Thirty days became forty. Forty became fifty. Families left. April turned to May. And still no one came to release Ahmed and his father from Kiskunhalas.
“Reka says this is a delay with our paperwork,” his father reported after speaking with her briefly. “But maybe it is better here than in Greece. You must have faith in Allah’s plan.”
Ahmed would have to try; he had lost faith in his own. Would a Jewish organization really want to help a Muslim boy? They probably just resented the comparison between his plight and Ralph’s. People were always weighing their suffering against others’, not using it to form bonds. He wrote to Max: It does not work.
Be patient, Max wrote back. But the fact that Max wrote nothing more just made Ahmed feel more hopeless.
The single tree in the courtyard had unfurled its leaves, dappling the ground beneath it with shade. An hour a day outside was no longer enough; Ahmed felt jealous of the birds that flew over the fence, of the laundry that hung outside the barred windows, flapping in the breeze. He learned a few phrases of Hungarian, and one afternoon, one of the guards who appreciated his efforts brought him a football. Ahmed kicked it as hard as he could against the fence, trying to break the barrier open. But the fence held, and eventually the guard took the ball away and gave it to some younger kids. After that, Ahmed mostly just sat beneath the tree, imagining his life back at the School of Happiness—hopping the garden wall, Madame Legrand praising his dictée, football with Oscar and Max.
One morning in late May, as he leaned against the tree trunk deep in one of these reveries, he heard his father’s voice.
“Ahmed, up, up! I have news!”
Ahmed jumped to his feet. His father was running toward him across the courtyard, waving a piece of paper.
“What is it?”
“Our petition was approved! We’re going!”
“To Greece?”
“No, my soul.” His father threw his arms around him and gave him a kiss. “To America!”
“But … how?”
With a trembling hand, his father showed him the piece of paper. It was a letter from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“Reka told me earlier that they’d heard about you and were trying to help us. But America is only accepting ten thousand Syrians. There is even a candidate for president who wants to ban all Muslim immigrants. So I didn’t want to say anything till we were sure.”
Ahmed leaned against the tree trunk. His father had tears in his eyes, but Ahmed wanted to cry for a different reason. He wasn’t going back to Belgium. The School of Happiness was gone forever. He would never be a student there again.
Then he remembered: in just another few months, Max would be moving back to America.
“Where?”
His father pointed to the last paragraph of the letter.
“Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s a town three hours south of Washington, D.C.—”
“Where Max lives!”
Ahmed took a deep breath, pushed down the tide of sadness. Enormous challenges awaited him—a new country, a new culture, a new school. Ahmed knew it wouldn’t be easy. But his father and Max would be near.
“Baba, I feel it again.”
“What’s that, my soul?”
Ahmed touched his father’s shoulder the way his father had once touched his on that moonless night at sea when he thought they’d never find a shore, never mind a home.
“Hope.”