“A few more steps, Mother, you can do it.” Amira coaxed her mother forward in the camp along the dusty pathway. Fatima grabbed her daughter’s forearm as they moved past the tents, but Amira refused to bear any of her mother’s weight. Their pace was so slow Amira thought she’d become an old woman too before they reached the toilets. She was trying not to let her frustration at her mother’s willfulness show.
“We’re almost there. Just a little farther.” Amira spoke though she knew her mother couldn’t hear her words. Fatima was able to walk greater distances now with minimal assistance, but that didn’t mean she wanted to, and she made no effort to mask her displeasure at being forced to rehabilitate. She sulked as Amira urged her forward.
They arrived at the latrine and Amira guided her to a stall. Fatima grimaced and turned her head away, objecting to the odour. “Here you are. I’ll wait just outside the door.” Amira opened it for her mother and swatted away a few flies. Amira had decided a week ago that she was done diapering her mother, and now she, Sami, and Ahmed took turns walking Fatima here. It was new and uncomfortable for Amira to stand up to her mother this way, but she simply had too many people to care for. She needed everyone in the family to do as much for themselves as they could, especially as they prepared to leave. They’d already passed their security checks, as Amira suspected they would, but today’s tests were more worrisome. Today they had their health checks. She wanted her mother in the best physical shape she could possibly be, and prayed that Yasmine wouldn’t wheeze during her examination. Poor Yaya had given them a terrible fright with her last major asthma attack. She’d stopped breathing altogether for about fifteen terrible, infinite seconds. Amira now lived in daily terror that if Yasmine didn’t get an inhaler and move somewhere with better air quality soon, her next big attack could be even worse—possibly even fatal.
“All done? Good. Let’s walk back.”
“Why are you tormenting me this way?” Fatima asked her on the way back to their tent. She didn’t often speak, but when she did her words were barbed and her voice was raspy from lack of use.
“Because I’m an insufferable, mean daughter,” Amira replied, emboldened by her mother’s deafness.
Sami lay on his mattress. He had been up much of the night worrying about Yasmine, but now his emotions had shifted to something rare for him: pity for himself and his family. He wallowed in the misery of their not belonging anywhere. He usually tried to stay brave and optimistic for the family, but the truth was they were drifters, refugees, displaced persons. They not only had no real physical home, they had no sense of the security nor comfort the idea of home carried. They had no medicines. Would they find those things in Canada? It was incredulous to Sami that a community had raised money and furnished a house for them. It let him reclaim a smidgen of his faith in humanity—but then doubts crept in. They’d fail their physicals. Turkey wouldn’t issue them exit visas. Their airplane would be hijacked or would crash because as Tareq once told him, people like them weren’t raised to expect roses to drop from the sky. He’d not fully trust in the recent bit of good news they’d received that a community on the east coast of Canada was actively working to bring them there until his feet stood on Canadian soil.
Sami saw his wife and mother-in-law in the tent’s door. “Good, you’re back. It’s time to go for our health checks.” He scooped a wriggling Omar up from where he lay beside him on the mattress, and waved the elder two children outside. When his eyes were able to focus on Amira’s face, he noticed the strain it held. She was no longer the docile, contented young woman he’d married who loved to read, visit the souk, and meet friends for coffee and conversation. But she was a survivor, and he admired her new fortitude.
“It’s almost over,” he told her as he exited the tent.
“It’s just beginning,” she replied.
Fatima sat down on the carpet, crossed her legs, and folded her arms in front of her chest.
“No, no, no. We must go now. We cannot miss these appointments.” Amira extended her hand to help her mother to her feet. Fatima swatted it away, turned her head sharply to the left as far as it would rotate, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Amira grabbed her mother’s arm and tried pulling her to her feet while Sami and the children waited outside. “I’m begging you to cooperate, Mother.”
Fatima began thrashing her arms and wailing like a wounded animal, trying to shake Amira off her.
Sami popped his head back inside the tent. “Everything all right?”
Amira was at her wits’ end. “Take yourself and the children to the health checks. I’ll catch up.” Amira squatted and placed her hands on her mother’s shoulders to try to calm them both down. “Do not do this. It’s our only chance to get the clearance we need to leave. Without the health check you’ll be stuck here in Turkey.” Amira noticed that she didn’t say “we’ll” be stuck here.
