Josef's Story: Antwerp, Belgium-1939 PDF

Josef watched his sister splashing around happily in the swimming pool on A-deck. Other kids chased each other around the promenade. Watched movies. Played shuffleboard. For as much as he’d wanted to grow up, Josef wished now that he could join them. Be a little kid again, cheerfully oblivious to wh...

Josef watched his sister splashing around happily in the swimming pool on A-deck. Other kids chased each other around the promenade. Watched movies. Played shuffleboard. For as much as he’d wanted to grow up, Josef wished now that he could join them. Be a little kid again, cheerfully oblivious to what was going on around him. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He had responsibilities. Like keeping his sister and his mother safe. Papa had told him what the concentration camps were like. He couldn’t let that happen to Ruthie and his mother. “Are you ready?” It was Pozner. He stood in the shadow of a smokestack, looking around nervously. Josef nodded. He had agreed to help take over the ship. He had to do something, and this was the only thing he could do. “What about Schiendick and his firemen?” Josef asked as they walked. “We’ve got a distraction for them down on D-deck. But we have to move fast.” The rest of the group came together near the social hall. There were ten men, including Josef, and they all carried metal candlesticks and pieces of pipe. Some of the men were Papa’s age, like Pozner, and some of them were in their twenties. Josef was by far the youngest. Ten men, Josef thought. A minyan. Ten Jews come together not to worship, but to mutiny. Pozner put a small length of lead pipe in Josef’s hand, and suddenly the weight of what Josef was about to do was very real. “Lead on,” Pozner said. Josef took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. He led his fellow mutineers into the maze of crew corridors. Just outside the bridge, in the chart room where all the maps were stored, they came across Ostermeyer, the first officer. He looked up from the map cabinet with surprise, but before he could do anything, Pozner and one of the other men grabbed him and pushed him through the door to the bridge. Josef was startled by how rough they were being with Ostermeyer, but he tried to swallow his fear. Taking over the ship wasn’t going to be easy, and this was only the start. There weren’t as many people on the bridge as there had been when Josef visited—just one officer and three sailors. The sailor at the ship’s helm saw them first, and he let go of the steering wheel to dive for an alarm. One of the passengers got to him first, slamming into the helmsman and sending him tumbling to the floor. The mutineers quickly surrounded the other sailors, threatening them with their makeshift clubs. And they had done it. Just like that, they had taken the bridge. Josef’s heart raced as he looked around, wondering what was next. Stretched out before them was the great green-blue Atlantic Ocean, and beyond that, still days away, Germany and the Nazis. Up on the little platform at the back of the room, the steering wheel teetered back and forth, and Josef wondered crazily if he should jump up there and turn the ship around himself. “Send for the captain,” Pozner told the first officer. Warily, Ostermeyer went to the ship’s intercom and summoned Captain Schroeder to the bridge. As soon as Captain Schroeder stepped onto the bridge, he understood what was happening. He spun to leave, but Josef and one of the other men blocked his exit. “Who’s in charge here?” Captain Schroeder asked. “What do you mean by all this?” Pozner stepped forward. “We mean to save our lives by taking over the ship,” he said, “and sailing it to any other country but Germany.” Captain Schroeder put his hands behind his back and walked to the middle of the bridge. He looked out at the ocean, not Pozner. “The other passengers will not support you, and my crew will overpower you,” he said matter-of-factly. “All you are doing is laying yourselves open to a charge of piracy.” Pozner and the others looked around at each other nervously. Josef couldn’t believe they were so easily losing their resolve. “We’ll hold you here as hostages!” Josef said. “They’ll have to do as we say!” Even Josef was surprised he’d spoken up. But his words seemed to put a little more steel back in the mutineers’ resolve. Captain Schroeder turned to look at Josef. “The crew will obey only me,” he said calmly, “and I will give no order, no matter what you do, that will take my ship off its set course. And without