As he regained his strength, Ahmed learned the family’s routine: on weekday mornings, they were out of the house no later than 8:15, and no one was home till the midafternoon. This left him a good chunk of time in which to move the orchids upstairs to the living room for some better light, take a shower, gather some food and record it on his list, wash his clothes, pet the cat and even run up and down the stairs for exercise.
Just before the Seamaster struck ten, Ahmed would stop what he was doing and stand by the back door of the living room. Like clockwork, rain or shine, the children came out in the schoolyard for a twenty-minute mid-morning break. Listening to the voices on the other side of the wall, he could close his eyes and imagine Jasmine was there, hopping from one chalk square to another during a game of hajla.
Afterward, he would talk to the orchids. He remembered how his grandfather used to hold conversations with the roses in his nursery. “They like to hear your voice,” he used to say, “to know you are there.”
So Ahmed told them about Baba—not about the night at sea or the war, but about life in Aleppo before the war.
“He always used to join our football games in the street. He didn’t care about being the only adult. He would cheer and shout louder than the rest of us. And when Nouri was little, he used to let her pull his beard and play with his lips even when he was trying to talk to his friends. He never told her ‘Go away’ or ‘Stop.’”
“Jasmine and I used to go to the market with him, and he always gave us a few sips of fresh milk before he took it home to Mama to boil. Once I hit Jasmine for drinking too much milk. He was very angry. I told him it wasn’t fair, that she was taking more than her share. ‘Allah judges what is fair,’ he said. ‘You must judge what is kind.’ I still remember how ashamed that made me feel.”
At 3:35, the boy returned from school with a woman who sometimes spoke French. At 5:30, the girl’s voice joined theirs, and at 6:30, the walls would shake as the front door opened and closed several times and the voices of the English-speaking parents replaced the French woman’s. The family normally went to bed by eleven, which gave Ahmed another opportunity to go upstairs around midnight and eat some leftovers or take a banana. After updating his food log, he always said good night to the orchids. Even in their half-dead state, they were something existing with him. What was it that his grandfather used to say? “Those who enjoy flowers enjoy the beauty of the world created by God.”
But Wednesdays were hard; school was only a half day, and at seven thirty, the cleaning lady came. Ahmed could hear her greet the family, and then her footsteps would come down the basement stairs to fetch the vacuum, which roared on and off overhead for the next five hours. At twelve thirty, she carried the vacuum back down to the basement, and shortly after, the boy arrived home. Stuck in the cellar, Ahmed did push-ups and squats or reviewed old football matches in his head to pass the time, but the hours dragged by. Weekends were even trickier—sometimes the family was out all day; other times, someone was always home. He tried to stash extra supplies for the weekend, but he was afraid of taking too much, and by Sunday, he was often restless and hungry.
By late September, Ahmed knew it was time to go. He had outstayed a welcome he didn’t even have. But he still didn’t have a plan. Even if he had had money, he knew he could never trust another smuggler. The only idea he could come up with was to sneak onto a train heading to Calais.
One morning, when the family was at work and school, he opened the door to the patio for the first time and stepped outside. The sky was a dazzling blue, and florescent-green parakeets improbably flitted over the garden. He wondered if they had once been pets. His mother had kept a parakeet. He pictured her stroking its silky green head. He could almost smell the laurel soap she washed with. He could almost hear the soft lilt of her voice as she sang the lullaby Rima tnam—Rima, Sleep—to Nouri.
There would be no garden in Calais. He had recently seen photos of the Jungle in newspapers the family left in the recycling bin. It appeared far worse than Parc Maximilien—tents packed into muddy, garbage-strewn fields between a highway and the edge of the city, and people cooking over open fires. With winter coming, the conditions would only get worse. Ahmed imagined sleeping outside and shivered. It had grown colder since he had last been out. He didn’t even have a jacket—he hadn’t needed one in the summer.
What if he stayed in the cellar through the winter?
It’s a stupid idea, he told himself. Someone will catch me.
But he’d been hiding in the cellar for a month, he reminded himself, and no one had. He began to think about the idea more practically. He’d need his own store of food, especially for the weekends. And money to pay for it. There had to be solutions to these problems.
The shouts of the schoolkids erupted over the wall. Ahmed knew it was just their recess, but it seemed like a sign. What was it Baba had once said to him as they’d walked home from Friday prayers at the mosque? It had always been their special time together, when his father talked to him like he was already a man.
When there is no way, Allah will make a way.