We peel ourselves from the tide. We are the stones in Abu Sayeed’s pockets.
AFTER I SAW Baba’s body under the green light in the funeral home, I let go of his big toe and ran past Lenny and up the stairs. I burst through the red-velvet waiting room with its closed curtains. I felt white-hot, a molten star.
I threw open the front door of the funeral home and threw up in the parking lot. I hadn’t eaten in two days, so I puked until I dry heaved, spitting up water and orange pulp. My guts wrung themselves like wet laundry.
When I heard Mama coming, I ran. I ran around the back of the building and through an abandoned lot that was all dirt. I darted through iron gates, through people’s tiny gardens that were just bare earth, past bodegas and newspaper stands. I passed the man selling honey-roasted nuts from his little cart and shop windows with ads of people drinking juice and bubble tea.
I ran until I came to the edge of the park, three blocks away. There was the fountain Baba had stared into when he used to let go of my hand. There was the break in the stone wall where the coyote had trotted out with its amber eyes. There was the spot just down the path where I had run from Baba and hid in the bushes, where he had crumpled and cried.
It was late winter then, and the lake was still thawing. I waited to see if Baba’s ghost would walk out from around the corner, but he didn’t. I was alone.
I waited and waited until Mama put her hand on my shoulder and led me home. I kept looking back to see if the magic would work, if wishes meant anything past the age of eleven. I told myself if I could have waited just a little longer, maybe things would have been different.
But they aren’t.
AFTER SUNSET, WE crawl from the rocks and steal away from the wreck of the aid ferry. Shouts of celebration ring out as trucks squeal their tires and backfire into the night. Zahra scans the curve of the shoreline and the street signs, and that’s how we figure out the ferry made it to Misrata’s harbor before it was rocketed. We had arrived.
We stumble in short bursts through the city, avoiding spurts of gunfire and patrolling military trucks. We both jump when we come across the burnt husks of shops, bullet holes in street signs, corners missing from apartment buildings. Misrata, like Benghazi, is bleeding brick and spent bullets. I wonder how many families have watched their homes crumble. I wonder if even Umm Yusuf knew how bad the fighting was, if anybody knew it would feel so familiar.
Zahra and I curl up in an alley behind an abandoned truck, but we don’t sleep. We shiver through the night until the sun comes up and dries our clothes. Then we start to come back to life, cracking the damp out of our knuckles and stretching our legs.
Zahra checks the map in its plastic bag, buried in my burlap backpack—still dry. Inside, the burlap smells like salt mixed with Mama’s perfume. I picture the air escaping from the shopping bag and wonder if there’s more hope in the world than I can see.
Zahra picks through the last of our money, wet as used tissues. The sky is red again, and the city shuffles in windows and lights cigarettes in doorways.
“We have to hurry,” Zahra says, pulling me to my feet. “Do it for Mama. Do it for Huda.”
She tugs me by my wrist down the street. We wander half a mile until we come to a market where fruit sellers are setting up their boxes. Zahra buys me sticky dates and fingers the money in her pocket when she thinks no one is looking.
We pass a stall with the radio on, fast-talking in Arabic in a dialect too different for me to understand. Zahra stops cold.
“What?”
She hushes me. She stands rigid, listening, and tightens her grip on my fingers.
“You’re hurting me,” I whine.
“We’re too late,” she whispers. “Algeria closed its border with Libya this morning.”
I crush the meat of a date in my hand. “What?”
Zahra curses again, and Mama isn’t there to tell her not to. She takes me aside into the shadows behind a stall selling apricots. “We can’t get across,” she whispers. “The border with Algeria is closed.”
“If we can’t get out, we can go back for Mama,” I say.
But Zahra shakes her head, pressing her mouth and her eyes shut like she’s still bleeding on the inside. The fear in her eyes reminds me of Mama’s, the way she doesn’t want me to see it even though I do. The cut on her forehead has hardened into a black scab, and I guess mine looks just as ugly.
