The Faculty of the Mind

Emma was able to expedite the application of Sumaiya’s family. They could take the ferry to Athens as soon as they were able to and then all the way to Malmö, not far from where she lived. The problem was that Sumaiya had been deteriorating rapidly ever since she settled in the medical tent. Her children were visiting her that morning when she had multiple nosebleeds, which terrified them.

The medical tent in Kara Tepe was not one. There was canvas, but it covered the structure, two windowless rooms constructed out of sturdy wood. In the bracing cold of late morning, it looked like an unassuming chapel on some back road. Sumaiya lay on one cot; her husband sat on the one next to her. Between her right arm and her hip, she held her imitation crocodile handbag, mustard colored, now matching her skin tone. She was already using a nasal cannula and an oxygen ventilator. In some ways, her husband looked worse. When I first saw him on the landing beach, I thought he looked much younger, frail and wispish, as if he carried an eternal boy within him or a serious, studious college student. Before us, on the cot, the boy looked lost. Sammy seemed morose, his heavy head in his hands as he mumbled quietly to himself. He didn’t notice that the four of us had entered the tent.

And what a foursome we were, Rasheed, Emma, Mazen, and me. The two nurses quickly walked over to adjust Sumaiya’s breathing tube, which was askew. Rasheed was there first. Sammy stood up when he saw us, bowed his head, both as a greeting and a display of respect. Emma, using Rasheed as a translator, began to explain to Sammy about “the next part of their journey,” as she called it. They spoke in soft whispers.

And Sumaiya blinked her eyes open. Her first reaction upon seeing me was a wide grin. She never ceased to surprise me. Her eyes sparkled, as if all this were some cosmic joke that was beyond her yet she’d enjoy it nonetheless. She reached out for my hand.

Have you ever considered the phrase “out of one’s mind”? As if someone who was confused, addled, or angry would no longer be using her mind. Was one in one’s mind only when rational with full faculties? Well, Sumaiya was out of her mind for sure. It was more than encephalopathy; the pain medications had her higher than Mount Olympus. She stared at me with strangely inattentive eyes and began to speak, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I stared back, noticing the slight oblique fold of her upper eyelids. Beautiful eyes. I figuratively slapped myself. I would be more attentive to her needs. I knelt toward her. She looked at me as though I were far off on a distant horizon. She blathered incomprehensively. I did hear her daughter’s name, Asma, but couldn’t trace it to anything rational. Before I could reply, she suddenly said, “We are not going back.”

“No,” I said softly. “No one is going back.”

“Yes,” she said and went quiet for a minute, looking at the heavenly ceiling of canvas. “You will take care of my girls. Asma, really. He will be fine with the younger girls, but she’s willful. She will need guidance.”

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. She did not need me to agree or confirm.

I turned on the table lamp, which was a replica of the Eiffel Tower but looked more like a lonely oil derrick in the middle of a desert doily. What was that anomaly doing in the medical tent of a refugee camp?