A Time of Miracles (9 page)

Lost in thought, I tell Gloria that I’m fed up with the hazards of life. I’m going to be eleven soon, and all I’ve known are hurried getaways, rushed goodbyes, and anguish. If it keeps up like this, I tell her, I’m going to jump out of the truck and wait for the soldiers to shoot me.

“Ah, yes?” she says. “And then what?”

“Then I’ll be dead, obviously!”

“And you’ll be better off, no doubt?”

Through a hole in the tarp that covers the back of the truck, I can see a forest of dense trees pass by. It’s darker than a cave in there. If I jump out, maybe I’ll be able to live there in hiding for 107 years, like a bear.

“And your mother? Do you think of her?” Gloria whispers. “Do you think she would enjoy hearing that you’re dead?”

“My mother doesn’t know me. She couldn’t care less,” I say. “And maybe she’s dead too.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk! Jeanne Fortune is not dead. She’s alive.”

“How would you know? You just tell me stories to force me to live.”

Gloria folds her arms over her chest. She thinks a moment as the truck zigzags to avoid puddles. Around us the other refugees try to catch some sleep. They are seated higgledy-piggledy, like rejected merchandise.

“Stay quiet,” says Gloria. “I have something very serious to show you.”

I’m suspicious. “Do you have more secrets in your box?” I ask her.

“Not in my box, Monsieur Blaise. In my pocket.”

I’m angry, but I stay calm. It’s raining outside and we are in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, I would rather stay dry by Gloria’s side, even if she gets on my nerves.

She searches under her coat and takes out a crumpled envelope. She hands it to me.

“There, open it,” she says.

I unfold the paper. In the upper left corner I see the colors—blue, white, and red. And a woman’s head. And below, some lines in French. Although I learned the everyday vocabulary in my catalog, I can’t read what’s written because of the alphabet.

“What is it?” I ask.

“An official document,” Gloria whispers like a secret agent. “From the Department of Foreign Affairs. You see that sign up there? It’s the emblem of France. Below, it says ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’ I had it translated by one of Mr. Ha’s friends.”

“Oh?”

“Yes indeed. And you know what else it says?” She stops and looks at me so intensely that it gives me goose bumps. “It says that your mother is alive, Monsieur Blaise. Jeanne Fortune in the flesh! It’s written here, in black and white! And you know what? She lives at Mont-Saint-Michel. It’s official.”

I stare with wide eyes. This paper comes from France! It speaks of my mother! It mentions Mont-Saint-Michel! Shaken, I look at the document with such strong feelings that I am about to cry. Then Gloria takes the paper and puts it back in the envelope; we can’t afford to lose it.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “The journey will last longer and it will be more difficult than by boat, but we’re on the right track.”

Tears run down my cheeks, and I can’t decide whether I am sad, happy, or what. My heart has swelled like a sponge.

“And Fatima?” I ask. “Do you think she’ll find her aunt in Saudi Arabia? Do you think she’ll be happy there with all that sand?”

“
Insha’Allah,
” Gloria answers.

She takes me in her arms like when I was little. She strokes my hair, she rocks me, and her scent of detergent and tea soothes me better than any balm.

“Now go to sleep, little miracle,” she whispers. “Tomorrow life will be better.”

WHEN
I look at page 67 of my atlas, I realize that the Black Sea creates an obstacle. If it weren’t there, the Caucasus would be much closer to Europe! But no one can decide to remove an ocean, and no engineer has thought of digging a tunnel with a railroad track under it. This is why we have to make a long detour and cross several countries, several borders, which is dangerous.

I don’t know who invented borders, whether it was God or Allah, but I think borders are a very bad idea.

At a border, even when you have an official passport with a photo, you have to jump out of the truck. War demands it. Controls! Barbed wire! Dogs! Cameras! Impossible to go through with a load of famished refugees. So we get out because the driver won’t go farther.

“Those of you who are willing to take your chances have to follow this man,” the driver says. “He’s very familiar with the area and will be your guide.”

“And then what?” we ask.

“A truck will meet you on the other side, everything is arranged. Now go!”

We don’t have a choice, so we get out of the truck. The guide requests his payment, and we have to pay him in cash down to the last dollar. Only then does he take us to the forest.