“Remember what Mama told us about the map,” Zahra says. “She told us to meet her in Ceuta. We have to get there now, no matter what.”
“How can we get there if we can’t cross? You said there’s no way out.”
Zahra bites her lip. “There’s a way,” she says. Then she looks down at me with concern. “Whatever happens,” she says, “don’t say anything. Your English will give us away.”
We step back into the sun. The day is getting hot already, and women stroll the market in long, colorful dresses in floral prints. Zahra buys a handful of apricots from a lady in the market and asks her a question in Arabic.
I don’t know all the words, but the tone in Zahra’s voice tells me what she’s asking for, and that she’s willing to pay for it. I look away from a row of gypsum roses in a neighboring stall and tug on Zahra’s sleeve. “Don’t.”
Zahra ignores me. The lady leans over and says something. I can translate the simple words: Don’t do this.
Why not?
You have a young boy. The lady frowns at me, and I can tell she thinks I’m Zahra’s son. The danger is too great.
But Zahra keeps talking until the lady gives in. She points to another stall where a man scowls into a basket of oranges.
We walk down, and Zahra talks to him in halting sentences. He doesn’t smile. He calls another man over, his voice flat and cold.
“I don’t like this,” I whisper.
But Zahra ignores me again. “Leave it to me,” she says.
When the man’s friend comes, he and Zahra talk. She tells him I’m her little brother, that our parents are waiting for us in Ceuta. I watch his eyes, the way they wander up and down, the way they linger too long on the folds of her tee shirt and the rips in her jeans.
The man shakes his head. I can’t take you to Ceuta, but I can get you to Algiers. You can travel from there to Ceuta. His accent and his dialect are different than Mama’s or Zahra’s, but I can understand most of what he says. I try to figure out in my head how far Algiers is from Ceuta.
Zahra asks, How much?
The man eyes her and names a sum. American dollars or Euros, he says.
Zahra argues with him, but she has nothing to bargain with. She empties her pockets, everything we have left except what’s sewn into the tongues of my sneakers.
When she pulls out the last of Mama’s dollar bills, my heart stumbles in its rhythm. I haven’t seen American dollars in so long that they look too obvious, too dangerous to carry around—like pulling out your passport in a crowd.
The man snatches up the dollars and counts them. He asks for more.
Zahra offers him her wrist. The man fingers her gold bracelet, brushing his fingers against the moles on her skin.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
She slaps my hand away and hisses back: “No English.”
Zahra slips the bracelet from her wrist and hands it to the man. He jerks his thumb toward a pickup truck.
A little while later, the man drives us and another family to a rickety old house three hours away, outside what Zahra thinks is Tripoli. The door creaks on its hinges, and inside, the tiny house smells like urine and rot. I feel a mix of shame and dread I don’t have a word for, a lump inside me screaming that this was a mistake.
The man lets us in with a few short words and shuts the door. We sit in the dark a few minutes, not moving. A boy about my age and an old man—his grandfather?—claim mats on the floor, and we do the same. No one speaks.
“He said we’ll get moving in a few days,” Zahra says after a while. “The smuggler
s will take us by truck across the desert to Algeria, maybe Morocco if they can find people willing to pay. We can try to cross into Ceuta from there.” She roams the oil stains on the peeling walls with her eyes.
I ask, “But how?”
“I don’t know.”
I sit with my knees crossed and hang my hands in my lap. “I’m glad you’re not one of those people.”
“What people?”
“The ones who never really listen,” I say. “The ones who give you that big smile when they’re just waiting for their turn to speak. The ones who are always blown around in the wind. Thanks for not being like that.”
“Not anymore.”
We don’t say anything for a while. I run my fingers over the nails where people have hung clothes and rags. Behind the fabric are words written on the wall in pen and marker, some in Arabic, others in French or English.
The world changes its shape in the night, one says.
Zahra laughs quietly. “I still have the key,” she says. “To the house in Homs.”
“You do?”