Fatima turned to face Amira and opened her eyes. “I’m not going. Leave me alone.”
Investing any more time in this argument meant Amira would miss her own health check. Her mother’s standoff could derail all their carefully laid plans. Exasperated, Amira took her hands off her mother, stood up, and took a step back. Her mother now barely resembled the proud, intelligent, and loving woman she had been before the war. Amira had been waiting for that person to re-emerge, but maybe she was gone forever.
With an inner strength she didn’t know she had, Amira made a resolution. If forced to choose, she’d pick Sami and the children. May Allah forgive her. She exited the tent and ran to her appointment.
A few minutes later, Fatima also exited the tent and went in the opposite direction. She was strong enough now to walk to the camp entrance without drawing attention to herself. She started down the road toward town, unable to hear the cars honking their horns at her as she weaved farther into the lane.
Tareq was driving back to Reyhanli Camp when he saw a few cars parked on the rough shoulder opposite. Several men were standing and pointing at something in the ditch. Tareq pulled a U-turn and joined them. “What is it?” he asked.
“A body,” someone answered.
Tareq walked briskly toward it. He leaned down to pick the woman up but fell to his knees and clasped his hands in front of his chest when he saw her face. He gently closed her eyelids with his thumbs and said a quick prayer before scooping Fatima into his arms and carrying her back to his taxi.
“I know her family. I’ll return her to them,” he told the men standing roadside.
Happy that someone else was dealing with this headache, they all returned to their cars and drove away.
Amira went through the motions. She washed her mother’s body three times and braided her hair. She silently acknowledged Noor’s entrance into her tent with a glance and a nod before letting Noor help her dress her mother in an ankle-length sleeveless dress Noor had brought. Sami and Tareq then entered and lifted her mother onto a sheet. Amira picked up her mother’s left hand and laid it on her chest, then laid her mother’s right hand on top of her left and folded the sheet around her, pausing for a last look. Even through her numbness, Amira registered that her mother finally had a peaceful look on her face that had long been absent. Sami secured the shroud with ropes he tied above her head and below her feet, then lifted Fatima. Cradling her in his arms, he exited the tent.
The children met them outside. Ahmed carried Omar, but a whimpering Yasmine took Amira’s hand as they all walked slowly to the main camp office tent together. The setting sun cast an ochre glow on the family like a spotlight following them. People in the lanes and emerging from their tents saw the procession, turned to face Mecca, and began reciting the Salat al-Janazah funeral prayers, creating a growing chorus of voices. Amira drew strength from it, straightened her back, dropped her shoulders, and lifted her head. Fatima’s grave was being dug as they walked.
A week later, Amira clutched the coveted Turkish exit visas in her hand. Yasmine’s asthma was noted on her file, but she had passed her health screening along with the rest of them and they were all issued Canadian visas. Things had then started moving quickly, and the Turkish exit visas arrived, stamped by immigration, within days. She tore the one issued to her mother into tiny shreds and stared at the rest until she imagined her eyeballs might burn holes in the paper. How strange to think they’d once worried they wouldn’t be allowed into Turkey, and more recently worried they wouldn’t be allowed out. It distressed Amira that her mother’s remains would be here for eternity but, at the same time, knowing her mother’s soul was at last reunited with her father’s soul in the afterlife comforted her.
The day had arrived. Amira shooed the family outside and closed the flap on their now-empty tent for a final time. A new family would move in, perhaps tonight or tomorrow. They could have it. Emotions flooded over Amira as she adjusted her hijab, clutched their passports tightly in her hand, and made the final walk through Reyhanli Camp.
Noor and her children were weeping, and Amira choked up as she bade her friend farewell with kisses on her cheeks. “When I needed you the most you were always there,” she told her. Noor promised to visit Fatima’s grave and stay in touch.
Many people whom Sami had helped when they were sick and traumatized stepped forward to thank him. Amira experienced equal measures of guilt and relief to be moving on as they all stayed behind. She acknowledged her privilege, but that didn’t mean she felt lucky. The war had taken both her parents from her. Every day without them was a trial. She acted brave and as normal as she could for the children’s sakes but was panicky and short of breath when they weren’t watching and she imagined her mother lying dead in that ditch, or her father suffocating under rubble. Her compounded grief was like a yoke around her neck, dragging her down. She reflected back on her final days in Aleppo, when she’d thought things couldn’t get much worse. How wrong she’d been. She’d thought her life was at a low point then, but it had sunk much deeper since. Rationally she supposed she’d smile and laugh again at some point in the future, but that seemed a long way off yet. For right now, she was just trying to get through one day at a time.