We are about fifteen people, walking single file behind this man who opens the way with his flashlight. Around us the night looks like a dark and menacing mouth ready to swallow us. But when you want something badly, you have to suffer in silence. So I walk, twisting my ankles, trying to forget fear, tiredness, and hunger. I am used to it.

It is raining. The mud becomes like glue under the soles of our shoes. I start thinking that it’s a waste of time to get clean in the public baths if we have to get dirty in the woods at each checkpoint.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk! Stop whining, Monsieur Blaise, and walk silently,” Gloria tells me.

I never thought it would be so difficult to be free. And now, with the humidity and the weight of the gear on her back, Gloria is coughing again. My stomach is in knots when I hear the horrible dog barking in her chest.

“Are there good doctors in France?” I ask.

Gloria catches her breath, hands on her hips. “I don’t need a doctor. It’s nothing … just … a coughing fit.”

We move ahead between the trees for hours and hours. Our feet slide and roll over stones, dead branches, and other invisible things. To encourage myself, I repeat my everyday vocabulary: “
Helloiwouldlikearoom. Wherecanifindagoodrestaurant? Pardonsiridliketogototheeiffeltower.
”

Later on we reach the edge of a village, and our guide tells us to hide in a barn and wait. Our small group huddles together to keep warm, and I finally drift off to sleep.

When I open my eyes, it is daylight. Gloria is talking to the other refugees about what to do. Wait some more? Leave? I ask her where the guide is, and she explains that he has disappeared. He pocketed our money and left without keeping his promise. He’s a rat, and now we have to manage on our own.

We leave the barn with tired eyes and enter the village through a street strewn with old tires and empty cans. The first living thing we meet is a yellow-furred dog that comes to sniff at us. As we move ahead, doors open. Children appear suddenly, then women, old people, and they look at us without a word, as if we had fallen from Mars.

At the end of the street, men are gathered. Their faces are the color of wax. They smoke cigarette butts, they spit, and one of them has a rifle tucked under his arm. I can’t help but think about the Kalashnikov that killed Fatima’s father as he prayed on his rug. I shiver.

“You must be refugees,” says the man with the rifle as we reach the group. “Where do you come from?”

We tell him about Sukhumi, the insurrections, the truck, the walk in the forest, and the guide who left with our dollars.

The man sighs. “These guides can’t be trusted,” he says. “All of them take advantage of people’s misery. It’s the third time this has happened in less than a month.”

The other men nod sternly, and I no longer fear the
rifle. I see that they are just poor peasants who have to deal with the hazards of life.

“We can’t do much to help you, but come with us,” they say.

They take us to the door of a large hut, where we flock in. It’s warm inside, and a pleasant smell of bergamot lingers between the walls. At the back a TV is on.

A woman motions to us to sit down on trunks. She serves us tea in small, decorated glasses, then gives us steaming pancakes with a dish of boiled cabbage. It is the best feast in the world.

“See?” Gloria says, smiling at me. “Never despair of human beings. For every person who lets you down, you’ll meet dozens of others who will help you.”

I nod. “Right!” I say.

Unexpectedly, the TV shows pictures of Sukhumi. We see the soldiers, the tanks, the planes, and the houses on fire. As we watch, our group of refugees stops eating, and the woman of the house raises the volume so that we can hear the news about our war. I look closely at the screen, hoping to see Fatima and Nour among the fleeing crowd. But everything moves too fast, and at the end a man wearing coveralls appears in front of the camera.

Gloria gets up so quickly that she knocks her tea glass down.

“What is it?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer me. She’s shaking.

She goes closer to the TV as the man in coveralls speaks into a microphone. The only thing I see is his name written
at the bottom of the screen—Zemzem Dabaiev. Gloria turns pale, tears flowing from her eyes.

I come near her. I take her hand. Gloria’s hand has never seemed so cold.

“Mother?” I say.

She bends toward me and whispers, “Koumaïl.” Then she collapses on the floor of the hut.

WHEN
you’re only nearly eleven years old, many things are impossible to comprehend, especially about love, war, nationalists, nations’ strategic interests—and also Zemzem Dabaiev. It’s because of all this that Gloria collapsed on the floor of the hut, but she doesn’t want to say anything more about it. When I’m grown up, maybe she’ll explain.

