by Chaitali Sen
They ate at the inn, where they were served generous helpings of lukewarm stew and stale bread. There was cheap wine and they drank it. They watched a sad man play his violin and to make him happy they danced, lazily and sleepily, John’s arm around Mariam’s waist, her cheek holding him up, until the man stopped playing his violin and collected his tips in a hat.
Their room was rustic and romantic. It had a shuttered window with no glass and no screen, and they could leave it open to let in the breeze. Mariam opened the shutters, her arms stretched out wide across the window. Over her head he saw a section of wall and the outlines of turrets, and a nearly full moon.
He kissed her in front of the window. Her body looked thin and fragile, much like it did when they first met, and she was worried about his head. They were delicate with each other at first, but they discovered they wanted more, and neither was as ailing as the other thought. He lay on his back, looking up at her, at her hair grazing the tips of her eyebrows. Her hands pressed hard into his chest and then he was shuddering, and cold. He lifted one hand, weakly, and pulled at her hair. He pulled her down to cover him.
At dawn a low-pitched song reverberated across the city stones. Mariam lifted her head toward the window. “The fajr prayer,” she said. They had talked about it once, on a cold grassy slope at Mount Belet.
Now Mariam told him what it meant, as she had heard it from her mother. Wake up, wake up, prayer is better than sleep.
He had to agree. This was better than sleep. They listened to the melodious call, and the hush that followed.
Their train was scheduled to leave at ten o’clock but reportedly it was often late, so they moved slowly. He called the front desk for some coffee and rolls. They bathed thoroughly and changed their minds about what to wear. When they were ready they took a taxi to the station, leaving the car empty and abandoned outside the city wall. He bought a first-class private compartment, as he had been advised to do. Having the tickets in his hand stirred up a wave of nausea. He told himself to stay calm, to look confident, to give off an air of entitlement. The platform was crowded and it reassured him that many of these people, statistically, were crossing the border with fake documents. It would be an easy passage. They bought snacks and several newspapers and magazines, enough to keep them occupied, because they both were certain they would not sleep.
He put the suitcase in the storage rack above their bunk. As the train pulled out of the station, an hour late, the conductor came and checked their tickets. John and Mariam watched him. He took no more than a cursory glance before he handed them back and left, but John remained standing by the door of the compartment as if he were guarding it. Mariam sat and looked out the window, getting her last view of the fortress wall and its main arched gate. The train creaked along the tracks for a few miles, but after that they descended steeply into a valley, where the land leveled off and the train could gather some speed. When the surrounding hills became monotonous Mariam pulled away from the window and stood up.
“It will be a little while until we get to the border,” he told her. “We should try to keep busy.”
They tried to read, but they were restless and took turns pacing the cabin. In his mind, John kept stumbling over the story they were supposed to tell. He had to remind himself again and again, who were they, where were they going and why?
In three more hours they were at the border. When he looked outside there was nothing—a low horizon splitting a sea of grass from a broad sky and nothing more. He couldn’t see it yet, but soon they pulled into a stop with a short platform, a checkpoint station and a tower in the near distance. It was identical to the desert station where he was posted during the first part of his military service and he remembered Sherod and Flaco and Gordo. He came away from the window smiling, remembering how lax they were about their jobs.
The conductor slid their door open and told them to get out their tickets and passports. He asked them to leave the door open until the border patrol had gone through.
They didn’t have to wait long. An officer not in military uniform came in to check their passports. He asked them about their journey and their destination. He had a round amiable face with a clownish, bulbous nose. “You’re taking the long way to France,” he remarked.
“We decided to take our time,” John said. “We don’t know when we’ll be back this way.”
The officer looked at Mariam’s passport and at Mariam. He winked at her. “Did you see Kulna Fort?” he asked her.
“Yes. It was very impressive.”
He closed Mariam’s passport but didn’t hand it back to her. He opened John’s again and leafed through it.
“Do you have other identification?” he asked.
John reached into his pocket for his wallet, which he had emptied of everything except the cash and his new driver’s license. He thought now the wallet looked suspiciously empty. He tried not to fumble as he took out the license and handed it to the officer.
The officer didn’t look at it. With the two passports and the license in his hand he said he would be right back. He walked out with their documents, and Mariam sat down on the edge of the bunk, her chest heaving.
“We’re doing fine,” he whispered. “This is the hardest part.”
He looked out the window but he couldn’t see anything happening at the checkpoint. After a minute he saw there were militia guards out on the platform, coming off the train and waiting for something. One of them turned and walked past the window. He was talking to someone on the train. It must have been the border officer. Then he stepped out of view, and in a minute the officer was back, joined by the same militia guard he had just seen on the platform. The guard stayed in the doorway, blocking it. The officer came in still holding the documents in his hand. “Mr. Chaboud?” he asked, watching John carefully for his response.
