A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  She made a strange little sound of protest. “Esa, I’m not—”

  He turned away. “Just go, Sehr. Don’t make me say something that we’ll both regret.”

  * * *

  When she’d gone, Esa stood at the railing, alone with a grief that seemed to expand the longer he thought of Sehr. He’d never spoken to a woman like that, raising his voice, striking where he knew it would hurt. It was worse that he’d done it to Sehr. His friend, Samina’s friend. She might encompass the things he wanted, but Sehr was not for him.

  He’d let it get to this point. He should have seen the signs, should have known that Sehr was misreading him. They’d worked together in the past, he knew their paths would cross again, it was inevitable—he’d tried to bring things between them back to a normal footing, tried to relax his guard.

  She’d seemed to view him as just another friend, treating him much the same as Nate.

  Now it was clear her feelings hadn’t changed.

  His shoulders slumped. He looked up at the great jewels of the stars without taking in their beauty. He didn’t want Sehr in Athens, entangling herself in his work.

  Then why when he’d made her cry had it felt like a fist through his heart?

  14

  Mytilene, Lesvos

  Ali hunkered down to wait. The ferry from Athens followed a steady course to the port. He wasn’t surprised he couldn’t see passengers on deck. The rain was cold and persistent, the kind of rain that drilled through your clothes to make its way into your bones. But even the rain in April was better than the winter just past. He shivered inside the jacket Audrey had bought him in Izmir. A windbreaker, she’d called it, turning up the collar of the one she’d bought herself in yellow. His was black and it was versatile, good for the rain or for sleeping on when circumstances called for him to improvise. Audrey had bought him a heavy winter jacket too, thick and fur-lined, indescribably warm, with gloves, a hat, and a scarf. He’d given the extras away; he couldn’t pass by children who’d dug into ditches for warmth, their bodies like bundles of bones. Ali’s father had said of the war, “What is the difference between my son and someone else’s? A child who is not my son is like my son.”

  The gloves, the scarf, the hat—the children had taken them without speaking, too frightened to show him gratitude. He didn’t need it. He didn’t need anything from kids who’d risked a journey like his.

  The Afghan boy at Moria looked like he was used to being beaten, flinching from every touch, every unexpected sound. The camp manager held up a clipboard; the boy expected a whip. Ali read it in the boy’s face, he knew that cowed look: the world was cruel, softness came at a cost. The boy’s legs were covered in sores, his teeth had gaps and his gums looked diseased. Ali had given him his gloves. A week later, a newcomer had beaten the boy for the gloves.

  Though it twisted Ali’s heart, there were things he couldn’t give up. If the Afghan boy couldn’t hold on to what was his, Ali couldn’t help him—he couldn’t afford to part with anything else. He needed his jacket and his shoes. He had to be ready to leave the instant he heard about Audrey—night, day, it didn’t matter. He had to stay dry and alert, ready to leap into danger.

  He chewed his lower lip. Nothing could be more dangerous than what he’d already faced.

  The escape, the overland crossing, the checkpoints, the sea in the dinghy where no one stayed afloat. The first safe sunrise in years.

  The rain had found its way into his collar; its chill reminded him of the sea, of the boat he’d taken, of the foghorn and the blinding lights in the night, of the bodies reaching shore, some dead, some alive, someone pulling him to shore. After that, he’d gone to the beach to help. He’d become someone who handed others to safety.

  Children who cried; the ones who would never cry again.

  Ali didn’t cry, because tears didn’t serve as a release—they were a punishment that stung his sores. The sea was still a nightmare in his mind; he wouldn’t add to the sum of his injuries. He wanted to be like the others, and the others tried not to cry. The Hellenic Rescue Team volunteers, the Christian peacemakers, the pretty Danish girls with long blond hair.

  They scooped the children up and dried them off. They wrote down names and dates of arrival, wrapping the children in blankets that reflected the moonlight off the waves. They were cheerful and full of encouragement.

  They weren’t like him. They hadn’t seen what Ali had seen.

  They hadn’t done what Ali had done.

