Refugees

by Catherine Stine

  Somehow Johar lost his nerve and scrambled back into the hole. He cursed himself under his breath. The footsteps stopped, turned, then shuffled perilously close. Johar kept still but feared his breaths were as loud as crow caws.

  As if he sensed Johar's proximity, Naji blurted, “Where is that brother of yours? He won't do as a soldier, but we'll bring him along as our cook.”

  “My brother's not here. He went out,” Daq replied.

  “Out so late? You said yourself it's past curfew,” Naji replied. “You're lying.” Johar heard the crashing of objects, maybe his mother's wooden trunk. He prayed Naji would not find the radio.

  Daq spoke once more, “You were my friend. Don't you believe me?”

  “Friends, yes,” Naji murmured.

  “Then believe me. Johar went to care for our ailing aunt in the village,” insisted Daq. “Leave him alone. You're right, he's not fit for the life of a soldier.”

  Naji snickered.

  Johar heard footsteps retreating once more. He heard groans, the thump of the door, then footsteps fading. Curled like an infant in the crawl space, Johar thought, Daq is right. I'm not a soldier, and not even a man. He hated himself then for not having shouted, “If you take Daq, you take me as well!” Would he see his brother again?

  Johar heard the sound of crackling. As he shoved the rugs aside, he was blinded by black smoke. They'd set the house on fire!

  driftwood

  New York City,

  September 10, 2001

  “But I don't know how. I've never improvised before,” protested Dawn. She was scrunched on her sleeping bag in the storage room, which had been hastily transformed into Dawn and Jude's crash pad. Despite her nervousness with Sander leaning close, the air buzzed with excitement.

  “When I was your age I didn't have much confidence,” he said. “You've got to start somewhere and build up.” Sander waved her toward the door. “Come on! Five-minute improv. I'll coach you. Hey, you said you were into music.”

  “But really,” Dawn began, “I'm not sure….” She felt shy with Jude off to an open call for an extra in the musical Rent.

  “No excuses.” Sander took her hand and gently pulled her up. Dawn followed him out to the practice area, where Pax was already rehearsing, his fingers racing up and down his Stratocaster in manic riffs.

  Sander picked up an electric flute, plugged it into an amp, and handed it to Dawn. “I borrowed this from a guy in BronxBox. Practice on it till you get your sea legs.”

  “Thanks!” Dawn had never tried one before. She spread her lower lip over the mouthpiece and tried a few notes. Walls of amplified sound rose up.

  “Dude, let's go,” grumbled Pax. “We're going to play a song I wrote,” Sander explained to Dawn.

  “Cool! But how do you… you know—improvise?”

  “Inject yourself into the mood,” said Sander, settling onto his seat and rattling out a fill. “Then oil your bones and belt it out.” She nodded dumbly.

  Pax began the melody, then Sander leaped in on snare. Sander's song rocked—it was a heady mix of Alanis Morissette meets Incubus meets Thelonious Monk.

  Dawn, almost swooning as she stood next to Sander, honed in on the song's essence, and tried hard to imitate, but her syncopation was stiff and her tone was flat.

  “You're off-key!” protested Pax. How did his fingers know just where to fly?

  Dawn was trying, she really was, but after so many years of reading music how was she supposed to improvise just like that?

  Sander kept grinning at her and patiently laying down the beat.

  Dawn's fingers stumbled over themselves, and her mind froze with the unfamiliar tension of creating novel runs while attempting to match the key and the pace. She could hear the flute screech. It was awful! The band stopped dead. “You're like stone,” Pax grumbled. “Relax! We're not going to bite.”

  Dawn would have punched Pax if she hadn't wanted to punch herself even more. “I'm trying to,” she said.

  “That's your problem,” Pax shot back. “You're trying too hard.”

  “Paxman, cut her a break,” Sander insisted, and turned to Dawn. “When you force the riff, it sounds canned. Take it slow, Dawn. Don't rush it.” Sander's gravelly voice sent charges down her back. “Have fun with it like a kid with a toy, you know?” He tapped on the snare. “Here's something easy. Pax, let's play ‘Siesta.' ”

  Pax rolled his eyes but laid down the guitar track. Dawn picked up the flute and listened. It was a lazy, summer theme, a butterfly theme spun around from flower to flower. OK, she could picture it, and began to play.