that order, you can do nothing. What will you do, pilot the ship yourself?” Josef blushed and stared at the ground, remembering his crazy urge to take the wheel when he didn’t even know how it worked or where to go. Captain Schroeder helped his fallen helmsman back to his feet and led him to the steering wheel. The man was still shaking from the attack, but he took the helm and straightened the ship on course. “You have done enough already for me to prefer serious charges against you,” Captain Schroeder said, still frustratingly even-keeled. “If I do, I can assure you that you will most certainly be taken back to Germany. And you know what that means.” Josef steamed. He did know what that meant, but did Captain Schroeder know? Really know? How many Germans really understood what was happening in the concentration camps? Josef knew, because his papa had told him. Had shown him when he jumped overboard and tried to kill himself.  Josef wasn’t about to let his mother and sister end up in one of those camps. “You would do that to us?” one of the men asked the captain. “You are doing it to yourselves,” Schroeder said. “Listen: I understand and sympathize with your desperation.” Pozner huffed. “You have no idea what we’ve been through. Any of us.” Captain Schroeder nodded. “No. You’re right. But no matter what’s been done to you, what you’re doing now is a real criminal act. By law I should have you all thrown in the brig. But I’m willing to overlook all this if you leave the bridge right now and give me your word you will take no such further action.” Josef scanned the faces of his co-conspirators and saw only panic. Fear. Surrender. “No,” Josef told them. “No,” he told Captain Schroeder. “My father told me what happened to him in those camps. I can’t let that happen to my mother and my little sister. We can’t go back to Germany!” The first officer took that moment to try to pull free from the men holding him. There was a struggle. The other sailors moved to help him, and the other mutineers flinched, ready to fight. “Ostermeyer! No!” Captain Schroeder commanded. “Cease and desist. That’s an order.” The first officer froze, and Pozner froze too, the lead pipe in his hand still raised in threat. Nobody moved. The captain raised his hands. “I promise you men,” he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper, “I promise you on my honor as a sea captain that I will do everything possible to land you in England. I will run the ship aground there if I must. But you must stand down and promise me no further trouble.” Pozner lowered his pipe. “Agreed,” he said. No. No! Josef wanted to argue, but everyone else agreed. Josef threw his pipe to the ground and left without the other men. They were going back to Europe, and there was nothing he could do about it. They were going back to Cuba, and there was nothing any of them could do about it. So this was the last verse, Isabel thought. After everything they’d been through, after everything they’d lost, their climactic ending wasn’t going to be climactic after all. Theirs wasn’t a son cubano, with its triumphant finale; theirs was a fugue, a musical theme that was repeated again and again without resolution. Their coda was to be forever homeless, even when returned to their own home. Forever refugees in their own land. The US Coast Guard had found them. “Geraldo,” Isabel’s mother said, but Papi didn’t answer. He sat frozen with all the others as a bright white searchlight clicked on. A ship motor—a real motor, attached to a real propeller— roared to life. “Geraldo,” Mami said again, “it’s started.” “No,” he said. “It’s over. For all of us. They’re going to take us to Guantanamo.” The searchlight swung around toward them. “No,” Mami said, hands on her bulging stomach, her voice tinged with alarm. “No, I mean, it’s started. The baby’s coming!” The head of every single person in the little boat turned in surprise. Isabel sat down with a splash in the water. She didn’t know what to think. How to feel. She’d been put through the wringer—the elation of leaving Cuba, the exhaustion of the storm, the horror of Iván’s death, the relief at seeing the lights of Miami, the despair of running into the Coast Guard ship and knowing they would never get to el norte. And now her mother was having a baby. Isabel’s baby brother. Isabel could only sit lifelessly and stare. She had nothing left to give. “I’m not staying in that refugee camp at Guantanamo behind a barbed-wire fence,” Lito said. “That’s just trading one prison for another. I’ll go back to Cuba. Back to my home. Castro