DAY 1
Ahdaf dropped a coin in the tip bowl and left the hammam. The hectic street quickly robbed him of the languidness he had enjoyed stretched out on a hot marble slab. He dodged pushcarts and deliverymen, some shirtless in the warming day, and jumped out of the way every time a boy, clinging to the back of a wagon piled high with boxes, shouted warnings as he hurtled down the hill with nothing more to brake him than his heels in thin sandals.
It was no less chaotic inside Leyla’s Café. People—mostly dark men like himself with some amount of facial hair—sat around small tables, their voices competing to be heard, arms flailing the air as they acted out the stories they were telling. A tobacco cloud hung overhead, abetted by the men puffing on shishas that sent up drifts of sweet, tangy smoke.
Ahdaf squeezed between tables and dodged outstretched legs to reach the cowboy bar, a short counter in a cubbyhole so nicknamed because, on the walls around it, Leyla had tacked pictures of Hollywood’s most celebrated cowboys and nailed a line of cowboy hats to its overhead arch. Its three stools were predictably empty. Beer was acceptable to be drunk at the tables, but for most customers, sitting at a bar drinking beer or anything else suggested they embraced elements of Western culture, a direct affront to popular fundamentalist notions. That didn’t stop them, however, from recharging their phones with the power strips that Leyla had laid out on it. Only one socket was available and Ahdaf claimed it before someone else did. His charge was in the red zone, down to a suicidal three percent given when his own life depended on his battery’s life.
Leyla stubbed out a cigarette and flipped her black hair off her shoulder. “Are you coming from the hammam?”
“How can you tell?”
“You smell like soap.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s better than you smelled yesterday.”
“Was it bad?”
“You’re not wearing your usual blue shirt either.”
“I washed it. This is my back-up while it’s drying.”
A stranger, pushing up to the bar, said, “Sounds like you could use a third shirt.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ahdaf saw that he was older but not by much, and he could’ve passed for Turkish but his accent said he wasn’t.
“I only have two hangers,” Ahdaf replied, not looking at the man, not wanting to engage with anyone who wasn’t a potential client, and the man was too well-dressed to be a refugee.
“Do you want a mint tea?” Leyla asked him.
“Tea?” She knew Ahdaf would want a beer. Then it dawned on him, maybe there was something amiss about the stranger and that was her signal. “Yeah, and with an extra sugar,” he said. “My body weight tells me I’m undernourished.”
“That’s an extra lira.”
“Okay, no extra sugar. I don’t want you getting rich off me.”
Leyla laughed. “Get rich off you? I couldn’t get rich off all you guys in here put together, no matter what I was selling!” She dropped a third sugar cube into his glass. “On the house.”
He frowned as he stirred his tea. “We had jobs in Syria. I could’ve made you rich then.”
The stranger offered his hand. “I’m Selim Wilson. Sam if you prefer.”
Ahdaf ignored his hand. “Why would I prefer Sam?”
“It’s what I was called growing up.”
“You changed it to Selim?”
“My mother’s Turkish. Selim is on my birth certificate.”
“While you guys decide on his name, I’ve got other customers,” Leyla said.
“Before you go, do you have cold beer?” Selim asked.
She looked at Ahdaf when she replied, “Only one is cold.”
“I only want one.”
“It’s mine,” Ahdaf spoke up.
“You’re drinking tea.”
He took a sip and pushed the cup aside. “I pre-ordered the beer. Very cold.”
“I tell you what, you guys share it.” Leyla uncapped the bottle and planted it between them, along with two glasses, before squeezing around the end of the stubby bar to serve tables.
“It’s all yours if you want it,” Selim said.
“We can share it,” Ahdaf replied.
“Then I insist that it’s my treat.” Selim angled the glasses as he poured to produce only thin heads of foam. He passed one to Ahdaf.
“Thanks,” he said and took a sip. “Are you American?”
“Is my accent that obvious?”
“It’s an accent. I like to know where people are from.”
