Refugee

by Alan Gratz

  The Castillo and Fernandez families helped each other up onto the sandy beach, and their wet feet became dry feet. Señor Castillo fell to his knees and kissed the ground.

  They had made it to the States. To freedom.

  Still in a dream, Isabel wobbled up the sand toward the flashing lights and thumping music and dancing people. She stepped into the light, and the music stopped and everyone turned to stare. Then suddenly people were running to help her and her family.

  A tan young woman in a bikini dropped into the sand beside Isabel.

  “Oh, my God, chiquita,” she said in Spanish. “Did you just come off a boat? Are you Cuban?”

  “Yes,” Isabel said. She was trembling, but she clung to Mariano like she would never let him go. “I’m from Cuba,” Isabel said, “but my little brother was born here. He’s an American. And soon I will be too.”

  Hungarian people on both sides of the road stopped and stared as Mahmoud and the rest of the refugees marched down the middle of the highway. Men, women, children, they had all come pouring out of the detention center after Mahmoud, joined by the UN observers, and the police had done nothing to stop them.

  The refugees stretched from one side of the northbound lane to the other, blocking cars from passing them. Packs of young Syrian men walked and laughed together. A Palestinian woman pushed a stroller with a sleeping girl in it. An Afghan family sang a song. The refugees wore jeans, and sneakers, and hoodies tied around their waists, and carried what little they still owned in backpacks and trash bags.

  Mahmoud’s father and mother found him and Waleed in the crowd.

  “Mahmoud! What are you doing?” his father cried.

  “We’re walking to Austria!” Waleed said.

  Dad showed them the map on his phone. “But it’s a twelve-hour walk,” he said.

  “We can do it,” Mahmoud said. “We’ve already come this far. We can go just a little farther.”

  Mahmoud’s mother pulled him into a hug, and then Waleed, and soon their father had joined them. Refugees streamed around them, and when Mahmoud’s mother let them all go she was smiling and crying at the same time.

  Cars honked behind the marchers, trying to get past. More cars stopped on the other side of the highway to honk and cheer them on or boo them. A police van pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and through a loudspeaker a policeman told everyone in Arabic, “Stop, or you will be arrested!” But no one stopped, and no one was arrested.

  Mahmoud and his family walked with the crowd for hours. Visible. Exposed. It was scary, but energizing too. They marched quietly, calmly, flashing peace signs at people who cheered them on from the sidelines. Police cars with spinning red lights paced them on the other side of the road, occasionally bweep-bweeping to warn some car away. News helicopters flew overhead, and a woman from the the New York Times worked her way through the crowd, asking Mahmoud questions and interviewing refugees.

  See us, Mahmoud thought. Hear us. Help us.

  Twelve hours had seemed like nothing when Mahmoud added up all the time they’d been walking since they’d left Aleppo. But this walk quickly seemed endless. They had no water and no food, and Mahmoud’s stomach growled and his lips were dry. He felt like one of the zombies from his favorite video game. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but Mahmoud knew they couldn’t stop. If they stopped, the Hungarians would arrest them. They had to keep moving forward. Always forward. Even if it killed them.

  Later that night, Mahmoud and his family at last reached the border of Austria. There was no fence, no wall, no border check post. Just a blue traffic sign by the side of the road with the words REPUBLIK OSTERREICH inside the EU’s circle of gold stars, and above it a sign with the red-and-white flag of Austria.

  The Hungarian police cars stopped following them as soon as they stepped across the border, and the refugees paused to hug each other and celebrate their escape. Mahmoud fell to his knees, fighting back tears of exhaustion and happiness. They had made it. It wasn’t Germany, not yet, but Germany was just one country away. The refugees were still laughing and congratulating each other when the phone Mahmoud’s father carried beeped an alarm. So did another phone, and another, until the whole crowd was a chorus of alarms.

  It was time for the Isha’a prayer, the last prayer of the day.

  Mahmoud’s dad used an app called iSalam to find the exact direction they should face to pray to Mecca. Mahmoud’s family found a patch of grass all to themselves and the hundreds of other refugees did the same, and soon they were all bowing and praying together. It wasn’t ideal—they were supposed to wash themselves and pray in a clean place—but it was more important to pray at the right time than in the right place.