said he won’t punish anyone who tried to leave.” “Unless he’s changed his mind again,” Amara said. It was Luis who saw the Coast Guard searchlight sweep past them on the water and point somewhere else. “Maybe none of us will have to go to Guantanamo!” Luis said. “Look! They’re not after us! The Coast Guard is after someone else!” Isabel watched as the searchlight found another craft on the water a few hundred meters away. It was a raft full of refugees, just like them! “More Cubans?” Amara asked. “It doesn’t matter!” Señor Castillo said. “Now’s our chance! Paddle for shore! Quickly!” Isabel spared her mother a look, then grabbed a water jug carved into a scoop and started rowing as hard as she could. So did Lito, Amara, and the Castillos. “But be quiet,” Lito whispered. “Sound carries a long way on the water.” “Ohhh!” Isabel’s mother cried. “Shhh, Teresa,” Papi said, holding her hand. “Don’t have the baby yet—wait until we get to Florida!” Isabel’s mother gritted her teeth and nodded, tears welling in her eyes. The lights of Miami got closer, but they were still so far away. Isabel glanced behind her. In the darkness, she could pick out the lights of the Coast Guard ship, alongside another dark craft. Shadowy figures were moving back and forth between the two. They were taking the refugees on board to send them back to Cuba. “Ohhh!” Isabel’s mother cried, her voice like a cannon shot in the quiet. “Row, row,” Señor Castillo whispered. They were so close! Isabel could see which hotel rooms had their lights on and which were off, could hear bongos beating out a rhythm over the water. A rhumba. “The current’s taking us north,” Luis whispered. “We’re going to miss it!” “It doesn’t matter—as long as we’re standing on land, we’re safe!” Lito said, his voice thin from exertion. “We just can’t be caught on the water! Row!” “OHHHH!” Isabel’s mother screamed, her voice booming out across the water. BWEEP-BWEEP! The Coast Guard cutter made the same sound as before, and its searchlight lit up their little boat. They’d found them! “No!” Isabel’s mother sobbed. “No! I want to have my baby in el norte!” “ROW!” Señor Castillo yelled, giving up entirely on being quiet. Behind them, the Coast Guard cutter’s motor roared to life. Isabel churned at the water, bending her flimsy jug-paddle in her desperation. Tears streamed down her face, from sorrow or fear or exhaustion, she didn’t know. All she knew was that they were still too far from shore. The Coast Guard ship was going to catch them before they reached Miami. Sirens. Soldiers shouting through bullhorns. Screams. Explosions. Mahmoud was barely aware of everything that was happening around him. He lay on the ground, curled into a ball. Trying desperately to draw a breath that would not come. His eyes felt like bees had stung them, and his nose was a streaming cauldron of burning chemicals. He made a choking, gurgling sound that was somewhere between a shriek and a whimper. After everything, he was going to die here, on the border between Serbia and Hungary. Rough hands pulled Mahmoud from the ground and dragged him away, his sneakers twisting and scraping on the dirt road. He still couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t force his eyes to open, but he felt his chest beginning to work again, the barest tendrils of air reaching his lungs. He drank the air in greedily. Then he was thrown to the ground, and someone pulled his hands behind him and tied them together with a thin piece of plastic. It cinched painfully tight, and Mahmoud was lifted again and rolled onto the flat metal bed of a truck. He lay there, still gasping for breath, the plastic zip tie cutting angrily into his wrists as more people were tossed into the truck beside him. Then Mahmoud heard the truck’s doors slam and the engine start, and they were moving. Mahmoud’s breathing finally came back to something like normal, and he was able to sit up and open his bleary eyes. There were no windows in the van and it was dark, but Mahmoud was able to see the other nine men with him, all of them red-eyed and crying and coughing from the tear gas, and all of them handcuffed with zip ties. Including Mahmoud’s father. “Dad!” Mahmoud cried. He worked his way across the floor of the bouncing van on his knees and fell into his father. They put their heads together. “Where are Mom and Waleed?” Mahmoud asked. “I don’t know. I lost them in the chaos,” Dad said. His eyes were red-ringed and his face was wet from tears and snot. He looked terrible, and Mahmoud realized he must look just as bad. Mahmoud