  “Not bad,” Sander said. “Oh yeah,” he sang as he swung his shoulders.

  She was good. She was hot! Even Pax started to dip his hips.

  The door burst open. Two girls—a brunette and a honey blonde—threw themselves onto the couch. “Hi, guys,” they cooed. “What's up for later?”

  “Hey,” Sander said. “We're going to a BronxBox jam. Want to hang here until we're done?”

  “Sure.” They both started to giggle like groupies.

  Dawn's mind went fuzzy when the women stared at her. Sander didn't seem to notice, and the guys started up again. She tried to pick up the thread but rambled off the beat. “Um, sorry,” she mumbled.

  “This is a drag,” Pax complained. “I'm taking a break.” He lifted the guitar strap over his shoulder, laid the instrument on its stand, flopped onto the couch, and lit a cigarette. Then he took a drag, tapped it on the edge of the ashtray, and chuckled to himself on the exhale. So, the big-shot guitarist was laughing at the incompetent flutist, huh? Well, to hell with Pax! Dawn was far from a beginner. The women started to whisper. What now? Dawn wondered as she stood there like a bonehead.

  Sander slid his drumsticks into one of the metal ridges along the side of his bass drum. “Girls,” Sander said, gesturing toward Dawn, “This is a friend of Pax's brother.” They offered a distracted hello.

  Their hair's prettier than mine, Dawn thought bitterly. She said hi, then fumbled around the furniture and shut herself in her room, her cheeks hot with shame. What had made her think she could jam with someone like Sander? Pax was right; she was inept.

  “Is she joining your band?” Dawn could hear one of the girls ask.

  The other one piped up, “She's staying here?”

  Sander's response was so muted that Dawn couldn't make out his words. She flopped on her sleeping bag as the band resumed. The apartment door slammed shut, and the music stopped. “Hey, Jude, how'd it go?” she heard Pax ask.

  “Just terrific,” Jude snapped. Dawn could tell he was upset.

  “Good to hear it,” said Pax. “Oh, by the way, Edith and Tom called, all yelling and stuff. Call them back. I can't cover for you again, dude.”

  “I'll call them, I'll call them,” Jude grumbled. Dawn heard footsteps approach, and the door swung open. Jude trudged in looking bummed, and crumpled onto the rug.

  “So what happened?” Dawn asked, distracted from her gloom.

  “It was beyond demoralizing,” Jude muttered. “They cut me off after three freaking lines, and you should've heard how lousy some of those wannabes were. I was good, Dawn, I was so good!” He raked his hair in despair.

  “Of course you're good, Jude.” Inwardly Dawn cringed, thinking of how squeaky Jude's voice got when he was nervous. “They don't recognize talent when it's staring them in the eyeballs,” she said, her voice gentle as she leaned toward her friend. “Let's go out walking. Forget those jerks. You'll land something soon.”

  “You think so?” Jude's face lit up. “Yeah, those bozos were clueless.”

  Dawn and Jude set out to discover the island with serious determination. They footed it from the hinterlands of Avenue A across St. Marks with its jewelry vendors and art students, west to the Hudson River piers, and up to the midtown skyscrapers. The city was packed with every kind of person imaginable, and some of them even seemed friendly. Though cabs buzzed around like mad hornets, the city was brig
hter and safer than she'd always assumed from watching edgy shows like NYPD Blue. Dawn and Jude reached Forty-second Street and ducked into stores displaying rows of I NY T-shirts, Yankees hats, postcards of the World Trade Center towers, and statuettes of Miss Liberty.

  Back on the street, Dawn and Jude flowed with the tourists, all searching for the spiritual heart of Broadway in the billboards and flashy news blips moving in lit-up bands around buildings. Dawn pointed to a subway entrance, and they hopped a train downtown to Tribeca. They wandered along Greenwich Street past loading docks and trendy lofts, and passed twenty-something couples who pushed strollers of whining children into a park called Washington Market. Dawn and Jude followed them in and climbed with the toddlers on monkey bars. After that, Dawn talked Jude into buying a fire-engine-red silk shirt in a boutique—“to get noticed the next time you audition.”

