The Refugee Ocean by Pauls Toutonghi

Author:Pauls Toutonghi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

NAÏM

Naïm had been silent all day. Silent as he landed at Washington Dulles—silent as he walked through the vast daylit interior of the airport—beneath the tall windows that were something from the architecture of his dreams. Two, three stories of glass. Almost like no walls at all. He was silent as he handed his passport to the customs agent and glanced at his own name written in Western characters—so strange and foreign and unfamiliar. The boy in that passport photograph looked guarded, wary. He stared at the camera like it was a hungry animal.

Naïm stayed close to his mother. He followed her toward the frosted doors of the International Arrivals Hall, which opened to admit them like the curtains opening on a stage. As soon as they’d stepped across the threshold, Naïm and Fatima had officially entered the state of Virginia. The doors closed behind them with a deep hydraulic sigh.

A group of American strangers stood there. His mother greeted the first woman in line. Naïm saw a half-dozen bilingual signs, signs in Arabic and English, and at least ten onlookers, many of them holding flowers or helium-filled red, white, and blue balloons. Naïm glanced over and saw the side of his mother’s face. And even as he did this—even as he mimicked her friendly gestures—he began to lose track of his body. He was physically there, but his mind was leaving; it was going somewhere else, wandering into the living room of the family apartment in Aleppo in another time. There, his father was smiling, lit from within with joy. Naïm saw a clutch of balloons held in his father’s right hand. Bright green, for luck. Mabruk, habibi, his father was saying, mabruk. My dear beautiful son. I love you so. Getting so tall now—God is good.

The moment fractured. And his father’s shirt started to smolder. A small orange flame rippled over the woven white fabric. It touched his father’s cheek so that his skin reddened and bubbled. Naïm touched his own cheek, as if to brush the flame away. He blinked and looked down. He made himself breathe. Ghosts. Naïm’s mother had always believed in them, but his father hadn’t. Tawhīd, he’d said whenever someone—someone in the family usually—had mentioned anything supernatural. Tawhīd, the oneness of God. One holy being, one divinity, one arbiter of justice. Nothing supernatural, other than God.

But then, what was this? Who was this? Green balloons still bobbed at the edge of his vision.

“Come back!” his father said. “Come home, my beautiful boy.”

“No,” Naïm whispered in Arabic. But he didn’t say it loud enough for even his mother to hear. His lips barely moved. La, he said again. “I can’t.”

Naïm was afraid to look. There was smoke now, curling up near the ceiling of the terminal, above the tall windows. His hand throbbed; his missing fingers itched like they were growing back. He stumbled after his mother, joining another line. Did anyone else see the smoke, smell the accelerant—the burning air? They had bombs here, too.

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