Ameena starts to translate, but I repeat her response in English, knowing the translation, “Twenty years.”
I stare into Hoda’s brown eyes as she nods and says, “Yes. Love.”
These two small bits of information and the youthful look in her eyes as she says the word love builds a story in my mind for Hoda. It makes her life hold more meaning for me.
“You love?”
Her question has me a little confused. “Do I have a love?”
She looks at Ameena then speaks quickly in Arabic.
“She is asking about your family. She says she is sorry for her English,” Ameena translates loosely.
“No, it’s okay. Yes. Naam Feaalan.”
Laila adds a question; I think it is one from her own curiosity. “Do you have sister, brother?”
I answer her, explaining I have two sisters, Natalie and Jilly; all the while Ameena translates for Hoda.
“Do you have pictures?” Ameena asks curiously after translating.
I think about it. “Uh, yes, I think I do.”
I rise from the table and go to my bag as Ameena translates my going to get a picture. If I have any they would be in my wallet. As I file through my billfold I see Jilly’s smiling face. It is two years outdated, but still a picture nonetheless. I take it out and notice a family picture. It was taken five years ago, my junior year in high school, before Grandma Wallace passed. A flood of memories come back as I take it out. We were not estranged then.
I close my billfold and walk back to the table and start with the picture of Jilly, passing it to Ameena. “This is my sister. Okhti, Jilly.”
Ameena studies the picture for a moment then passes it on to Laila, then Jasara. “Jamil,” Hoda says once it is in her hands. As she hands it back to me I place the picture of my family on the center of the table. We took this picture in our backyard.
I point to my father and say, “Baba;” then to Mom, “Mama;” Natalie, “Okhti Natalie;” then Jilly again, “Okhti Jilly.”
As I name off each of them, everyone is smiling with intrigue except Hoda, who is looking at me somberly.
“Write?” she asks expectantly then repeats her question in Arabic.
Ameena translates, “Do you write them? Since you have been here?”
Feeling in the spotlight, I fiddle with my fingers as I answer, “I write Jilly.”
Decoding my words, Hoda presses with another question, one I knew she would ask. Especially with the way she watched me as I pointed out my family. “Mom, Dad?”
I know Hoda enough that she is a woman with expectations and she expected me to have written my mother and father out of respect. I also know there is no hiding lies from Hoda, even if it is the smallest one like not writing my parents. “No.”
She takes her napkin off her lap and sets it on the table next to her, then leans forward. I don’t know what to expect, a reprimand in Arabic? A slap across the face? I wouldn’t put either past her. She is one tough mama. She takes hold of my hand, turns it over to my open palm, and points her index finger firmly in the middle of it.
“You write!” As she says each word, she pokes my palm softly, seeming to embed the statement into my hand, my heart.
My hand is easier penetrated by her words then my heart when it comes to my parents. I don’t give her a promise; instead I nod, then pull my hand away.
I look down at Muna’s small hand, wrapped around my much larger one, as we walk back into the center from the courtyard. It is the same hand Hoda marked with her expectation last night. Write my parents.
When I got to the center this morning, I sent Jilly the digital picture of me at the amphitheater and at Hashem Restaurant. I almost included my mother and father on the email chain, but then had second thoughts. I quickly typed under the pictures:
Me at the Roman Amphitheater and eating stuffed falafel at Hashem with the volunteers. Love you. Miss you
I log out before I change my mind about adding my parents. Hoda would be so pissed if she knew I left them out.
With my free hand I shift my veil, feeling the itch of sweat on my scalp from standing out in the courtyard. The girls had been extra excited to go out and play today when I told them I would show them how to jump rope. They were impressed I knew what I was doing. Even Muna gave it a shot and stayed with the girls while I looked on. I noticed the guard watching them a few times. He even smirked when the girls would get caught up in the rope and giggle. He wasn’t so stoic after all.