  As they meandered further downtown and back inside the Trade Center concourse Dawn's energy ebbed. In this place where she'd first set foot in Manhattan, the loneliness of her arrival hit her full on—the tension of driving east with Burnout, the terror when she'd lost Jude for those seconds on the concourse. She thought of today's humiliating jam session, of Jude's dismal audition. They rode the escalators aimlessly. What am I doing here? she wondered. All the earlier exuberance of the afternoon now seemed forced.

  “I'm going to meditate,” Jude said. “Want to join me?”

  Dawn felt an urgency to connect with something steady. “Give me a minute, Jude. I need to make a call.”

  “Sure.” His voice sounded unsettled too.

  She watched Jude sit on a bench and raise his head toward the arched line of windows as she leaned into the phone partition to block out noise. Dawn pulled the SIM card from her pocket and dialed.

  After a few seconds she felt her resolve falter. What was she going to say? She should hang up now, while she still could.

  Louise's scolding words from their last battle popped into her mind like a computer virus: Who do you think you are, Miss Rude?

  I don't know who I think I am, Dawn thought. Certainly I'm not as important as a starving refugee. Dawn's neck muscles stiffened. She glanced out of the phone booth to the cold marble concourse spreading in all directions. Then her finger went to the button that would cut off the call.

  “Hello?” Louise's voice vibrated inside Dawn. “Hello?” The voice was solid. Dawn's reply withered in her throat. “Hello?” Louise repeated persistently. Seconds passed. Sweat broke out on the back of Dawn's neck.

  “Dawn? Is this you?” Dawn heard the stern tone, and something in her shifted. All feeling, from her brain to her ankles, cooled like a canary left by an open window. She hung up.

  run

  Baghlan, Afghanistan,

  September 9, 2001

  Johar pushed through the carpet layers. Khub ast! he thought frantically. Flames were curling around the door to the front room. He was almost to the storage room door. “Am I such a coward, Allah,” he said aloud as he stepped into the blazing front room, “that you wish me dead?” Johar strained his eyes for shapes. On a square of overturned bedding, flames jumped. Around the circle of logs on the hearth a fire danced. Smoke poured from the ceiling bricks. He took a hurried breath in and out. The hairs inside his nose scorched. If I burn, thought Johar numbly, Bija and Aunt Maryam will have no family. No food.

  “I'm braver than you think!” he yelled to the fire as he tripped through the smoke to search for his pack. It was lodged in the crevice under the floor with the singed wool. Johar stuffed it full, then shot through the door to the sheep paddock, escaping flames hotter than the hellish sands of Rigestan.

  “Come,” Johar commanded his sheep. He lured them from the stone enclosure behind the house, prodding the skittish ones along the path and toward his neighbor's house as they bleated with terror. “Zolar!” He beat on her door until she opened it.

  “My brother,” Johar cried. “They took my brother, and now the men may be headed for my aunt Maryam's!”

  Zolar wept at the sight of Johar's house in flames. She was thankful for the sheep he gave her, and so moved by his worry for Bija and Maryam that she offered him her donkey. “Protect what you can. My beast will get you to your aunt's faster than on foot.”

  Johar uttered grateful thanks, took one last look at his burning hut, and flew like a free-tailed bat to town.

  He guided the donkey onto a back path, praying he would not run into guards. Where would Naji take Daq, and what did these Pashtun Taliban want with a Tajik like Daq, anyway? It would be absurd for Daq to fight against the Alliance—against his own Tajik tribe in the north. And Farooq was not as tough as Daq—Farooq's would be a swift decline. These thoughts drove Johar to Maryam's, more fearful than ever for her safety.

  Spotting men up ahead, across from Maryam's hut, Johar took cover behind an old Soviet rocket that had pierced the hill like an ogre's arrow. His breath came in sharp stabs. In the darkness it was impossible to tell whether the men were Taliban or not. They prattled on. While Johar was devising an alternative route he heard the rumblings of a truck, and the men drove away.

  Maryam's door was open. Johar leaped off the donkey and tied it to a post. He trembled as he eased in the door. Neither Maryam nor Bija was anywhere in sight, but the house! The house had been torn apart! Fabric was ripped from the wall. The flower pots and dishes lay in shards. Books had been trampled. The samovar was gone from its perch. What had they done with his family? Kidnapped them? Or, pray not, murdered them?

  Johar shuddered with a rising hysteria as he scrambled into the courtyard and around the village lanes. “Bija! Maryam!” he called, splitting apart the silence. Oil lanterns lit behind curtains, and faces peered out.