thought the van would stop soon, but it drove on and on. “Where do you think we’re going?” Mahmoud asked. “I don’t know. I can’t reach my phone,” Dad said. “But we’ve been in this van for a long time. Maybe they’re taking us to Austria!” “No,” one of the other men said. “They’re taking us to prison.” Prison? For what? Mahmoud wondered. We’re just refugees! We haven’t done anything wrong! The van stopped, and Mahmoud and the other refugees were unloaded into a building one of the soldiers called an “immigration detention center.” But Mahmoud could tell it was really a prison. It was a long, single-story building with a barbed-wire fence surrounding it, guarded by Hungarian soldiers with automatic rifles. A soldier cut the zip tie off Mahmoud’s wrists. Mahmoud expected the relief to be instant, but instead his hands went from numb to on fire, like the tingling needles he felt in his leg after it fell asleep, times a thousand. He cried out in pain, hands shaking, as he and his father were hurried into a cell with cinder-block walls on three sides and metal bars on the front. Eight other men were pushed inside with them, and up and down the hall more prison cells were filling with refugees. A soldier slammed the barred door shut, and it locked with an electronic bolt. “We’re not criminals!” one of the other men in the cell yelled at him. “We didn’t ask for civil war! We didn’t want to leave our homes!” another man yelled. “We’re refugees!” Mahmoud yelled, unable to stay silent any longer. “We need help!” The soldier ignored them and walked away. Mahmoud felt helpless all over again, and he kicked the bars in anger. There were similar cries of innocence and rage from the other cells, but soon they were overtaken by separated families trying to find each other without being able to see from cell to cell. “Fatima? Waleed?” Mahmoud’s father called, and Mahmoud yelled their names with him. But if his mother and brother were here, they didn’t answer. “We’ll find them,” Dad assured Mahmoud. But Mahmoud didn’t understand how his father could be so sure. They hadn’t found Hana, so what made him think they would find Mom and Waleed? What if they had lost them forever? Mahmoud was beside himself. This trip, this odyssey, was pulling his family apart, stripping them away like leaves from the trees in the fall. It was all he could do not to panic. His breath came quick and his heart hammered in his chest. “I don’t believe it. They took us almost all the way to Austria,” Mahmoud’s father said, checking his iPhone at last. “It’s just another hour by car. We’re outside a little town in the north of Hungary called Györ.” Almost all the way to Austria, Mahmoud thought. But instead of helping them along, the Hungarians had thrown them in prison. Hours passed, and Mahmoud went from panic to frustration to despair. They sat in the cell without food or water, and only one metal toilet attached to the wall. All Mahmoud could think about was Mom and Waleed. Were they in some Hungarian prison somewhere too, or had they been pushed back across the border into Serbia? How would he and Dad ever find them again? He slumped against the wall. “I have to say, this is the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in,” Dad said. He was trying to joke again. His father was always joking. But Mahmoud didn’t think that any of this was funny at all. At last, soldiers with nightsticks came to their cell and told them in Arabic to line up to be processed. “We don’t want to be processed,” Dad said. “We just want to get to Austria. Why not just take us all the way to the border? We never wanted to stay in Hungary anyway!”  A soldier whacked him in the back with his nightstick, and Mahmoud’s father collapsed to the ground. “We don’t want your filth here, either!” the guard yelled in Arabic. “You’re all parasites!” He kicked Mahmoud’s father in the back, and another soldier hit Mahmoud’s father again and again with his stick. “No!” Mahmoud cried. “No! Don’t! Stop!” Mahmoud begged. He couldn’t bear to see his father beaten. But what could he do? “We’ll do it! We’ll be processed!” Mahmoud told the guards. That was all it took—to surrender. The guards stopped beating his father and ordered everyone to line up. Mahmoud helped his father to his feet. Dad leaned heavily against him, needing his son for support. Together they shuffled in line along the far side of the hallway, away from the cells. Men and women and children watched them with hopeful eyes as they passed, looking for their husbands and brothers and sons. And then Mahmoud saw