“Yes,” John said.
“Have I pronounced your name correctly?”
Mariam corrected his pronunciation. The “ch” was soft. The officer apologized for his mispronunciation.
“Is there a problem?” John asked. He felt it would have been suspicious not to ask.
The officer opened the passports again. “These were issued in Alexandria?”
“Yes.”
“Is that where you live?”
“Yes, in Cypress Gardens.”
“Why did you not fly out of Alexandria?”
“We’ve planned to take this journey by train for a long time. My father died recently. He left us some money. We decided this was the only chance we would have.”
“You have no children?”
“No children,” John answered.
“How long have you been married?”
“Ten years,” he said, rounding up.
“What was your father’s name?”
They had not drawn out a family tree. He said the first name that came to his head, Cyrus, but there was a delay, which the officer certainly noticed. The officer pressed him for more details about his father, and John provided them, no longer making things up but telling his own father’s life story. He was a doctor, a cardiologist. He was seventy years old. When asked how he died, John invented a heart attack.
“How tragic for a cardiologist to die of a heart attack,” the officer said, sounding amused.
Mariam exhaled suddenly, a loud exhalation as if she had been holding her breath underwater. The officer looked at her, alarmed. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“Are you from Alexandria as well?” he asked her.
She nodded. “I grew up in Alexandria, but my family comes from Belarive in the south.” She had adjusted her accent to sound like she was from Alexandria. John never knew she had that ability and he was amazed by it, amazed at her capacity to surprise him, still.
“Belarive,” the officer mused. “It used to be a beautiful place.
Have you been there?”
“Only once when I was small.”
“Well,” he said, cheerfully slapping the passports together, “if one of you could step outside with this gentleman, I’m sure we’ll have this resolved quickly.”
“Have what resolved?” John asked.
The guard stepped forward. He stood in front of Mariam, waiting for her to stand up and accompany him. Mariam was about to stand up but John put his hand out in front of her, and she sat back down. “What is this about?”
“We have to verify the authenticity of your documents.”
“The documents are authentic. Surely you can tell a fake passport from a real one.”
The officer chuckled. “You would think this is true, but you’d be shocked at how many people pass through here with false documents. It’s causing problems for our neighbors. You understand.”
John couldn’t think of anything to say. This seemed to be standard procedure and there didn’t seem to be a way out of it. “I’ll go,” John said. “I’ll go with him.”
The officer looked at Mariam again. “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” he asked, pointing to the guard incredulously. “This baby face? He won’t hurt you.”
Mariam played along. “I’ve never faced a military interrogation before.”
The officer looked back at the guard and they both laughed. He turned back to Mariam.
“You have nothing to hide, do you?”
“I have nothing to hide, but it isn’t every day one is accused of forgery.” She stood up now, but she wasn’t looking at either of the men standing in front of her. Her eyes were on the window. John followed her gaze and saw what she saw, a silent gathering of militia guards a few cars down the platform, five or six of them. Passengers were coming off the train, perhaps to be questioned in the same way John or Mariam were about to be taken off the train and questioned. Soon the passengers outnumbered the guards on the platform. Three men were put immediately to their knees, with their hands on their heads, barrels of rifles pointed at their backs. The commotion grew as the other people taken off the train began to plead with the guards. The voices had reached the window of their compartment now, finally capturing the border officer’s attention. He turned and looked out the window and frowned. He waved over his guard, who took a brief look before rushing out to the platform.
Then John peered out further into the grass and saw a figure, perhaps a boy of twelve or thirteen, or else a small man, running fast. Mariam squeezed his hand. He glanced at her and saw her staring in the same direction.
The officer took out his radio. There was a stretch of static before someone from the tower answered his signal.
“Someone’s running in the field,” he said. “Don’t you see him?” There was a garbled response which somehow the officer seemed to understand. “Take a damn shot. What are you waiting for?”
John couldn’t hear any shots fired. He only saw the boy run a little longer before he stumbled and fell into the grass. Two guards ran out after him. It didn’t take them long to reach him. He had not gotten as far as John had thought.
He felt Mariam lean on his shoulder. He turned his chin toward her, trying to assure her he wouldn’t let go of her now. They had come close to being separated, which would have been a terrible mistake, but for now they were forgotten, with the trouble on the platform and the boy shot down in the grass, and whatever happened next he wouldn’t let go.
As the officer stepped away from the window, Mariam lifted her head from John’s shoulder. He tightened his grip on her hand, bracing for a confrontation. Everything outside was settling and John had not yet thought of another way out.
“What a mess,” the officer said, shaking his head.
A voice came on the radio again and the officer answered it. A guard was reporting to him but the message kept breaking up. He looked like he wanted to throw his radio out the window and began walking out of the compartment, then turned back, absently handing the passports back to John. The license fell to the floor and he bent halfway down to pick it up, but changed his mind, probably remembering he had more important things to do, and continued walking out of the compartment with the radio to his ear.