“No, not now, Monsieur Blaise. Not now,” she says. “We have to continue with our journey by any means possible, and if you ask one more question about Zemzem, I’ll wring your neck, is that understood?”

I nod.

We leave the village on board a cart driven by the man with the rifle. He takes us to the bottom of a dark valley that looks as if it had been cut out with an ax from the sides of the mountains. We are finally in Russia. The man says goodbye before turning back to his village, and our group of
refugees breaks up, each of us following his or her destiny,
insha’Allah
.

Gloria and I keep going on foot. When we’re lucky, we hitchhike in trucks, in dented cars, along roads, rivers, swamps.…

We sleep in improvised shelters that don’t offer much protection. I am often cold, so I dream of Fatima in the dunes of Saudi Arabia, which warms me up.

By the end the only thing I can say about Russia is that there are lots of hydraulic dams, but very few people.

At the Ukrainian border there is no barbed wire for once. Only armed guards and dogs. Gloria arranges things with the driver of a tourist van that is half empty. He takes our last dollars in exchange for the right to sit with the passengers, who are half-asleep in their seats, their cameras slung around their necks. When you have seen war and bombs, it’s strange to see tourists. They would be better off taking pictures somewhere else, I think.

“Let’s see if Mr. Ha did a good job,” Gloria whispers to me as she hands me my passport.

I turn the pages and look at my photo—a Parisian, clean, well groomed, without lice or fleas. Looks good to me. But I tremble a little when the guard starts inspecting the van.

He’s a hulk in uniform, with the thick neck of an ox and dull eyes that remind me of Stambek’s. It looks like he forgot his intelligence somewhere too. Our good luck.

“French?” he asks in Russian.

We nod convincingly, but I see that he hesitates when
he looks at the stamps drawn by Mr. Ha. I lean toward Gloria, and without thinking, I blurt out the everyday vocabulary I learned in the catalog. It’s a jumble of words that don’t make any sense, but the guard doesn’t know any better. He may not even know about the Eiffel Tower. He looks at me with his blank eyes, then at Gloria, and again at me.

At last he closes our passports. “Welcome to Ukraine,” he says.

We hold our breath until the van goes through the checkpoint and gains some speed.

“Well!” Gloria cries out. “You’re a true dictionary, Monsieur Blaise!”

I laugh when I think of my gibberish, but Gloria seems really surprised by my linguistic powers.

“Maybe some French stayed in my memory after the Terrible Accident?” I say. “Maybe I remember a few things subconsciously?”

“Maybe …,” Gloria whispers. “In any case, if she could see you, your mother would be proud of you.”

I put my head on Gloria’s shoulder and close my eyes. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I’ll be able to remember Jeanne Fortune’s face from the depths of my memories. Maybe I’ll be able to remember the sound of her voice.

“And my father,” I ask, “do you think I knew him? Do you think he carried me in his arms before the Terrible Accident?”

Gloria jerks her shoulder in surprise. “Yes, I think so,” she says.

“You think so, but in fact you don’t know.”

“When one does not know, Monsieur Blaise, one imagines. It’s better than nothing.”

There is so much mystery surrounding my past and so much uncertainty about my future that it makes me dizzy. I prefer not to think about it. As the van takes the road toward Odessa, I content myself with counting the number of borders we still have to cross before we reach France. There are six, at least. It will take time, but the most important thing is to keep going straight ahead.

IN
the railroad freight yard of Odessa, we sleep at the back of a cattle car. The floor is hard and it stinks of cow urine, but I dream that I am lying under the dormer window of the Matachine with Fatima and we are looking at the unchanging stars.

That night our radio and our samovar are stolen. Ukrainian thieves are very silent, and this makes me so sad that I have no courage left.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk!” Gloria says. “The gear is lighter now. In a way, the thieves did me a favor.”

THERE
are days when I see shadows in Gloria’s eyes. Grief does that. Even if she hides it, I know that she thinks of Zemzem, of her five brothers, of Liuba, and of the marvelous fruit in the orchard of her childhood. I have no cure for her. All I can do is keep going without whining, and sometimes I recite the poems of Charles Baudelaire that I learn from my catalog. “
Hommelibretoujourtuchériralamer!” Freemanyouwillalwayscherishthesea!