The girls’ chatter increases in the halls, as it always does, and as I always do I stop walking and turn around to hush them. As I do, a thunderous boom echoes in the distance. The slight tremor it creates slides beneath my feet and the girls stand before me deathly silent. Their eyes are wide and the smiles are wiped from their now fear-filled, ghost-white faces.
The crackling break of an eruption closer now, setting a larger tremor over the ground beneath our feet, sends me to my knees and the girls immediately to the ground as they scream and muffle their cries with faces buried in their hands. I try to huddle close to them, touch them, let them know I am here.
“It’s okay. I’m here,” I say with a shaken, out-of-breath voice. I start to rise, trying to pull Muna up in my arms, just as another crackling explosion strikes even closer, sending Muna squirming, fighting to get free of me. For a little girl she is pretty fucking strong. I scramble after her, pulling her down with me, huddling again with the rest of the girls. I know I need to get them away from here, but as I try to pull on them to rise, they yank away from me and remain flat to the ground. I can’t leave any of them just to take one at a time. It will never work.
“We have to go!” I call to them, my own panic setting in. I try to scoop up two of my girls, Kameela and Sahla, but clinging to each other like they are, it is impossible for me to lift their dead weight on my own.
“Ella!” I hear Tom’s yell come from behind me as I continue to tug at the girls to get them up off the ground.
“Help me! I can’t get them up!” I call out just before the sound of bullets and shattering glass fill my head. Something hits me from behind, a body, sending me straight to the ground, flat like a pancake. The rain of glass pelts my arms and the back of my head as my body is covered by another, the hard breath from him in my ear now.
I try to wiggle out from under his body, but he takes hold of my hands with his, keeping me from moving. “No! Stay down!”
His Arabic accent takes dominance over my plea. “The girls! Save them!”
I hear the static of walkie talkies and heavy boots around my head. My human shield commands, “Khodhum! Take them! Go!”
Their screams are becoming wails of agony, if not for physical pain, then for the trauma of living again what they thought they had fled far away from here. I keep telling myself, They’re screaming. They’re alive.
I can hardly breathe from the combined weight of my defender and the anxiety of what I can’t see, when he suddenly lifts away from me, taking me up with him and hoisting me over his shoulder in one swift motion. I open my eyes and see the shattered glass on the ground where we laid get farther away as I am taken from the scene.
No blood on the ground. They aren’t hurt.
“Where are the girls?” I yell, begging for an answer as I crane my neck to look around the front of us. “I need to see them!”
As we turn the corner and pass through a corridor, a door slamming behind us, the light from the outside world is shut out. Gunfire peppers beyond the door again. Is it our soldiers or those attacking? Is it the guard in the courtyard? The one who finally smiled at the girls playing today? Has he been hit? Is he dead? Are the girls in here with us?
With adrenaline pumping through my veins, I writhe and squirm to be released as my mind continues to assault me with questions. “Put me the fuck down!”
In one swift motion he abandons his hold on me, dropping me to my wobbly legs and cupping his hand over my mouth, holding me still. His height towers over me
and his mass engulfs me as his angered golden-ember eyes search mine.
It’s like an ambush, a familiar capture as he holds me captive with his furrowed brow, his eyes darting between mine, a symbol of his recollection. He is searching my eyes for something he’s discovered before. Something we both succumbed to. How is it possible? We are in Jordan in the middle of a fucking attack. My golden-eyed stranger was in D.C. at some fucking rich-ass party then again in a fucking elevator! As his hand loosens over my mouth, I don’t fight his hold like I had seconds before, as I consider how any of this is happening.
“‘Eh enta.”
I don’t think his deep-voiced whisper was meant to find its way into the open space between us, because once he said it, he quickly closes his mouth, tightening his jaw as he backs away from me completely, leaving me to free fall in the release of golden amber having captured me before, in another place far away from this world.
It is him.
“Ella!” Ana voice permeates the door.
Tom brushes past us, breaking the soldier and I apart further as he opens the door halfway. “Ana! Get in here! Quiet!”
