Members of the UN Refugee Agency were visiting Reyhanli Camp. Peering from one open eye, Amira watched Sami get up well before sunrise to register their family. He wanted to beat the crowd.
“How did it go?” she asked when he returned to the tent mid-morning, strain showing on his tired face.
“They brought an interpreter who helped me fill out the paperwork. It was onerous, but we’re all registered. You, me, and the children—including the unborn one.” Sami reached out and touched Amira’s large belly.
She felt a flutter as the baby began to stir inside her. She looked down and saw a bulge appear in her lower left abdomen. “He’s kicking.”
Sami moved the palm of his hand over the bulge and grinned. “Hello, baby. Aren’t you a feisty one.”
“He’s going to need to be.” Amira tried to ignore the pressure on her bladder. She’d just been to the latrine and surely didn’t need to pee again. “What happens now?”
“Our names will be sent to various embassies around the world. I’m certain some generous country will approve us.” Sami flopped on the bed and yawned.
Would they? Amira kept her doubts to herself. Their names would be listed with presumably thousands of other names, a roster of the world’s most desperate. Who’s to say whether they would be distinguishable from the masses? Amira knew they weren’t that special. But she wouldn’t let despair overtake her today. Today they had an outing. They were leaving the refugee camp to go into the Turkish city of Reyhanli. Amira sometimes forgot there was a city here separate from the tent city. Some even dubbed it “Little Syria” because the population of about sixty thousand had now more than doubled with so many Syrian immigrants living there. Amira’s ankles were swollen and her back ached, but she didn’t dare complain. It wasn’t often she was able to leave camp, and she was excited. While washing dishes at a spigot she’d overheard good things about a bakery in town, plus Sami had recently treated an injured woman whose cousin opened a barbershop there. The woman paid to have her leg wound disinfected and stitched with three free haircuts. Amira wanted Sami and the children to cash in these I.O.U.s before her appointment at the health-care centre.
“Shall we hire a driver now?” Sami asked as they walked along the road away from camp. Amira nodded. She wanted to save money by walking farther but knew her limits, and though it was early, the morning sun was already intense. Yasmine’s energy, too, waned quickly and they needed to preserve it to complete their errands.
A car drove by and slowed down when Sami waved his arm. Sami opened the passenger door for Amira and helped her maneuver inside before climbing in the front seat. “As-Salaam Alaikum,” Sami greeted the driver.
“As-Salaam Alaikum. I’m Tareq. Where are you headed?”
Amira wanted to speak but, unable to find the confidence, deferred to Sami. He gave directions and set about getting to know Tareq. Amira envied his ease with new people. He’d always had a long waiting list at his medical practice, and she could see why. Sami was likable.
“I’m ex-military. I defected from that corrupt war back home. Now I make a living doing this and that. Driving a taxi, selling cellphones or small appliances, exchanging money.” Reyhanli camp got smaller and smaller in the distance as Tareq spoke.
“Won’t the Syrian army kill you if they catch you?” Sami asked.
“They might, but if I’d remained a soldier I’d have been killed anyway. I’d rather die on my own terms than for Bashar al-Assad,” Tareq replied. “Hey, did you hear the latest news from Aleppo? A bomb went off in a tunnel outside the outer wall of the Citadel two days ago. It’s basically destroyed.”
“Oh no. I heard it had become a military base. What a shame,” Sami said.
Despite the heat and discomfort of her swollen body, Amira faked cheerfulness and initiated a game of “I Spy” to distract the children in the backseat of the taxi from the conversation underway up front. They’d visited Aleppo’s Citadel before the war and had a wonderful time exploring in the large castle and saying their midday prayers in its excavated Hadad Temple among the etched stone pillars the archaeologists had uncovered. Amira wanted Ahmed and Yasmine to hold onto that version of the Citadel in their memories. She didn’t want them to picture only the bombed-out version of the city every time they heard the word “Aleppo.”
Sami and Tareq exchanged numbers when they arrived in town, already thinking the other could be useful if they needed to barter medical care for goods or services in the future. Friendships were too expendable these days to be built on simply liking another person; there had to be mutual benefit to both parties for them to make time.
The family poured out of the car onto a commercial street. “There’s the barbershop.” Amira pointed for Sami’s benefit. “Take the children with you and get everyone a haircut.”
“Even me, Mama? I want long hair like yours,” Yasmine said. Amira wore a hijab today as she always did in public, but her daughter had seen her often in their home without it on. Amira’s hair trailed halfway down her back in glossy, chocolate brown waves. Back in Syria it had been Amira’s favourite feature, and she enjoyed washing it every other day and brushing it at bedtime while Sami complimented her beauty. In the refugee camp, though, she was lucky if she got to wash it every other week. During the day she kept it braided and out of the way and found when she undid her braid and shook out her hair at bedtime, cooking smells were released.
