So, what brings you to America?”
Crash. He had been floating, flying somewhere between his fourth or fifth glass of champagne, in that liminal space between the ground and golden inebriation. He was not drunk, but had not really landed, yet, to the truth: He was in America.
He tore his eyes away from the girl in the white dress, toward the voice.
“I’m Amber. You’re from Syria, right? What brings you to America?”
He didn’t know, he wanted to tell her. He didn’t know what brought him here, to America and this gilded reception, this room shimmering as through a prism, or a dream, or the fizzing glass he held up. He looked around the library.
Oak-paneled walls lined with hundreds, thousands of books. A heady scent of paper, age, leather, pipe tobacco. Chandeliers sprinkling light, and through large—dizzyingly large—windows, moon and stars pouring in more. Hadi Deeb, a guest at Harvard!
Hadi Deeb, Syrian refugee, who, barely a year ago, had been Hadi Deeb, barely alive, Branch 235 detainee. Who, for months in that nonplace of a prison they nicknamed “Falastin”—a vacuum of time and light—had not seen sky. He had seen girls in corners, naked, eyes vacant, emptied, men sleep on tiles caked with their own blood and feces.
But now, these windows! He could see stars! Champagne tasted like stars. As if Far’ Falastin, and all of Syria, had never existed.
Five days ago. Had it been only five days since he’d arrived? Was that all it took to end a world? Five days, and five years, and Omar disappearing, and the final blow when the armed men of the shabiha, looking for him, had hit his mother.
Wide-eyed Amber was still waiting: What had brought Hadi Deeb to America? The trunk of a car, a steel container at the back of a truck, a tarmac, three flights over seven time zones…
“I took a plane,” he said, attempting humor. Amber stared. Hadi Deeb was not funny in English.
A clap on his back.
“You’re up, son.”