  As he recited the first chapter of the Qur’an, Mahmoud thought about the words. Thee alone we worship, and thee alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path. Their path had been anything but straight, but Allah had delivered them to this place. With his blessings, they might actually reach Germany.

  When Mahmoud finished his prayers and opened his eyes, he saw a small group of Austrians had gathered at the edges of the praying refugees. There were police officers there too, and more cars with flashing lights. Mahmoud sagged. They only see us when we do something they don’t like, he thought again. The refugees had stopped to get down on their knees and pray, and these people watching them didn’t do that. Didn’t understand. Now the refugees looked foreign again, alien. Like they didn’t belong.

  Mahmoud worried what the crowd might do when the Austrians told them they didn’t want them. Their march through Hungary had been peaceful until now. Would this turn into another fight that would see them gassed and handcuffed and thrown into prison again?

  “Welcome to Austria!” one of the Austrians said in heavily accented Arabic, and others yelled “Willkommen!” and applauded. Actually applauded them. Mahmoud looked around at Waleed, who was as stunned as Mahmoud. Was there some mistake? Did these people think they were something other than Syrian refugees?

  Suddenly, they were surrounded by Austrians—men, women, and children all smiling and trying to shake their hands and give them things. A woman gave Mahmoud’s mother a handful of clean clothes, and a man worried over his father’s cuts and bruises. A boy about Mahmoud’s age wearing a New York Yankees jersey handed him a plastic shopping bag with bread and cheese and fruit and a bottle of water in it. Mahmoud was so thankful he almost wept.

  “Thank you,” Mahmoud said in Arabic.

  “Bitte,” the boy said, which Mahmoud guessed was German for “You’re welcome.”

  The Austrians, they learned, had seen their march on the television, and had come out to help them. It was like that all the way up the road to Nickelsdorf, the closest Austrian town with a train station. White, native-born Austrians and olive-skinned Arab Austrians who had recently immigrated to the country filled the overpasses, throwing bottles of water and food down to them—bread, fresh fruit, bags of chips. A man next to Mahmoud caught a whole grilled chicken wrapped in aluminum foil.

  “We are with you! Go with God!” a woman shouted down to them in Arabic.

  Mahmoud’s heart lifted. They weren’t invisible anymore, hidden away in the detention center. People were finally seeing them, and good people were helping them.

  At last, Mahmoud and his family reached the Nickelsdorf train station, where they bought tickets to Vienna, the capital of Austria. They traveled overnight by train, and when they arrived in Vienna the next morning they bought tickets to Munich, a large city in Germany. In Munich, the response was the same as in Austria, only bigger. There were thousands of refugees at the train station, and moving among them were hundreds of regular German people offering bottles of water and cups of coffee and tea. One couple had brought a basket full of candy and were handing pieces out to children. Mahmoud and Waleed joined the happy mob of kids around them and each got a couple of candies, which they wolfed down. A more organized effort was unloading a truck full of fresh fruit, and anot
her group was handing out diapers to anyone with babies.

  Seeing the diapers reminded Mahmoud of Hana, and he looked up at his mother. He could tell she was thinking of his baby sister too. She put a hand to her mouth, and soon she was working her way through the crowd again, asking anyone and everyone if they had seen her daughter. But no one had seen or heard of a baby plucked from the water. If the people who had rescued her made it to safety, though, they were likely somewhere here in Germany. Mahmoud and his family would just have to keep looking.

  An official-looking German man with a name tag that said Serhat—a Turkish name—approached Mahmoud’s father with a clipboard in hand. “Are you and your family seeking asylum in Germany?” he asked in perfect Arabic.

  Mahmoud held his breath. Was this it? Was the end of their long, horrible nightmare near? Could they finally stop moving, stop sleeping and praying in doorways and bus stations? In Germany, Mahmoud and his family could make new lives for themselves. Mahmoud could finally find a way to reconnect with Waleed. They could find Hana. Get his dad laughing and joking again. Find peace for his mom. After coming so far, after losing so much, it felt like Mahmoud and his family were almost to the Promised Land.