“Sure.” Zahra pulls her eyes from the graffiti on the wall and tugs out the thin silver key from her pocket, its engraved numbers chipped and corroded with salt. “Imagine,” she says. “No door. No house. Just a key.”
A truck starts outside. Across the room, the old man passes the boy my age a stub of crayon from his pocket. The boy takes off his shirt, revealing a ladder of bones up his back and down his chest. The skin is pulled tight on his brown cheeks, and his black hair hangs in his face while he turns the shirt inside out, pressing his crayon to the tag.
I ask him, “What are you doing?”
The boy looks up at me, shaking the hair out of his eyes. His jeans are too big for him, and his knees bulge like oversized doorknobs. He lowers his eyes when he answers me, fidgeting with the black collar of the striped tee shirt in his hands. For a minute, I realize I forgot to use Arabic, and I open my mouth to try again.
“I put my name on the tag,” the boy says quietly in English, his accent different from Mama’s. “My name and my grandfather’s name and who I am. In case they can’t tell who we are from our bodies.”
He says it so calmly. I stutter back, “Who you are? You mean your name?”
“No. I mean the story of my life, where I was born and things.” The boy holds out the crayon to me. “You want to write too?”
I take the crayon from him, my hand unsteady. I tug open Mama’s bag and write my name and Zahra’s on the inside of the burlap.
Then I pause. Where should I say I’m from, Manhattan or Homs? And what can you say about your life in five crayon words?
The boy and his grandfather wait, staring out the milky window.
While I think, I lay my head back against the wall. I read another line, scrawled on the wall in pen by someone else who must have passed this way: We aren’t on any map.
PART IV
* * *
ALGERIA / MOROCCO
Bare Earth
After King Roger’s death, any peasant in Palermo could tell that his heir, William, was not the man his father was. The Sicilian barons spread rumors that he was not fit to rule. They whispered against him, calling him bad and wicked.
But William was impressed by the work al-Idrisi had done for his father, and he promised to reward him generously if he would stay at his court and write another book of geography for him. Because young William was King Roger’s son, al-Idrisi stayed. He asked Rawiya and Khaldun to remain in King William’s court to assist him with his work, saying he could not do it without them. And Rawiya, who treasured her friends in her heart, agreed to stay for a time.
As word spread that the Sicilian noblemen were plotting against King William’s rule, Rawiya became nervous. She and Khaldun told al-Idrisi of their fears, but he waved them away. Al-Idrisi would not leave King Roger’s son in his time of need. King Roger had created a haven of equality and learning, he said, and King William would continue his father’s legacy.
But it was not to be.
SIX YEARS AFTER King Roger’s death, Rawiya and Khaldun met in a secluded corner of the court gardens by night, surrounded by jasmine flowers and almond trees. Here they could talk freely as they could not by day, safe from the frowns and gossip of the court. Over the last several years of peace, they had been inseparable, walking the palace halls, the gardens, or the streets of Palermo. Speculations of their relationship had become widespread. The only other place they could be alone, free to laugh and talk as they pleased, was in the palace workshop as they bent over their notes and the sketches of maps they produced for al-Idrisi, who relied on Rawiya and Khaldun while he worked and wrote in King William’s court. They had been given titles of court scholars. Rawiya and Khaldun worked side by side in the workshop day after day, and it was there that they had shared their first shy kiss several months before, their fingers stained with ink.
On this particular night, Rawiya and Khaldun grasped each other’s hands as the conversation took a different, more nostalgic turn. “The trees are full and green again,” Rawiya said, “and soon the fields and orchards will be in fruit. Six times the olive harvest has come and gone since we returned to Palermo, and still my mother will walk the olive grove and the shore waiting for my return. I was a young girl when I left home,” she said, “but I am grown now. It is time I made plans to return home.” For Rawiya and Khaldun were both nearing twenty-five years of age and beginning to feel restless to put down roots.
Khaldun looked down at their hands. “I know,” he said. “You must go to your mother. She will want to know you are safe.”