“It’s American,” Selim confirmed.
“If you’re an American, you must know who some of these guys are,” Ahdaf remarked, referring to the cowboy pictures Leyla had tacked to the walls.
“I know a lot of them. Not personally, of course, but from the movies.”
“Maybe you should take a selfie in a cowboy hat and stick it on the wall,” Ahdaf suggested.
Selim snorted. “It takes more than being an American wearing a cowboy hat to meet Leyla’s standards. I think you also need to be a movie star.”
“I think she just likes cowboys,” Ahdaf replied. Now that they were talking, he couldn’t help but notice how handsome Selim was, his dark beard groomed and his eyes chestnut brown. “I don’t think all those came from movie stars,” he added, pointing to the cowboy hats nailed overhead. “Have you been to Leyla’s before?”
Selim nodded. “Yeah, occasionally.”
“I’ve never seen you in here and it’s basically my office.”
“Obviously we work different hours.”
“I’ve also never seen another American in here.”
“I’m Turkish American. Maybe that explains it. Or maybe the fact that I wanted to meet you.”
Ahdaf’s danger alarm went off. He’d met lots of strangers at Leyla’s. Refugees were his clients and her café was where they knew to find smugglers to help them make the crossing to Greece. Selim, he sensed, wasn’t looking for that kind of help. “Why do you want to meet me?” he asked.
“I’ve heard you get things done.”
“What things?”
“Moving people.”
“Who told you that?”
“A lot of people could have told me.”
“But who did? I like to know how people find me.”
“He. She. It. I don’t remember.”
“Why the secrecy?”
“I need a reliable route for people to escape.”
“Escape what?”
“Turkey.”
“So you’re a smuggler, too?”
“Not like you, or why would I need you?”
“You don’t need me. Lots of guys do what I do.” Ahdaf checked his phone. “It’s charged enough,” he reported and dropped it into his daypack. “Are you CIA?”
“I can’t say who I work for. Not until we have an agreement.”
“Then I guess I’ll never know. Thanks for the beer.” He slipped off the barstool.
“Just remember, Ahdaf Jalil—”
“How do you know my name?” Ahdaf interrupted him.
“Just remember,” Selim started again, “what you call ‘moving people’ is trafficking to the rest of the world. Turkey could deport you back to Syria. Back to Raqqa and ISIS. Back to a push off a high rooftop.”
“Why have you come looking for me?”
“I told you, I want your help.”
“I don’t want to help you.” Ahdaf stood to leave.
“Take this.” Selim forced a business card on him.
“I don’t want it.”
“Sometime you might need help. Not everyone is a nice guy like you.”
Ahdaf glanced at the card. No name. Only a telephone number with a local prefix. “Do I ask for Sam or Selim?”
“You don’t ask for anyone. You leave your name and a message, and where to find you if you need help.”
“I won’t need help,” Ahdaf said, but stuck the card in his pocket anyway. “Thanks for the beer.”
“Maybe next time I can treat you to a meal.”
“I’m never that hungry.”
Ahdaf made his way to the door of the lively café. He knew some eyes trailed him. Nobody’s business was entirely private since most of it was conducted on the street. Everybody kept an eye on each other and not always to be helpful. Selim hadn’t said he was CIA, but he was somebody like that, and probably somebody in the café knew exactly who he was.
The door hadn’t closed behind him before his phone started ringing.
###
An hour later, Ahdaf was pacing the loading dock at the central bus station. The family was late. Nothing had been easy to arrange for them because they insisted on traveling all together, not letting the father go first to establish a beachhead where the others could join him. For Ahdaf, that meant more seats on a bus, more lifejackets, more spaces on a raft—all of which were in heavy demand. It was mid-autumn, and already on some days the weather made it treacherous to cross. In another month, it would be an option only for the very desperate.
Ahdaf had bribed the bus driver to save seats for the family. He tried to promise the same service to all his customers, and he pretty much could. He’d learned which drivers he could trust to save the seats until the door hissed and closed.
