As we leave the city behind, I stare out the window. While Budapest was elegant and cosmopolitan, the rest of Hungary is quiet, rural, and agrarian. We pass a handful of exits for small towns dotting the fields along the highway. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of red-tiled roofs or a church steeple, but mostly it is flat fields and clusters of trees. The air is warm and sweet, smelling of hay, of turned earth. Crows fly overhead, outlined black against a cerulean sky.
Ninety minutes later Laszlo takes an exit off the highway. “We are close to the Serbian border,” he announces. “We will reach the camp in a few minutes.”
I press my nose to the window, feeling a jolt of excitement and a flutter of nerves in the pit of my stomach. We are so close. I am eager to get on the ground and start helping people.
We pass a lone gas station, and a couple of minutes later Laszlo turns down a one-lane dirt road. There are no houses or buildings anywhere in sight, just fields on either side of the narrow road, a scrim of trees, and the wide blue dome of sky. We continue down the lane, passing news vans parked along the shoulder with cameramen and reporters holding microphones milling around. Farther along we creep past a line of Hungarian police vans parked beside the road, dark and silent. And then we reach the camp.
“This is it?” Milo asks, incredulous. A few dozen camping tents are scattered across a fallow field bordered by trees. The ground is black earth, churned to mud. The lane we are driving on bisects the camp into two sections. On the left, two large open-sided white tents are filled with stacked boxes. One tent contains food and the other clothing, Laszlo tells us. Two Porta-Potties stand a little ways beyond the tents. The camp looks haphazard, inadequate, just a few small tents in a field of turned earth. The ground is littered with trash. It reminds me of Mumbai. Shredded plastic bags, a single discarded tennis shoe, drifts and mounds of rubbish trampled into the muddy soil.
Police are everywhere, milling about at the edge of the camp, standing by the police vans, hands resting casually on the guns at their hips. Dozens of refugees, maybe more than a hundred, are spread out across the field. Some are going in and out of the camping tents. Others wait in long snaking lines at the food and clothing tents. A closed-sided tent on the right side of the field has the word Medicine printed in several languages in large red letters on the canvas. A straggly line of people waits there. As I watch, a lithe woman with cropped dark hair pops out of the tent and ushers a mother and child inside.
Laszlo pulls the van off to the side of the lane, landing the right two wheels in a shallow ditch. “Stay here,” he instructs, jumping from the van. “I will find out where to unload the supplies.”
At the far side of the camp runs a set of railroad tracks, and the refugees come walking along the tracks in small groups, a new set of two or three or four people trickling into the camp every couple of minutes. The refugees are coming from Serbia, Laszlo explained on the ride over. This camp on Hungarian land is the first time they cross into the Schengen Area, a group of twenty-six countries that have abolished border crossings and passport checks. When they reach Hungary they are almost where they want to end up. They have only to make their way north through the countries of the Schengen Area to their final destinations. Few want to stay in Hungary; they are just passing through, but Hungary represents hope and safety. They are almost to their new homes.
Laszlo reports back. “We can unload everything and take it to the tents.” He points. “Food, clothes, and medicine. But first”—he gestures for us to follow him—“Come meet Szilvia. She is the boss while you are in the camp.”
Chapter 30
At the food tent we shake hands with Szilvia, a stocky Hungarian woman in her midfifties with dyed blonde hair. She has sharp eyes in a kind, careworn face.
“You are welcome here,” she says in heavily accented English. “Many organizations say they will send aid, but Medecines Sans Frontieres and Migration Aid are the only ones on the ground right now. We need help at every station.”
Under Szilvia’s direction we unload the supplies, stacking the food in the food tent and delivering the underwear, socks, hygiene items, and diapers to the clothing tent. I hand over the diapers and baby wipes to a harried-looking young Hungarian man who is attempting to communicate with the refugees waiting in the line. A young man in his teens, barely sprouting the scrubby line of a new mustache, waits with a little girl in a grubby blue dress.
