And then she came. Saleem leaped to his feet at the sight of the familiar purple shirts. Abdullah burst out laughing and slapped his calves.
“Ah, the real reason you’ve come back! You think she’ll take you in and give you asylum, eh?”
“Abdullah, don’t say that. It’s nothing like that.”
Saleem was nervous. Four figures approached and Saleem held his breath. He spied Roksana, carrying a large box. Saleem walked over, when he wanted to run. He did not want to bring any more attention to Roksana for both their sakes.
He called her name softly.
Roksana’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Saleem?”
She put the box down on a bench and put a hand on his arm.
“Saleem, where have you been? What happened to you?” She looked him over. He had lost weight in the last week alone. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Saleem said, conscious of her touch. His body tensed and she pulled back. Roksana’s edge had softened. He resisted the urge to wrap his arms around her.
“Tell me,” Roksana said as she sat on a cement step. She looked up at Saleem and he took a seat beside her. His questions came first.
“Roksana — my mother. Where did she go? Did they take the train?”
They’d left the day after Saleem had spoken with his mother. Roksana had gone to the train station and recognized them, though she’d never seen them and though Saleem was not there. She’d guessed, she’d said, by the look on their faces. They looked like they were missing something. . someone. She didn’t tell him much about his mother, hiding how Madar-jan had really looked behind simple words. Roksana had helped them get onto the train to Patras, though she didn’t know anything about their journey after that. They’d left over a month ago.
“You have not heard from them?” Roksana asked.
“No. I hope they’re in England with my aunt.” He sighed.
“Can you call your aunt?”
Saleem did not have her phone number. There hadn’t been enough time or levelheaded thinking in their brief conversation for Saleem to ask his mother for the number. He had no way of contacting them, nor did he have a way of finding his family once he got to London.
Roksana wanted to know everything that had happened. Madar-jan had told her something about the police, but she hadn’t shared much more beyond that.
Saleem recounted the whole story for her while she listened intently. She bit her lip and shook her head as he described the way the police had kicked him around before letting him loose in Turkey. It felt good to finally be able to talk about it with someone like her, someone who listened and didn’t think he’d had it coming.
“Saleem, this is bad. You have to do something. You can’t get stuck here like all these other guys,” Roksana warned, her eyes on the rest of the Afghans shifting aimlessly through the park. “You need to find a better way. I wish you at least had that passport I mailed to you. I’m sure it was stolen. You can’t even trust a damn envelope to get from here to there without someone going through it.”
“It’s gone. I must go to Italy with no passport. It will not be easy.”
“No, and it’s very dangerous.” Roksana thought it over. “Maybe you can get another passport. But. . it’s a little risky.”
“A passport? From where?” Saleem looked at her curiously.
“They are costly, I think. For a European passport — maybe hundreds of euros,” she said, though she sounded unsure. “I don’t really know but some of the guys here might.”
Saleem had money and told Roksana as much.
“Keep your money hidden away, Saleem. Maybe it’s better if you don’t say anything to the boys here,” she warned, nodding in the direction of the others. “Fake papers don’t always work anyway.”
It struck Saleem that a girl like Roksana should have nothing to do with Attiki Square, a jungle of cement and weeds, framed by buildings and deceptively serene trees. Men lazed on sheets of cardboard. It looked more like a corner of war-ravaged Afghanistan than a peaceful European nation. Roksana should have run in the opposite direction but she didn’t. It was a curious thing.
“Why do you do this, Roksana?” he asked pensively. She said nothing, letting his question melt into the silence between them.
Saleem looked up at her. What did she see? Did she see his clothes or his stringy hair? Did she see a friend or a refugee case? Saleem hadn’t known what to expect from Europe, but it surely wasn’t this. He hadn’t expected to be tossed about and under threat every step of the way. If Roksana was trying to undo what had been done to him and his family thus far, there was a long way to go.
Before she could answer his question, one of the other volunteers waved her over. They needed her help.
“Where are you going to stay tonight?” The edge in her tone returned. She was back to business. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”
Saleem shook his head. Maybe Roksana was here because he was that person who could make her feel selfless and giving. Maybe it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her. Something bitter took root within him though he didn’t know why and he wasn’t proud of it.
“No, I will stay here.”
Roksana nodded, then stood up and brushed her backside with her hands. Saleem had no way of knowing how many times she’d asked herself the same question. Why bother to come here? Why bother doing anything for one refugee when a thousand more were on their way in?
She could have walked away from him for good. She could have lumped him in with the others. But she didn’t see him the way she saw the others.
Roksana regretted that she couldn’t tell him more about his family’s whereabouts. She’d watched the train pull out of the station, but beyond that moment, anything could have happened to Fereiba and the two younger children. Anything.
CHAPTER 39. Fereiba
I’VE DRAGGED MY TWO CHILDREN ALONG WITH ME FROM RAIL to rail, from country to country. At each checkpoint, each customs control, I wait for the moment when we will be found out. My worst fear is the same as my biggest hope — separation from my children. I wonder if I’ll be apart from Saleem forever or if he’ll be the only one of us to make it through. Samira is a young girl, a dangerous time to be alone. Aziz is frail, a flower that will quickly wilt if plucked from the bush. I pray at some checkpoints that my children be granted asylum even if I am sent back. At other checkpoints, I pray we are sent back together. Cornered mothers pray for strange things.
When the bombardments back home were at their worst, a teacher I considered a friend made crazed decisions each night. One night, she made the children sleep with her and her husband, all in the same room. Another night, she put each child alone in a different room. Every night was a gamble. They could all endure or perish together. Or they could gamble that perhaps one or two of them would survive. Each night, without fail, she prayed most fervently that God not spare her if her children were taken. These were pleas she could only make to God in her quiet thoughts because to speak them aloud would have blackened her tongue.
In the last year, as I’ve tried to give my children a safe life, I’ve felt more like a criminal than anything else. Even righteousness is an ambiguous thing.
From Greece to Italy, from Italy to France. It is now the last leg of our journey, from Paris to London on a silver-and-yellow train that looks like a rocket blazing through an underground path. It is on this last voyage that I leave Aziz in Samira’s care and gather our Belgian passports. I slip them into my black leather handbag and take them with me to the restroom in our car, a narrow square of stainless steel. One by one, I rip each page of the passports into tiny shreds and let them fall into the toilet like the snowflakes that will meet us in London. I tear them apart and undo our false identities. I am again Fereiba. My children are again Samira and Aziz.