Executive Order 13769: By the authority vested in me as President…’ ”
“Don’t read it to me, Hadi! Tell me what it means!” I shout at the phone, at the large window, at the sky, painfully blue. It is still day here, and there is not a cloud, and at first, your words evoke nothing. Then, slowly, horrifyingly, they darken into scenes.
Flashes, news flashes. Headlines we saw on TV, last year, last month, just last week. Zero tolerance! Build a wall! Deported. Words, just words drowning me. Your words: not us. The looping videos. Their drowning eyes, those boys, handcuffed, lined up like cattle. Every one of them has your face. Every headline now reads Hadi.
“They released the order on Friday. Section 3(c) blocks entry into the US of all visa holders from Iran, Iraq, a number of other countries, and of course Syria, for at least ninety days.”
“But that doesn’t apply to you! You’re a refugee!”
“Section five,” you continue, as though you had not heard, as though you were sitting across from me, reading the paper, “suspends all refugees for at least one hundred and twenty days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely.”
In the silence that follows, in the air, I see the headlines again. People and their lives reduced to thin layers of ink on flimsy paper. The deceit of words on a page. Our own, skimming them, stirring tea, from a safe, surgical distance, barricaded from seeing.
I see everything now, distinctly. Every line on your face. Still, stupidly I ask:
“What do you mean, ‘indefinitely’?”
No response.
“But… you’re already here! You live here. You have a wife and—”
Not now. Not like this.
“And besides, where would you go? It’s not like they can send you back to Syria…”
There is a silence I only heard once, the night it rained bombs and glass on our heads in Syria. More of a whistle, like a kettle, so loud it shouldn’t be called silence. Steam burning your ears deaf. You were the only person who ever nodded when I described it. You did not answer the first time I asked: “Hadi? Where are you?”