Ahmed held Yasmine’s hand as they walked past the white tents. He saw the swings he’d not sat upon since Abdo left and heard them creaking now under the weight of other children. He saw the paths on which he and Abdo spent countless hours kicking a soccer ball back and forth, and dragged his toes to draw a line in their bumpy surfaces a final time. He wondered if Abdo thought of him, too, wherever he was, and if Abdo had made a new best friend to play soccer with. He kind of hoped Abdo had, but he also kind of hoped he hadn’t.
Ahmed felt sad about his grandmother and wished she hadn’t died. She’d been so unhappy and unwell at the camp that it felt like she just gave up on life. It didn’t really seem fair that the rest of them got to move to Canada and start over but neither she nor his grandfather would have that chance. Their bodies would be in the Middle East forever, and who would visit their graves? He wished they were at least buried side by side. Ahmed also noticed that since his grandmother died, sometimes his mother went very still and stared at nothing for a few seconds at a time or longer. It worried Ahmed when she froze like that and he prayed these spells were temporary.
Walking on, Ahmed saw the school he loved, where he made art, solved math equations, read the same small selection of books over and over, and learned more English words than the rest of his family knew combined. He stood inside the school’s door and waved at his teacher. Ms. Hussain interrupted her lesson to see him off.
“Listen to me, Ahmed,” she said in English, speaking slowly and clearly, enunciating each word. She laid her broad hands on his narrow shoulders and Ahmed felt the warmth of her strong palms radiate beneath his T-shirt. “You are smart, kind, and brave. Go make a full life in Canada. Never forget you are Syrian, but let yourself be Canadian, too.”
Ahmed only partially understood the English words she was saying, but he inferred their meaning and nodded gravely. He pulled away before his tears fell.
The International Organization for Migration booked a driver to take the family to the airport, but Sami declined, choosing to have a final private ride with Tareq. Words seemed redundant at this point, so they drove in wistful silence.
Sami told himself they were fortunate to be moving somewhere peaceful, and resolved to focus on that rather than his nerves about starting all over in a completely new culture where he didn’t know the language. He’d also have to accept it was, if not the end of his medical career, the start of a long hiatus.
They’d learned they would have financial support for a year while they settled into Canada and learned English. He was a quick study but a year was not long. He doubted his English would be sufficient by then to start the lengthy doctor recertification process. He’d take whatever job he could find. There were so many unknowns. The only certainty was how much he was going to miss practicing medicine—and his friend Tareq. They reunited with the family on the tarmac.
“Bye, Uncle Tareq. Come see us in Canada,” Yasmine said, waving goodbye. She was the jolliest of them all, ready for whatever adventures were to come. Her shock over her grandmother’s death dogged her in nightmares, but in the daytime her temperament was as lively as ever. Her brown curls bobbed as she spun her head toward the chartered airplane that would fly them out of Turkey.
“Remember, you are my brother,” Tareq told Sami, grasping his shoulder tightly and squeezing it. “For the rest of our lives we are family. No ocean between us changes that.”
A flight attendant guided them onto the plane and they took their seats. Into two small suitcases Sami stored overhead, Amira had packed her family’s meagre belongings: her beloved Quran wrapped carefully in a hijab, a few spare clothes and diapers, some spices she feared she’d not be able to buy in Canada, olive oil soap, and the family photos of her, Sami, and her parents on her wedding day, plus the baby photos of Ahmed and Yasmine.
Sami shoved his medical bag, which was empty except for a stethoscope, below the seat in front of him. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they’d fled Syria in the night with little more than the clothes on their backs. He flashed back to walking down streets littered with rubble, riding with the smuggler, scrambling through the ditch, and confronting the armed guard at the border. It made him shudder. He hoped this would be their final escape.
They all buckled their seat belts, and as the plane took off they strained to look one last time at the land they were leaving. Leaving, hopefully, for better, and leaving for good.