He tugged at his black, stained T-shirt.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Then my dad gave me a key and said go to a house, and he told me where it was, and he said to go inside and lock the door. But when I got there the house didn’t have a door.’ He took a key out of his back pocket and showed it to me, as if he was still expecting to find the door that the key would fit. Then he tucked it again into his pocket.
‘But Allah will help us in the water? Because in the water they can’t find us.’
‘Yes, he will help us cross the sea.’
Mohammed’s shoulders softened and he stayed beside me for a while with his black jeans and black top and black fingernails and black eyes. As the days passed I realised that nobody else spoke to Mohammed and after our conversation on the balcony, he always glanced over at me, constantly checking to see where I was. I think I made him feel safe.
On the third day, I went for a walk. There was a concrete pathway that led deep into a wood, and if you kept walking eventually the path opened out to the big buildings. There were not many clouds, the weather was very similar to Syria, maybe slightly cooler. The sky was full of fog from the pollution, especially in the morning, a thick grey mist that lurked above the water and above the streets and the mist was not clean like a winter frost, it was full of the smells of the city and its people.
On the fourth day, Elias decided to join me on my walk. He rarely spoke unless he was going to say something about the weather, which was more or less the same every day anyway, but he commented on the tiny changes, like, ‘The mist is thicker this morning,’ or, ‘There is a bitter wind this evening.’ He always said the most obvious things, but the weather became important to us as we waited and watched for signs that the sea would be calm, so that we could continue our journey.
As we walked, I became aware of other things too, like the cats, which reminded me of Aleppo; how they woke up from their sleepy state and waited all day in the shadows for food. And the street dogs too, unpredictable and unkempt, with their old scars and new wounds, from injuries or disease or accidents. They all looked similar with light or sometimes dark brown coats. They were everywhere: wandering into alleys and side streets behind the restaurants, waiting for food, or walking through traffic. In the night, the wild dogs of Istanbul would call to one another across the city. And in the morning they rested under chairs and tables in front of the coffee shops on Taksim Square. Often they just lay dozing, recovering from the night’s activities. Most people didn’t seem to notice them, but the dogs watched everyone, with half-moon eyes and heads resting on paws: they watched the children darting through traffic tapping on car windows, trying to sell bottles of water to passers-by.
There were whole families wandering through the streets, some barefoot, sometimes sitting by the sidewalk when they became tired of walking, and other refugees on the market stalls, trying to make enough money to move on from here, selling things that people couldn’t live without: phone chargers, life jackets, cigarettes.
Sometimes I forgot that I was one of these people. Like the dogs, I sat everyday on the same bench and watched the yellow cabs circling the red poppies on the roundabout. I took in the smells from the grill houses and kebab shops, with their spits and wood fires, and the wonderful smells of the dough rings, fresh from the ovens, or from the vendors who circled the square each day. There were raw burgers in glass display cases and in the storefront windows women in traditional dress made hand-rolled crêpes. I watched how the refugee children learnt to adjust, how they mastered the art of survival – these little entrepreneurs, the lucky ones. What would Sami have thought of these streets? Of the market stalls and restaurants and streetlights on Istiklal Avenue, just down the road from the slums and ghettos. He would have dragged me by the hand into the chocolatiers, and Afra would have loved the boutiques, bookstores and patisseries.
From the day we arrived at the smuggler’s apartment, Afra again refused to go outside. When I returned to her after walking the streets, I would tell her about the Ottoman buildings, about the cars and the noise and the chaos and the food and the dogs. If I had some change, I would buy her a dough ring with sesame seeds. She loved them, especially when they were still warm, and she would break it in half to share with me. Afra would never eat anything without sharing it – that was her way. I didn’t tell her about the children on the streets. I didn’t want her to see them in her mind’s eye, to become trapped with them in the inescapable tunnels of her mind.