“Socks? You need socks? Razor?” the Hungarian volunteer says slowly and clearly in English, pointing to the items. The young refugee looks confused and nods at every item. The volunteer throws up his hands and turns to me. “Do you speak Arabic? Pashto? Dari?” he asks hopefully.
I shake my head. “Sorry, just a little French.”
He sighs in a long-suffering way and turns back to the young man. “Soap?” he asks again, emphasizing every word as though saying it loudly will make it more understandable. “Underwear for men or women?”
At the food tent Rosie, Winnie, and Kai are already hard at work under Szilvia’s direction. Standing behind a set of folding tables in a U-shape, Rosie is handing out apples and oranges to people waiting in line, Winnie is slicing cucumbers in a cumbersome manner, looking as though she might never have held a kitchen knife before, and Kai is stacking and organizing crates and bags around the edges of the tent, keeping the others supplied with necessary items. Abel is assigned to the drink station in one corner of the food tent. Every adult gets a large bottle of water, and every child can have as much juice and milk as they want. Milo has been assigned to the clothing tent, Rosie tells me. I stand aimlessly for a moment, wondering what I can do to help.
Szilvia sees me and beckons me over to where she is taking inventory. “Many of these refugees, they have been on the road for weeks, sometimes months,” she explains, counting the number of packages of oranges and marking it down. “They come from Turkey to Greece by boat, then by land up through Macedonia to Serbia and finally to us.” She pauses her counting and makes a walking motion with her fingers, illustrating the route they take. “It is a long way, and many times they walk, days they walk. They are exhausted, hungry, no good food, not much water. Many children are sick from sleeping outside. We help them as much as we can before they leave to go north to Germany, Sweden, Norway. This is just a . . .” She searches for the word in English. “A pit stop. Then they go on to their new homes.”
Her gaze alights on two people who have just arrived at the food tent, a heavy middle-aged woman with a younger man who looks like her son. He has her strong nose and dark curly hair. The woman sways and stumbles as they reach the front of the line, and Szilvia springs forward, catching her under the arm.
“Get water and food for them,” she snaps at me, and I jump to comply. Abel hands me two bottles of water, and Rosie quickly gathers some fruit and packaged cookies.
Szilvia is speaking to them when I come back. She opens a bottle of water, pressing it into the woman’s hand. “She has a problem with her heart and ran out of medicine, her son says. Here, take them to the medical station.” She shoos me toward the tent on the other side of the lane.
We set off toward the medical tent slowly, the son and I both helping to support the woman. She moves ponderously, her skin ashen. She doesn’t look good at all, and I cast nervous glances at her as we walk, hoping we can reach the doctor before she collapses.
The line at the medical tent is only about a half dozen deep. As we take our place at the end of the line, the woman I saw earlier pokes her head out of the tent and spies me. She is wearing a white lab coat and has a stethoscope draped around her neck.
“You,” she calls, gesturing to me. “Come, I need assistance.”
I hesitate, not sure I should leave my patient in need, but the lady in the lab coat again gestures impatiently for me to follow her.
Inside the tent the air is sweltering and smells strongly of antiseptic and unwashed bodies. I wrinkle my nose and try to not breathe deeply. A portly man sits on a white fo
lding examination table, his arm held awkwardly out from his body. There is a deep gash in his hairy forearm, crusted with dried blood. I look away hastily, trying not to gag. Oh no. Why couldn’t I have gotten the cucumber slicing gig? Anything but this. Wounds, blood, bodies, sickness—I am not cut out for this kind of thing.
“Hold his arm like this,” the woman instructs, gripping the man’s arm on either side of the wound. When I hesitate she jerks her head impatiently and I spring forward, holding the man’s arm in a tight grip and staring at the ceiling, counting to one hundred in my head as she cleans and dresses the wound. I feel light-headed and bend my knees slightly. How unimpressive would it be if ten minutes into my first real assignment, I passed out in the medical tent? Surely Saint Mia has more grit and gumption than that.