Pulling her in, her eyes go wide as soon as she sees me and she starts rambling in loud whispers. “Oh my God! I thought you and the girls! You were out in the courtyard!” She pulls me into her arms and hugs me with every ounce of trembling force remaining within her. I notice the girls huddled in a corner with two soldiers standing beside them and Tom huddled near them, speaking to them in Arabic as their sobs are contained to small whimpers. I want nothing more at the moment but to go to them and hold them.
Once Ana releases me, I move to them quickly, kneeling down in front of them as they huddle around me. I hold each of them close, Muna the first to climb into my lap and curl up. My heart breaks and melts at the same time as I hold them, check them for any marks, any blood.
A walkie talkie comes alive in one of the soldier’s hands. The responder is speaking Arabic very quickly and the soldiers exchange it just as quick. Suddenly, the door opens and all the guns in the room take aim, just as the solider from the courtyard comes into view.
Thank God he’s safe.
He speaks to my savior hastily. My mind is not working in Arabic, so I can’t understand what they are saying. Whatever the exchange, the man who shielded me turns to Tom and me. “They will stay with you. Do not leave until it is clear.”
Seemingly torn by his duty to defend and protect and staying here, he looks at me once more then leaves, the courtyard soldier tailing him.
Minute after minute passes with silence. The gunfire has stopped and there is the sound of heavy footsteps on broken glass outside of the door, along with the static of walkie talkies. The soldiers protecting us receive a commanding voice on their walkie talkie, letting us out into the hall. As they usher us out, the girls encircle me, holding onto any piece of fabric, arm, or leg they can. Tom walks ahead of us and Ana turns to go toward the classrooms.
“Ana?” I question her leaving my side even for a second.
“I need to check on my girls. Amanda has them,” she says as one of the soldiers follows her down the hall.
I stand with Tom, the soldier, and the girls in the hall, taking in the broken glass covering the length of the hallway. The light fixtures blown out, the windows gone, and streaks of blood along the wall. Seeing the blood, I look away, unable to prevent the surge of fear.
“I can’t have them here. I need to get them to the classroom,” I say to Tom, both trying to leave the scene for my sake and my girls.
Tom is visibly shaken as he runs his hands through his hair and looks around at the shattered portion of the center. “Okay, we will take you.”
The soldier walks behind Tom, my girls, and me, and I carry Muna on my hip. Tom speaks to the soldier in Arabic, asking him a question about the director of Caritas. The soldier talks over the device and quickly gets a response.
“She is fine,” he says in English with a thick accent. As we walk down the clinic section of the center, the movement of staff and those who were being seen is slow, but awakening from the strike with cries, sobs, and tears of shock and fear and despair. Despair ... they couldn’t get away from it. That is what must be going through the refugees’ minds right now. They can’t get away from the despair even here surrounded by those who care about them.
Tom’s cell phone rings and he quickly picks up. “Yes.”
As I watch him speak, he looks at me. “Yes, she is fine. Okay, I will.”
He hangs up as we keep walking and I’m curious about who he was speaking to. “Who was that?”
He puts his arm on my back and leads me along. “It was nothing. Don’t worry.”
Where the lights were blown in the front portion of the center, they are working back here along the corridor. I nod and hold Muna closer as she rests her head on my shoulder.
The weight of her head gives rise to the soreness of being pushed to the ground by my rescuer. “The man that shielded me. Is he a soldier?”
Tom is taking in our surroundings, assessing everything and everyone around us. “Yes, among other things.”
“What other things?”
I see one of my girl’s mother crying as she comes running down the corridor, looking around with fright until she sees me and releases her cry. “Nooda!”
The little girl lets go of Tom’s hand and cries desperately until she reaches her mother and is swept up in her arms. As Tom and I get closer to them, the mother comes up to me.
“Shukran. Hafazat abnatay. Shukran.” Her weakened voice trembles as she takes my free hand and holds it tightly between hers. Thank you for saving my daughter, is what she keeps saying. The glimmer of light cast in her tears, knowing her daughter is alive, when moments ago her fear was she may be dead in the courtyard.
