The drive from the beach was shorter than they expected. Tareq carried his sister out the door of the white van that held a big yellow sticker with a black arrow on it. The weather sliced at their raw skin. The cold was made increasingly bitter by their hair, still wet with seawater.
The group was directed to stand in a line that had already formed, zigzagging outside the camp. They were the last of their boat to make it here. But there were more people than just those from their dinghy.
“You guys can come with me,” said one of the volunteers from the beach, pointing at Tareq. She had driven over with them in the van. “We can deal with check-in later. I want your sister to get to the clinic.”
“Is she not better?” Tareq worried.
“She is fine,” the friendly woman said. “But I just want her to get checked out properly with real equipment. You have nothing to worry about.”
“My sister,” Jamila whispered to Tareq.
“Other people from different boats are here,” he said, staring at the group ahead.
“Yes, but they are not Afghan.” A solitary tear slid down her left cheek.
“Come with us. We will find someone to help us locate her. I promise.” The truth was, he wasn’t sure what had happened to Najiba, but he also didn’t want to see Jamila upset, not until they figured out where her sister could be.
“Hey!” yelled the young man from the boat. “How did you get first class?” He laughed as they passed.
Tareq couldn’t help but taste the festive air in the crowd. Despite the horror of the journey, it really was delicious to be alive. We are alive. Susan’s okay! So he threw the man a bone. “Nice jacket!” He smirked as they made their way past the group.
“What? It’s warm.” The young man brushed his hands down into the pockets of his lime-green wool coat. He looked at the other men next to him, who were also laughing. “It’s warm!”
Tareq gripped his sister tightly as they navigated their way through the rock-strewn camp, following the brown swinging ponytail of the volunteer ahead of them. She finally stopped at a small white tent; the sign read CLINIC in English, Arabic and Persian. The building was sturdier than the one at the beach. There was a sign of the Red Cross plastered to the side of the door. They trudged through gravel to make their way to the entrance, watching as the volunteer talked to the doctor, explaining Susan’s situation.
“Okay.” She finally turned back to them. “You will be in good hands here. This is Dr. Raquel. She will check Susan out.”
“Thank you.” Tareq passed his sister to a pretty woman in a red long-sleeved shirt. “You go with the doctor, habibti. I won’t be more than a minute,” he promised before turning to Jamila. “I need to go in with Susan. But tell her about your sister.” He tilted his head toward the young woman who had walked them over.
Jamila looked at him, her eyes filled with guilt and regret, wondering what she could have done differently to have remained by Najiba’s side. Tareq detected other emotions there too, though. He felt like he was an expert on reading eyes now, schooled in the most horrible of circumstances. He could see a deep pain in hers. He wanted to unlock her past, her fears, her joys and her dreams. He wanted to know everything about her. But he knew, for now, he had to wait. He held his heart and his body back. Jamila needs her sister. And I need to take care of mine.
“It is okay. Tell her what happened. I feel she will be able to help,” Tareq said.
Jamila knew he was right. The fact that the volunteer was a woman made it easier. She can’t hurt me. She calmed herself with that thought. She turned back to Tareq and said, “Just make sure Susan is okay.”
“Thank you.” Tareq didn’t want to abandon Jamila. “Find us,” he said before pivoting back toward the clinic.
As he stepped into the heated room, he felt relief. The burning chill on his nose and ears began to abate. He could smell the scent of fresh timber rise from the thin wooden flooring. Dr. Raquel was taking Susan’s temperature and had given her a box of orange juice to hold.
“Hello.” The curly-haired woman smiled at Tareq as he walked in. “She is absolutely perfect.”
He stared at the two, amazed. She looked like an older version of Susan—the hair, the eyes and the smile. In a flash he pictured his sister fully grown, having had the opportunity to be as successful as this doctor in their new lives, away from war—a dream that was no longer possible in Syria, at least not for them. “Thank you,” he said.
“Shoof, juice!” Susan picked the box up higher for her brother to get a better look.
“Merhaba.” A voice came from the side. A man walked out from behind a box, pulling out a gray blanket.
“Hello,” Tareq answered.
“You can take this with you.” The Arab man lifted the blanket. “You will get more when you get to the tent with non-food items.” Tareq looked at him quizzically. And the man caught on. “When we are done, I’ll get you checked in and take you there.”
“Are you Syrian?” Tareq asked. The man’s dialect was curious.
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m Hashem. My parents were from Syria, but I grew up in London.”
Tareq nodded. “That explains the accent, almost Syrian but a little different.”
Hashem laughed. “I guess that is how my parents would describe me too.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“No, I’m just here to help out.” The man tossed the blanket to Tareq. “Wrap that around your sister.” Tareq obliged. “Dr. Raquel is from Spain. We have another doctor from Denmark. Neither of them speak Arabic but they both speak English. So I am translating.”
“That is very helpful,” Tareq said as he wrapped the heavy wool blanket around his sister’s shoulders.
“Yeah, until you have a bus of Afghans that come in.” He shook his head. “Then I’m useless.”
“The sign, it looks familiar. Red Cross?”
“You’re probably used to it as Red Crescent. The group operates all over the world.”
“Yes, yes.” Tareq remembered the ambulances he saw around his city. “There seems to be so much more help here than back home. If we had help there, we wouldn’t have to be here.” He let his thoughts pour out.
Hashem looked down. “Yes, well, there are a lot of people who care. But you’re not wrong. There isn’t enough being done in Syria. Or here either, to be honest.”
“And there are a lot of people who hate us.” Tareq stared boldly at Hashem’s dark brown eyes.
Susan put her juice box down and glanced up at her brother. Hashem took notice. “It’s not hate as much as it is fear,” he tried to explain. “You see—”
“I know the difference between hate and fear,” Tareq cut him off.
Hashem pushed himself off the stool and walked to a stack of orange juice boxes. He pulled one off the top of the pile. “Here.” Hashem passed him a box. “You must be hungry.”
Tareq took it but kept his eyes glued to the man in front of him. “You know, if you were in Syria, you would have been forced to fight. Either for the government or for an opposition group—if you weren’t dead by now.”
“Excuse me?” Hashem studied the boy in front of him.
“My point is, we are the ones afraid. We are the ones who have suffered. How can complete strangers be afraid of those of us who have seen what real suffering is? They can’t be afraid of the weak. We should call it what it is: hate.”
“I don’t disagree with you. But there are people from all over the world who still care.”
Tareq was too exhausted to continue the conversation. He knew it wasn’t fair to Hashem, who actually came to help. Instead, he studied his juice box and unwrapped the plastic around the straw, poking it through the hole at the top. With two giant sips he had swallowed it all down.
“Would you like another?” Hashem looked at the crushed box.
“Lah, shukran.” Tareq thanked him for the offer, but it was time to get ahold of his father. Removing his phone from the waterproof pouch, he cursed under his breath when it wouldn’t turn on. “Do you have a place I can charge my phone?” he asked. He wanted to let his father know they’d arrived and they were safe. He wouldn’t go into details. Not today. He didn’t want him to worry.
“Yes, of course.” Hashem pointed to a white table with outlets around it. “That’s our charging station. It should have any type of cable you need.”
“Thank you.” Tareq was amazed by the preparation and organization, luxuries that arrivals in the months before didn’t have. He walked over to the table, knowing it would take time for his phone to charge. But he sat next to it anyway, waiting.
“Why don’t we go check you two in while it charges?” Hashem walked over with another box of juice, placing it in front of the drained teen, who himself needed a reboot.
Hashem couldn’t do that, but he could share a juice.