The Family

We had to register the family with the police, find them shelter for the night, make sure they left for Athens soon, get Sumaiya diagnosed, on a treatment schedule if possible. She needed stronger pain medication than paracetamol. She’d had nothing else. She must have dealt with such pain. I brought stronger stuff with me, but I’d left it all in my hotel room. Stupid me. Oxycodone? Yes, I bought one bottle. Morphine as well. Half my suitcase was filled with pills of all sorts. I hadn’t even unpacked them yet.

I wanted Emma to fix the problems. She knew what to do, where everything was. She chose to commiserate with Sumaiya, holding hands and speaking in soft tones and broken languages. Sumaiya’s husband, Sammy, sat on the sand cuddling with the middle daughter. I asked Rodrigo if we should take the family to be processed. No, we were to wait for a bus that would transport all the refugees to a camp called Moria; we couldn’t fit all five in our car.

I felt helpless. What could I do?

I was a connoisseuse of helplessness, impotence my intimate. At times, like Orpheus, I felt I could sing to life itself, to defeat the reaper if only for a little while, but I also had to watch in despair as Eurydice was dragged back into the underworld. I’d heard complaints about doctors and their god complex, particularly surgeons. I’d been around physicians most of my life—some were arrogant, some were plain assholes—but I had yet to meet one who thought she was omnipotent. But then neither was god, if she or he existed. We were able to do incredible things every now and then, but often we were helpless. We were godlike in the sense that we were both omnipotent and impotent, and like god, often all we could do was watch and witness.

I took out my phone, went online to figure out as much as I could about hepatoma. I wondered if I should get a local phone number to save on roaming charges.

Asma, the future doctor, unwrapped the top of her sandwich, leaving the rest of the tinfoil to keep it from falling apart. She examined the content between the bread, then took an exploratory first bite. The tinfoil made her look like a bird with a silver beak. She found the taste strange but tried another bite. I explained that it was peanut butter and jelly, a strange American invention. She thought it was much too sweet for a sandwich but kept on eating.

That was not the case with the old woman back where we left her. She was sitting upright now, with the allegedly uncaring son and his family around her. The consummate curmudgeon took one bite of the sandwich and spat it out. A young blond volunteer tried to berate her for spitting out the food, but the Syrian woman simply turned her back to her. Even from a slight distance, the old woman appeared livelier, pinkishly robust in spite of her long trip and longer age. Time, that capricious banker, hadn’t yet seen fit to collect all interest due. The college girl tried a different tack, asking the old woman why she didn’t like the sandwich, the translation done by one of the old woman’s granddaughters. There was some sort of one-sided conversation during which the old woman remained strategically hostile. The college girl showed her an iPhone—the latest, no doubt taken out of its box on Christmas—asking in a theatrically interrogative tone, the kind used to stimulate viewer curiosity at the end of an episode, “Is it okay if I take a photograph with you, and then I can show you what it looks like right here on the screen?”

I wasn’t sure if the old woman understood any of the prattle, but she uttered the one English word that made the young girl blanch. “No,” she yelled. Where did passions find room in so diminutive a body?

“Eye gouging avoided,” I said.

“Don’t bet on it,” Emma said. “The girl will hit on someone else. Look for the babies, you’ll find idiots taking selfies.”

I ended up talking shop with Dr. Giacometti from Bari while we waited. He’d been on the island for two weeks, his second stint since October. Sumaiya kept throwing questioning glances my way. I told her in Arabic not to worry, that we were not talking about her. Her youngest daughter, around four or so, napped on her lap while Emma stroked the girl’s hair. Giacometti had decided he wouldn’t come to meet another boat, preferring to work in the camp, but he was bored on break this morning and thought he’d check the beach. He sang Emma’s praises, she who reigned over the island, the best nurse on Lesbos, who could fix every problem. He told me a funny story about meeting his first boat back in October, when he was trying to help a terrified woman disembark and in her flailing she struck his face and his glasses flew off into the water. He wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t see without them. Should he keep helping the refugees off the boat or look for his glasses? He joked that the question became existential: he could help the refugees as a man, but if he were to help as a physician, he needed better eyesight. He hunted for his spectacles like a purblind pelican, to no avail of course, even though the water was calm that day. Then the most amazing thing happened. He noticed an amorphous dark shape plunge into the water ahead of him. Then a shivering ten-year-old Syrian boy emerged, his hand rising out of the sea first, holding Giacometti’s glasses.

“I was stunned,” he said. “I broke into tears. I was the lady who dropped her handkerchief, and he was my knight in shining armor, a child who should have been sitting in a classroom somewhere on such a morning. Look, I’m about to start crying now talking about it.”

I considered giving him a hug but settled on a pat on the shoulder, which was when his colleague approached. “Let me guess,” the other doctor said in almost accentless English. “He has told you the story of the boy-knight refugee who risked his life by diving off a high tower into shark-infested waters to retrieve Paolo’s eyeglasses.” Giacometti pretended to strangle his colleague. We chatted for a minute or so; they cracked a couple of unfunny jokes that made them laugh. I glanced down. Emma hugged Sumaiya, who wept surreptitiously, noiselessly, hoping her daughters wouldn’t notice. Her husband held his breath, apparently trying not to cry.

We were duly interrupted by panicked selfie-girl, who asked if anyone had seen her cell phone. She had it a minute ago but couldn’t seem to find it. I knew Emma was going to start laughing. Selfie-girl ran from one contingent to the next investigating; each group of refugees and volunteers occupied a precise location, like elements in the periodic table. One of the Mennonite girls offered to use her own mobile to call the missing phone.

A converted school bus appeared, a yellow rectangle in the distance. Everyone gathered their belongings, meager as they were, before heading toward the parking lot. Most of the refugees carried their belongings in large black trash bags. As I passed the old woman, I heard hers ringing.