  He’d heard the horror stories about the crossing but he’d told himself the others were describing the passage from Libya. The journey across the Aegean was short—he could see Lesvos from the Turkish coast. He’d spent the last of their funds arranging passage for his group: Aya, Israa, Sami, and himself, the four limbs of a body, each essential to survival.

  The call from the smugglers had come early in the morning on a night when the wind was high and a bleak rain pelted their faces. He’d refused to go, insisting on a safer crossing because he had to think of the girls. The smugglers hadn’t cared. They told him if he stayed behind, he wouldn’t get another chance—they’d keep his money and leave him stranded in Izmir.

  He’d talked it over with Sami, but the calls had come one after the other, pushing, pushing, persisting. Finally, Israa had kissed his cheek and said, “Our dreams are beginning to fade. I want to reach the other side.”

  On the sea, the night had choked his hopes. Four boats had launched at once, the smugglers hustling them along. He’d been given a quick lesson in operating the engine; Sami had been handed a flashlight.

  “Wait until you’re nearly there,” the smuggler said. “Don’t waste the battery on the torch.”

  They’d shrugged into their life jackets, ill-fitting and damp with cold. The smugglers began to load them into the boats, a scene of noise and confusion. Once Sami was on the raft, Ali passed Aya into his arms. Israa’s turn was next, but suddenly he couldn’t find her. She’d been at his side a moment ago. He craned his neck, searching the crowd of passengers struggling to find a seat. He began to shout Israa’s name. Sami climbed down from the raft.

  “No!” Ali shouted. “Don’t leave Aya!”

  He called for Israa until a smuggler shoved him in the back. His head was wrenched sideways. The smuggler pointed to a boat up the beach. “She’s there.”

  He caught a glimpse of a white scarf, though he couldn’t see Israa’s face. She was climbing into the boat; she didn’t hear him over the wind.

  He yanked the smuggler’s hand. “We’re together. Get her back here.”

  Israa’s boat was pushed out onto the waves, overcrowded with bodies. The smuggler shrugged. “Go, don’t go, your choice.”

  Aya called for him, crying.

  “We’re going to the same place?” He insisted the smuggler tell him.

  The smuggler pointed out into the darkness. “You all go to Lesvos.”

  He couldn’t see the outline of the island; the rain was falling in sheets. His life vest was already soaked. “Push us off,” he said. “We need to catch the other boat.”

  He hurled himself into the raft, pushing past others to get to his seat. The engine sputtered before it caught, rain lashing the sides. He looked at Sami with dread in his eyes. He’d never steered a boat, and here in the dark with the rain and the rising waves—there were thirty or forty people in the boat. Their lives were in his hands.

  “I can’t see,” he called to Sami. “Get closer, shine the flashlight.”

  Sami and Aya pressed through the crush of bodies, the raft pitching with each step. An older woman took Aya onto her lap. Sami held up the flashlight. When he flicked it, nothing happened. He switched it on and off. The batteries were dead.

  The smugglers had tricked them. The engine was weak, the light didn’t work, the boat was too heavy—the waves were crashing the boat. Some passengers were prepared. They’d brought plastic cups to bail with.

  He looked at Aya’s terrified face and th
ought about turning back.

  But Israa was out there on the waves. She needed him now more than ever.

  He counted the bodies in the boat. He counted his own and decided. There was no going back from this point. It was only four miles across.

  “Does someone have a cell phone?” he shouted.

  Hands in the boat went up.

  The phones cast a limited light on the waves. He saw the shadows of the other boats, carving a path for him to follow. He turned the boat too fast; the passengers cried out. He didn’t dare cut his speed in case the engine refused to catch.

  He didn’t know how the next hour passed. His arms and back ached with effort, his eyes straining against the darkness. Cell phones were swept away with their belongings, the waves black, the boat half submerged, the passengers shivering, their lips blue with cold.

  Lightning forked through the clouds, a silver slash against the night. Aya screamed, but Ali held on to the rudder, willing the engine to last. On the Mediterranean, pirates stripped the engines from the boats, leaving passengers to die at sea. He prayed that wouldn’t happen here.