  All they had to do was make room in their hearts for Germany the way it had made room for them, and accept this strange new place as their home.

  “Yes,” Mahmoud’s father said, a smile slowly growing on his face. “A thousand times yes.”

  This was the coda to Isabel’s song.

  She stood with a trumpet in hand—a gift from Uncle Guillermo, Lito’s brother. She wasn’t on a sidewalk in Havana, but in a classroom in Miami. It was her second week of school, and the first day of band class. The day they auditioned for their places in the orchestra.

  Isabel twiddled her fingers on the trumpet’s keys. She couldn’t believe she was standing here, in this classroom, less than a month after stumbling onto Miami Beach with her baby brother in her arms.

  So much had changed, so quickly. After her mother and brother had been taken to the hospital and given a clean bill of health, Lito’s brother, Guillermo, took them in until they found a little apartment of their own. His apartment was smaller than their house in Cuba, and not near the beach, but if Isabel never saw the ocean again that was fine by her.

  Little Mariano was at home, getting fat and happy along with the other babies Mami was paid to watch at the little in-house daycare she ran. Papi had gotten a job driving a taxi and was saving up for a car of their own. Señora Castillo planned to go back to school to become an American lawyer, and Señor Castillo was already talking to someone about getting a loan to open a restaurant. Luis got work in a little bodega, and Amara in a dress shop, and once Amara became a US citizen she planned to become a Miami police officer. They were going to be married in the winter.

  And Isabel, she had started the sixth grade. It was hard because she didn’t speak English yet. But there were other Cuban kids there, lots more Cuban kids, a few who had come to America by boat, like her, but more who had been born here, Cubanoamericanos who still spoke Spanish at home. Isabel had quickly made friends, girls and boys who were warm and welcoming, and she knew she would learn to speak English like her teachers soon enough. She was practicing by watching lots and lots of television. (At least that’s what she told her parents.) She would learn, and in the meantime math and Spanish and art class all still made sense.

  And so did music.

  Señor Villanueva and the other students waited for her to play. Isabel had practiced for weeks for this moment. At first she couldn’t decide what song to play, but then, while watching a baseball game with her father, she had figured it out.

  Isabel adjusted Iván’s Industriales baseball cap on her head, took a deep breath, and began to play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States. But she didn’t play it like she’d heard it at baseball games on the television. She played it like a son cubano, offbeat with a guajeo melody.

  Isabel played it salsa for Iván, lost at sea, and for Lito, back in Cuba. She played it salsa for her mother and her father, who had left their homeland, and for her little brother, Mariano, who would never know the streets of Havana the way she had. And Isabel played it salsa for herself, so she would never forget where she came from. Who she was.

  Soon, Isabel had everyone in the room clapping along to the beat with her, but as she played she heard a different rhythm, a beat underneath the one everyone else was clapping to. Her foot tapped in time with the hidden cadence, and she realized with a thrill that she was finally hearing it.

  She was finally counting clave.

  Lito was wrong. She didn’t have to be in Havana to hear it. To feel it. She had brought Cuba with her to Miami.

  Isabel finished with a flourish, and Señor Villaneuva and the other students cheered. She thought she might cry for happiness, but she bit back her tears. She had done enough crying over Iván and Lito.

  The song of her leaving Cuba to find a new home was over.

  Today it was time to start a new song.

  A German song Mahmoud had never heard before played on the radio of the van that took him and his family through the streets of Berlin. The capital of Germany was the biggest city he had ever seen, far bigger than Aleppo. It was filled with nightclubs and cafés and shops and monuments and statues and apartments and office buildings. Almost all the signs were in German, but here and there he saw a sign in Arabic advertising a clothing store or a restaurant or a market. Buildings lined the sidewalks like ten-story walls of brick and glass, and cars and bicycles and buses and trams rattled and honked and clanged by in the streets.

  This strange, frightening, exciting place was to be Mahmoud’s new home.

