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Mahmoud could hear music beyond the fence.
It was hard to see for all the people. He stood in a long line with his family, waiting at the border to gain admission into Turkey, near the city of Kilis. Around them were countless more Syrian families, all hoping to be let in. They carried everything they owned with them, sometimes in suitcases and duffel bags, but more often stuffed into pillowcases and trash bags. The men wore jeans and T-shirts and tracksuits; the women wore dresses and abayas and hijabs. Their children looked like miniature versions of them, and acted like miniature adults too—there was very little crying and whining, and none of the kids were playing.
They had all walked too far and seen too much.
After leaving the car behind, Mahmoud and his family had followed the map on their phone, skirting cities held by Daesh and the Syrian army and the rebels and the Kurds as best they could. Google Maps told them it would be an eight-hour walk, and they split the journey up by sleeping in a field. It was hot out by day but it got cold at night, and Mahmoud and his family had left all their extra clothes in the car in their haste to escape.
The next morning they had seen the people.
Dozens of them. Hundreds. Refugees, just like Mahmoud and his family, who had left their homes in Syria and were walking north to Turkey. To safety. Mahmoud and his family had fallen into step with them and disappeared among their ranks. Invisible, just as Mahmoud liked it. Together the shambling throng of refugees was ignored by the American drones and the rebel rocket launchers and the Syrian army tanks and the Russian jets. Mahmoud heard explosions and saw smoke clouds, but no one cared about a few hundred Syrian people leaving the battlefield.
And now they were in line with him, all those hundreds of people and thousands more, and they weren’t invisible anymore. Turkish guards in light green camo gear with automatic weapons and white surgical masks over their faces walked up and down the line, staring at each of them in turn. Mahmoud felt like he was in trouble. He wanted to look away, but he was worried that might make the guards think he was hiding something. But if he looked right at them, they would notice him, maybe pull him and his family out of line.
Mahmoud stared straight ahead at his father’s back instead. His father’s shirt was stained at the armpits, and with a quick sniff of his own shirt Mahmoud realized he stank too. They had walked for hours in the hot sun without a bath, without a change of clothes. They looked tired and poor and wretched. If he were a Turkish border guard, he wouldn’t have let in any of these dirty, squalid people, himself included.
Mahmoud’s father kept their papers tucked into his pants under his shirt, along with all of their money—the only other things they owned now besides two phones and two chargers. When Mahmoud and his family finally got to the front of the line, late in the day, Mahmoud’s father presented their official documents to the border agent. After what seemed
like an eternity of looking over their papers, the border guard finally stapled temporary visas onto their passports and let them through.
They were in Turkey! Mahmoud couldn’t believe it. Step after step, kilometer after kilometer, he’d begun to think they would never, ever escape Syria. But as relieved as he was, he knew they still had so very far to go.
Ahead of them stretched a small city of white canvas tents, their pointed tops staggered like whitecaps on a choppy sea. There were no trees, no shade, no parks or football fields or rivers. Just a sea of tents and a forest of electric poles and wires.
“Hey, we’re in luck!” Mahmoud’s dad joked. “The circus is in town!”
Mahmoud looked around. There was a main “street” in the camp, a wide lane where refugees had set up little shops, selling phone cards and camp stoves and clothes and things people had brought with them but no longer wanted or needed. It was like a giant rummage sale, and it seemed like everybody in the camp was there. The path was crammed full of Syrians, all strolling along like they had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.
“All right,” Mahmoud’s father was saying. “A man in the group we walked with gave me the name of a smuggler who can get us from Turkey to Greece.”
“A smuggler?” Mom said. Mahmoud didn’t like the sound of that, either
—to him, smuggler meant illegal, and illegal meant dangerous.
Dad waved their fears away. “It’s fine. This is what they do. They get people into the EU.”
The EU, Mahmoud knew, was the European Union. He also knew they were much more strict about letting people in than Turkey was. Once you were in one of the EU countries, though, like Greece or Hungary or Germany, you could apply for asylum and be granted official refugee status.
It was getting there that was the hard part.
“I’ve been talking to him on WhatsApp,” Dad continued, holding up his phone. “It will be expensive, but we can pay. And we’ll have to get to Izmir, on the Turkish coast. Assuming we stop to sleep every night, that’s a nineteen-day walk. Or it’s a twelve-hour car ride, non-stop. I’ll see if I can find us a bus.”
Mahmoud and his mother and sister and brother walked the shopping street. People called out to one another in Arabic, and music from radios and TVs filled the air. Other children darted in and out among the adults, laughing and chasing each other into the alleys of tents off the main drag. Mahmoud caught himself smiling. After Aleppo—the near-constant gunfire and explosions, punctuated by the oppressive quiet of an entire city trying their hardest not to draw attention to themselves—this place felt alive, even if it was dusty and cramped.
Mahmoud saw a cardboard box of used toys at one of the shops and knelt to dig in it while his mother and brother and sister walked on. He sifted through it, hoping—yes! A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! It was the one with the red bandanna. The box didn’t have any other Ninja Turtles in it, but Waleed would be excited to get it. Mahmoud hoped so, at least. Waleed didn’t seem to get excited about much these days. Mahmoud paid ten Syrian pounds for it—about five cents in American money.
A car honked behind Mahmoud, and he turned like everybody else. It was an old blue Opel taxi, traveling so slowly Mahmoud could walk faster. It was the only car Mahmoud had seen in the camp, and the crowd parted for it as it drew closer. A Syrian pop song blared from the radio, and young men and women danced and laughed alongside the taxi. As it passed, Mahmoud saw a young couple sitting in the back. The woman was dressed in a white satin dress and veil.
It was a marriage procession, Mahmoud realized. Back in Syria, it was a tradition to be escorted to your wedding by a parade of cars, to help carry you into your new life. Mahmoud remembered his uncle’s wedding, before the war. His uncle had worn a tuxedo and his bride had worn a dress of sparkling jewels and a tiara, and they had been escorted by a dozen cars to a party where Mahmoud had eaten a piece of the delicious seven-tiered cake and danced with his mother to a real band. Here, the couple’s only escort was a group of rowdy teenage boys running behind the taxi, and their destination was a dirty white tent with whatever food they’d been able to buy in the camp’s market. But everyone seemed to be having fun.
The old taxi’s exhaust pipe made a sound like a gunshot—POK!—and everybody ducked instinctively. The spell of happiness and safety was momentarily broken by the unforgettable memories of the chaos they had just escaped.
Mahmoud’s heart was still racing when someone put a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped.
It was his dad.
“Mahmoud, where’s your mother? Where are Waleed and Hana?” his father asked. “I found us a ride, but we have to leave now.”