He checked his watch.
Ten minutes.
Ahdaf looked around. The driver wouldn’t wait for anybody. Certainly the seat jumpers wouldn’t. The instant the door hissed preparing to close, the passengers standing in the aisle would wrangle for the three vacant seats, claiming maladies they didn’t have to assert their priority to sit down.
The driver blew the horn. Five-minute warning.
Ahdaf caught his eye through the windshield and shrugged. He didn’t know where the family was. Then there they were, scurrying along the platform looking for the bus to Assos, rushed and encumbered; an infant in her mother’s arms, the father and teenage son hauling rucksacks.
“Here!” Ahdaf waved to catch their attention. “HERE! HERE!”
They hurried up to him.
He chuckled when he saw Meryem’s inflated belly. “You weren’t so big yesterday,” he said.
“You told us to make her look more pregnant,” Yusuf, her husband, reminded him.
“And you did! I hope her lifejacket still fits!”
“My life jacket won’t fit?” Meryem asked, alarmed.
“I’m joking,” I reassured her. “A life jacket fits around the shoulders and your belly that’s bigger.”
Yusuf grinned. “It’s a life preserver for our new baby. Extra protection!”
“A life preserver?” Ahdaf asked, puzzled.
Yusuf poked his wife in the side, denting the inflated tube hiding under her robe, at the same time revealing the outline of a life preserver beneath her rust-colored robe.
“Yusuf don’t!” she said. “People might be looking.”
Two short toots of the horn. The two-minute warning.
“Call the number I gave you as soon as you get off the bus. Your contact will be waiting for you.”
“Who is it?” Yusuf asked.
“I never know. You have a backup number if there’s a problem, and if there’s still a problem, call me. Here, take these.” Ahdaf handed out bright pink caps with sun visors. He even had one for the baby.
Issa, a lanky fourteen-year-old with a wispy moustache, looked dubious. “I’m supposed to wear a pink hat?”
“It’s the only color they had. Besides, you won’t care when you get to Lesvos and have to walk seventy kilometers in the hot sun.”
Meryem paled. “We must walk seventy kilometers? I really am pregnant.”
“I’ll carry you if I have to,” Yusuf reassured her.
Issa put the cap on backwards, having to pull it hard over his mop of curly black hair. “It’s too tight!”
“Tight’s good. You won’t lose it if there’s wind.”
“Wait,” the teenager said, and turned the cap around to pull some hair through the band in the back. “Cool or uncool?” he asked Ahdaf.
“Very cool. It’ll never fall off.” Ahdaf caught the driver’s eye again, who nodded. Time to board.
“Thank you again, Ahdaf,” Meryem said, and did an unexpected thing for a Syrian woman: she kissed him on his cheek. “You are a kind man to help my family.”
Yusuf grasped his hand with both of his. “You’ve helped save my family,” he said.
“It’s you who saved your family. You got them away from the war. I’m only helping a little.”
They touched their hearts and Yusuf followed his wife onto the bus.
Issa, the last to board, pointed to his cap.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Pink?”
“You’ll be glad to have it, pink or not. Besides, you might start a trend.”
The boy grinned. “Cool. Thanks for helping my family.”
They shook hands before Issa bounded up the steps to sit across the aisle from his parents in the front row. As they all waved goodbye, the driver stared at Meryem’s pronounced belly. He glanced in the rearview mirror to ask the passengers, “Is there a midwife on the bus?”
Ahdaf heard a few nervous laughs as the door hissed and closed. The driver backed out of the bus bay and drove off. Ahdaf waved again though he couldn’t see the family through the glazed windows. He hoped they saw him because he knew how every act of kindness, no matter how trivial—if only a friendly wave or the offer of a sesame bar—could nurture someone’s hope that what lay ahead mightn’t be so bad.