  The German government had taken in Mahmoud and his family. For the past four weeks the four of them had lived in a school in Munich that had been turned into simple but clean housing for refugees. They had stayed there—free to come and go as they pleased—until a host family agreed to let them share their home while Mahmoud’s parents got on their feet.

  A host family here, on this street, in the capital of the country.

  The van pulled up to the curb outside a little green house with white shutters and an A-frame roof. Flowers filled the window boxes like Mahmoud had seen in Austria, and two German cars were parked in the driveway. Across the street in a park, teenagers did tricks on skateboards.

  Mahmoud’s father slid open the side door for them to climb out, and Mahmoud and his mother and brother grabbed the backpacks filled with the clothes, toiletries, and bedrolls the German relief workers had given them. The relief worker who’d driven them led Mahmoud’s mother and father and brother up the steps to the front door of the little house, but Mahmoud stood for a moment on the sidewalk, looking around at the neighborhood. Mahmoud knew from his history class back in Syria that Berlin had been all but destroyed by the end of World War II, reduced to a pile of rubble like Aleppo was now. Would it take another seventy years for Syria to return from the ashes the way Germany had? Would he ever see Aleppo again?

  Cries of joy and welcome came from the porch, and Mahmoud followed his family up the steps. His mother was being hugged by an elderly German woman, and an elderly German man was shaking hands with his father. The German relief worker had to translate everything everyone said to each other. Mahmoud and his family didn’t speak German yet, and the family apparently didn’t speak any Arabic. The German family had at least managed a sign written in Arabic that said WELCOME HOME on it, even if the expression they had used was a bit formal. Mahmoud still appreciated the effort—it was better than he could do in German.

  The man shaking hands with his father turned to Mahmoud and Waleed, and what Mahmoud saw surprised him. He was a really old man! He had wrinkly white skin and thin white hair that stuck out a bit on the sides, like he’d tried to comb it but it wouldn’t stay put. When the relief worker had told them they’d be staying with a “German family,” Mahmoud had imagined
a family like his own, not like his grandparents.

  “His name is Saul Rosenberg,” the relief worker translated, “and he says welcome to your new home.” As Mahmoud shook the old man’s hand, he spotted a small, thin, ornate wooden box attached to the frame just outside the front door. Mahmoud recognized the symbol on the box—it was the Star of David! The same symbol on the flag of Israel. Mahmoud tried not to show his surprise. Not only was this couple old, they were Jewish! Back in the Middle East, Mahmoud knew, Jews and Muslims had been fighting each other for decades. This was a strange new world.

  Herr Rosenberg’s wife broke away from Mahmoud’s mother and bent down to say hello. She was a wide woman, white-haired like her husband, with big round glasses and a gap-toothed, friendly smile. From the pockets of her frock she withdrew a little stuffed rabbit made of white corduroy and offered it to Waleed. His eyes lit up as he took it from her.

  “Frau Rosenberg made it herself. She’s a toy designer,” the translator explained.

  The old woman said something, directly to Mahmoud.

  “She says she would have made one for you too,” the translator said, “but she thought you might be too old for stuffed animals.”

  Mahmoud nodded. “She can make one for my little sister, though, when we find her,” he told the relief worker. “We had to hand her off to another boat to save her when we were drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. It was my fault. I’m the one who told my mother to do it, and now I have to find her and bring her back.”

  Frau Rosenberg looked questioningly at the relief worker as he translated, and her bright smile faded. Waleed ran off to show his mother his new toy, and the old woman led Mahmoud into the hallway just inside the house, where family pictures hung on the wall.

  “I was a refugee once, just like you,” the old woman said through the interpreter, “and I lost my brother.” She pointed to an old brown photograph in a picture frame, of a mother and father and two children: a boy about Mahmoud’s age in glasses, and a little girl. The father and son wore suits and ties, and the mother wore a pretty dress with big buttons. The girl was dressed like a little sailor. “That’s me there, the girl. That’s my family. We left Germany on a ship in 1939, trying to get to Cuba. To escape the Nazis. I was very little then, and I’m very old now, and I don’t remember too much about that time. But I do remember my father being very sick. And a cartoon about a cat. I remember that. And a very nice policeman who let me wear his hat.