someone takes our place,” Mom said wearily.

  Mahmoud carried the life jackets so his father
could carry Waleed, who quickly fell asleep on his father’s shoulder. His mother carried Hana. Even though Mahmoud hated the desperate feeling of defeat in going back to the mall, at least it meant not sleeping outside in the park.

  But this time, someone was waiting for them at the mall entrance.

  There were two of them, both Turkish men, in matching blue tracksuits. One of them was muscular, with curly black hair, a thin beard, and a thick gold chain necklace. The other was overweight and wore mirrored sunglasses, even though it was night.

  He was the one with the pistol stuck in the waist of his pants.

  “You want inside, you gotta pay rent,” the burly man told them.

  “Since when?” Mahmoud’s father said.

  “Since now,” the man said. “We own this building, and we’re tired of you Syrians freeloading.”

  More bullies, thought Mahmoud. Just like in Syria. Mahmoud’s legs went numb, and he thought he might fall over. He couldn’t bear the thought of walking any farther. Looking for a place to live again.

  “How much?” Mahmoud’s father asked wearily.

  “Five thousand pounds a night,” the muscular man said.

  Dad sighed and started to put Waleed down so he could pay the man.

  “Each,” the man said.

  “Each? Per night?” Dad said. Mahmoud knew his dad was doing the math in his head. There were five of them, and they’d already been here a week. How long could they afford to pay twenty-five thousand pounds a day and still have enough for the boat, and whatever came afterward?

  “No,” Mahmoud’s father said. Mom started to protest, but he shook his head. “No—we already have all our things. We’ll find someplace else to stay. It’s only until tomorrow.”

  The big man chuckled. “Right. Tomorrow.”

  Mahmoud staggered along behind his parents as they roamed the streets of Izmir, looking for someplace to sleep. His parents carried Waleed and Hana, but not him. He was too old to be carried anymore, and for the first time he wished he wasn’t.