I steel myself and concentrate hard on a few flies buzzing around the ceiling of the tent. The man flinches when she applies antiseptic but otherwise remains stoic. When she is done dressing the wound, she speaks to him in a torrent of beautiful words I don’t comprehend, then ushers him out. When she comes back, she grips my arm lightly.
“Thank you.” She smiles at me, and it feels like the sun breaking through the clouds, lighting up her face. Up close I see she is older than I am, probably late thirties. Her short dark pixie cut is tousled. She has bruised smudges under her eyes from fatigue, but even so she is striking, with a strong jaw and wide brown eyes fringed by dark lashes.
“I am Delphine Dupont.” She sticks her hand out and I shake it. Her grip is strong and sure.
“Mia West,” I say. “You’re a doctor?”
“Oui.”
“Oh.” I brighten at the single word. “You’re French?” I thought I detected a French accent.
She nods. “Oui. From Bordeaux.”
“I studied French in high school,” I say, feeling stupid as soon as the words leave my mouth. “I’m from Seattle.”
“Seattle. Like Grey’s Anatomy, non?” She starts tidying the examination area, wiping the table and getting ready for the next guest. Her supplies and tools are rudimentary. A folding examination table, a metal stool for her to sit on, and a small rolling cart stuffed with assorted medical paraphernalia.
Laszlo told us there is no electricity or running water at the camp, and I imagine how challenging it must be to keep things sanitary and offer assistance with such limitations.
“What were you speaking to that man when you bandaged his arm? It didn’t sound like French.”
Delphine nods briskly. “You are right. It was Arabic. My father was born in Tunisia, and I was raised to speak both French and Arabic, which is very helpful right now.”
I’m impressed. She’s the first person I’ve met in the camp who can communicate with the refugees.
“Are you here volunteering in the camp?” she asks me.
I nod. “For a few weeks at least. Maybe longer.” Stella and Bryant have not given us a departure date, saying we would see how things looked when we got on the ground.
Delphine turns to me. “You came with the older woman, oui? You can bring her in.”
While I go fetch my patient, Delphine leaves the tent and heads across the lane. She talks to Szilvia for a moment. I see her pointing back toward us. When she returns we are waiting in the tent, the woman sitting hunched on the examination table while her son stands nervously nearby.
“You will stay here and help me with the patients,” Delphine announces. “You are my new assistant. Szilvia tells me that you want to provide medical care for poor women and children. This will be good practice for you.”
Horrified, I stare at her for a moment, neatly trapped by my own lie. Laszlo must have told Szilvia about my medical aspirations. No wonder I didn’t get the option to chop cucumbers. They think my medical skills are better used here. Too bad those prized skills are entirely fictitious.
“Oh, I don’t really have that much training,” I hedge. “I’m sure someone else would be more help.” Like probably anyone else on the volunteer roster. I’m guessing most of them can at least handle the sight of blood. For a moment I panic at the thought of being stuck in this tent, forced to help with medical procedures. It’s my own personal version of hell. It’s also entirely my fault for allowing the Humanitas Foundation to believe a falsehood. Now I am paying the price.
Delphine fixes me with a stern stare. “This is a crisis,” she says firmly. “Each of us must do all we can, and more than we can, to help.”
After that, there is really nothing more I can say. I grit my teeth and get on with it. Delphine unwinds the stethoscope from around her neck and presses it against the woman’s ample bosom, murmuring to her in Arabic. After a moment of concentration, she whips off the stethoscope. “Give me the blood pressure cuff,” she orders.
Obediently, I rummage around the rolling cart, hoping I can correctly identify the blood pressure cuff. I locate what I think is the right equipment and pass it to her, resigning myself to volunteering in the very last place in the camp I’d choose to be.
Chapter 31
“Mia, are you in here?” Rosie pokes her head into the women’s shared hostel bathroom later that night. “Can I brush my teeth?”
