around their shoulders, Muhib tall and lean, Isaac small as a child. Mist chills the quiet camp and smudges the far trees and the factories beyond. Settling back into melancholy, Muhib sighs, but Isaac won’t let him get away with that either. He mimics the sigh and pretends to wipe tears from his eyes until Muhib laughs too.
‘You will find another girl,’ Isaac tells him.
‘No, Isaac, not like that girl,’ Muhib says. ‘I don’t sleep since she left. Three nights crying.’
‘And smoking,’ Isaac says.
‘Yes, smoking and crying for Rosalina.’
‘The Spanish girl?’
‘Of course, the Spanish girl. So beautiful, believe me.’
‘You have a big heart, my friend.’
On his zigzag trek from Sudan to France, Isaac has picked up several languages, but Urdu is not one of them and so they speak in minimal English, a few blunt words warmed with use. Neither prays at a mosque but they have Allah in common and also the school. Soon, Isaac will unlock the door and Muhib will sweep inside and round the entrance before the first classes arrive. But for now they drink chai in the donated camping chairs and dream.
Even when he’s not calling her, when his voice is not literally in her ear – and, good grief, he calls often enough – Julie keeps up a conversation with him in her head. Just look at this, Dad, she’s telling him, silently, as she walks down the main track into the camp. Not what you expected, right? So normal. Look – shops and cafés, families, a church.
Julie smiles at everyone she passes on the track. She read on one of the helpful Facebook pages that outsiders should smile, so she smiles at them all: smiles at the young Sudanese men, gangly-tall, whisking along on bicycles; smiles at the Eritrean women darting in and out of the café-bar, even though she can’t catch the eye of any of them; smiles at Kurdish families in thickcoats, big-eyed children peering out from under their hoods; smiles at the Afghan men behind the raw-plank counters of general dealers, selling headache pills, cans of Coke and Red Bull, biscuits and batteries. Traders on the new frontier.
I wish you could see this, she tells inner Dad. Seriously, you’d reconsider all those things you’ve been saying if you could only see how everyone gets along, how considerate people are of each other.
A woman asks Julie, urgently, where she can find a sleeping bag. Her orange lipstick is half wiped away, leaving her mouth approximate, as if blurred by motion. Julie has no idea where sleeping bags are given out, but luckily someone else helps with directions. As the woman hurries off, Julie hands her a flyer about the event in the theatre tonight. The Dome’s giant beach-ball shape is drawn on the flyer so everyone can find it. Julie gives out more flyers to a group of men nearby. They don’t speak much English and so, to explain what’s going to happen, Julie mimes playing a trumpet, a guitar, a piano, the bongos. Then she mimes dancing. Draws quite a crowd. They applaud when she curtsies. The sun comes out. Even more people accept flyers. Smiles all around.
Well, to be honest, it’s men who accept the flyers. Julie’s mission is to encourage more women to attend, but so far she has seen few and actually invited only the woman with the blurred orange mouth. She would like to invite the young Eritrean women, but they scurry by so quickly. She reached her hand out to one of themearlier, a girl as petite as Julie is, her hair cresting in a grown-out Mohican, but the girl jumped aside as if Julie might strike her and that was so alarming and then embarrassing that Julie hasn’t dared to approach another woman since, except to hand flyers to the husbands or sons or fathers or whoever they are.
Someone has planted a row of boulders along each side of the gravel path, about the size of human heads, and several people – well, men actually – are seated on these rocks in the sun. Julie finds one to sit on too. If it wasn’t
‘You will find another girl,’ Isaac tells him.
‘No, Isaac, not like that girl,’ Muhib says. ‘I don’t sleep since she left. Three nights crying.’
‘And smoking,’ Isaac says.
‘Yes, smoking and crying for Rosalina.’
‘The Spanish girl?’
‘Of course, the Spanish girl. So beautiful, believe me.’
‘You have a big heart, my friend.’
On his zigzag trek from Sudan to France, Isaac has picked up several languages, but Urdu is not one of them and so they speak in minimal English, a few blunt words warmed with use. Neither prays at a mosque but they have Allah in common and also the school. Soon, Isaac will unlock the door and Muhib will sweep inside and round the entrance before the first classes arrive. But for now they drink chai in the donated camping chairs and dream.
Even when he’s not calling her, when his voice is not literally in her ear – and, good grief, he calls often enough – Julie keeps up a conversation with him in her head. Just look at this, Dad, she’s telling him, silently, as she walks down the main track into the camp. Not what you expected, right? So normal. Look – shops and cafés, families, a church.
Julie smiles at everyone she passes on the track. She read on one of the helpful Facebook pages that outsiders should smile, so she smiles at them all: smiles at the young Sudanese men, gangly-tall, whisking along on bicycles; smiles at the Eritrean women darting in and out of the café-bar, even though she can’t catch the eye of any of them; smiles at Kurdish families in thickcoats, big-eyed children peering out from under their hoods; smiles at the Afghan men behind the raw-plank counters of general dealers, selling headache pills, cans of Coke and Red Bull, biscuits and batteries. Traders on the new frontier.
I wish you could see this, she tells inner Dad. Seriously, you’d reconsider all those things you’ve been saying if you could only see how everyone gets along, how considerate people are of each other.
A woman asks Julie, urgently, where she can find a sleeping bag. Her orange lipstick is half wiped away, leaving her mouth approximate, as if blurred by motion. Julie has no idea where sleeping bags are given out, but luckily someone else helps with directions. As the woman hurries off, Julie hands her a flyer about the event in the theatre tonight. The Dome’s giant beach-ball shape is drawn on the flyer so everyone can find it. Julie gives out more flyers to a group of men nearby. They don’t speak much English and so, to explain what’s going to happen, Julie mimes playing a trumpet, a guitar, a piano, the bongos. Then she mimes dancing. Draws quite a crowd. They applaud when she curtsies. The sun comes out. Even more people accept flyers. Smiles all around.
Well, to be honest, it’s men who accept the flyers. Julie’s mission is to encourage more women to attend, but so far she has seen few and actually invited only the woman with the blurred orange mouth. She would like to invite the young Eritrean women, but they scurry by so quickly. She reached her hand out to one of themearlier, a girl as petite as Julie is, her hair cresting in a grown-out Mohican, but the girl jumped aside as if Julie might strike her and that was so alarming and then embarrassing that Julie hasn’t dared to approach another woman since, except to hand flyers to the husbands or sons or fathers or whoever they are.
Someone has planted a row of boulders along each side of the gravel path, about the size of human heads, and several people – well, men actually – are seated on these rocks in the sun. Julie finds one to sit on too. If it wasn’t
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