them—his mother and Waleed. They were in a cell with other women and children! “Youssef! Mahmoud!” Mahmoud’s mother cried. “Fatima!” Mahmoud’s father cried with relief, and he stepped toward her. Whack! A soldier clubbed Mahmoud’s father with his nightstick, and Dad went down again in a heap. Mahmoud and his mother cried out at the same time. “Stay in line!” the soldier yelled. Mahmoud’s mother reached for them through the bars. “Youssef!” she cried. “No, Mom—don’t!” Mahmoud cried. A soldier clanged his nightstick against the metal bars, and she retreated inside her cell. Mahmoud got his father up again and helped him into what the soldiers called the “processing center.” There, clerks sat behind long tables, taking down information from the refugees. When Mahmoud and his father got to the front of their line, a man in a blue uniform asked them if they wanted to claim asylum in Hungary. “Stay here? In Hungary? After you have beaten me? Locked my family up like common criminals?” Mahmoud’s father asked, fists clenched and shaking. Mahmoud still had to help him to stand. “Are you joking? Why can’t you just let us go on to Austria? Why do we need to be ‘processed’? We don’t want to stay here one second longer than we have to!” The policeman shrugged. “I’m just doing my job,” he said. Mahmoud’s father slammed his hand flat on the table, making Mahmoud jump. “I wouldn’t live in this awful country even if it was made of gold!” The policeman filled in an answer on a form. “Then you will be sent back to Serbia,” he said without looking up at them. “And if you return to Hungary, you will be arrested.” Mahmoud’s father didn’t speak again, not even to make a joke. Mahmoud answered the rest of the clerk’s questions about their names and birthdates and places of birth, then helped his father back to their cell with the other inmates. Mahmoud’s mother cried out for them again as they passed, but Mahmoud’s father didn’t acknowledge her, and Mahmoud didn’t respond. He knew that would only bring down the wrath of the guards again. Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in. Disappear. That was how you avoided the bullies. The St. Louis was throwing a party. Even bigger than the one it had thrown the night before they’d reached Cuba. This one had the euphoria of more than nine hundred people who had been at death’s door and were suddenly, miraculously, saved. Belgium, Holland, France, and England had agreed to divide the refugees among them. None of the passengers were going back to Germany. Josef’s mother wasn’t alone on the dance floor anymore. She was joined by dozens of couples, all dancing with giddy abandon. Josef had even taken a turn around the floor with her. Passengers sang songs and played the piano with the orchestra, and one man who knew magic tricks entertained Ruthie and the other little kids in the corner of the social hall. In another corner, Josef laughed as passengers took turns telling jokes. Most of the jokes were about taking holiday cruises to Cuba, but the best was when one of the passengers got up and read from the brochure that advertised the MS. St. Louis. “ ‘The St. Louis is a ship on which everyone travels securely, and lives in comfort,’ ” he read. You could barely hear him over the hooting. “ ‘There is everything one can wish for,’ ” the man read, gasping for breath, “ ‘that makes life on board a pleasure! We hope you’ll want to travel on the St. Louis again and again!’ ” Josef laughed so hard he cried. If he never saw the MS St. Louis again in his life, he would die happy. The next morning, the ship docked at a pier in Antwerp, Belgium. Negotiations between Captain Schroeder and the four countries still took time, and it was a full day later when, under the grim portrait of Adolf Hitler, Josef and his family joined the other passengers in the social hall again to find out where they would be going. Representatives from the four countries sat at a long table at the front of the hall, arguing over which passengers each would take. Every country wanted only the passengers with the best chances of getting accepted by America, so they could ship the refugees back out as quickly as possible. Josef hoped they would get England, because it was the farthest away from Nazi Germany, safe across the English Channel. But when everything was settled, he and his family were assigned to France. They would be among the third group to disembark—after the Jewish refugees going to Belgium and the Netherlands were delivered, but before the last group sailed for Great Britain. The first group left