“Sure.” Standing under the lukewarm spray of water in the shower, I lean my head against the cold tile of the shower stall and close my eyes. It has been a very long day.
Laszlo dropped us off at the hostel well after dark. Located in a small town near the camp, it is our new home. Rosie, Winnie, and I are sharing a large, basic room with bunk beds. The men have the same setup across the hall.
Rosie is quiet as she brushes her teeth. I lather and rinse, trying to erase the smell of antiseptic and dust and unwashed people that permeates my hair and clothes. I am bone-deep weary and footsore and want nothing more than to fall into bed, but even that simple desire makes me feel guilty. I can enjoy a soft bed and a good shower. The people we have come to help cannot. Tonight families, young children, and arthritic old men will sleep on the hard ground with nothing more than a thin fleece blanket to keep the night chill at bay. Fleeing war, violence, trauma in their own countries, they are now bunking down in an empty potato field as they wait for buses that the Hungarian government sends sporadically to transport them north to the border with Austria.
“Goodness, what a day,” Rosie says, her mouth full of toothpaste.
“Yeah, you can say that again.”
Rosie spits into the sink. “Did you see that mother with her teenage daughters walk into camp this afternoon? The one with the designer handbag?”
“I noticed them. What was the purse? It looked expensive.”
The woman and her two daughters walked down the railroad tracks late this afternoon. They all wore hijabs covering their hair and stylishly cut manteaus (which look like long, fitted trench coats) in modest tan and navy blue. The older woman’s pace was slow and dignified. Over her arm hung a beautiful purse in pale pink and rose gold.
“A Chanel,” Rosie says, her tone reverent, tapping water from her toothbrush. “Python skin. That bag is probably worth about five thousand dollars.”
“Wow. They walked all the way from Greece with a designer handbag?”
“I think it’s the only thing they had,” Rosie says. “The daughters didn’t seem to have anything else with them. It makes me feel so ridiculous that I was so devastated about losing my suitcase when these people have lost everything.”
I don’t say anything.
Rosie pauses, the water still running in the sink. “I feel guilty parading around in these designer clothes Lars got me, but I don’t have anything else to wear,” she says soberly.
It’s a conundrum. She can’t borrow anything of mine as we’re not remotely the same size, and even if Winnie was amenable to letting her borrow clothes, lace-up combat boots and Dynamite Kitty T-shirts would be just as jarring as designer wear.
“Maybe just try to tone it down a little,” I suggest, rinsing conditioner from my hair. “That plum dress doesn’
t look too flashy. I think a couple things could still work.” I want to help Rosie, but I’m just too tired to think clearly. “At the end of the day I don’t think what you’re wearing matters as much as being sensitive to where people are coming from, what they’ve gone through, and what they’ve lost.” I swallow hard, suddenly feeling tears spring to my eyes.
“You’re right,” Rosie agrees. “I just didn’t realize it would be like this. To see people, real people, in these conditions, and start hearing their stories. It’s . . . shattering.”
“It is,” I say quietly. There is no other word for it.
We don’t say anything for a moment, the steady patter of the shower the only sound.
“Okay, sugar. I’m going to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.”
“Sleep well. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The bathroom door shuts behind Rosie, and I lean my head against the cold tile in the shower. I picture the woman with the Chanel purse and her daughters again. There were no men accompanying them, which Delphine noted was unusual. The woman’s face was stalwart and weary. Something in her expression caught me, resigned but still proud. What had they gone through? What had they left behind?
The shower has run cold, but I am too tired to care. I stand under the chilly spray, overwhelmed by what I have seen today. The most poignant visitor to the medical tent was a little boy with shaggy hair who silently clutched a red toy car missing a wheel as Delphine cleaned an infected cut on his knee. His mother told us the car belonged to his seven-year-old brother, killed by a bomb in Damascus while the boys were playing in the street. When his mother found him at the hospital hours later, he was sitting by his brother’s body, holding his limp hand. He carried the toy car with him from Syria, his only memento of his brother.
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