Rawiya touched her forehead to Khaldun’s. “But I don’t want to leave you.”
Khaldun pulled back and looked into Rawiya’s eyes. “I want your home to be my home,” he said. “Wherever you go, I will go. That was my promise.” He kissed her hands. “I love you, Rawiya. If you will have me, I will follow you to the ends of the earth. If you will have me, I will be your husband.”
But no sooner had he said this than a loud shout went up from the courtyard, and Rawiya and Khaldun sprang to their feet. From the palace came the crash of breaking glass, the crack of clubs on marble. Alarmed, they hurried through the gardens toward the courtyard, keeping their heads low, hidden by the branches. Brash voices and the crackle of torches rose from the courtyard.
Rawiya and Khaldun huddled close together, dismayed at the scene before them. Rebels had taken the palace. The rumors of unrest had been true; the barons had stirred up an armed rebellion against King William.
“We have to find al-Idrisi and get out of here,” Khaldun whispered.
“The library—that’s where he will be.” Rawiya touched al-Idrisi’s jeweled scimitar, which she had worn with pride these last six years. She knew al-Idrisi would never leave without The Book of Roger.
They fled across the gardens toward the library. “It’s been six years,” Khaldun said, “and his heart is still between those pages.”
“He isn’t the first to seek peace among his books instead of sleeping.” Anger seeped into Rawiya’s voice. “This never would have happened under King Roger. A wise king would have—”
“But we have to deal with things as they are,” Khaldun said. “We had many peaceful years. We should be grateful.”
Rawiya flattened herself against a tree at the sound of voices, and her fingertips brushed Khaldun’s. “We had more than most,” she whispered.
They entered the open passageway that led to the library. Through the arches across the balconies, they could see men lifting statuettes and hacking out frescoes and tiling, setting fire to tapestries and velvet cushions.
The library was empty, and all the candles were out. There was one other place al-Idrisi would almost certainly be. Rawiya and Khaldun made for the workshop, where a single candle burned.
In his workshop, al-Idrisi was hunched over the silver planisphere in his white scholar’s robes. He cursed and wept, struggling to lift the plan
isphere onto a wheeled pallet, but it was too heavy for one man to lift alone.
Down the hall, rebels shouted as they ransacked the library, hacking at the bookshelves, setting fire to rare texts.
“There’s no time,” Rawiya said. “We have to leave it.”
“No.” Al-Idrisi set the planisphere down, rubbing his fingers. “The planisphere is all I have left of Roger.”
“You have the book and the map,” Rawiya said. “Let that be enough. The rebels will want the planisphere for the silver. It’s too dangerous to take.”
“Please.” Al-Idrisi bowed his head, his beard as white as his turban. Even after years of travels had taken their toll, Rawiya had never seen him look so old. “We can manage it together.”
Rawiya circled the silver disk. It weighed more than two men. “All right,” she said. “Help me.”
Khaldun moved beside the planisphere, and al-Idrisi positioned himself at the head of their six hands. Together, the three of them hauled the planisphere onto the pallet, grunting with the weight.
The doors burst open. Men tore through the workshop, overturning the tables and the drawing board, brandishing daggers and clubs.
“Go,” Khaldun called out, parrying a blade with his scimitar. He threw the man off him and blocked a club that came swinging down. His attackers shrieked and kicked at him.
“Khaldun!” Rawiya cried.
Khaldun blocked their weapons and spun, sending one man’s dagger to the ground and its owner clutching his wrist. “Go. Now!”
Rawiya pulled al-Idrisi toward the door. More fighters forced their way into the workshop, pushing Khaldun into a corner with the planisphere, his back to the window. One of them set fire to the curtains, and the flames spread across the wooden beams of the workshop ceiling.
Khaldun never saw the arrow that hissed through the window from the courtyard.
Rawiya shrieked.
The arrow tore through Khaldun’s robe, spattering blood on the workshop floor. As his attackers cheered, Khaldun lifted his eyes to Rawiya.
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