that afternoon. Josef watched with most of the other passengers as the refugees going to Belgium disembarked. Josef didn’t want to go to Belgium, but he was jealous nonetheless. Like everybody else, he was ready to get off this ship. “Think of it—we traveled ten thousand miles on board the St. Louis,” one of the men leaving for Belgium told the other passengers as he stepped onto the gangplank, “only to end up three hundred miles from where we started!” The line got a laugh, but a sad one. Josef was all too aware of the long shadow cast by Nazi Germany, and so was everyone else. Still, as long as the Nazis stayed in Germany, they would all be safe. Wouldn’t they? The next day, 181 passengers disembarked in the city of Rotterdam, even though Holland wouldn’t let the St. Louis dock at their pier, just like in Havana. The refugees were taken into town by another ship and escorted by police boats. As they sailed on to France, Josef wandered the decks. The ship had a strange, empty feeling to it. Half the passengers were gone. The morning they arrived in Boulogne, France, the 288 passengers who were traveling on to England gathered on C-deck to say farewell to Josef and the others who were disembarking. “We’re due into England tomorrow,” Josef heard one of them say. “June twenty-first. That’s exactly forty days and forty nights in a boat. Now, where have I heard that story before?” Josef smiled, remembering the story of Noah from the Torah. But he felt less like Noah and more like Moses, wandering in the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Was that France? The Promised Land, at last? Josef could only pray it was. He picked up his suitcase in one hand, took Ruthie’s hand with his other, and led her and their mother down the ramp into Boulogne. “You see?” Mama said. “I told you somebody would think of something. Now, stay close, and don’t lose your coats.” At the bottom of the ramp, Josef watched as one of the other passengers got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground. If he hadn’t had his hands full, Josef might have done the same thing. The secretary general of the French Refugee Assistance Committee officially welcomed them to France, and the porters on the docks moved quickly to carry the passengers’ luggage for them, refusing any and all tips offered. Maybe this was the Promised Land after all. Josef and his mother and sister spent the night in a hotel in Boulogne, and then they were taken by train to Le Mans, where they were put up in a cheap lodging house. Days passed, and life went on. Josef’s mother got work doing other people’s laundry. Ruthie went to kindergarten at last, and Josef went to school for the first time in months—but because he couldn’t speak French they put him in the first grade. Thirteen years old—a man!—and they put him in a classroom with seven-year-olds! It was humiliating. Josef promised himself he would learn to speak French over the summer, or die trying. He never got the chance. Two months later, Germany invaded Poland, touching off a new world war. Eight months after that, Germany invaded France, and Josef and his mother and sister were on the run again. Isabel’s mother cried out. “It’s coming— it’s coming!” Isabel didn’t know if she meant the baby, or the Coast Guard ship. Or both. “Paddle!” Amara cried. Isabel paddled harder. She could see the shore, could see the beach umbrellas folded up for the night but still stuck in the sand. Strings of lights. Palm trees. More music—a salsa now. It was all so close! But so was the Coast Guard ship. It bore down on them, its red light flashing, its powerful motor thrumming, water sluicing from its bow. Isabel’s heart hammered. It was going to catch them. They weren’t going to make it! Lito froze. “It’s happening again,” he said. “What? What do you mean?” Isabel asked, panting. “When I was a young man, I was a policeman,” Lito said, his eyes wild. “There was a ship—a ship full of Jews, from Europe. And we sent them back. I sent them back! Sent them back to die when we could so easily have taken them in! It was all politics, but they were people. Real people. I met them. I knew them by name.” “I don’t understand,” Isabel said. What did her grandfather’s story have to do with anything? “Paddle!” Isabel’s father cried. The Coast Guard boat was almost on top of them. “Don’t you see?” Lito said. “The Jewish people on the ship were seeking asylum, just like us. They needed a place to hide from Hitler. From the Nazis. Mañana, we told them. We’ll let you in mañana. But we never did.” Lito was crying