  He thought of the risks he’d taken: no one chose the water unless the place they’d left behind was too perilous for them to remain. Sami’s stories of Aleppo were the most harrowing Ali had heard. Apart from his own hands’ work.

  A huge wave caught the raft. They were flung into the dark. He kicked to the surface, coughing water, his life vest hanging from its straps. Sami had Aya in one arm; he was kicking his legs furiously, but he wasn’t making headway. Ali swam back, calling to the other men. It was impossible to flip the boat, but together he and Sami dragged children to the raft.

  The life vest felt like it was choking him, but it was suicide to take it off. He wasn’t a strong swimmer. Some of the passengers were drowning, succumbing to the drag of the waves. He clutched Aya and Sami to the raft. Thunderclouds rumbled overhead, an ecstatic color like the sea.

  The waves were pulling him down; he couldn’t stay afloat.

  His frantic thoughts were for Israa. Please, God, Israa had made it.

  His cold hands slipped from the raft, thunder crashing in his ears.

  Sami held on to Aya. He heard her high-pitched scream.

  He was drifting down, no matter how hard he kicked his legs, his limbs heavy and weighted, so cold and thick he couldn’t move.

  A ghostly white light appeared; he tried to blink it away.

  Israa needed him—and Sami …

  A fair-haired figure reached for him, coaxing him to the light.

  “I’ve got you,” she said, “I’ve got you.”

  He fought the desire to give in, but in the end the angel took him.

  * * *

  He was dragged onto a boat, his life vest stripped from his body. When the dark mist cleared from his eyes, he saw Sami and Aya on deck.

  He hadn’t been dreaming of an angel.

  He’d just met Eleni Latsoudi.

  * * *

  What an agonizing time it was taking the cars to disembark. Passengers followed the cars in little clumps. He was looking for a reed-thin black woman who wore a canary yellow scarf. The scarf meant he would spot her against the backdrop of the antiseptic dawn.

  He reached for the apple in his pocket, forgetting he’d eaten it hours ago when he’d first begun his vigil.

  A scuffing of feet on the path below alerted him to action.

  Aya had come to find him, guessing he’d be at his favorite perch, looking over the water. She’d brought him a little Styrofoam cup, but because the climb up to his perch was a rough one, she’d spilled half the contents on the way. It didn’t matter. Even half was good on a morning like this, the rain like a chilly warning, flattening the stench of the camp. He might have caught the scent of olive trees on the breeze, or he might have been remembering his home.

  He sipped at the hot chocolate, a subversive effort of the Danish girls, who insisted on providing rations beyond the limits of their NGO.

  “Did she come?”

  He smiled at Aya. She was doing her best to pick up English, practicing every chance she got. She wasn’t shivering, because he’d given her his winter jacket, the one Audrey called a parka. It was so big on Aya that she wore it like a dress, her hands stuffed deep into its pockets.

  He was cold, but Aya was warm, and that was what mattered. He’d kept one of his promises to Israa.

  “I don’t know yet.” He let the hot chocolate slide down his throat. When it was finished, he picked Aya up and hoisted her onto his lap.

  “Look for the yellow scarf.”

  They watched the passengers come and go—tourists from the region, a handful of police, the agent in a special uniform with the crest of a globe on her shoulders. The globe was held in the grip of a pair of olive branches; Ali snorted to himself.

  There was no such thing as an olive branch. There was only a ruined orchard.

  “There!”

  Aya’s finger shot out from her pocket to point. She was thrilled to be of help, pounding his leg with her fist.

  “Careful,” he warned. “That hurts a little.”

  “Oh, sorry, sorry.” She smoothed a hand over the sore spot.

  Ali picked her up and settled her on her feet. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s Shukri. Let’s find out what she’s learned.”

  Aya danced from one foot to the other. Her shoes were a size too big, in danger of slipping from her ankles.

  “You think she knows about Audrey?” Her eyes went round and wide. She fluttered her long, thick eyelashes, an imitation of her sister.