He left the bus terminal and ran to catch the tram when he saw it pulling up. It wasn’t full and he sat by the window watching shopkeepers in the last throes of the day: dragging merchandise inside, flicking off lights and lowering squeaky metal grates. Only the cafés had customers. Ahdaf felt deflated—how else to describe it?—whenever he sent people he’d grown to like into unknown hands and an uncertain future. He had learned it was possible to bond with other refugees very quickly because that’s all the time they had. Yusuf’s family, too, had felt the bittersweetness of the moment. Meryem’s kiss on his cheek had been poignant proof of that. Ahdaf smiled to think she probably wished she had made herself appear a little less pregnant to have more room on the narrow bus seat, but the ploy might win her some sympathy if she needed protection or a helping hand. The family’s journey had already been tough. Ahdaf had made the same one himself, coming from Syria mostly on foot and braving scoundrels along the way. But unlike Yusuf’s family, he opted to stay in Istanbul. He felt safe enough there and anonymous when he wanted to be.
Or was he? How did the CIA man—that’s how he thought of Selim even if he hadn’t admitted as much—know about him? He even knew his last name; but then Ahdaf realized, half the people at Leyla’s could’ve told him. It was odd, though, if he’d come around asking questions about Ahdaf and no one mentioned it. On suspicious things like that, someone always had your back because they expected the same friendly protection.
Like many of the young guys who hung out at the café, Ahdaf played a minor role in one of many smuggling networks. He moved people arriving in Istanbul to Assos, a sleepy village five hours away on the coast, from where they’d cross the narrow channel to Greece. He organized bus connections, space on rafts, lifejackets, and overnight stays if needed; and fulfilled special needs such as medications or replacements for lost crutches. He wasn’t much more than an efficient gofer. All the young smugglers who hung out in Leyla’s were gofers, not the bosses who paid the bribes and bought the rafts that he and their other minions filled with desperate passengers. Ahdaf had little idea who the bosses were. It wasn’t like there was a corporate headquarters where he could meet the team. Smuggling was managed by cell phone, and only in-person when money needed to be exchanged or a gofer disciplined. That didn’t mean that he didn’t hear the abusive stories from up and down the line. The worst, in his mind, were the smugglers who took money from refugees for a crossing that never happened. The refugees either ended up stranded in Istanbul or depleted, on a second try, money they’d held back to start new lives in Europe. Ahdaf knew who the scoundrels were but he was helpless to stop them. He survived in an edgy world, which translated meant dangerous verging on lethal.
“Next station Aksaray,” a recorded voice announced over the tram’s intercom. “Aksaray. Next station Aksaray.”
Many people got off and Ahdaf followed them. Aksaray, a working-class neighborhood, was a magnet for refugees. Families sat in clumps on the sidewalks, some ever alert to begging opportunities, but the majority just huddled in what little space they could find. For most, living on the streets was a fraught adjustment after losing their claim to middle class. Many of them could have been Ahdaf’s mother or his father because they too had once been teachers and dentists, or simply housewives who’d been enjoying modern luxuries like dishwashers until their neighborhoods were bombed. They had fled, none under Ahdaf’s special circumstances, but for reasons also threatening enough to force them uproot themselves and embark on a dangerous journey. Not everyone survived. They knew the risks when they started out, but their odds were worse if they remained behind.
Ahdaf resented the whole vocabulary of human trafficking and Selim all but called him a trafficker. He didn’t traffic people. He smuggled people because they wanted to be smuggled. Along a long chain, he moved them one link. If they could have done it themselves, they would have, but they needed help and he didn’t exploit them. The guys running the rackets made the money, which he always collected, but he barely got by on his meager cut. It was only enough to keep him working for them as a foot soldier in an ever-growing army.
People who’d already made the trip successfully sometimes sent word back to other refugees to seek out Ahdaf. At least for one leg of their journey they could be sure someone wasn’t going to steal their money. They’d feel safe because safety was what Ahdaf had sought for himself. He would never buy an oligarch’s palace on the Bosporus, so why not be an honest man?
