A Dangerous Crossing by Ausma Zehanat Khan

Author:Ausma Zehanat Khan [Khan, Ausma Zehanat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250096784
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

22

Aegean Sea crossing

Lesvos to Chios

“Come on, Aya.”

Ali lifted her onto the boat. Audrey had purchased it from a fisherman who’d done the deal in cash. Ali was always finding problems with the boat, not least the fact that Audrey no longer piloted it.

She’d steered it with the competence born of a lifetime’s experience, her gun stowed in the hold in case they ran into trouble on their way to Izmir. They’d discovered things in Izmir, bad things done to innocent people, refugees burned like matchsticks on first use.

He wouldn’t accept that as his fate. He was going to fight for Israa, the way he knew Audrey would fight.

Aya was with him, because Shukri claimed to be too busy to keep her eye on her. After what had happened with Audrey, he couldn’t risk leaving Aya on her own. She was all that was left to him now, the only thing in his life not stained like the blood of a poem. He wondered if Nizar Qabbani had envisioned this future for Syria when he’d written, “O my sad homeland, how in a moment you changed me.”

He shook off the thought. It was daylight and they were safe. He’d be able to steer them to Chios. He was following the detective who’d tousled his hair with a smile that reached his eyes, and a look of pain about his mouth that said he understood him.

The man’s name was Esa.

It was a Muslim name, an Arab name, a name to live up to, the way Ali had tried to live up to the example set by his brothers. They’d disappeared inside Sednaya, where he prayed they had met their fate at once. These were terrible prayers to make—the only ones he could summon from the knowledge of what he’d fled. He loved his brothers like pieces of his heart; he prayed for their release from the evil of the torturers, the kind of evil that lurked in hell, banished for eternity, except that the torturers, like Assad himself, still reveled in their earthly pleasures. On the day that Aleppo was pounded into submission, the nightclubs in Damascus were packed.

The material journey was a brief one. In the eternal life of the Akhirah, his brothers would reunite at the foot of the Prophet’s throne, and Esa, the son of Maryam, would call them home as companions.

He was following a less saintly Esa to Chios. If this one proved reliable, he would tell him what he knew about Audrey’s journey to Hatay, and her subsequent visit to Holland. He would also confess about Audrey and the van.

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