now, distraught. “We sent them back to Europe and Hitler and the Holocaust. Back to their deaths. How many of them died because we turned them away? Because I was just doing my job?” Isabel didn’t know what ship her grandfather was talking about, but she knew about the Holocaust from school. The millions of European Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis. And now her grandfather was saying that a ship full of Jewish refugees had come to Cuba when he was a young man? That he had helped to send them away? Mañana. Suddenly, Isabel understood why her grandfather had been whispering that word over and over again for days. Why it haunted him. When would the Jews be let into Cuba? Mañana. When would their boat reach America? Mañana. Mañana had never come for the Jewish people on that ship, Isabel realized. Would mañana never come for Isabel and her family either? A calm came over Lito, as though he’d come to some sort of understanding, some decision. “I see it now, Chabela. All of it. The past, the present, the future. All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. For the bright promise of mañana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabela: It didn’t. Because I didn’t change it. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. Take care of your mother and baby brother for me.” “Lito, what are you—?” “Don’t stop rowing for shore!” Isabel’s grandfather yelled to everyone else. He kissed Isabel on the cheek, surprising her, and then stood and jumped into the ocean. “Lito!” Isabel cried. “Lito!” “Papá!” Isabel’s mother cried. “What’s he doing?” Isabel’s grandfather popped back up a few meters away, his head appearing and disappearing in the waves. “Lito!” Isabel cried. “Help!” he cried, waving his arms at the Coast Guard ship while at the same time swimming away from it. “Help me!” he yelled. “He jumped in to distract them!” Papi realized. “They’ll come for us first!” Señor Castillo said. “No, he’s in danger of drowning. They have to rescue him!” Amara cried. “This is our chance. Row—row!” Tears rolled down Isabel’s cheek where her grandfather had just kissed her good-bye. “Lito!” she cried again, reaching out for him over the waves. “Don’t worry about me, Chabela! If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s treading water,” Lito yelled back. “Now, row! Mañana is yours, my beautiful songbird. Go to Miami and be free!” Isabel sobbed. She couldn’t paddle. Couldn’t row. Couldn’t do anything but watch as the Coast Guard ship veered away from their little boat and steered toward her grandfather. Went to save him and send him to Guantanamo. Back to Cuba. They came for Mahmoud and his father again the next morning, this time to take them to a crowded refugee camp in a cold, muddy field surrounded by a wire fence. Multicolored camping tents stood among heaps of trash and discarded clothes, and Hungarian soldiers in blue uniforms and white surgical masks guarded the entrances and exits. There was only one real building, a windowless cinder-block warehouse filled with row after row of metal cots. Mahmoud and his father found Mom and Waleed among the newly arrived refugees, and they shared a tearful reunion. They were each given a blanket and a bottle of water, and found cots for themselves. But when the food was delivered, they missed out. The Hungarian soldiers stood at one end of the room, tossing sandwiches into the crowd like zookeepers throwing food to the animals in a cage, and Mahmoud and his family didn’t know enough to rush the tables to catch their lunch. Mahmoud expected his father to laugh it off, but he wasn’t joking anymore. Instead, Dad sat on his cot, his face and arms purple and bruised, staring off into space. Getting beaten and thrown into prison by the Hungarians had finally broken his spirit. It scared Mahmoud. Of the four members of his family who were left, he was the only one who wasn’t broken. His mother had snapped the moment she had handed her daughter away, and now she wandered the maze of mattresses and blankets in the detention center, asking people she had already asked if they had seen or heard of a baby named Hana. Mahmoud’s brother, Waleed, was broken too, but unlike his mother he had been broken piece by piece, over time, like someone snapping off little bites of a chocolate bar until there was nothing left. He lay listless on a foam mattress, disinterested in the card games or soccer games the other children were playing. Whatever childish joy he had once possessed had been sucked out until there was nothing left. And now his father