• • •
BY NIGHT IT WAS COLD, and so Saeed and Nadia slept fully dressed, not removing their jackets, and huddled together, wrapped inside their blanket, which was above and around and also below them, providing a degree of cushioning against the hard and somewhat uneven ground. Their tent was too small for them to stand, a long but low pentahedron, in shape like the triangular glass prism Saeed used to have as a child, with which he would refract sunlight into little rainbows. He and Nadia held on to each other at first, cuddling, but cuddling grows uncomfortable after a while, especially in tight quarters, and so eventually they slept back-to-front, initially with him pressed against her from behind, and then, at some later point as the moon passed unseen high overhead, he turned and she turned and she pressed against him.
In the morning when he woke she was watching him and he stroked her hair and she touched his bristles above his lip and below his ear with her finger and he kissed her and things felt good between them. They packed up and Saeed hefted the large backpack and Nadia the tent and they traded one of their smallish backpacks for a yoga mat that they hoped would make sleeping more comfortable.
Without warning people began to rush out of the camp and Saeed and Nadia heard a rumor that a new door out had been found, a door to Germany, and so they ran too, in the middle of the crowd initially, but striding swiftly so they were soon closer to the front. The crowd filled the narrow road and overflowed into the margins and stretched many hundreds of meters at its longest, and Saeed wondered where they were going, and then up ahead he saw they were approaching a hotel or resort of some kind. As they drew nearer he glimpsed a line of men in uniform blocking their way, and he told Nadia, and they were both frightened, and started to slow down, and allow people to pass them, because they had seen in their city what happens when bullets are fired into an unarmed mass of people. But in the end no bullets were fired, the uniformed men simply stopped the crowd and stood their ground, and a few brave or desperate or enterprising souls tried to make it through, running at high speed on either side, where there were gaps, but these few were caught, and after an hour or so the crowd dispersed and most people headed back to the camp.
Days passed like this, full of waiting and false hopes, days that might have been days of boredom, and were for many, but Nadia had the idea that they should explore the island as if they were tourists. Saeed laughed and agreed, and this was the first time he had laughed since they arrived, and it warmed her to see it, and so they carried their loads like trekkers in the wilderness and walked along the beaches and up the hills and right to the edges of the cliffs, and they decided that Mykonos was indeed a beautiful place, and they could understand why people might come here. Sometimes they saw rough-looking groups of men and Saeed and Nadia were careful to keep their distance, and by evening they were always sure to sleep at the periphery of one of the big migrant camps, of which there were many, and to which anyone might belong, joining or leaving as they saw fit.
Once they met an acquaintance of Saeed’s and this seemed an almost impossible and happy coincidence, like two leaves blown from the same tree by a hurricane landing on top of each other far away, and it cheered Saeed greatly. The man said that he was a people smuggler, and had helped people escape their city, and was doing the same thing here, because he knew all the ins and outs. He agreed to help Saeed and Nadia, and he cut his rate in half for them and they were grateful, and he took their payment and said he would have them in Sweden by the following morning, but when they woke there was no sign of him. He was gone. He had disappeared overnight. Saeed trusted him and so they stayed where they were for a week, stayed at the same spot in the same camp, but they never saw him again. Nadia knew they had been swindled, such things were common, and Saeed knew it too, but preferred for a while to try to believe that something had happened to the man that had prevented him from returning, and when he prayed Saeed prayed not only for the man’s return but also for his safety, until it felt foolish to pray for this man any longer, and after that Saeed prayed only for Nadia and for his father, especially for his father, who was not with them, and should have been. But there was no way back to his father now, because no door in their city went undiscovered by the militants for long, and no one returning through a door who was known to have fled their rule was allowed to live.
One morning Saeed was able to borrow a beard trimmer and trim his beard down to the stubble he had had when Nadia first met him, and that morning he asked Nadia why she still wore her black robes, since here she did not need to, and she said that she had not needed to wear them even in their own city, when she lived alone, before the militants came, but she chose to, because it sent a signal, and she still wished to send this signal, and he smiled and asked, a signal even to me, and she smiled as well and said, not to you, you have seen me with nothing.
• • •
THEIR FUNDS WERE GROWING THINNER, more than half the money with which they had left their city now gone. They better understood the desperation they saw in the camps, the fear in people’s eyes that they would be trapped here forever, or until hunger forced them back through one of the doors that led to undesirable places, the doors that were left unguarded, what people in the camps referred to as mousetraps, but which, in resignation, some people were nonetheless trying, especially those who had exhausted their resources, venturing through them to the same place from which they had come, or to another unknown place when they thought anything would be better than where they had been.
Saeed and Nadia began to curtail their wanderings to conserve energy, and thus reduce their need for food and drink. Saeed bought a simple fishing rod, available for a less exorbitant price because its reel was broken and the line had to be spooled out and pulled back in by hand. He and Nadia journeyed to the sea, and stood on a rock, and put bread on the hook, and tried to fish, alone, two people by themselves, all but surrounded by water the breeze was chopping into opaque hillocks, concealing what lay beneath, and they fished and fished for hours, taking turns, but neither of them knew how to fish, or maybe they were just unlucky, and though they felt nibbles, they caught nothing, and it was as though they were merely feeding their bread to the insatiable brine.
Someone had told them the best times to fish were at dawn and dusk, so they stayed out alone longer than they otherwise might have. It was getting dark when they saw four men in the distance, approaching along the beach. Nadia said they should go, and Saeed agreed, and the couple walked away, quickly, but the men seemed to follow, and Saeed and Nadia increased their pace, increased it as much as they could manage, even though Nadia slipped and cut her arm on the rocks. The men were gaining on them, and Saeed and Nadia began to wonder aloud what of their things they could leave behind, to lighten the load, or as an offering that might sate their pursuers. Saeed said perhaps the men wanted the rod, and this seemed more reassuring to them than the alternative, which was to consider what else the men might want. So they dropped the rod, but soon after they rounded a bend and saw a house and outside the house were uniformed guards, which meant the house contained a door to a desirable place, and Saeed and Nadia had never before been relieved to see guards on the island, but they were now. They came close, until the guards shouted at them to stay back, and there Saeed and Nadia stopped, making it clear they would not try to rush the house, sitting down where the guards could see them, and where they felt safe, and Saeed considered whether to run back and retrieve the rod, but Nadia said it was too risky. They both regretted dropping it now. They watched for a while but the four men never appeared, and the two of them set up their tent right there, but were unable to sleep much that night.
• • •
THE DAYS WERE GROWING WARMER, and spring was stuttering into being in Mykonos, with buds and scattered flowers. In all the weeks they had been there Saeed and Nadia had never been to the old town, for it was off-limits to migrants at night, and they were strongly discouraged from going there even by day, except to the outskirts, where they could trade with residents, which is to say those who had been on the island longer than a few months, but the gash on Nadia’s arm was beginning to fester, and so they had come to the outskirts of the old town to get it tended to at a clinic. A partly shaved-haired local girl who was not a doctor or a nurse but just a volunteer, a teenager with a kind disposition, not more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, cleaned and dressed the wound, gently, holding Nadia’s arm as though it was something precious, holding it almost shyly. The two women got to talking, and there was a connection between them, and the girl said she wanted to help Nadia and Saeed, and asked them what they needed. They said above all they needed a way off the island, and the girl said she might be able to do something, and they should stay nearby, and she took Nadia’s number, and each day Nadia visited the clinic and she and the girl spoke and sometimes had a coffee or a joint together and the girl seemed so happy to see her.