“It’s too hard to keep clean and tangle-free.” Amira gently pulled Yasmine’s long curls and watched them recoil like springs. “Just as short as your shoulders, please? I’ll meet you in one hour right here.”
As her family crossed the street hand-in-hand, Amira slipped into a lingerie shop. While once upon a time in Syria she’d enjoyed buying lacy bikini briefs, today she needed to focus on comfort. It irritated her to be the size she currently was and to have all her dresses, once loose, now stretched across her abdomen so she could see the outline of her protruding navel. The elastic waistbands of her underwear cut a red line into her lower abdomen and she sought relief in several new high-waisted pairs, size extra-large. They were decidedly un-sexy, but she didn’t care. The idea of wearing actual lingerie seemed laughable now. She used to wear provocative underwear, sometimes even all day while Sami was at work. It was her own little secret until he came home and she could giggle and whisper, “Guess what I’m wearing under this,” into his ear as they put the children to bed, knowing where it would lead. Such flirting seemed a lifetime ago.
She watched her family members leave the barbershop and make their way toward her. They all had smart haircuts, and she found herself jealous of them. She’d wanted to have her eyebrows threaded like she did in her previous life, but there wasn’t money for that, nor time. They had no mirror in their tent, but when she caught her reflection in a pot or spoon she was appalled by how bushy her eyebrows had become. Sami had become hairier too, but today his cheeks were the smoothest she’d seen them in ages. “I splurged on a shave,” he told her when she grazed her fingertips across his face. “My barber was a thirteen-year-old Syrian boy barely bigger than Ahmed.”
They stopped at a falafel stand for lunch. Now that Amira was used to living in the refugee camp, things in town seemed civilized and gloriously clean by comparison. Reyhanli didn’t have the elegance of old Aleppo and it, too, was vulnerable to terrorism, but the streets felt calm today and the Turks and Syrians seemed to get along here well enough.
Could this ever feel like home for them? Amira wondered. No, she decided, that was magical thinking. Living here permanently would likely mean her children would work rather than go to school, Sami would provide unlicensed medical care in exchange for cellphones and drives, and she would always worry that ISIS might strike. She and Sami had ambitions for their children beyond this, and wanted them to grow up somewhere quiet and peaceful. They would not sell these dreams short just for the convenience and marginal gain moving from the camp permanently into town would offer.
Sami had arranged a prenatal check-up for Amira at one of the local health-care centres. He had been monitoring her pregnancy himself but wanted her to deliver the baby in a clinic. Her other births had been uncomplicated but that didn’t guarantee this one would be too, and besides, Sami didn’t feel the refugee camp was sufficiently sanitary and neither did he want the sole responsibility of delivering his own child. He was too emotionally invested to act as a clinician.
“Thirty-four weeks and growing well,” the doctor declared. “How’s mom feeling?”
“Huge, hot, tired, and uncomfortable all the time. The usual,” Amira replied. The baby kicked her in the ribs as she spoke, as though objecting to Amira’s words. “Oof. There he goes again,” she said.
“He or she. And you’ll come here for the delivery?” the doctor asked.
Amira nodded and tried to be grateful. She preferred the clinic to her tent but was still coming to terms with her baby being born in Turkey. Technically, according to his birth certificate, he wouldn’t even be Syrian. He might not get to see Syria for decades.
Yasmine was examined and declared stable and prescribed an inhaler for her asthma. Sami agreed with the treatment plan. Yasmine wasn’t one hundred percent, but she wasn’t worse.
They had arranged to have Tareq drive them back to Reyhanli Camp. As the white tents pulled into sight, Amira’s mood plummeted. It had been such a welcome break to leave camp for the day. Her old sense of freedom and purpose had returned. Now the monotony and rigor of camp life stretched in front of her as endlessly as those white tents.
Sami’s phone rang as they climbed out of Tareq’s car. Amira was reminding the children to thank their driver.
“Who called?” Amira asked, when Sami was finished.
“The United Nations Refugee Agency. They just needed to confirm something with me about our registration. They were confused by the birth date of our third child, which I estimated will happen one month from today.”
Ahmed overheard his parents’ conversation. “What’s happening, Papa?”
“An agency is sending our file to embassies around the world. Those embassies select families from a list to interview. If we pass, we’re invited to go live there.”
“So it’s really happening? We’re moving far away?” Ahmed’s eyes darted from his mother to his father, and Yasmine was now looking at them expectantly, too.
Amira took a deep breath. She turned around, her back to her family, and rubbed her large belly. Once composed, she faced them. “It appears we are. Or at least we’re going to try. There are no guarantees we’ll be selected, but let’s hope so.”
Ahmed noticed that this time, when his mother smiled, her eyes smiled, too.