was dead inside too. Mahmoud fumed. Why were they even here? Why did the Hungarians care if they were just passing through? Why had they taken them all the way to the Austrian border only to throw them in a detention center? It felt personal somehow. Like the whole country was conspiring to keep them from finding a real home. There were policemen with guns at every door. They were more like prisoners than refugees, and when they got out of here it would just be to go back to Serbia. Back to another country that didn’t want them. After everything they had been through, they weren’t going to make it to Germany after all. But Mahmoud wasn’t ready to give up. He wanted life to be like it was before the war had come. They couldn’t go back to Syria. Not now. Mahmoud knew that. But there was no reason they couldn’t make a new life for themselves somewhere else. Start over. Be happy again. And Mahmoud wanted to do whatever it took to make that happen. Or at least try. But making something happen meant drawing attention. Being visible. And being invisible was so much easier. It was useful too, like in Aleppo, or Serbia, or here in Hungary. But sometimes it was just as useful to be visible, like in Turkey and Greece. The reverse was true too, though: Being invisible had hurt them as much as being visible had. Mahmoud frowned. And that was the real truth of it, wasn’t it? Whether you were visible or invisible, it was all about how other people reacted to you. Good and bad things happened either way. If you were invisible, the bad people couldn’t hurt you, that was true. But the good people couldn’t help you, either. If you stayed invisible here, did everything you were supposed to and never made waves, you would disappear from the eyes and minds of all the good people out there who could help you get your life back. It was better to be visible. To stand up. To stand out. Mahmoud watched as a door on a nearby wall opened, and a group of men and women in light blue caps and vests with the letters UN written on them came inside, escorted by some important-looking Hungarian soldiers. Mahmoud knew that the UN was the United Nations—the same group that had been helping people at the Kilis refugee camp. The UN people carried clipboards and cell phones, and made notes and took pictures of the living conditions. This place was run by the Hungarians, not the UN, so Mahmoud guessed they were there to observe. To document the living conditions of the refugees. Mahmoud decided right then and there he was going to make sure the observers saw him. Mahmoud got up from his cot and walked to the door. All he had to do was push his way through, and he would be outside. But a Hungarian soldier stood guard next to it. She wore a blue uniform, a red cap, and a thick black leather belt that held a nightstick and had all kinds of compartments. Over her shoulder she carried a small automatic rifle on a strap, the barrel pointed at the gymnasium floor. The guard ignored Mahmoud. He stood right in front of her, but she looked over him. Past him. Mahmoud was invisible as long as he did what he was supposed to do, and as long as he was invisible he was safe, and she was comfortable. It was time for both of those things to change. Mahmoud took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Chuk-chunk. The sound echoed loudly in the big room, and suddenly all the kids stopped playing and all the adults looked up from their mattresses at him. It was green outside, and sunny, and at first Mahmoud had to squint to see. “Hey!” the guard cried. She saw him now, didn’t she? The UN observers did too. “Stop! No! Not allowed!” the soldier said in bad Arabic. She struggled to find the right words and said something in Hungarian that Mahmoud didn’t understand. She started to raise her gun at him, and then she glanced up and saw the frowns on the faces of the UN observers.  Mahmoud stepped outside. The woman looked around at the other guards and called out to them, as if asking what to do. Mahmoud took another step, and another, and soon he was away from the building, walking toward the road. Waleed ran through the door after him, followed by the rest of the children. The Hungarian guards yelled after them, but they didn’t do anything to stop them. “Mahmoud!” Waleed said, panting as he ran up alongside his brother. His eyes were bright and alive for the first time Mahmoud could remember. “Mahmoud! What are you doing?” “I’m not staying in that place and waiting for them to send me back to Serbia. Come on,” Mahmoud said. “We’re walking to Austria.”