The next morning, just before eight, the doorbell rang. Max ran to the kitchen window, hoping to find Ahmed. But instead Oscar stood outside, a battered racing bike balanced on its kickstand next to Max’s.
Max grabbed his coat and backpack and ran to the door. His parents piled into the foyer after him.
“Hello, Madame, Monsieur How-Weird,” Oscar said. Then he stepped past Max to kiss Max’s parents on their cheeks.
Oscar probably had no idea how brilliant a move this was—his parents still weren’t completely used to the customary Belgian greeting, and as they blushed and fumbled, Max took the opportunity to shoot out the door and down the steps. He unlocked his bike and nodded to Oscar, who had finished his kiss offensive and hopped back on his own bike.
“Where are you going?” his mother asked.
“We bike to school together,” Oscar said matter-of-factly, as if they did this every day.
His mother took a step after them. “Wait, Max, I don’t—”
“Oh, let them go. It’s just around the block,” his father said.
Max didn’t wait for the argument he knew was coming. He just pushed off and started pedaling. “See you after school!”
“Au revoir,” Oscar added.
They raced down the street, past Albert Jonnart’s house, before turning onto Rue de Linthout. But at the end of the block, instead of turning right onto Rue Vergote and toward the School of Happiness, Oscar turned left. At the end of the block, he braked by a traffic circle and pulled out his phone. “I told Farah I’d call her as soon as we were together.”
“Where is she?” Max asked.
“Home. Her metro is still closed.”
“Hi,” Oscar said into the phone. “It’s me. Max is here.”
He pressed Speaker and Farah’s voice crackled over the line.
“I have an idea where Ahmed is,” she said. “That man, Ibrahim, the one he came here with. If he was in trouble—”
“He’d try to find him!” Max said. “Didn’t he have family in Molenbeek?”
“Yes,” Farah said. “Ibrahim Malki … No, Malaki—that was it!”
Max squeezed the handles of his bike.
“You’re in Molenbeek, Farah. Could you find him?”
“Because every Muslim knows every other Muslim? There are tens of thousands of people in Molenbeek!”
“I’ll find him,” Oscar cut in.
“How?” Max asked.
“I can use one of the computers at the commune to look up anyone in the city. I’ll just tell my mom I started feeling sick on the way to school—she’ll let me hang out there.”
Max grinned. “Criminal mind,” he said in English. Then he switched back to French for Farah. “I’ll bike to Molenbeek and find him.”
“We’ll go together,” Farah said. “There are journalists everywhere trying to talk to people, and it’s making everyone tense. It’s not a good time to be wandering around by yourself. Meet me outside Forum at ten. It’s this huge furniture store on Chaussée de Gand, the big shopping street, around the corner from the Place Communale. It used to be an old theater. You can’t miss it.”
* * *
AT A QUARTER TO TEN, Max rode into the Place Communale. After all the talk on the news and from Madame Pauline about Molenbeek being a terrorist training ground, Max was surprised to find a cobblestone square flanked by an elegant town hall with a copper dome and town houses with shops on the ground floors. The shops were a mix of Western (one with the illuminated green cross of a Belgian pharmacy) and Eastern (a shop that sold headscarves and other Muslim women’s wear). A few were already open, and others were in the process of opening up. It almost seemed like a normal day save for the news vans parked in the square, satellites perched atop their roofs like huge white ears.
As Max turned the corner onto what Google Maps assured him was Chaussée de Gand, he saw more stores selling chandeliers, rolled-up carpets, lacy curtains, bolts of cloth. Most of the women on the street wore headscarves, and Max noticed that only men seemed to gather at the small cafés, where they drank glasses of steaming hot tea instead of wine or beer. But at the same time, Molenbeek didn’t seem quite as foreign—or frightening—as he had imagined. The language Max heard most around him was French, and the curving street and buildings—with their tall windows and gabled roofs—were distinctively Belgian.
Minutes later, he spotted a white building with an enormous red marquee that once must have featured the night’s acts but now simply read FORUM in big white letters. Before he had even reached it, Farah ducked out from behind the mattresses and dining sets that spilled out the front entrance and ran over to meet him.
“Oscar called me with the address,” she said in French. “It’s not far. Come on!”