  Ali felt a quick stab of pain. With her curly hair and long-lashed eyes, Aya was the image of Israa. She would grow up to be as beautiful, one day. And that day would come, God willing.

  “Yeah,” he said, helping Aya navigate the hill. “I think she knows. She must know. But even if she doesn’t, I’m going to make her help us.”

  He frowned. Two passengers from the boat had caught up to Shukri, a tall woman and her companion, a dark-haired man with a face that reminded him of the Afghan boys on the hill.

  The woman was holding on to Shukri Danner’s arm. The man was blocking her path.

  She’d been about to hail a taxi; now she turned back to the newcomers, making for a building near the dock.

  They weren’t wearing the Interpol insignia.

  Who were the strangers then?

  15

  Mytilene, Lesvos

  “Assalam-u-alaikum, sister.”

  Khattak’s greeting did nothing to set Shukri Danner at ease, Rachel noted. She had a beautiful round face, her skin so smooth it appeared seamless. It was her expressive black eyes that gave away her sense of discomfort at being asked to speak to them about Audrey’s work.

  Shukri was tall like Rachel, though her proportions were more fragile. She wore a white headband beneath a flowing yellow head scarf that draped the top half of her body. Her small brown hands darted in and out of this covering with quick, sparrow-like gestures.

  “I need to get back to headquarters,” she advised.

  “We just have a few questions. Once we’re done here, we’ll take you there ourselves.”

  They’d found a small café near the beach and were warming themselves up with strong Greek coffee and pastries. The ambiance made it seem less like an interview and more like a meeting of friends. As Khattak continued to speak in low, soothing sentences, Shukri began to relax. She drank her coffee, giving them her full attention.

  As they’d expected, she was horrified by the murders and worried about the implications for Woman to Woman’s work.

  “There is a lot to do here,” she told them. “There’s never a shortage of need.”

  She spoke with an accent that lightened the emphasis on vowels, drawling them out so they were soft and almost tangible. Her voice was so delicately pretty, it could have soothed a child to sleep. Rachel had gathered some preliminary information about Shukri. She was a Somali-Canadian married to
a man of German background. In addition to her native language, she spoke English, French, and Arabic, and was an invaluable asset to Audrey’s NGO.

  When asked to describe her role, she told them it was a little bit of everything. Providing translation services to help refugees at the intake point fill out paperwork and acquire accreditation, tracking down and reuniting families that had been separated at border crossings and checkpoints—or, more unforgivingly, on the Aegean Sea. Requisitioning supplies, maintaining inventory, helping out in the volunteer kitchens, offering rudimentary first aid.

  Her primary responsibility had been to select cases that were suitable for fast-tracking to Canada, but as she spoke, it became clear that despite her commitment to her work, she was wearied by the changing demands of bureaucracy—internally within W2W, and, in a broader sense, with the Canadian government.

  “People are angry,” she said in her fine, soft voice. “They want families now, they want to answer the need, they’ve raised the funds and they don’t understand what could be taking us so long. It isn’t us,” she explained with a sigh. “We do what we can. I wear so many hats, I sometimes forget I have a head.”

  Khattak laughed at this, and at the warm and pleasant sound, a smile escaped Shukri, slowing her harried recital.

  “Yes, I’m funny, that’s what the children on the island tell me. Miss Shukri, you are funny, you always make us laugh.” She sighed. “I wish I could keep them laughing, because I have some idea of what they’ve seen. They’ve suffered, Inspector Khattak. I’ve run out of languages in which to tell you how.”

  Gently, Khattak brought her around to the subject of Audrey Clare, and the rumored disagreement between them. Shukri folded her hands over her breast. Her prayerful posture made her look like a golden Madonna. She didn’t seem like a woman with anything to hide, an assessment supported by the frank disclosure that followed.

  “I wouldn’t just say we disagreed, my dear Inspector. We were fighting—actually fighting. She’s a foolish, headstrong girl. It wasn’t easy to keep her in check.”

  “In check how?” Rachel asked, wondering at this unexpected description. The Audrey she had met on several occasions was a bright and lovely young woman, self-confident and poised, and, by all accounts, successful at her work.