I try to pull my hand away as I nod, not wanting to speak, knowing my voice will give way and release the cry I’m desperately holding in. Tom must see me struggling inside as I continue to nod and try to smile while holding Muna.
“Bikill Sroor,” he says to the woman, who clings to her daughter and runs in the opposite direction.
Tom puts his arm on my shoulder again as he moves us along faster, the soldier still to the rear of us. His walkie talkie dispatches the sound of soldiers speaking quickly in Arabic.
He speaks to the soldier behind us as we enter the wing containing all of the classrooms. Tom turns back to me. “I have to go check on everyone. He will stand guard at the classrooms. He is calling for another to come down to your wing as well. You will only need to stay until the children are picked up.”
“Then I can go home?”
He nods as he starts to walk away. “Yes.”
“Wait. You didn’t answer me. What other things is this soldier?” I needed Tom to confirm what I felt deep within; I have just been saved by the man I’ve met before, far away from here, back in the States.
Tom and the soldier standing guard by our sides exchange a knowing glance, then he looks back at me. “He is the silent benefactor of this program and the Prince of Jordan.”
The soldier speaks quickly in his device, responding to the voice on the other end, then turns back to us. “The authorities have arrived. They need you.”
As Tom walks away, he calls back to me, “We will send the parents back to pick up the girls. Don’t leave the classrooms until I or one of the authorities has come to get you. Do you understand?” His serious tone strikes a nerve of fear in me again as reality sets in. I had been rescued from death by the fucking Prince of Jordan, a man who has touched my soul on more than just this occasion.
The comfort of my small hallway of classrooms is filled with the small cries as I pass each door to mine. Once I’m in my room and Ana and the other girls come into sight, my girls immediately go to them and hold each other.
As each of our girls are picked up, the same scene unfolds: a mother, father, or aunt with fear in their eyes turns the corner and comes into the classroom. The fear
only disappearing from them when they have spotted their little girl alive, then the wails and cries come, bringing up all of the anxiety I had just controlled. It happens over and over again until the last one is picked up, my sleeping Muna, snuggled in my arms. I can’t imagine being the one to tell any of them I failed in protecting the life of their daughter and she has died.
I hand Muna off to her crying aunt, only to stir Muna from her sleep and renew her own frightened emotions. I think if I had lost one of them, I wouldn’t be able to carry on here.
Ana and I don’t speak after the girls are gone. We just sit at our chairs and wait for someone to take us home. The home I want most of all right now is the small, cheap apartment I share with my best friend Allison back in D.C. The more I think on it, though, the more I think of him, the soldier, the prince, the benefactor, the man at the loft. He is the fucking Prince of Jordan.
I hear Tom’s voice before he appears at the door as he speaks with a few of the other teachers. His face is still as morose as it was earlier. “Okay, let’s get you home.”
I look at the empty streets on either side of us as I ride in the backseat of the black-on-black SUV. The panic of another attack has turned the busy streets of Amman into a ghost town. I glance around at the buildings. All are standing and are untouched, so the explosion must not have been this direction. Where, though?
Getting closer to the Ba’ashirs’ home, worry for Ghalib, Ameena, Laila, and Rushdi revives the dread from earlier. What if they were in the buildings bombed? Why did I not fucking think of them earlier? Pulling up to the house, I thank the driver in Arabic and rush to the front door. I knock quickly, still feeling the creeping panic at my back, worrying an attack may come again right here, right now at my back.
Ismad opens the door quickly and lets me in, closing and locking it behind me. “Oh thanks to Allah, you are safe, Ella. Hoda!”
As if they were waiting anxiously for me, Hoda, Ameena, and Ghalib appear at the top of the steps, while Uncle Naz, Jasara, Laila, and Rushdi stand at the open doorway of their small living space.
Cross the Stars (Crossing Stars #1) Page 13