Farah turned off Chaussée de Gand onto a residential street lined with apartment buildings and town houses. Then she stopped and pointed down a quiet block.
“That’s where they caught Salah Abdeslam, the Paris attacker.”
Max wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t this, a slightly worn-down but still pretty block with ironwork balconies. He thought about what Madame Pauline had said. “Do you think a lot of the people knew he was here?”
“A few,” Farah admitted. “It’s hard when young men can’t get good jobs and feel there’s no place for them here in Belgium. Some turn to crime and drugs, and there are radical mosques and imams who prey on them. But most people don’t get involved in any of this. They just want to be left in peace.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible for anyone now.”
Farah stopped in front of a tall brick apartment building.
“You may be right. But don’t tell Ahmed—I’m sure he is frightened enough.” She gestured at the building. “This is it.”
Like the rest of the apartments they had passed, lacy white curtains covered all the windows. Max noticed a set of buzzers, but it was impossible to tell which apartment to ring since the names of the occupants had been scratched off.
“A lot of people did that after the lockdown,” Farah said. “They didn’t want the police to bother them.”
“I hope Oscar gave you an apartment number,” Max said.
“The address just said first floor,” Farah said, pressing one of the lower buzzers. No one answered. She tried another.
A man’s curt voice crackled over the intercom. “Who’s there?” he asked in French.
“My name is Farah. I’m looked for an Iraqi family. Malaki—”
Then she said something in a language that Max guessed was Berber. The man answered her in this language and a few seconds later, the door buzzed open.
They scrambled up a steep, dimly lit stairwell to the first floor. Farah paused on the landing and pointed to a door to the right with an array of shoes laid out carefully beside it. “He said they live here.”
Max rushed over and knocked on the door. He heard a bolt slide and the door creaked open a few inches. A man with a creased, unshaven face peered out, his brown eyes blinking rapidly. It was clear to Max that he had no idea why he was there.
“I’m looking for Ahmed Nasser,” Max said in French.
The man opened the door wider and gazed at Max, then Farah. “You know Ahmed?”
“We are friends of his,” Farah said. “We mean him or you no trouble. We are simply worried about him and are looking for his friend Ibrahim Malaki.”
The man’s eyebrow twitched with excitement. “I am Ibrahim Malaki,” he said in French. “Come in, children, come.”
The warmth in his tone made Max hopeful that Ahmed was inside. He charged toward the door, but Farah grabbed his arm. “Take off your shoes,” she said.
Max felt his face color slightly. He slipped off his sneakers and lined them up next to hers. Then they followed Ibrahim down a narrow hall into a room with several small carpets and futons. Max had hoped to find Ahmed sitting there, but the room was empty. Ibrahim called out in a language that Max assumed was Arabic, and a door off the room opened. A woman with shapely dark eyebrows bustled out, trailed by a wide-eyed little girl, and switched on an electric kettle in the corner.
“My wife, Zainab,” Ibrahim said. “And my daughter, Bana.”
Zainab greeted them with a nod and some Arabic words that Farah repeated back. Then she and Bana vanished behind another closed door, returning a few minutes later with a tray of teacups and flaky honey-and-nut-filled pastries.
“I am glad you come,” Ibrahim said in French, settling onto one of the futons and indicating with a wave of his hand that they should do the same as Zainab handed them tea. “I too look for Ahmed.”
Max’s stomach dropped. “He’s not here?”
Ibrahim shook his head. “I do not see him since he leaves me in August. But please tell me how you meet him.”
Max sighed heavily—Farah’s idea had seemed like such a good one!—but he knew he owed Ibrahim this much. He quickly explained how he’d found Ahmed hiding in his basement, how they’d enrolled him in school, how he’d impressed everyone with his hard work, how they’d become increasingly worried that Inspector Fontaine and Madame Legrand would catch on.
“I think the attacks were too much,” Max admitted. “He was frightened. He just ran. But I was hoping he’d come to you or your family.”
“I wish he does too,” Ibrahim agreed.
Then he said something so extraordinary that Max thought he’d heard him wrong.
“I’m sorry. Can you say that again?” Max asked.
In a slow, clear voice, Ibrahim repeated, “His father is searching for him.”