On the morning of Tuesday, March 22, Ahmed woke up after six. With the sunrise now around six thirty, he knew he’d have to get ready quickly. He threw on his clothes and rushed out to the furniture room to check the orchids. He was hopping on one foot, trying to shove on a sneaker, when he nearly toppled over. On the spike of the healthiest orchid were tiny, pale-green buds.
Only three days were left before the parent-teacher conference. Just as he’d promised, Ahmed had been thinking about what he wanted to do. It was hard to share Max’s faith that adults would protect him, especially after he had broken so many laws. But he wouldn’t be telling alone; Max would be with him. As he gazed at the buds, they seemed like a good omen, a message from the universe that everything would be okay.
By the time Ahmed scaled the garden wall and made his way to Square Vergote, the sky was turning a bright, cloudless blue. The peace it promised—of a sunny day, of warm moods lifted by spring, of friends and football—calmed him.
Only later did he realize that he had forgotten the most important lesson of war: when you least expect it, chaos always returns.
* * *
“JE VIENS CHERCHER MAX.”
I’ve come for Max.
A familiar voice jarred Ahmed from Madame Legrand’s lecture on the Thirty Years’ War. He looked up to find Max’s mother standing in the doorway. Wisps of hair stuck up around her face, and she sounded out of breath.
Ahmed glanced at the clock on the wall—it was barely nine thirty. Why was she picking up Max now? He hadn’t mentioned a doctor’s appointment.
Madame Legrand wrinkled her brow, clearly taken aback by the interruption. Ahmed looked at Max, but he just blinked and stared, as confused as everyone else.
“The directrice says it’s okay,” Max’s mother said in French, waving Max up out of his chair.
Madame Legrand cocked her head at Max. “Go on.”
Max quickly gathered up the books and papers on his desk, then, with an almost imperceptible shrug in Ahmed’s direction, followed his mother out of class. As soon as the door closed behind them, Madame Legrand went back to discussing the Peace of Westphalia.
Ahmed told himself that Max’s mother must have forgotten an appointment. But just as he began to focus back on Madame Legrand’s lecture, the door to the room opened and a man Ahmed had never seen before walked in. He too seemed breathless, like he was in a great hurry.
“I’m taking Charlotte,” he said.
Outside in the hall, Ahmed saw a few other parents leaving with their kids. Something was going on. Something bad enough, frightening enough, that they were taking their children home. Ahmed could only think of one thing: a terror attack. His chest tightened; he couldn’t breathe. Max’s mother would get him home safely—they were only two blocks away. But what about Max’s father and sister? The terrorists could be attacking government buildings, like the one where Max’s father worked, or even worse, schools.
Madame Legrand had figured out that something serious was going on as well, because she walked the man who was clearly Charlotte’s father out into the hall and closed the door behind them.
“What’s going on?” Farah said.
As if in answer, a siren wailed in the distance. Jules and André ran to the window.
“No go near window!” Ahmed shouted.
Everyone stared at him. Ahmed felt his face turn red. He was just trying to keep them safe, but it might sound like he knew what was going on out there. What if they thought he was a terrorist or knew the terrorists?
A balled-up piece of paper landed on Ahmed’s desk. He picked it up and smoothed it out.
“Stay calm,” it read in English.
Ahmed caught Oscar’s eye and nodded. But it was hard not to panic. He was an illegal refugee; he had forged paperwork. The whole city would be looking for young men like him. He just wanted to run back to Max’s house and hide in the cellar. But running away now would seem suspicious. And he was safer here in school than he’d be on the streets with the terrorists and soldiers and police.
When Madame Legrand returned, she dismissed Charlotte, then went back to the history lecture. But this time, even she seemed distracted—forgetting her point and gazing out the window. It was a relief when Madame Bertrand, the directrice, walked in. She whispered for a minute with Madame Legrand, then turned to address the class. Ahmed understood some phrases: “explosion at the airport,” “some parents have taken their children home,” “the school is locked now.” She seemed to be assuring them that they were safe, but the frantic bleating of the sirens outside made Ahmed wonder what she wasn’t telling them.
The day continued as if it were no different than any other—Madame Legrand showed them how to solve for x, they learned a Zumba dance in gym and back in class they discussed the fables of La Fontaine and the moral lessons they taught. But it wasn’t a normal day; no one clowned around or misbehaved, and Ahmed could see from the worried faces that everyone’s thoughts were elsewhere. Ahmed knew exactly how they felt: did it really matter if they could solve for x when the city was under attack and their families were possibly out there? He wished he could tell them that it did, that even the illusion of normal life could help you put one foot in front of the other and walk the tightrope of disaster.
At lunch and over recess, rumors and stories began to spread. Oscar reported that he’d overheard the secretary telling one of the teachers that the airport had been blown up. Madame Mansouri had confided to Farah that the Maelbeek metro station had been attacked too. Ahmed felt ill as he remembered riding past this stop on the back of Max’s bike on the way to the Magritte Museum. There was possibly also a bomb at the Schuman metro, near the European Commission headquarters, though no one knew for sure.
“This is bad,” Farah repeated, again and again.
Ahmed knew she wasn’t just talking about him and his life, but hers. Every Muslim in Brussels would be a suspect, at least in the minds of non-Muslim Europeans. Ahmed knew he could never tell the truth now. The authorities would lock him up or deport him back to Turkey.
As he played a halfhearted game of football during recess, Ahmed noticed that there were no commercial planes in the sky, only police helicopters, looping low over the neighborhood. The whoosh of the rotors reminded him of the helicopters back home, the ones that dropped bombs, and he had to stifle the urge to run inside.
“You’re fine,” Oscar whispered to him after one of the helicopters buzzed particularly low. “Just make it through the day; you’ll be safe at Max’s.”
But Ahmed noticed that Oscar didn’t talk about the next day and the day after that. In just a few hours, everything had changed. And Max wasn’t there to reassure him.
By the afternoon, even Madame Legrand could no longer keep up the pretense that it was a normal day. For the last hour of school, she let them draw “dessins heureux,” or happy pictures. Ahmed sketched without thinking. It was a way to keep his mind calm, clear.
“That’s a beautiful garden,” Madame Legrand said, standing over him.
“Merci, Madame.”
He had drawn the garden behind Max’s house. Madame Legrand asked him if she could hang it up in class. There was no polite way, Ahmed felt, to say no. But he would have liked to have kept it.