Out of habit, his feet brought him to Leyla’s Café when he’d been intending to go home. Once there, he thought he might as well go inside, but then he looked through the window at the men slouched in their chairs, hanging out because they had no other place to go. It depressed him because he was one of them with no place to go; certainly no place he wanted to call home, and he’d be going home to no one. He didn’t want to be depressed after he’d been feeling good about helping the refugee family. He’d saved their lives, Yusuf said, though Ahdaf knew it was an exaggeration. He also knew that the road ahead of them was still treacherous. He smiled remembering the fourteen-year-old boy’s worry about being uncool. Ahdaf, only ten years older, could remember being fourteen. Before the war. Before having another birthday became chancy. He may not have saved their lives, but he was glad he’d given the boy a better shot at reaching fifteen.
He saw Leyla watching him through the window. She looked puzzled, and he realized he’d been standing there lost in thought for a couple of minutes. With a short wave, he walked off. Five minutes later he turned a corner and opened the front door of the building where he lived. was on his corner pulling open his building’s front door. He climbed one flight of steps. That was the only thing he liked about his room: it wasn’t on the ground floor which made him feel safer.
He flipped on the light and looked for fleeing cockroaches. It had been a week since Ahdaf had seen one. He appeared to be winning that war. He dropped his daypack on the floor and went into the bathroom. At least he had a proper toilet to piss into and didn’t have to use the same sink that he’d later use to brush his teeth or splash his face. Having his own apartment, if only one long room with a tiny bathroom, was a far cry from when he first arrived in Istanbul and shared a basement room with nine other guys, one of them always smoking or farting while pissing in the sink. Without a toilet they had to shit somewhere else. Café. Mosque. Sometimes an alley. He’d never known ten confined men could be so rank. He’d wake up smelling like them. Sometimes it stayed on him all day. That’s when he started splurging on a hammam whenever he had a few extra liras to spend.
He pulled a beer from the refrigerator, popped its top and took a swallow. It was only as cold as tap water but that would do. Beer was Ahdaf’s new habit. In Raqqa, it had been hard to find, and he hadn’t drunk it more than a clandestine few times, usually when he and his cousin got tipsy enough to seduce each other—if their experimental touches could be called seduction. In Istanbul, it helped him sleep. It helped him nod off before bad memories or anxieties about his tenuous existence flooded him. He swallowed more beer. Being approached by the secretive American had unnerved him.
He stripped to his boxers and turned off the light before crawling gently into bed. He’d raised it off the floor using stacks of books: sixteen stacks around its perimeter and eight more to support its center, atop which overlapping pieces of plywood theoretically distributed the soft mattress’s weight. He’d made sure that the stacks were as close to the same height as possible, and with a large enough footprint to bear his weight as well as absorb his movements while asleep. He found most of his books on the trams, forgotten by passengers in a hurry to get off, and at spots where people knew to put things for anyone who wanted them.
The evening was warm for mid-autumn. He heard a couple of cars go by, some kid clatter past on a skateboard, the low murmur of televisions and conversations from nearby apartments. He threw off the sheet and laid back on the pillow waiting for the beer to dissolve the day. It didn’t. Instead, smelling the lingering soap on his body he became aroused as he recalled that part of his day at the hammam. Timur, the attendant he’d learned to ask for, had scrubbed him down. As usual his hands, hidden under a mound of soapsuds, slipped up Ahdaf’s thighs, brushing his cock which was already hard with anticipation. He gripped him, and with a couple of jerks made Ahdaf come, the whole while acting with complete indifference. Only when he doused Ahdaf with cold water did his sly smile acknowledge their complicity. What Ahdaf also saw, not visible to anyone else, was Timur’s own cock wagging behind his thin towel. He wanted to touch it—they both longed for him to touch it—but they also knew the danger of exposure as a homosexual. Now in bed, with no one to denounce him for his unholy thoughts, Ahdaf pulled off his undershorts, and with his eyes closed, imagined it was Timur’s hand again that closed on his cock and made him come a second time that day.
He let his satisfaction subside before going into the bathroom to splash his belly clean.
