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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.