John clutched the passports, expecting the officer to come back any minute. Maybe there was a place on the train they could hide, or they could get off the train and run in the other direction while everyone was distracted. A woman, likely the boy’s mother, was screaming. If there was a time to get off the train, it was now. But then what? Then what?
The border officer appeared on the platform. He made a gesture, his hand waving high in the air. The train lurched and sighed.
Mariam called John’s name. He turned to her and watched her lips.
“We’re moving,” she said.
Even as he felt the grinding under his feet he thought she had gotten it wrong. He looked out the window again. The platform and the people it held like a stage slid past, slowly, until it was gone.
MORNING
Omar made breakfast every morning. He let Arifah sit with a cup of tea by the kitchen window while he buttered the bread and sliced a banana. His grip on the knife improved daily. In the beginning it constantly slipped out of his hand. If it fell to the floor instead of onto the table, he would simply leave it there and get another one out of the drawer, and after breakfast, when Omar had left the kitchen, Arifah bent over picking knives up off the floor.
When he brought her the plate she would try to be gracious, smiling at him while he patted her head. Often when they sat on the sofa watching television they held hands. At night, lying next to each other, they would stay awake for a long time and have a conversation.
Arifah tolerated all of his kindness, but she had no more use for human company. Somewhere inside this harmless old man was the man she married, the man who had done her much harm. She had not wanted to come back here. They all would have been happier if she had let him come alone and made her way without him, but she had wanted a family, and she had not been raised to leave her husband. Even when he abandoned her she was loyal, and she hated herself for it. She blamed him entirely for her loss. She couldn’t spare him.
Dolly told her not to be so morose. Mariam and John were in France. Wasn’t it something joyous that they had made it across a continent?
“I’ll never see my daughter again,” Arifah said.
“How can you know that?” Dolly asked, but Arifah did know, and Dolly knew it too, and they did not discuss it again.
Then Dolly and Zoya came to say goodbye. They were leaving for Switzerland. The university was closed and there was nothing here for them anymore, though Zoya disagreed. She wanted to stay and find out what new world would come from this chaos. She was sullen and listless and had not said a word during the entire visit. When she got up to go the restroom, Dolly confessed that she and Zoya fought constantly now. She feared there was no affection left between them. “It’s difficult to have an only daughter,” Arifah said, perhaps unkindly. Dolly would likely see Mariam, perhaps not soon but sometime, and the thought of it made Arifah’s body ache.
One morning she and Omar were sitting by the window, watching a rainstorm, listening to the low rumbling thunder and the rain coming down like silver arrows. Omar squinted and brought his head closer to the glass, and she followed his gaze to the street. A car had pulled up in front of their house, and after a minute a door on the passenger side opened and a long bud of an umbrella suddenly bloomed like a giant black flower. Arifah went to the front door and saw Vic running up the path, holding the umbrella with one hand and gripping a brown bag to his chest with the other. He got to the porch and put his umbrella down without collapsing it. “Come inside,” she said. “You’re drenched already.”
She closed his umbrella and brought it inside, and took his coat. “Can I make you some tea?”
“I can’t stay long. There’s a ca
r waiting for me.”
“We’ll go to the kitchen, regardless, where it’s warm.”
In the kitchen Vic urged Omar to sit down. He sat down himself, placing the paper bag, splattered with rain, on the kitchen table. He accepted a cup of tea from Arifah.
“I’ve been meaning to pay you a visit. I wanted to know how you are,” he said.
“On a day like this? Are you mad?”
He smiled. “It had to be today. I’m leaving tonight and won’t be back for a while.”
Arifah’s heart clenched. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been more prepared for this news.
“Are you going back to Alexandria?” she asked.
“Not back to Alexandria.”
“Germany?” Omar asked. It was not a question so much as a command. He once told Vic to go to Germany, which was funny to Arifah given how quickly Omar had abandoned Germany.
“I’m afraid not,” Vic told him.
Arifah could see he didn’t want to reveal any more. It was none of their business, anyway.
Vic picked up the paper bag and pulled out a book. It was the book John had written, the one Mariam had shown her when it was a bunch of loose papers in a box. She remembered the argument it started. “They left this in the apartment and I’d been meaning to give it to you. Do you already have a copy?”
“No,” Arifah said. She had seen it in Mariam’s apartment, but it hardly took up any space in her mind with everything going on.
“I apologize for holding it so long. I was reading it.”
“Any good?” Arifah asked jokingly.
Vic smiled. “It’s very good.” Vic looked at Omar and slid the book across the table to him. “You will like it, Omar. For people who love our country, it’s an important book. I never knew John had so much love for his homeland.”