  “Johar!” a woman's voice called from a nearby shed. “Johar, is that you?”

  The burqa-clad figure was hazy in the dark. As he hurried toward her, he saw that she stood a head shorter than Maryam. “Who are you?” Johar asked.

  “Shh.” The woman pulled him inside. “It's

  Ramila.” “Ramila, what happened? Where did they go?”

  “Soldiers took your aunt.” Ramila's eyes, through the burqa's opening, had a stunned look. “They're searching for you too, Johar. You must leave!”

  “But my aunt, my cousin—” A catch in Johar's throat would not let him continue.

  “Come.” Ramila lit an oil lamp and motioned Johar to a corner where a sleeping child lay curled on a quilt, stalk doll in hand.

  “Bija!” Johar leaned over and hugged his little cousin. “Jazakullah, Ramila.”

  “I was taking her to help me sort the vegetables when the soldiers came for your aunt,” said Ramila. “Before they could capture us too, we ran and hid here.” She knelt down next to Bija and stroked her head. “I gave her my old doll to calm her.” Ramila gazed at him. “I can keep her with me, Johar, until it's safe for your return.”

  Johar couldn't concentrate on Ramila's words. As glad as he was to see Bija's tiny chest rising and falling, he knew Maryam might be in great trouble. If only he knew where she was. If only he'd been with her, she would not have been alone when soldiers came.

  Bija was waking. Johar swept her up in his pattu. “Ramila, was there any clue as to where the soldiers would take my aunt?”

  “No, Johar. But I heard them inquire of your whereabouts when they came near the shed. The soldiers will be back for you. You must go!” Ramila gathered supplies and pushed them into his hands.

  Johar hesitated. “I must find my aunt.”

  “They will hold her in jail for a time, but they won't kill her. Go before the soldiers carry you off,” she insisted.

  Johar remembered the old plan, the family plan they'd hoped they'd never have to follow. “When you see Maryam, tell her we will ride south, over the Pakistani border, to the camp where her friend once went—the camp Suryast in Pakistan—where Bija can be safe. Tell her we'll wait for her there. Tell her I love her.”

  Ramila held her arms out. “I can
look after Bija.”

  “Bija must come with me,” Johar answered. “I promised my aunt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. No one would harm his cousin. He would make sure of it.

  Ramila lowered her arms to her sides. “Asalaam alaikum. Safe travels, Johar.”

  “Alaikum asalaam, Ramila.”

  Bija clung to his shoulders as he ran back to Maryam's. Johar had memorized each of her hiding places, and went to them now: gathering the spindle behind the false wall, the knitting needles stuck inside straw, the wool in a false ceiling, a trampled Rabi'a book from under the floor. He moved them to his own hiding places: an extra pouch in his pack, a pocket under his pattu, the inside hems of the quilt. The donkey would carry only the essentials, for he could not bring attention to the cargo.

  Johar hurried down a deserted path toward the temple of Sorkh Kowtal. He knew this winding trail well. That old crater hole had been his playground; this ruined hut had been a fairy-tale bazaar where he'd sold imaginary crafts to his friends. Mixed with his fear was a powerful nostalgia for these things of his past, which he might not see again. If he made it tonight to the southern trade road leading to Charikar, he would feel safer. Johar quieted Bija's hungry fussing with a heel of bread that Ramila had given him, and pressed her close to warm her.

  As the hovels on the outskirts of Baghlan receded and bushes gave way to camel thorn, Johar imagined he heard his father's murmur from the fog-laden sky: “Follow the dried riverbed if need be, and speak up.” Speak up? The poetry of the dead was sometimes murky, as the heavens were tonight.

  “Speak up,” a voice demanded from the clearing. Johar jerked to attention. Bija began to howl.

  In his confusion Johar had led them to a checkpoint guard. “Foul, foul hell,” he hissed under his breath.

  “I said halt! What business has kept you past curfew?” ordered a black-turbaned Talib, emerging from the shadows. His small eyes were set inward, like knots on trees. “Why are you travelling the roads so late? Where are you from and what is your destination?” Johar had a momentary urge to spur his donkey on, but yielded when the guard raised his Kalashnikov toward Johar, and two other men stepped from the shadows. Johar draped the pattu over Bija to conceal her.